Blue is certainly more popular and has its merits. Many argue that we need it, for the key policies and moves, and in some respects, they have a genuine point. It’s a solid choice and those who put their faith in it have nothing to be ashamed of. However, it’s just a dull and predictable choice. Who wants to meet some two headed cobra in the woods and when you lob your poke-ball at it, the equivalent of John Major comes out? The further parallels are uncanny, as blue and yellow (electricity) are incompatible in Pokémon. Why couldn’t have Cameron looked to his Game boy Colour for advice for who to go into coalition with?
Red used to the only option for the sensible Pokémon player. It’s radical and just gets the task done. Don’t like something? Then burn it and move on. Sick to death of poverty and squalor? Just burn it down and replace it with Welfare State. Fed up of workers being exploited? Set it alight with a minimum wage. Come gather round the flickering bonfire of free healthcare for everyone. None of this ‘tackle’ or ‘leer’ shit, just direct, smoking action. Unfortunately, it’s changed. In the most recent instalment of the franchise, the fire Pokémon is a depressingly cute pig and has become as boring as the blue choice.

A lot like the face of the new reds, Ed Miliband then, who looks and sounds like the type of person who just couldn’t bring himself to make a decision of whom to select, so just stayed in the character’s home town for hours on end, doing the tutorials over and over again, as he feels ‘safe’. If he wants to get into power at the next election, he should use my theories to his advantage. In the next leadership debates, he could interrupt Cameron mid flow and just shout: ‘Look, you can vote for this oversized tortoise with a pair of super soakers on his back or the unidentifiable grass Pokémon that looks like part of an adventure playground at a National Trust park or, if you’re feeling really lucky, that yellow liberal Pikachu, who looks very nice, but will let you down when you need it most. You do that. But I’m a dragon. A fucking dragon! With fire on my tail!’ Yes, I realise that no-one but the readers of this blog would have the slightest clue of what he was trying to communicate, but why not play the geek card, Ed? It’s all you’ve got going for you.

So, let’s take a recap. Arctic Monkey’s fourth album ‘Suck it and See’ will be released in just under a month and a half, with James Ford, whom produced ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, returning for producing duties. Whilst it would be unreasonably harsh to call ‘Humbug’ a disaster, it is fair to state that Josh Homme’s influence was a little bit too heavy-handed on the album, and with the exception of the sublime ‘Cornerstone’ and the glorious ‘Secret Door’, it almost felt that they had matured too much, resulting in songs, like ‘Potion Approaching’ and ‘Dangerous Animals’, which were lacking in the usual wit and flair that they are adored for.

We have already been blessed with two tasters from the upcoming LP, with both each respectively supporting and contradicting drummer Matt Helder’s claim that the album is ‘more poppy than Humbug was’.

‘Brick by Brick’ was the first track to be released. Straight from the start, with its raw, White Stripe-esque riff, it is evident that they have advanced from the ‘Humbug’ sound, though certain elements remain, as they still have a penchant for those perfectly restrained, fuzzy guitar solos that sound like they’re trudging through quicksand. Turner’s lyrics are also position themselves away from the joyless affair of ’Humbug’, with brash claims that he wants to ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, ‘steal your soul’ and ‘feel your love’, which come as a welcome relief.

The first single from ‘SIAS’ was the considerably darker ‘Don’t sit down ‘cause I’ve moved your chair’. Whilst the title might evoke playful images of Turner removing Helder’s drumming stool, resulting in a giggling chase around their massive American studio, the song is full of impending danger and lists the ‘sort of ridiculous things you can do that are probably more dangerous than if you just sat down", according to Turner. The lyrics seem too cryptic on first listen, but after repeated plays, Turner’s sly wit shines through: ‘Wear your shell-suit on Bonfire night’. Granted, ‘Going into business with a grizzly bear’ comes across as clumsy and rushed, and not just because of the Grizzly Bear’s natural financial prowess, but because they could have easily inserted ‘Claiming Humbug’s better than Favourite Worst [night] mare’ instead, which is far more risky activity to partake in. The heavy, chugging riff displays the touch Josh Homme left on their sound, which compliments Turner’s newly perfected croon.

The video is also quite striking. Gone are the days when all that was required of them was to appear in front of a camera with that pose of awkward youth. The video successfully manages to mimic that effect of when you tightly close your eyes and open then again (just me?) and conveys their transformation from the shy teenagers, into the ‘Bigger Boys’ that steal ‘Sweethearts’, whom strike one as far too cool and aloof to serenade over domestic tiffs and Sheffield nightclubs.

Turner’s voice has also matured and there is now no longer any trace of the former spiky snarl; replaced with an unnervingly seasoned purr. It’s not going to help fend off the inevitable comparisons with John Lennon, what with him evolving from the kitchen sink poetry in a band of scallies, to a bohemian new life in New York, with a trendy girlfriend, crooning cryptic ditties. The analogy isn’t completely accurate thankfully, as the transition seemed to occur during The Last Shadow Puppets, which would mean well known shirker, Miles Kane would play the part of Yoko Ono, well known...oh yeah.

So, while many were delighted when Helder’s claimed the new album was to be more ‘poppy’, the new material doesn’t really support that. However, it clearly demonstrates how the band has managed to stay relevant, through their constant progression and maturity, when so many of their contemporaries have tried to emulate them, only to add mass to the ever-growing indie landfill.

The real reason for the overblown and crude production is that shaving is, in fact, the least macho activity a man can partake in. Think about it. What do Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and David Beckham have in common? They all look better with facial hair. A beard is an ultimate statement of manliness. It’s rugged, messy, stores food and was invented by Attila the Hun’s school bully. Therefore, the removal of this fellow fodder is alongside actually leaving the bathroom in a reasonable state, on the ever-growing list of Male Sins.

Shaving companies have had to formulate this fallacy in order to stay afloat. They abide by the general rule of ‘MORE BLADES= MORE MANLY’. Currently, Wilkinson and Gillette offer a razor with five blades, but it can only be a matter of months before they start selling miniature chainsaws to hack off excess facial hair. Terms like ‘hydration’, ‘irritation’ and ‘resistance’ are thrown around, as if they’re selling fish resuscitation, rather than an instrument for scything off protruding facial hair. And god forbid that the razor doesn’t ‘glide’ or feel ‘smooth’ against the skin, rather than ‘tug’ and ’pull’ it, as if the device has some harmful vengeance against you. Yes, the razor should pet the skin and conjure up a sensation not dissimilar to a swan rubbing a Johnson’s Baby Oil model’s arse across your face.

For some reason, I dislike shaving. It’s not that I can blissfully recall a more innocent age of shaving, in which a barber would employ a cut throat razor, and neither is it wholly the fact that my facial hair looks as if I’ve been slapped on the back whilst eating a honey and toothbrush bristle sandwich. The most vexing aspect is the expectation to really savour it; an experience so divine and pleasurable, that to not enjoy is inhuman. Well, to me, shaving is just another instalment in the necessary bathroom routine, rather than a much-anticipated opportunity for self indulgence.

Every so often, a catalogue, and I use that term very lightly, is shoved through your front door. Whilst some of the content is utilized to sell you the garments, the majority of the pages are filled with snapshots of the world’s most middle class porno: a grubby public school boy comes to fix an airy vixen’s arga. However, the underlying sexual tension just proves too much, so they end up frolicking in her barn, with the mud-caked John Deere and Daddy’s gun just out of sight. Fortunately, it ends on amiable terms, as the final photo is always that of a communal sing-song round a campfire on an empty beach.

The very few pages dedicated to the actual Jack Wills clothing are laughable. For a start, the models seem to be wearing every item of ‘Fabulously British (But made in a humid sweatshop by Chinese children)’ clothing. Ever been dressing up for a formal event and after putting on your shirt and tie, just thought you should be wearing a pair of garish check shorts and flip flops instead of the matching suit trousers? No? Well you must have considered complimenting your swimwear with a thick, tweed blazer? Wrong again? Of course I am. While they want to portray a sense of British eccentricity, the ending result is the models looking like they’ve just escaped from an 18th century lunatic asylum.
A rather irritating consequence of Jack Wills growing popularity is the numerous other outlets attempting to mimic their success. Take Hollister. Another shop similar to JW: full of your decent, staple clothes, in which a logo of an animal somewhere at the top of the food chain can add a couple of notes to its value. When I visited the Manchester branch, you had to queue just to gain entrance to the products. This wasn’t because it was too busy, but to try and create an atmosphere of exclusivity. In hindsight I have a sneaking suspicion that they might be onto a winner with that idea, because there simply isn’t enough queuing involved in high street shopping. Yes, you do get to wait in line for the checkouts and the fitting rooms, but is that enough for the modern day shopper, who thrives on being sandwiched between two strangers? After you’d been permitted to enter the shop floor, it struck you how dark it was, as another part of the decor was to have eerie rays of lighting up shelves and prices. Why should you bother with a fully lit shop, when you can just have various lamps illuminating the shelves? I imagine the desired effect wasn’t to disguise the basic nature of their clothing, in which a check shirt is considered risqué, under a hazy mask of pretension, but it managed to achieve this.

However, the thing I despise most about Jack Wills is their overall attitude towards clothes. When it comes down to it, the primary functions of clothes are to protect your modesty and to help maintain a suitable body temperature given the external climate, but they also add to your character. Surely what you choose to wear should be an individual statement of who you are, not who you should be. They shouldn’t act as an invitation into an elite group. The main problem with brands like Jack Wills is that they prey on teenager’s fears of not fitting in. Their ‘seasonnaire’ garb and catalogues brimming full of smug arseholes, are just ploys to make teenagers feel redundant and irrelevant, so they can present their clothing as a lift up onto a higher rung of the social ladder. They’ve taken everything wonderful about fashion and just...hang on. Is that a giant, striped paperclip for £1.50? Uh, just ignore what I was saying. I’ve been converted!

Right that’s it, I think. It’s taken many sleepless nights and more coffee breaks than one of Silvio Berlusconi’s all night Bunga Bunga dinner parties, but I’ve finally done it. Here is my equation that a band should use if they’re thinking about reuniting. All they have to do is substitute how many solo albums the lead singer has made into A, the amount of bankruptcies band members have had to file for into B, the number of times they’ve said they’ll never reunite to their desperate fans into C and the amount of their ‘classic’ albums that have been re-issued since their demise into D. If the answer comes to over 20, then it qualifies them to do a special one off show. If it comes to over 50, then they can go the whole hog and do a world tour.
The band reunion seemed to be one of the main crazes in the noughties, like those Topman T-shirts with the strange downward collars and sending chain e-mails that threaten the receiver with extreme emotional trauma if they don’t re-send it to another 10 friends in the next 16 minutes. Everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Specials to Spice Girls to The Police and even, er, Blue, who reunited just after 5 years after splitting, have had a roll of the reunion die. Sometimes it works, like in the case of Madness, who still continue to fill festival slots and The Specials, whose songs like ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Too Much, Too Young’ still feel relevant 30 years on, with the exception of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, as the big man was very much free at the time of the magazine going to publishing.
However, it’s not always a guaranteed success. Take the serial re-uniters, the Sex Pistols for example. They were a band who’s stripped down, no-nonsense songs were in the right place at the right time. They didn’t have any artistic merit or even have that many good songs, but that wasn’t the point. Yet the Pistols didn’t seem to realise this and have played frequently since, even as recent as 2008. Of course, I’m sure ‘it just felt right’, rather than the multiple figure sums they presumably received, but surely John Lydon must have had enough integrity and dignity to not tarnish the Sex Pistols legacy for a few easy bucks? But this was the man who ‘couldn’t resist the temptation’ to sing the praise of Country Life Butter and frolicked around in the jungle with Jordan and Peter Andre, so I may be wrong. He could agree to The Sex Pistols playing Prince William’s stag night, citing ‘it was what the Sex Pistols were all about’ and I wouldn’t be that shocked.
I also have my doubts about the upcoming Pulp reunion, in which they’re playing several festival dates this summer. They sang for all the misfits that weren’t ‘avin’ it large to Oasis or having a knees-up to Blur. But those misfits have grown up and they don’t want to see Pulp. They’ve grown up, married, and have had children, who they warn to stay away from people that look like Jarvis Cocker. It’s just going to be a tad weird having the bearded Cocker doing that dirty whispering along to songs, like ‘Underwear’. It’ll just sound like some sort of Barnsley 35p a minute sex line, that no-one’s enjoying.
So what I’m getting at here is that while it’s healthy to occasionally dabble in nostalgia, can’t we just leave it in the past, where it belongs? Otherwise, it’s just going to get crazy. In forty years time, I don’t want to see a middle aged, balding man that slightly resembles Justin Bieber to be straining to reach the top notes of ‘Baby’ or a 64 year Tinie Tempah boasting that there’s a groupie everyday at his front door. We should look back on the noughties with a sense of pride, but not continue to re-live it. With the music industry already declining at worrying pace, the last thing new bands need is to compete with some ageing has-beens, belting out their irrelevant ditties.
So bands of the world! I offer you with this ultimatum. Either, stick it out like The Rolling Stones or Prince have done, and yes, make a couple of terrible albums, or you can split up, never to return, leaving us with only positive memories of you.

This was always going to be a difficult album for Kings of Leon. Since jumping onto the shiny bandwagon to the tempting land of stadium rawk in 2008, with the, let’s face it, terrible ‘Only by the Night’, where do the Tennessee boys go next? Do they return to their roots, as lead single ‘Radioactive’ suggests (Just drink the water/ where you came from), re-growing their beards and hair, and forcing Caleb to live solely on a diet of razor blades and whisky to get back that growl? Or do they continue producing the meaningless, pristine, Matalan-thems, like ‘Use Somebody’ and ‘Revelry’?
Well, if the previously mentioned lead single was anything to go by, it would be a bit of both. It would be perfect if you were blind, as you wouldn’t have to watch the bizarre, ego-fest of a video that accompanies the song. For those of us with the misfortune of sight, you will have probably already seen the video, in which the four members frolic and cavort around with a large group of school age, black children. They play football, chase each other through sprinklers and do a lot of hugging. You half expect Caleb to stop singing, look directly into the camera and with a straight face, say: ‘For just two pounds a month, these kids can have their lives back. Don’t you think they could, (chuckle) ‘Use Somebody’? Ok everyone. Back to the chorus!’
However, the song itself, sans video, is everything I wanted from their return. A chorus so large and preachy that Bono himself probably finds himself singing it in the shower; the sharp, spiky guitar lines from Matthew that wouldn’t sound out of place on ‘Youth and Young Manhood’; and one of the best uses of a gospel choir since Blur’s ‘Tender’.
You can tell a lot about a Kings of Leon album by its opening tracks. ‘Red Morning Light’ shows the boys full of energy and provides a suitable introduction for the dirty, raw mess that ‘YAYM’ was. ‘Slow Night, so Long’ was brimming with subtle hooks and had them sounding like The Rolling Stones at a rodeo. ‘Knocked Up’ was a scowling slow-burner that introduced the darker sound of ‘Because of the Times’. So what can we tell about ‘The End’? Based purely upon it, it would suggest that the whole album will plod along at the agonizingly slow pace of Deborah Meadon in a sack race, be dominated by soulless guitar effects, and never really hit a peak until it’s too late. Not surprisingly, that is an incredibly accurate indication of how the album plays.
As previously mentioned, one of the albums biggest problems is that it’s just too sluggish. As ‘The Face’ and ‘The Immortals’ waddle along at a tortoise-like pace, you find yourself trying to work out if this is the same Kings of Leon that recorded the raucous ‘Four Kicks’. Jesus, even ‘Use Somebody’ sounds like they must have been on a mix of speed, Red Bull and whatever the NCIS cameraman has for breakfast everyday, compared to this painful tempo. The album just sounds half arsed and reluctantly made, as a result.
While it should be well documented that I disliked ‘Only by the Night’, at least I can recall some of the songs and even hum along to it. After listening to the new album, all memory of it disappeared into thin air, like a fart at a dinner party. Every song on ‘Come around Sundown’, sounds like it’s lacking a kick.
I can imagine it now. The band are sitting around, congratulating each other on a successful recording session. Then the producer comes in and chirps: ‘Right, all that’s missing now are the choruses. When’s everyone free to record them?’ The band all pull out their limited edition OBTN Blackberrys and mutter excuses. ‘Sorry I can’t, I’m having skinny lattes with Snow Patrol’, ‘I’d love to, but I’m putting the finishing touches to my new clothing range.’ ‘This is a disaster. I’ve already scheduled my stadium arena posing class for then.’ The producer simply couldn’t find a slot when all are free, and just decides it to give it a miss. ‘No-one will notice.’ He reassures himself. And as a result, ‘Come around Sundown’ really is a ‘meh’ record; absent of any sort of hook or memorable song.
There are a few exceptions. There are some nice dub guitar effects on ‘The Immortals’. ‘Pick-up Truck’ is the rare occasion where you’re glad the album slows down, sounding broody and powerful. However, the majority of the songs sound like the type of songs you would have skipped on the previous albums. ‘Beach Side’ is essentially glorified elevator Muzak, while ‘Birthday’ is the attempt at an anthem, but it falls flat on its face with its 50 Cent like chorus.
‘Come Around…’ has Kings of Leon having some sort of identity crisis. They’re trying to imply that it’s a ‘returning to your roots album’ (Music Cliché #447), but they’re forgetting they’re from Tennessee, not Hull. After listening to it several times, I can safely say I have no intention to revisit the majority of it again. As a result, they sound like a parody of themselves. I don’t particularly enjoy heavily criticising them, but with an album this mediocre, they’re leaving themselves open to it. Let’s hope that when they find their true identity, people are still willing to give them a chance.

What I am going to write about though is what caused him to make such a statement in the first place. Don’t worry, Random Tale reader(s) ( Ite Libby), this is isn’t a rant about China, even though they are hardly my favourite country since that thing in the Olympics, where they replaced that child singer with a prettier one. No, this is about my blurry stance on Animal Rights.

Now, I’m not a vegetarian. I’d love to be one for the moral high ground I so very cherish, but meat is lovely. Most of the time, you just forget that it is the carcass of a mother you’re wolfing down, as it tastes pleasant. Once in a while, you do remember this fact, feel a little queasy and eat the vegetables on your plate until the feeling subsides.

Now, does that make me a bastard? If it does, then so are 96.7% of the Earth’s population, who share the same moral beliefs as me. ( Cheers Google.) Our bodies are suited to eating meat, to the incisors in our mouth to the Hydrochloric Acid produced in our stomach to the protease we produce. Also, our family only buy free range chicken to eat and are getting chickens in our garden. ( Woah. Is it me or did this blog get a whole lot more Middle Class?) So surely that’s OK?

Also, I am more than happy to wear Leather jackets, as I feel like James Dean or one of the Ramones in them. I say I wouldn’t wear fur, but it’s only because it’s vulgar and I have never seen real fur on the High Street. So what I’m trying to get at here is, I, or 96.7% of the Earth’s population, in a position to complain about animal cruelty?

How can we complain about Russians sending a Donkey up into the air, when most of us have been known to eat the slaughtered bodies of Cattle, and then ask for seconds? Why do we give front page coverage of the fact that a woman once put a cat in a wheelie bin for under a day, when there are people strolling around in murdered animals skin?

I’m not sure who I’m angry at. It’s probably just at myself for being an awful, hypocritical human being. I’m in way over my depth if I start debating the morals on whether or not we should eat meat, so I won’t. So to prevent this blog from being completely pointless, I would thoroughly recommend you listen to The Smiths album ‘Meat is Murder’. Just don’t think too much when listening to the title track.

Facebook really annoys me. What is it? Basically, it’s just a big meeting place where people are meant to socialise. I guess you could say it’s a network where people are social. A social network. But it’s not, is it? On Friday and Saturday nights, it’s just you and the other folk who have stayed in, either optionally, or more likely, because we have nowhere else to go. It feels like a waiting room, with all the outdated magazines being the wall posts people have written to each other, that you’ve read at least six times already, as they’re deemed ‘top news’. Personal jokes that you couldn’t possibly understand, meeting times for the next days. The sort of thing that has no relevance to you, but are there on the main page.

Later, the outgoing, popular people arrive back from whatever function they’ve been to and make sure everyone knows about it. There’s photo albums with 200+ photos in, which, naturally, you analyse each one to see how much fun was going on, who did what and which people were there. You know more about it, than the actual attendees. You then compare the guest’s social standing to your own, and conclude whether it was just that you weren’t invited. ‘ Thanks Gran. You invited Aunt Carol but not me.’
Another irritating thing is that people, more specifically of the female gender, are actually putting what’s on their mind in the ‘What’s on your mind?’ box. That’s not what it’s for! Just put something that’ll make the reader smile: an amusing incident that has happened to you today; a link; your take on the current affairs; the fact that your dog pissed on the new sofa etc. I, and the majority of your Facebook friends, do not give one solitary shit about the fact that your current boyfriend is ‘being a wankaaaaaa :@’. This is usually followed by about 10 females agreeing and slagging off the whole male population. If I wanted this, I’d watch Loose Women.

And while I’m at it, song lyrics. You didn’t compose those lyrics. Some Record executive in a suit did and then passed them onto JLS to croon. You’ve simply listened to radio 1 and typed down the first chorus you heard. That’s fine, but credit the composer.
For a start, I think it’s going the same way as Bebo, in our age group. Actually, it’s becoming more popular, but my peers seem to be disowning it and seem to be living their lives. More likely, it has always been this quiet, but during the exam period, it received a massive boom, due to procrastinating posers faux panicking about their upcoming Maths paper. Scared you’re going to do badly? Then get off Facebook, and revise, you arsehole.
For all its flaws, it does offer free communication and has made arranging and advertising events a lot easier. It has completely revolutionised the way we socialise, probably for the better. I’m not going to blame social networks for the fact that I’m painfully shy, as I would be just the same without them. Also, in the years to come, we will have all these photos and videos on here to reminisce over; a luxury that our previous generation would have loved to have had.

I think I’ve convinced myself that if I quit I’ll spend time doing real and worthwhile stuff, like building a real farm or starting my own Mafia gang, rather than just do it virtually. I probably won’t, but it’s the thought of it.

As I was writing that paragraph, we crashed into the side.
We have only been on the barge for about 4 hours now, but I was driven to such a frenzy by the sheer narrowness of it that I had to do the washing up to calm me down. Normally I would never get cross with anything slim - for example my iPod, the Laptop and myself - however, this is different. Everywhere on the boat is so narrow that if two people are heading in opposite directions, one of the passers has to lean onto a seat, or temporarily go into the bathroom, to allow the other to get through. I can sense it’s going to get to the stage where we are going to raise our hand in thanks as they do on the roads, and continue our journey along the boat. I suppose I’m going to have to get used to it.

Initially I wanted it to be really awful, so I could complain a lot. However, when we got there, I found I could stand up in the barge without hitting my head, and that the other people at the port were just like us, rather than the sex offenders and reluctantly married old couples who I had expected. The only annoying thing was the fact that I had forgotten my capo for my guitar. It was, however, pointed out that this was my fault, so I duly kept my complaints to myself.

It was definitely a mistake to take our disabled dog with us, as she despises moving objects, ducks and the middle class, and lets out a pained yelp as we pass any of them. She has not been allowed off the lead yet, and it doesn’t look likely that she ever will. I’m sure she would have had a better time at the kennels. Oh well, I’m sure she’ll eventually wear herself out. Or damage her other hip.

I shouldn’t be ultra critical though. It was very pleasant sitting on the end, in the brief period of sunlight, playing my guitar, albeit in the wrong key. Also, running along the top never gets boring. I’m sure the pub meal we will have, if we ever reach a pub, will be pleasant. I do seem to be whining a lot, though. ‘You’ve got to be taking the piss!’ is a common one: when the boat jolted and I pissed on my sock; when I realised that the plugs seemed to be from 20th century Czechoslovakia; and when it was revealed that there was to be no internet connection and only four TV channels (five if you count Channel 5).

Overall, it has been a very pleasant birthday though. Mum made a delightful chocolate cake and I received a camera. It certainly hasn’t been my worst birthday. From what I can remember, that was about 5 or 6 years ago, when Mum lied to me and said that I had come to age where I was too old to celebrate my birthday. I should’ve realised she was fibbing, we always commemorate hers. We went on a walk that day and got lost. It rained and I didn’t have a coat. She did apologise though, which means that she’s no longer on my list of people I would shoot should I ever go completely barmy - which I can’t rule out if the following six days are terrible.

Wednesday 4th August - 16.36
The long delay between entries is due to the fact that the electricity supplier of the boat is of poor quality, and not the fact that I’ve just forgotten. Currently, we’ve run out of water and don’t look set to get any until 6pm, which means no drinks or toilets. I can cope with that, though. It hasn’t rained or been cold, and I haven’t felt any sort of sea sickness. I’ve also nearly completed Professor Layton on my DS, which is time well spent. Other things I have undertaken to pass my stretch on HMS Holiday are reading 1984 and listening to the Arcade Fire album which I managed to find. I'm still trying to decide if it's as good as ‘Neon Bible’.

I am starting to get a little jaded, as I suspect everyone is. As I speak, two of my sisters are sat at the table, having a conversation about whose ‘daughter’ is the worst. One of them is currently in court for stabbing someone and I find myself quite gripped, which shows the standard for entertainment on the boat. And surprising as it sounds, there are few amenities on the banks of the Shropshire Union Canal, so we have spent the majority of the duration on the tiny floor of the boat. The television gets very little signal, so we are forced to *gulp* bond.

Anyway, it hasn’t been the nightmare that I dreaded it was going to be. Hopefully the electricity charger will allow me the chance to put in another entry, but if not, I leave you with one of my scenarios which I've been imagining. What if one wanted to commit suicide on the barge, with dignity? You couldn’t stick your head in the oven - it's too small. You couldn’t hang yourself, as the roof is too low. I doubt you could drown yourself. I very much doubt that I’ll find out.

Thursday 5th August - 14.57
This joke isn’t funny any more. This is no longer a holiday, but an endurance test. We moored near a sewage treatment works last night, so the barge is teeming with flies, which can’t be killed with spray due to our extremely cramped and ill ventilated living conditions. HMS Hellhole has an unpleasant smell, which no one can quite put their finger on, but are willing to accept as it’s part of the ‘barge experience’. And surprising as it may sound, the prospect of home seems welcoming; away from stewed tea, narrow beds, cramped showers, zingzillas and those tiny black winged bastards. One of them, hopefully an enthusiastic, young fly, had the audacity to land on my hand as I was typing. Never has killing a defenceless animal felt so therapeutic.

Well, that was all I could manage. Three entries is enough, surely? Anyway, as I’m running my delicate fingers over the keyboard to type you this, I have my land legs back, and with that, my internet connection. I have a feeling that that will be my last experience on a barge as my Mother had a breakdown on the last day, which involved her yelling profanities off the top of the boat. Nevertheless, it was a valuable experience. It was even enjoyable in places, despite the impression my third entry gives you. In hindsight though, a week was probably too long.

So to keep you company, I give you two choices. Either a Blu-ray DVD player, with a television and a servant who will run to the nearest Blockbusters and get whichever DVD you want.

Seems tempting.

Or an iPod , your CD collection and all the new releases sent to you weekly. Also, some headphones that aren't those ones that come with the iPod that look like Barbie's shower head.

What you thinking then? Film or music? Both have their merits, but for me it has to be music.

Don't get me wrong. Films are alright. Some have the power to make me laugh, some have the power to make me cry, but most of them have the power to make me fidget and get bored. I know I'm a cretin for saying this, but most films go on too long, and eventually I just want to listen to some music.

Here's some reasons why music is better than films.

1. How many people after watching Forrest Gump wanted to recreate the ' Run Forrest Run!' scene? Nobody, exactly. But how many people listen to 'Sticky Fingers' and want to recreate 'Brown Sugar' on guitar and swagger around pretending they're Mick Jagger? I rest my case.

2. Most films have some good scenes in, but nobody skips straight to them. That would be silly and not worth the effort. You have to watch the whole film to eventually get to the scene in question. However, you can skip past 'Don't Stop' to get to 'This is the one' on 'Stone roses. So, music is a better quick fix than films.

3. You can walk round the house doing whatever shitty thing you have to do and hum/whistle/ faux sing anything. Walk round the house reciting the script to Shawshank Redemption and it doesn't have the same effect.

4. The CD is the most beautiful thing ever invented. Name one good DVD cover and I'll give you 10 brilliant album covers. ('Is this it', 'Raw Power', 'Abbey Road', 'Whatever people say I am...')
Then you've got the sleeve notes, which have occupied many bus journeys home. Then the actual content - no film has ever matched the sheer delight of listening to a classic album. No film has ever left me with that fuzzy feeling within me or had me dwelling on it for days afterwards. I have never watched the same film again straight after watching it for the first time, but I've listened to one album at least 3 times in one day.

Maybe I just haven't watched enough amazing and life changing films and you're more than welcome to suggest some for me. But I won't take them with me on the island with me. Unless I had an iPad which had both movies and music on, but we'll save that for another day.

I find, when things are getting a little stressful, that a little perspective goes a long way.

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Let's start with the physics. Look at your hand. 99.99999...% of that hand is not there. Despite that, there's an enormous amount of energy in you. If you released all the energy in 1000 people (with the whole e=mc^2 thing), you would have enough energy to power the world for a year. The whole world. A whole year. You'd also be charged for mass murder, but that's not the point.

For every single person on earth, there exists over a hundred web pages. And there's a lot of people on earth. Every single one of them has different opinions and a different viewpoint. If you randomly picked ten of those people, between 2 and 3 of them would probably not have access to drinking water. And those opinions? We haven't a clue what they actually are, and we don't know what 'being conscious' means either. In fact, what we don't know seems to outweigh what we do know.

The person you love? They're mostly made of water. So are you. And both of you two squishy water-sacks are perched on a rock which is flying through space at about 30km every second, and spinning at over 1000 miles per hour if you're at the equator. Oh, and the rock's made of pretty much nothing, just like your hand.

What is this nothing-rock flying around? The sun. A ball of gas, a million miles across, which is hotter than the squishy water-sack that gave birth to you. Oh, by the way, there's something wrong with it and we haven't a clue what it is. Have I mentioned it's also made of pretty much nothing, too?

So each of us is one of billions of these squishy water-sacks on a massive ghost-rock flying at millions of miles an hour around a massive ball of hot, and we still manage to take ourselves seriously?

What strange creatures we are.

In the iPhone adverts, they like to show all the practical uses for the apps, and the examples are always cool city types called 'John Appleseed' calling someone to meet for coffee, Twittering about his coffee, adding his coffee dates to his calendar or finding the café on Google Maps. This is all very clever because it shows off all the cool things you can do on a iPhone, while quietly associating Apple’s products with the lifestyle of cool, city people - making even people like me, who live in a county which doesn’t even have a city in it, buy in to this lifestyle that they are in no way associated with but want to be part of, as it allows them to create a flimsy facade of self-worth.

I've only ever used Google Maps to look at my house from above, and once to see how far it was from Lands End to John O’ Groats, never any of the trendy city things that Apple promised would happen to me when I bought it.

So when I went on holiday you can finally see, after that monstrous digression (I do apologize), why I was excited when I went away. I was in an unknown town, and I could use Google Maps to find the local coffee shops!

I tried it. There were none. The 'town' was called Nettlecombe: it had a population of 70, and the only building that wasn’t someone’s house or the church was a pub called the Marquis of Lorne. I went there, but they didn’t sell Coffee, only beer. And no one was called 'John Appleseed', just Ted, Robert and Enid. Really.

Now, as I have never searched Google Maps before, only navigated it manually, I have never entered a specific location. And without doing that, I wasn't to know that StreetView had been added, as that is the only way of getting the StreetView button to appear. So when I searched for 'Nettlecombe', I was amazed. The little yellow man appeared, so I tapped it, hardly daring to believe, but lo and behold there was the hamlet I was staying in, indexed by a US technology giant and immortalised forever. The fact that they had been down this tiny country lane, and every other country lane in Britain for that matter, blew my mind. Now I had the luxury of having it blown again by the fact I could walk around the world on a device smaller than my hand.

{img1}I’m beginning to sound like some insufferable middle-aged uncle type with all my talk of ‘the wonders of technology these days’, but I am serious. That’s a lot of power Google and Apple are putting in our hands and it all has to come from somewhere. There’s sci-fi novels where in the future the earth is run by big companies called InudstrialCorporateSoft, with smoke billowing out of the chimneys of their factories while crows call ominously from the rooftops and a thick, grey fog floats in, but what’s really happening is a company with a silly name, a logo in primary colours and a joke app for translating from animal to human is fooling everyone with its jolly front, it’s ‘don’t be evil’ (no capitals obligatory on pain of death) slogan and offices full of lava lamps, bean bags, sushi bars and generally the happiest coders in Silicon Valley, into thinking that it just wants to ‘organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’, when really it wants to enslave our souls.

I know I’m not the first person to raise concerns over the worrying power of Google - in fact I’m probably the last - but it needs to be said as many times as possible. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but there seems to be such a thing as a vast array of entirely free software for every aspect of one’s life with no expense other than having to see a one-line advert about how you should buy the thing you just searched for. The price has to be paid somewhere, and it’s paid in the form of having your personal details harvested for profit.

Last week, to the outrage of the blogosphere, Facebook announced their new OpenGraph API, which allows apps to collect your information. Previously, if you were marked as ‘Single’ on Facebook, it might send you adverts for dating sites. Now, it goes a lot further.

Say you visit the BBC website, find an article about how endangered the pandas are, and post a link to Facebook so everyone can see the problem. OpenGraph will now record this, and start sending you adverts about adopting a panda. If you posted a link, chances are you care about them, and so this all becomes scarily powerful. Also, you might now be suggested to get a baby panda on your FarmVille or Mafia Wars or whatever else it is you waste your life on.

What I’m trying to say is information comes at a price. And that price is privacy. Now personally, I’m not fussed. These companies are welcome to my data; I’ve got nothing secret or exciting going on in my life, I’m just a normal guy. If Google and Facebook and the rest really care about knowing what I’m like, then they’re welcome to. I’ll block the Ads they send at me, and continue to use their services until I die of being sucked into a vortex of corporate servitude.

It’s too late to be anarchistic; we gave up fighting years ago. Just enjoy the convenience and lifestyle that these products bring, and try not to think too hard about it.

Works for me.

"Wonderful?" you enquire, in the slightly-longer-than-comfortable silence after that statement.

"Yes!" I reply, content that my thinly disguised bait has been bitten.

Picture the scene: a few of my friends and I are strolling quite contentedly along the side of the road in a suburb on the outskirts of town. The birds are swaying, the trees are singing. We come to the main road, press the pedestrian button at the traffic light and wait for the little green man to bleep at us.

Just as it begins to do so, we hear a dull thump from over the crest in the road, then another, and another. Slowly, the whining treble overlay of today's repetitive pop fades in over the top, and a small, crimson Nissan climbs over the hill, panting from the exertion. Inside are two shaven-headed men in their late teens to early twenties, shirtless and heavily tatooed. The air pumps itself full of drum machine.

They stop at the traffic lights as they turn red, and we cross in front of them, at this point only slightly scared for our lives. Their small, beady eyes follow us as we make our way, as inconspicously as it is possible to do so in a group of seven or eight, over the pathway of zebra stripes. No one utters a sound.

Suddenly, and completely without warning, the man in the passenger seat leans out of the wide open window, and screams a single, joyous exlamation, beer waving in the hot air:

"Swiss Family Robinson!"

Grinning, he ducks back into the car and, in a squeal of tyres, the car speeds away.

Wonderful.

Was that an insult? Was it a compliment? Was it the result of many hours of careful consideration, or was it completely on impulse? What does it even mean?

I have no idea, and somehow that makes the event that much more memorable and that much more enjoyable. Any world in which people spontaneously do things like that is a world which I am proud to inhabit. So thank you, whoever you were, for an intriguing experience.

You have to ask yourself, why do we buy things in the first place? In fact, why do we do anything? In the end, the only reason we ever do anything is to try to improve our overall happiness. Maybe it doesn't always work, but in the end the overall motive for any action is happiness.

We pay the rent because we know it makes us happier to have a place to live than to have lots of money. We go to work because we know it makes us happier, in the end, to have money than to not bother with the job.

Okay, so why didn't I like buying socks?

A concentrated source of happiness

It's all to do with getting the most happiness out of the least effort. In our culture, money is pretty much the same thing as effort, and so we try to get the most happiness for the smallest price tag.

Which would you rather, a great book for ten pounds or a great book for five? A boring book for five or a great book for five? You always root for the thing that you percieve to have the best money to happy ratio.

My realisation of this fact happened to come as a searched in vain for a second clean sock at the bottom of every drawer and, with a sinking heart, realised that I would have to resort to the sorry looking, slightly greying thing in the corner, looking like it was ready for retirement. Because you see, i didn't realise how much happier it makes me to have socks that don't smell than to have socks that do.

I think until now i had managed to avoid finishing a post with a cliché, but: you don't know what you got until it's gone.

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Now, I may have given the wrong impression - I love what Mark Ronson does, but I’m just a little jealous of his success. I want to work with Kaiser Chiefs and Kings of Leon like he does. I want to appear on musical comedy panel shows like Nevermind the Buzzcocks. I want to have Mick Jones (guitarist for Foreigner) as a stepfather.

Well, maybe not that last one…

This blog is mostly so I can be the first to upload a blog in the ‘Music’ section of the blog, so I’ll fill up some space by telling you a few facts about Mark Ronson.

Did you know he is best friends with Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon? No wonder he was inspired to have a job in the music industry. Did you know that Ronson has dated Rashida Jones, Daughter of Quincy Jones; drummer for The Like, Tennesse Thomas; and English model Daisy Lowe...?

Not bad.

Did you know he's got a Grammy for being Producer of the Year in 2008, and also was credited for the 2 Grammy's Amy Winehouse won in the same year. He also has a BRIT award for best male solo artist.

I'd say he's achieved a lot, and all this information has led up to my final point...

I Hate Twitter.

What annoys me, though, is that I also really love writing, and I used to really love English lessons. This seems wrong.

It is.

Teaching really shouldn't make people hate something that they used to love, it should fill them with awe and fascination at what they have yet to discover, and make them itch to know more. Okay, so maybe I'm being a little optimistic, but I really do believe in it, or something similar.

The root cause, from where I'm standing, is the target based, exam driven model taken on by our modern education system. Now I can see the problems faced by the examiners and by the teachers, and I'm not saying I have an answer, but something's got to change somewhere.

Going back to the title of this post, it's very difficult to mark and compare in a creative art without some element of bias. Pretty much all impressions of art, writing and music are purely opinions, and opinions are hugeley subjective; they're dependant on context, culture and personal taste.

The options for the examiners? There are two main ones:

• a 'vote', taking the average mark awarded by a crowd of different markers, mostly eliminating personal bias
• a set of artificial guidelines that entrants are forced to adhere to
  in order to recieve marks, thus eliminating much of the creative part
  of a creative subject

Obviously, the second is the one the exam boards have settled on.

It's understandable. Exam papers are expensive to mark, and take time to moderate and check thoroughly. Just imagine how long it would take to get your grades back if the papers had to be marked by upwards of five to ten people! At the same time, without guidelines as to what you are supposed to write about and the style you should use, the papers are even harder to mark well. But even so, it's not good enough.

Current GCSE English courses seem to consist of the attitude that you pretty much know how to write well before you even start, and you spend the majority of the course learning how to write in the exact way that the examiner is looking for.

In fact, this problem permeates even into subjects that should supposedly be immune from this sort of thing, such as the sciences. Targets for improvement have driven teachers to teach to the exam rather than the science: you are told what the examiner wants to hear rather than the full, generally accepted, scientific explanation. Thankfully it would be virtually impossible for this to happen in Maths, but that seems to be an exception, sadly.

However you try to approach it, there is a fundamental problem in trying to distinguish from good and bad in a subject where, almost by definition, there is no right answer and no wrong answer.

As I said, I'm not saying I have an answer. What I am saying is that we need to look more closely at how these subjects are taught and examined - this is intended as a proposition for debate, not a rant.