Wilf’s Blog

I don’t usually comment on the xkcd web comic, as just about everyone reads it already, but this week’s I completely agree with.

After seeing Office Space with z3rb back in February, he said that Idiocracy (made by the same people or director or something) was also good. I watched it, and he was wrong. It was shit. The whole film was stupid.

As the cartoons discusses, the average IQ of the population is not going to decline, the average person’s IQ will always be 100 because that is how IQ is defined. I think. So no matter whether people more or less clever, their IQs will stay the same. But issues of IQ aside, people aren’t going to give up on cleverness. It’s built into our species, a desire to learn and know things. People learn more today because we have the technology to do so easily, and in the future we’ll have even more time to do so.

I also agree with the cartoon’s title:

People aren’t going to change, for better or for worse. Technology’s going to be so cool. All in all, the future will be okay! Except climate; we fucked that one up.

Technology will be so cool, and so will the future. We think it’s alright being alive at this time, but imagine what’s still to come. Technology helps people to learn and be better informed, it’s not going to lead to societal ‘decline’. It will free people from having to work so hard and let us be better people.

But bullshit aside, there was another problem with the film: it just wasn’t funny. That’s why it failed^[1].

1. And why TNG wins. [↩]

Yesterday I was at a BBQ with a few friends. The host was 18 a few days ago, but it’s not as if we needed an excuse. Overall it went well: the weather was warm, the atmosphere relaxing, and of course there was plenty of food and drink. I even managed to cycle home afterwards without trouble.

But half way through the evening, trouble was aplenty. One of my friends there was George^[1]. George is great for conversations, especially during one of his ’saunters’. A few hours and several drinks into the evening, he suggested that we partake in a spot of saunterage for a chat, and I agreed. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but George knew of a path through some woods. We hopped over the fence at the end of the garden and joined it.

Now at this point, around 9.30pm, it was still warm and light. I was amazed at just how jungley a Scottish wood could be – huge leaves to the left, sharp branches to the right, and shit on the path. At least there were no wild animals. A few minutes later, however, we came across something far worse: complete fucking scumbags (~15 year olds who were a few years below us at school).

It all started out quite amicably. George and I were walking along the path, quite briskly, jumping over the occasional stream, with this group of around 15 boys and girls to the left of the path. I couldn’t tell what they were doing; it’s not as if there was anything of interest in the woods that would warrant the attention of 15 people at once. I wasn’t familiar with the people, I only recognised their faces, but they all seemed to know George.

We were both a bit drunk, and I wasn’t actually listening to what they were shouting, but I think we were being pelted with some rather unimaginative insults. George and I were just joking to each other, laughing at our jokes and laughing at the scumbags. On reflection, I don’t think that they liked how happy we were. I thought it would be a good idea to start speaking in a Glaswegian accent, with lines such as “‘Ere mate, ya looking at ma bird?” (see NEDS Kru on YouTube). Anyway – we just carried on right past them.

We were about 50 metres away when we heard a guy shout in a particularly disgusting accent: “Don’t get wide with me”. Of course, we started laughing at this ridiculous sentence. That we were moving away and not even engaging these people aside, what the heck does ‘getting wide’ with someone entail? Whatever it was, we were sure we weren’t doing it. We turned and inquired as to what that meant. ‘Being cheeky’. LOL.

Oh dear. You know that when a gormless idiot thinks he’s been ‘given cheek’, there’s nothing you can say to convince him otherwise. We carried on along the path, but we were being followed by several of the guys. We were making our way to the edge of the woods where there was a street and some houses, but before we could reach it, another group of guys appeared in front of us, to join those who had ended up following us. We were trapped, in the middle of about 7 or 8 guys^[2].

It all started in the most bizarre of ways. The guy who had shouted at us originally had another gem of insight to shout at us (or rather at George, they didn’t really seem to direct anything specifically at me): “George you grouse!” Wow. That had me and George both pissing ourselves laughing^[3] and it put a very large grin on my face. But really – wow. What a thing to say. I was mostly surprised that he even knew a word as complicated as that. He then proceeded to remark to George that his shoes looked homosexual. “Well, I’ve never really regarded these shoes as particularly homosexual, to be honest,” George replied. It was true; his shoes showed no sexuality.

Then, they started to punch us. Really. As soon as the first punch was laid, everyone started punching: George retaliated, and they even came at me. I was a lot taller than everyone else there, and larger too. Although I’m not the most in-shape person, I’ve been going to the gym for a couple of years, and I have considerable strength. The only problem was that there were 7 of them, and 2 of us. Had they been 7 12 year old girls we’d still have been in trouble. The punches aimed at me only struck my chest and arms^[4] and they barely hurt. I felt that to retaliate would only serve to justify their attack on us, so all I did was to push them away from me and away from George as I could. A few seconds later and the first round was over.

I have to confess, at this point I was still grinning rather widely. I’m not sure why; it wasn’t a conscious decision. I looked at our attackers and it was clear that they were under the influence of at least alcohol, and quite possibly more. I’m not sure what they were saying or what George was saying back to them, but it was clear that with their intoxication and general stupidity, we would not be able to talk sense into them. After all, they had attacked us, seemingly without provocation. Whatever anyone else was saying, I was urging George to leave. We had a clear way out, and I thought the most sensible option would just be to walk away^[5]. Either George didn’t hear me or he wanted to stay, and he continued talking. Obviously I wasn’t going to leave George alone, so I made sure that no one went behind my back, and I was not hit again. Unfortunately, George was not so lucky and whilst he was talking to their leader, some threw the odd punch at him, and there was even a headbutt^[6].

Another punching frenzy broke out. I tried to protect George as much as I could (they were no longer going for me) but quickly I got into a position where there wasn’t much I could do. I was telling them not to hit George; that it made absolutely no sense to be doing this; and that George didn’t want to be hit. I didn’t know what else to do. George was only defending himself, but if we fully engaged, so would they, and there was no way that we would win. We were outnumbered.

When the punching died down again, I asked to George if he wanted me to call the police (in order to scare them – as if they’d have let me place a call!). In the end, I didn’t. Large red lumps had appeared on George’s face – just like you see in the movies, only for real. I had no idea those things developed so quickly. Strange. Everything about this was strange.

Danny (who George was familiar with and who seemed to be their leader) started talking to us. What he said was complete bullshit and it just angered me. I was no longer grinning. To him, the whole situation made sense. He had been phoned by the guy who told us not to be ‘wide’, and Danny had been told that we were causing trouble when we were walking past the large group of scumbags . We most definitely were not. He somehow tried to rationalise their attack on us, but this was not a particularly smart guy. I was saying that all we wanted to do was continue our walk up to the houses at the edge of the woods. He descended into a broken record state, telling us that we should just move on. Yet he couldn’t make the connection that our goals were the same. Really, the whole situation was just bizarre.

Eventually (and I don’t know how they came to this point), George and Danny shook hands (not something that I would have done), and we managed to leave, unfollowed. I didn’t have a mark on me^[7], but George had quite clearly been in a fight, though he was OK.

10 seconds later we were laughing and joking to each other – had that really happened? How were those people so disconnected from rational and sensible though? OMFSM.

That was our fun for the night, but it left us thinking. What do we do in such a situation? George asked me how I thought he held up: I think he did well, he returned as many of their (admittedly rather weak) punches as he could, although the first punches were totally without warning and I don’t think there was any way that we could have got away not-punched. Later on, in telling the rest of the people at the party what happened, I did feel that George slightly misrepresented my role as someone on the sidelines feebly asking them if they would please stop hitting him. But for whatever reason, their anger was focused on George, and I feel that I did the best that I could. After pushing away those that attacked me, I think that finding my own targets to hit rather than try and use my significant mass to get people away from George would have made the situation worse. In any case, I don’t think either of us were scared or even worried (though perhaps we should have been). All that was going through my head, and probably George’s was: “What. The. Fuck.”

And what do we do after being in such a situation? We considered reporting it to the police, but decided that that would only serve to waste our time. I was uninjured, and George’s injuries were superficial. What is there to do? Nothing that I can think of.

All that this experience has done is baffle me, and lowered my view of the scum of this world. George said later something like this – “Who would have thought, us, the guys with the awards for being the 2 cleverest in the school, being in a situation like that”. Crazy.

What do you think?

1. I’ve not asked his permission to blog about this, but I’m sure he’ll be OK. UPDATE: permission granted [↩]
2. I’m trying my hardest to tell the truth and not exaggerate. [↩]
3. OK, slight exaggeration there. [↩]
4. Probably due to my height. [↩]
5. Though, on reflection, I think they would probably have just followed us again. [↩]
6. Surely the most stupid type of attack. [↩]
7. Although right now my right arm is quite sore. [↩]

It makes me laugh. Really: how can you manage to mangle the English language so badly? It must take real skill to overcome your in-built tendencies to write correctly. I want to know who it is.

AUTHOR:

Mr Kimble
electriccockmachineofdoom@emp.microsoft.com
90.194.204.128

MESSAGE:

Hello Wolf Wolson,
IamGlad you took the time to read my message because it took me a long time to writted and i am Happy that you decided to post it on your blogmachine i think we should go for a walk soon.

OK then, we’ll go for a walk.

A few weeks ago I received a strange comment which was caught by my spam filter which I found interesting. Read it.

AUTHOR:

Mr Kimble
electriccockmachineofdoom@emp.microsoft.com
90.196.205.198

COMMENT:

Hello Wilf Wilson,
I have been following your blog for a long time. I think we should meet up and have talk long time for fun and such other things I think it would be a good thing and you could bring your big friend along because we could spam lunch in his beard and eat him after we are tired from walking up mountains like we do at the weekends and we can fish for food because your friend will die and be eated and we can go to london because the queen lives in london and you know the queen because you are really english adn not scottish we know this because you have said and what you have said is the truth without any doubt.

Unless spam computers are developing intelligence and a sense of humour and have started making typos, then I think this must be some sort prank. After all, I do have a big bearded friend, I do walk up mountains and I am actually an Englishman living in Scotland. What do you think?

No, this isn’t going to be another narcissistic blog post about writing blog posts (wouldn’t the world explode?) – instead it will be about the book that I read today: “Why I Write“, by George Orwell^[1].

I bought the book back in January, as part of my “Large Book Order” (I’ll soon be making another one^[2]) but I’ve only today found the time to read it. I’ve not been reading books or blogging much lately, but now that school’s finished and the weather’s good, I’ll be seeing more of those books and that darned intarwebs.

A little note about the weather. I live in Scotland, and although I think the weather isn’t as bad as its reputation would suggest, it’s really quite pathetic. Today the Sun was out all day^[3]. True, the Sun is at its hottest in late June, but look how far North we are – on a level with Sweden and Canada! The air temperature was barely above 20C – that is about as good as it gets, and we only get this treat a couple of times per year. It pales in comparison to France or even the south of England, yet even this room-temp air seemed to much for the folks here – even my brother turned super-moany^[4]. I live in a town of whimps.

Back on topic – today I got up early (10:30am), ate, shaved, showered, got the deck chair out and started to read this book. I have only read the two most read books written by George Orwell – “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, as well as a few of his short stories. One of those short stories was included in this book – “A Hanging” – but I’d had enough of that back in Higher English when my teacher attempted her Burmese accent. Hilarity ensued.

What’s puzzling me is that in writing this review of “Why I Write”, I can’t think of why I am writing this. I don’t even have anything to say about it, other than that I am glad to have read it. Yes, I know how pretentious that sounds. George Orwell is one of my favourite writers, and in this book he presents some of his ideas outside of a fiction form. He wrote the majority of it about a year into the Second World War, and I found it fascinating to get into the head of someone at that very time. They didn’t know who was going to win the war – they didn’t even know how much of a murderous bastard that that Adolf Hitler would turn out to be. His predictions in the book were not always right, but the issues that he raises and discusses were really interesting. The book is only 120 small pages long, yet I spent the whole day reading it, interspersed with stops to think. I’m glad I wasn’t alive at that time, but it’s also saddening to see what has happened to the world after defeating fascism; what seems like the slow erosion of our liberties and our failure to take advantage after the war to make civilisation so much better. Instead we’re left with the cumulation of 60 years of twattery: a severe recession, and a larger wealth gap than ever before. I urge you to read this book if you have enough time.

The final 20 pages of the book are more about writing than the previous 100 pages which strayed into Orwell’s politics. They conclude with these tips which I am going to strive to follow (which I have found on another website):

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

I’m not a good writer, but I’d like to become one. I would read through this blog post and try to apply each of these tips to my prose, but after a day in the Sun I couldn’t bear it. Maybe I will next time.

C’est la vie.

1. Damn, I should really get some of that Amazon-affiliation-link-money-stuff going on [↩]
2. I won some prizes at school so I have £60 to spend at Waterstones. Nice. [↩]
3. Even though it seemed like every single cloud in the sky happened to pass *right* between the Sun and my garden. Bastard condensed water droplets! [↩]
4. I’m starting to think that this whole idea of a Holiday in Nice this year with him might not be the best of ideas [↩]

• Use of ‘random’ in a ‘cool’ way.
• Wrong use of upper-case words.
• Badly fitting ASCII characters to make an image.
• The fact that the image depicts an iPod Nano, or at the very least a normal iPod, and not the mentioned iPod Shuffle (which, FYI, has no screen).
• Wrongly capitalised ‘iPod’.

On the plus side:

• The sentence starts with capital.
• The sentences ends with only one exclamation mark!
• It only makes use of one colour.

Alright, just a quick note – I came across this YouTube video, a promo for the finale of the 10th season of SVU.

It’s not been decided whether the main cast is coming back for the next season, so watching the promo I was expecting a fun-filled, cliff-hangery episode.

But then came the end, where the bad guy speaks. He says something and I recognise his voice. It’s the fucking new guy. Oh dear, the whole episode spoiled.

Today is a good day.

The best bit about travelling at Easter is getting to see all the baby lambs. Yep, all of them.

It’s great fun, but worth the price?