Tales from Wookiepedia

Okay, so so much for ’see you tomorrow’, but I’m still here. Truth be told, I found it very difficult to post for a few days because I’ve been ridiculously tired. “Why?”, I hear you ask (or not). Well, that would be because I recently indulged in an all-six-movies overnight Star Wars marathon (there was a chance more recently to catch up with sleep during the England-France game on Wednesday night, but enough about sport. There’ll be a whole other blog for that in the summer).

And you know what? Star Wars is still the incredible awesome saga it ever was. It was nice to go back and watch the prequel trilogy again, something I haven’t done for a while, and I think I can just about say they’re not as crap as I used to think they were. Well, Episode I isn’t anyway. Episode II, however, is still an ugly blemish on the face of the series. It didn’t help that it was very hard for me to take Anakin seriously when he’s a dead ringer for my cousin – who is, just to enhance the bizarreness of the thing, of Jamaican descent. Go figure.

So while I was busy not being able to open my eyes for a long enough period to write on this blog, I spent the days afterward trolling the internet as I often do, and in my haze of semi-consciousness I arrived at the Star Wars version of Wikipedia. Yes, it’s “Wookiepedia” – possibly the best name for any website of any kind ever. Way back when (about five years ago), I used to read a fair few published Star Wars books, and for the most part enjoyed them immensely, but I had no idea of the extent of this ‘Expanded Universe’ that has been built by tie-in books, games, comics and graphic novels. It’s absolutely massive. Seriously, seriously huge. And a (rather large) group of dedicated fans have put it all into the Wookiepedia resource. Thanks to them, I’ve read with unashamedly childlike fun all kinds of things about the universe I either used to or never knew before. Over the years, the various novel series have built up a pretty solid forty-year story following on from Return of the Jedi, and it’s detailed with such love for the franchise that I was compelled to dig up some of the old X-Wing books I used to own and over the last couple of days I’ve realised to my pleasure that I wasn’t old enough to really appreciate them when I first read them. I’m now thoroughly enjoying working my way through as much of the series as I own, which is far more reading than I’ve done for an awful long time. So thank you, Wookiepedia. The Force is strong in you.

Backseat blogging

A lack of “news” material today (I hope you weren’t expecting me to cover the fact that gold is trading at $1000 an ounce for the first time ever) means I’ve got to think of something myself without being prompted by such trivialities as breaking stories.

I guess I could do a token piece on the US Presidential “race” (I wish they’d stop calling it that, even a marathon takes less than a day), but quite frankly I’m getting so bored of the whole thing. Why they all can’t decide internally on their candidates, or have all the states vote on the same day, or just fix it for Bush again, is beyond me. JUST END IT NOW, AMERICA!

So I won’t talk about that then. I should mention in passing that after I sent a general pressure email to my friends two days ago when I launched this blog, in which I politely guilt-tripped them all into reading, I received a reply from one of them who clearly fancies himself as a bit of a backseat blogger. (Not to sound ungrateful, particular reader, I appreciate your contributions. Keep them coming.) Anyway, this guy gave me a little list of things he thought I should talk about, and with a lack of material I have indeed turned to this list. First on it was the US Democrat nomination, which I have covered above as much as I feel I can without losing my will to live, so I might as well finish off the list.

It reads, in full: “The US democrat nomination, look at your favourite webcomics, websites, whatever, or do something on Eurovision. Or movies.”

So,

1. See above.

2. I am a regular reader of Questionable Content by Jeph Jaques, Ctrl-Alt-Del by Tim Buckley, and PvP Online by Scott Kurtz.

3. My go-to website when I have nothing to do is the BBC Sport page. I don’t visit as many websites as perhaps I should, there are a lot of geeky ones that I’m missing out on. Suggestions in the form of comments are very welcome indeed. I’m also a recreational user of Facebook (studies show it’s wise to refer to such things in drugs terminology) and I am contractually obliged to regularly visit MyFootballClub.co.uk, as through it I am a shareholder in Ebbsfleet United FC. More on that when The CDB Pod launches.

4. In retrospect, “whatever” probably wasn’t a specific suggestion, but I’ve come too far to turn back now.

5. Eurovision. Is it just me, or is that a really strange thing to come to after discussing Presidential elections and the web? Eh, anyway. I have a mixed relationship with Eurovision, probably because I watch British television. From a British perspective, Eurovision is horrible. These people really have got to decide whether they are taking it seriously or not. On one hand, Terry Wogan makes lots of noises about “we need a winning entry this year” or whatever, which is fair enough, he clearly cares about the whole thing, but then the BBC force him to present a choose-Britain’s-entry show in which an entire third of the voting ballot is made up of people who have histories of not winning public-vote TV singing contests IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, LET ALONE EUROPE? It’s really sad, because like any sensible Brit I like Terry Wogan immensely and I don’t think I can handle him getting hurt again.

I’m going to fall out of list format now because it’s become clear that I’m actually writing an entire article on Eurovision now, so that pesky reader has got his way. I hope you’re proud of yourself – this is what you’ve done to me.

Of course, I say that in a cynical, hurt sort of way, but the truth is I do actually really like Eurovision. I will always make sure I am free on the night of the contest so that I can watch it with my family, because it is a great television event, as long as you set yourself free of the despair and painfully inevitable doom that comes from believing the British are in with any chance at all. There is much entertainment to be had watching people who actually think the contest is important (i.e. any country east of Germany). Every year, you are guaranteed to find at least one song, usually a handful, that are either fantastic fun because they’re quirky or actually a really really good song. I still want to find a copy of the Serbia & Montenegro entry from 2002, I think it was, when Wogan was somehow surprised that everyone liked it. It was a great, mysterious traditional folk thing that crept up on you out of nowhere. They came third, and they deserved more, if not for that pesky Ukrainian girl wearing Xena-style leather and cracking a whip.

Back to my point on how Britain chooses its entry, one of the talent-show failures inevitably won, in this case pleasant-but-dull-as-dishwater X-Factor reject Andy Abraham, and I hope he enjoys his nul points. There’s no way in hell Europe will vote for him. I haven’t even heard the song – I couldn’t bear to watch the show – but I saw him a couple of times on X-Factor (my mother and sister were watching it. I couldn’t watch anything else, I swear) and he appears to have pigeonholed himself into the grandparents-approved superficial soul niche. Considering that in the last few years, whip-flailing Ukrainian “roleplayers”, Tim-Burton-meets-Slipknot death metal and a transsexual granny from, er, Ukraine again, have enjoyed huge success, I’m not sure instantly-forgettable soul is what Europe wants right now.

Which leads me on to this question – why do we ask the public, who, let’s not forget, constantly prove themselves to be morons, choose between a bunch of people we’ve either never heard of before or have previously decided via a similar process are not talented enough to make it? Granted, it isn’t the 70s anymore, but Cliff Bloody Richard (full name) entered the thing about a million times back in the day! Many countries do actually enter people who have actual careers in music, and they do pretty well in general. I remember a conversation I had with my mother a few years ago when, for some unfortunate reason, Emma Bunton (Baby Bloody Spice, also a full name) came on the telly with some godawful video for some godawful song. This was her comeback before last, I hasten to add – the song got into the top 10, not #67 which I believe was as far as her latest attempt got – when she was actually popular. And my mother asked me “why don’t we get Emma Bunton to do Eurovision?”, and I couldn’t find a suitable answer for it. That was the year we entered James Fox, to put it into context. (What? You don’t remember him? Surely not, he came fourth in Fame Academy!)

So next year, can we please ditch the public phone vote and have at most three people who are involved in the music business in some way, and let them enquire to some actual musicians as to whether they’d like a go at restoring British pride. Call me crazy, but this year Britain are going to get beaten by a puppeted turkey. We cannot let that happen again.

The emailer had other points in his list, but I’ve forgotten what they are.

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P.S. A quick plug for a fantastic Eurovision book, Nul Points by Tim Moore. This fellow took it upon himself to visit everyone who ever scored the famous zero points, and it makes for a great read. Do check it out.

MSN Screen Names: A Rant

Aloha, this is the first post on the CDB Desk blog. No need for an overlong intro, suffice to say that I’ll be running this in conjunction with my sport blog, the CDB Pod, which will launch this summer. I’ll be using this blog to comment on all the non-sport issues that I feel like talking about. Strap yourself in.

So, to get started, I thought I’d talk about a subject close to my heart (in the ‘keep your enemies closer’ sense) – MSN screen names. Those of you who don’t use MSN – sorry, but I’m sure you can relate to this somehow, considering you’re internet-literate enough to be reading this in the first place.

Basically, I keep seeing people using these ridiculous “deep” sayings that don’t look deep – they just make you look like a prat. Here are some great examples:

• <Name> What if today was your last day? I hope one day you will get the chance – to live like you were dying~
• ~Life is like a game of poker! U never know if u will win or loose!~
• I’ll make sure we survive

Here’s how I see it.

1st example: This is pointless, pratty melodrama. I mean, wtf? I know for a fact that this person is not going to die tomorrow. So how the HELL does he know what it’s like to ‘live like you were dying’? Why does he wish it on someone else? IT MIGHT BE HORRIBLE! It probably would be, thinking about it a bit…but that isn’t the point. To the person who wrote this, whose name shall be omitted – YOU. ARE. A. PRAT. Stop trying to sound impressive, it isn’t working.

2nd example: First of all, no. It’s not like that. There are times during a game of poker when you KNOW that you will win or you KNOW that you will lose, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And second – if we remove the poker part, life itself ISN’T always ‘you never know whether you will win or lose’! There are times in your life when you KNOW you will succeed at something or you KNOW you are going to fail. And there are also times where you don’t win or lose – how do you explain that? Furthermore, if it WAS like that, thanks for pointing out the bleeding obvious! WE WOULD KNOW! We don’t need you to tell us!

3rd Example: What are you, a freaking psychic? You know who you are.

So, in short, basically I’d like people to stop pratting about with all this nauseating melodrama and supposed ‘wise words’. They don’t make you look impressive or cool, and most of the time the ‘wise words’ aren’t even wise. THEY’RE NOT EVEN REAL WORDS! Case in point, use of ‘u’ instead of ‘you’. That’s not a word! THEREFORE it can’t be wise words. If you absolutely must identify yourself with something other than your name or a nickname, at least make it something funny. Seeing as most people on MSN are under the age of 30, I highly doubt that any of them have enough life experience to say something truly profound anyway.

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Note: If you’re one of the people I pressured into reading this blog, you may recognise the above. It is indeed taken (and modified, I hasten to add) from a post I made on my old Son of SPAM Palace forum (now defunct), as a way to get me started. From here on in, though, it’s all up-to-date material.