American 'English'

Have a glance at this and tell me if you notice anything.

No, not the effortlessly tedious Blair/Brown no-love affair - I'd sooner attempt hack my head off with another man's penis than write about politics. No, I was referring to the rather curious spelling of 'Labour' throughout the article.

Given that the term 'Labour Party' is a proper noun, it shouldn't be subject to being 'Americanized', should it? You'd think someone writing for the New York Times would know that, even if it is just the online edition.

Ordinarily, I could care less, however this is the week that the film World Trade Center (yes, spelt like that) opens in the UK, which rather smacks of having your cake and eating it.

That special relationship, eh? If it's all about give and take, it's fairly clear who's taking it.

Driving in the Slow Lane

Here's a bit of rubbish journalism for you.

In a piece about Richard Hammond's crash for The Independent's online edition, David Randall wrote:

"...the made-for-TV stunt, reminiscent of the risks the late Australian wildlife daredevil Steve Irwin used to take..."

Really? I don't ever recall Steve Irwin strapping himself into a car fitted with a rocket engine and trying to break the land speed record.

It's a slightly desperate attempt to link two completely unconnected news stories, a bit like the girl on Question Time the other day who asked if, given the tragic death of Steve Irwin and the injuries sustained by Richard Hammond, reality TV should not be more closely regulated.

A few points:

1. Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond didn't make reality TV programmes; 'reality TV' is when you trap a hideous bunch of people in a particular situation and try to get them to shag/kill each other.
2. Steve Irwin was killed in an extremely freak accident - only 17 deaths have been recorded by stingrays in Australia since 1969.
3. There have always been daredevils and people willing to put themselves in harm's way in order to break records or entertain the public - nobody made them do it.

The rather hysterical, and slightly pious, dissembling of the whole 'irresponsible' Top Gear affair has rather annoyed me - and I don't even like cars. An element of risk is what a lot of programmes are based on - the only good thing about ensuring all shows are Health & Safety-ed to within an inch of their lives is that it would mean an end to Last of the Summer Wine - after all, you wouldn't be able to send a load of old men down the side of a hill in a bath any more.

Gaming-Based Lament #462

This post was inspired partly by this entry on The RAM Raider's blog.

I can't remember the last time I read a games magazine. Not properly, anyway.

Aside from skimming through one to take the salient points (overall scores) from the couple of reviews I might be interested in that month, and a quick glance at upcoming releases, I'll rarely be found reading one.

This is what I've always done though, with the exception that, in the past, at some point I would return and read the thing properly.

But not now.

It could be that demands on my time are to blame. Or the fact that the internet has brought an immediacy that mags couldn't hope to match. But I believe the truth is that I just don't enjoy reading them like I used to.

Unlike a lot of people, I do like Edge. I trust their opinions, and their depth of knowledge about the world of games and its history is almost scary, but I don't really want to read a sixteen page article about whether games are art or not.

Some people obviously do, and that's fine, but what are the alternatives? Some shitty 'official' rag, that has its reviews faxed to them by a PR person from the games company? Or perhaps arguably the lowest form of games publishing - the 'lifestyle games mag'.

The very notion of such a thing already has the vomit leaving my stomach looking for an exit, but somehow these publications still exist. There is nothing more painful than opening a magazine and seeing an article, ostensibly about 'social gaming', but which features a double-page picture of a bunch of blokes on a sofa with joypads in hand and bottles of beer dotted about the room.

Because check the fuck out of us, we play games AND drink alcohol.

For me, reading mags was at least 50% of what I enjoyed about games. The truth is, there was nothing wrong with magazines that had a more surreal or humourous take on the world of games. Very often, it was the stuff in the mags that had nothing whatsoever to do with games that I enjoyed the most - the fact that the people writing it also liked games too was more of a bonus.

The days of the Your Sinclair staff pretending the magazine was put together in a garden shed are long gone, and the death throes of that particular kind of witty, knowing games writing could not have been demonstrated more clearly by the short life and undignified death of the last attempt of its kind, Arcade magazine.

Those kind of mags didn't die because they were shit, they were forced out of existence by publishers more keen to appeal to people with writing on their t-shirts, seemingly declaring that the days of gaming as a marginalised, clique-y hobby were gone forever.

But what that really means is that most of the people who used to buy games mags probably don't bother any more, which is certainly true for me, and since Digitiser metamorphosed into a humourless hardcore heaven, it's left a gaping hole in my gaming life, one which could be filled easily by producing just one quality games publication that didn't feature interviews with club DJs.

The Tit Awards

Here's something I've just noticed:

"Justin Lee Collins to present the Golden Joystick Awards 2006."

If you needed another reason to not pay any attention whatsoever to this ceremony, then they have provided it and then some.

Given that it usually warrants about half a column in most game mags, I don't know anyone who really cares about these awards, aside perhaps from the grey PR execs who populate the audience, whom you would only recognise if you happened to catch that episode of Click Online they appeared on making ludicrous claims about their company's new console or something.

Or the ex-Big Brother contestants and tabloid scandal-causers who get another 3 valuable seconds of airtime while presenting a award.

If awards ceremonies per se are largely unbearable viewing, then sitting through a show fêting computer and video games is probably something akin to being strapped to a chair while someone inserts a red hot needle into your bollocks at regular intervals.

I don't know if Mr. Lee Collins knows anything about gaming, but I suspect that's a moot point anyway - his job is probably just to read an autocue in the unbelievably loud and exaggerated way that's made him a star.

Fishy Fuckwits

What's the definition of an idiot? You'd be hard pushed to better this.

It seems people having been killing stingrays in Australia, apparently as some kind of revenge attack for the death of Steve Irwin. Yeah, that'll teach 'em - those shovel-shaped bastards have been getting away with it for too long.

Honestly, you've got to wonder sometimes how the human race ever managed to drag itself out of the caves to begin with, never mind build some kind of 'civilisation'.

If it isn't waging war on fish, they're falling over themselves to put the boot in to a man before his corpse is even cold (just check out the Wikipedia history page for the article about stingrays - they couldn't crowbar poorly spelled 'jokes' into the article quick enough).

Still, you don't know the full story - perhaps those stingrays were hanging around a Tube station looking a bit shifty, and you never know what they could be hiding under their gills...

How to Kick a Man When He's Dead

There used to be an unwritten equation when attempting to make light of a shocking or upsetting event. It went something like this:

Tragedy + Time = Comedy

That middle part was generally key - try and jump in with a light-hearted take on the situation too soon and you could risk looking like an insensitive prick.

Over the years, the gap between something tragic happening and the first wave of jokes about it has become shorter and shorter, to the point where it's entirely feasible that someone could've easily written a terrorist-based sitcom between the first and second planes hitting the World Trade Center.

If you throw the Internet into the mix, the equation would now look more like this:

Tragedy = How Fast You Can Post to B3ta

I haven't bothered trying to search out all the examples of "humour" extracted from the sad death of Steve Irwin, but I know they're out there already - it's as certain as Vernon Kay is a twat.

I don't know why people feel the need to try and outdo each other in their crassitude. Are all these weak puns and hastily knocked together Photoshop gags just individuals trying to show a bit of edge by being first to the punch? Or are people actually showing their true natures?

If it's the former, then hiding behind the anonymity of a stupid made-up name and an untraceable e-mail account is hardly anything to boast about.

But if it's the latter, that's far more unsettling. There's a seamy side to the Internet, and I'm not just talking about the various hate groups or the more sordid end of the self-love market. With the unprecedented freedom the Web has brought us, there's apparently less reason than ever for some people to employ a bit of sensitivity, and I fear that for some, the marks they leave online are probably closest to their true feelings.