»12th January 2009

Ice Powers

Things are going to be more disjointed than usual tonight, I've done it again, I've made another lazy blog update by cobbling together some of my more humorous moments from last night's MSN conversations. If you're quoted here, I probably didn't ask you for permission, because I'm just so bad-ass like that sometimes. I'm the one who usually comes out of these things looking worse anyway, so relax.
The myriad topics begun with vague commentary around my task of writing a self-congratulatory 'essay' as part of an application for a work placement. Once I'd finally got that over with however, the floodgates to blabbering crap were opened wide and full and suddenly everything was fair game.
This also gives me an excuse to use more ridiculous HTML tags!!!
On considering ways to pad out the personal statement:

[17:42] Mark/: and you could mention writers outside of journalism as an influence
[17:43] Carl www.extarscube.com: haha h.p. lovecraft? :D
[17:44] Mark/: if he's an influence on your writing and you can describe how without sounding like crazy
[17:44] Carl www.extarscube.com: 'i like describing things as 'wyrd' or 'demoniacal'

On transferrable skills and self-evaluation:

[17:47] Carl www.extarscube.com: it's bad enough having to sum up my own strengths and skills on the cv
[17:49] jk: i'm surprisingly good at that, i managed to turn a week of student repping into the ability to lead and motivate groups
[17:50] Carl www.extarscube.com: well yes my two 'meetings' in the pub with the two disinterested mentees in third year demonstrated all sorts of organisation and people skills
[17:50] Carl www.extarscube.com: but if i actually had to read that out i would do it with all the passion and conviction of a hotd voice actor

Acknowledging the drawbacks of this very website:

[17:55] Carl www.extarscube.com: it might be in my interests at some point to make a 'mature' cube with a white background and roman font and upload some of my prouder forays into review and comment

I quickly became frustrated once more by the process of looking around for a job, the bullshit and the not knowing what the hell I'm doing are really quite disturbing. What exactly are these people looking for anyway?

[18:06] Carl www.extarscube.com: it irritates me no end when job sites use sophistic terms like 'entry is tough blah blah *so you need to show something special*'
[18:06] Carl www.extarscube.com: oh yeah? what's that, ice powers?
[...]
[18:08] Carl www.extarscube.com: i'm an accredited genius and have certificates from the international genius council, i am in fact the only genius born in the year 1986, so that's why you should give me a job

God knows what brought this up, even looking over the logs myself, the tangents can be quite hard to follow. One thing it certainly wasn't caused by was a consideration of the musical 'Showboat', which I have no knowledge of whatsoever.

[22:11] Carl www.extarscube.com: showboating always sounds like euphemism for sexual act to me
[22:12] Carl www.extarscube.com: rather - to me, showboating always sounds like a euphemism for a sexual act :D
[22:12] Carl www.extarscube.com: maybe a drive-by streaking or something

Having had the library at Sheffield University described to me by Mark, the topic shifted once more. It's became apparent to me now and I really ought to have mentioned it earlier on, but these are basically cobbled together from conversations with Mark and JK as if that wasn't already obvious and also that a lot of the time I'm not exactly just quoting from one conversation at a time but it's all the same train of thought. I really do believe Sheffield to be some vestige monument of a fallen age cum bleak dystopia.

[01:55] Carl www.extarscube.com: sheffield really is evil. mark has linked me to an 'audio visual guide to the learning area' or 'library tour video'
[01:56] jk: heh
[01:56] Carl www.extarscube.com: it sounds like some industrio-military nightmare
[01:56] Carl www.extarscube.com: there's a 'flexi-space' which can be 'reconfigured any way you choose' (all the furniture is on wheels. you can't move a chair without wheels after all)
[01:57] jk: haha. ghastly
[01:57] Carl www.extarscube.com: adjacent to the flexi-space are 'break out rooms' which i guess are used by the defenders to make actions from during the sally
[01:58] Carl www.extarscube.com: you know, just in case the libr- learning space is besieged
[01:58] Carl www.extarscube.com: i'll have to inform citizen stewart immediately that the library at sheffield university may present a problem for the planned invasion to depose emperor bean
[01:59] jk: hehe, they'll just take shelter in the learning space and deploy flexible counterinsurgent pods
[...]
[02:07] Carl www.extarscube.com: we went to sheffield centre shopping once when i was maybe six or seven and i found it pretty scary
[...]
[02:08] Carl www.extarscube.com: i can remember walking through what i thought was a subterranean shopping centre where all the units were empty and there were homeless people lying around, it was worse than blade runner
[...]
[02:27] Carl www.extarscube.com: last time i went to wakefield it felt like a larger dewsbury, i didn't really get the sheffield black pit of nightmare vibe

Once more, like some biblical plague, the collective idiocy-fest also known as Big Brother has manifested itself. Having earlier embarked on a quest to find out if any of the Jacksons were normal or if they had all succumbed to the plastic surgery god and had gone for the whole psycho-clown look like Michael. As it turns out, the internet is rather vague about some of the more obscure Jackson family members. Tito and Jackie both seem to share photos on the internet, no one seems entirely clear on the distinction between the two. Well, one or both of them seemed to have managed to dodge the plastic bullet and appear to have aged gracefully. Marlon appears to be safe as well, looking somewhat like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who I can only assume is no relation. The jury is still out on Janet seeing as she's still reasonably young and could still resort to trying to graft some kind of ludicrous kevlar appendage onto her face in an attempt to look like a normal person or whatever the whole objective is there with the rest. Latoya for example looks kind of like Michael if Michael was for some reason surprised throughout the entire procedure, or perhaps if he asked to look like a cat. Jermaine Jackson, whilst looking kind of normal, is also incredibly shiny and appears to has hair made out of vinyl, he still has that whole Miami Vice thing going on. Whatever varnish they use on him I'd like them to use on my guitar, that thing just keeps getting scratched to buggery.

Anyway, Latoya Jackson NEATLY brings us onto the next topic. Celebrity Big Brother. To be more specific, the shit-tornado which is the CBB website and the procedurally generated moron-comments that fill it. I'm sure they could actually get more realistic comments if they asked Tarn Adams to code whatever it is they use to generate the comments instead.

[02:47] Carl www.extarscube.com: some of the comments on the celebrity bb site are just too bad
[02:47] Carl www.extarscube.com: they're almost like procedurally geneated ones
[02:48] Carl www.extarscube.com: on 'tommy' the glaswegian socialist politician - "GO ON TOMMY MA MAN,A SOCIALIST AND CELTIC SUPPORTER THEY DON,T COME ANY BETTER.POWER TO THE PEOPLE,BRING IT ON. Posted by ANNIE MILLIGAN on 11/01/2009 20:43:36"
[...]
[02:48] Carl www.extarscube.com: on lucy pinder - "shes so hot with big boos Posted by super-t on 10/01/2009 22:25:14"
[...]
[02:49] Carl www.extarscube.com: "ITS SHOCKING THAT SHE IS GONE. SHE IS THE BEST EVER ON CBB. I WILL NEVER WATCH BB AGAIN .. IT BROKE BY HEART Posted by LucyLover on 10/01/2009 20:21:43"
[...]
[02:50] Carl www.extarscube.com: haha the video's section is presumably by standard entitled 'lucy's best bits'
[02:50] Carl www.extarscube.com: i'm guessing there's two
[02:51] Carl www.extarscube.com: "COOLIO IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ANNOYING!!!!!!!!!! GET OUT OF THE HOUSE YOU ANNOYING PERSON!! I KNOW THERE HAS TO BE A BIT OF FRICTION BUT OMG THIS IS O.T.T(OVER THE TOP.) PLEASE LEAVE COOLIO YOUR TIME IS UP WITH ME!!! Posted by COOLIO TO GO!!! on 11/01/2009 18:01:51"
"ULRIKA, U R A VERY LOVELY PERSON & VERY BRAVE 4 GOING ON BB,, GOODLUCK,, STAY SWEET....XXXX.... Posted by jane on 11/01/2009 17:05:32"
the ones in all caps do stand out from the crowd
[02:52] jk: i want all these people to die in a hollocaust...is that inappropriate?
[02:53] Carl www.extarscube.com: [name] IS SOOOOOO [quality1]!!!!!!!!! DNT FORGET THA ULL ALLWAS BE [quality2]!!! XXXXXXXXXX
[02:54] jk: hehe, template 1 saved

So yes, that's it. We've reached the end once more. I'd like to wish you all to stay strong and I'm sure you're all great people in person and that if you stay true to yourself you'll win through and won't get evicted on friday.

Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!