The Dark Prince

Readers, People, Country readers. I have been busy for quite some time now as you have probably guessed, and well, I have sort of neglected you haven’t I?. Well, I learnt that the best thing to do in times of neglect for a parent is to buy the neglectee a hugely overvalued present. However, since most of you refuse to identify yourselfs, I’m not about to buy the entire world a puppy for christmas, so you may go and get your reward for yourselves instead. Send the bills to someone rich, like Ex-Vice Chancellor Alan Gilbert.

Right, now that the forgiveness has been … erm … realised, I can begin on whatever the hell I was going to write for this entry. To be honest, I really can’t remember what I was going to write about. It was going to be really good actually. So good, htat you would be smiling for weeks on end about the goodness of it all. You’ll just have to think up whatever it was I was going to write and smile about it instead then. That’ll do.

It seems that there are many of you, my flock of sheepish readers, who are interested to hear more on the subject of Ego Removal, and you wish to hear of my past cases, successful or otherwise. Well, I guess I have no choice then, do I?

Case 1: The closeted ego
As well you should know, much of the excess of ego in this world comes from those who think they are better than everyone else. One such case was The Closeted ego, who was extremely immature, stupid and up himself. He lorded over everyone, simply because he was a medical student, which clearly made him some sort of god. Anyway, this wonderfully arrogant little wretch was also clearly in denial about certain attributes which he had. Thus, we have the two main requirements for an ego removal, namely: an excess of ego and a clear weak point.

I had completely intended to let nature run it’s course with this mini-demi-god, however one day during a reasonably relaxed game of foosball, he had the nerve to imply that I had never kissed a girl. Well, my readers, what was a hot-blooded male like myself to do? Why, Isaid the first thing that sprung to mind, namely:

At least I don’t have a steel rod stuck up my arse, why don’t you just come out of the closet already?

Surprisingly, he never talked to me after that, he also watched his mouth a bit more and within six months was outed as screaming queen. A good result for all, and another job well done.

Case 2: The instant expert

Many of the people I know will at some point ask to learn something from me. Whether it be Billiards related, Computing related or gaming related, most realise that I do not boast without reason and only claim ability that I actually have. However, some are stupid enough not to realise when I am rather good at something and misread my ability. This then leads to the delusion that once they have trained for a short period they are better than me.

We shall refer to the unfortunate victim of delusion as Mr. Bounce. Well, after training Mr. Bounce in the art of Tekken 3 on his recently purchased playstation, we hit the time of holidays. Two weeks alone is never fun, but Mr Bounce managed to brave the elements of whatever by continually playing Tekken and truly believing that in this period he would somehow learn what took me two years.

Upon arriving back in the land of university, he and his smug expression challenged me to a match, I happily accepted and for a moment thought he might have actually learnt something. He didn’t. How surprising. Needless to say, I used every single character I knew, and some that I don’t and brutalised his meagre playing ability. Once more his Ego was returned to it’s correct size (in his case, infinitessimal), and another notch was carved into my belt.

These are merely two cases in an ocean of foolishness and stupidity. However, we must remember that no matter how bloated an ego, some cannot be repaired simply because they are not based upon abilities or knowledge in the real world. Thus, a different technique must be used to combat this cancerous growth of obstinacy. Such an example is that of The Eggplant, which I think is a story for another time.

Seeing that this is one of those things that starts with b (yes, that word) I figured I should at least include something about my current situation, if only for the record. Don’t worry, immediately after this, there will be a new entry, so skip to that if you must.

As of this point in time, my network is functional. It has 4 working machines, with two more ready to be networked as soon as I can fix up some minor problems. I am ahead of all work, although I’ve been a bit ill, so my attendance hasn’t been all that great, but I understand everything and intend to fix all revision this weekend.

Aside from that, my snooker badly needs attention as I’m sure my form has been corrupted with all this non-practise, so soon I shall begin my regular regime of 3 hourlong sessions of snooker a week.

Exciting stuff? Not really, but this is a … blog … after all. Anyway, on with the articles.

Since my last article, less than two days ago, I have been flooded with E-mails asking me how to become one of these chosen few, the elite keepers of the sanity of the human race. Well, actually, my E-mail was flooded with at least 100 spam E-mails for V1agr4!!!$!@. Thus, since for this sort of advertising, we would expect it to be subtly introduced with all other letters received, say a ratio of at least 1:5 (for spam:real), otherwise people would just delete it all. So I would guess that at least 500 people wrote to me, but unfortunately, due to the sorry state of the world, I was unable to hear their plea.

This article, my dear friends, my followers and perhaps worshippers, is for you. Without you writing in excess of 500 E-mails, well I just wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

The job of an Ego Removalist is fraught with danger and possible repercussions. It is all very well to look at the good of this sacred position, but remember, we are the doctors of social status, with the glamour comes the difficulty, and if we fail, then all hell breaks loose. For every crushed store owner, there are several hundred forum idiots, who no matter what you say, will continue in their plight, corrupting others as they go.

For this reason, only the bets can become Ego Removalists, for with us, lies the heavy burden of responsibility to society. However, even the best of the best cannot redeem those that have been bled dry of all sensibility. These zombies of blather only serve to spread their corruption further and must be stopped at all costs, but how do we elimate these threats?

To be honest, this is truly difficult and is often dependant upon the method of zombie creation. Most cases of misplaced egos occur in one of two fashions:

• Popularity: Usually extended periods of popularity (particularly when the target has no real reason to be popular talent-wise), cause a significant error in the ego of a possible target. Rich only children in particular tend to feel that they know all and are never taught how to be wrong. Our job is to teach them.
• Change of Life: An unpopular student in high school will do all in their power to change their way of living once entering university, (or from uni to employment, or even between employments). This change usually results in the target pretending to be something they can never be. If this delusion continues, the ego may be irretrievably bloated. These usually are the worst cases, and need special attention.

The method of removal is similar for both circumstances - Crush all positive feedback reaching the target. The cause of the ego problem is also important, as a rich child will not usually be deeply affected by removal of praise for skill, but can be effectively ego-resized by absolute proof that they are wrong (in front of as many people as possible). The second case is more straightforward. Ridicule. Whilst it is unfortunate the fate that these idiots suffer in high school, it is not necessary for even more egotistical scams to exist in the world. An ego built on the foundations of change is most susceptible to direct insult and percieved large scale dislike.

In some cases in your training, oh dilligent followers, you will find a problem so big, that it simply cannot be fixed at once. Remember, the human mind plays in your favour. Continuous insults or even whispering about the target behind their back (so that they may hear), will do wonders within the space of a few weeks. However some will resist and it is almost impossible to properly destroy the cancerous vile lump of ego, try to correct the subject before this stage is reached if at all possible.

Remember, Ego Removal is difficult and dangerous, a miss hit could make matters far worse, whilst a perfect removal may not necessarily make the situation better. Their lives, and the fate of the world, lie in your hands.

Now as you are all well aware, my wide-ranging audience of millions of individuals, there exist many people in this world. Some of them have eyes, most in fact. Many of them posess a thing called an ego. This ego gives them a measure of their own abilities, however in most cases the measure is vastly inaccurate.

The ego measurement is grossly affected by alcohol, social group and cultural raising and there are many ego-related crimes. This is where myself and a few - a precious few - fight the good fight. We are the ego removalists, and we specialise in fixing the broken measurements of these many flawed individuals.

How do we do this, I hear you ask in extreme anticipation. Well, there are many steps, like the American agencies, we should ensure that our target is genuine. Unlike said agencies, we actually do. Firstly, the target is sited.

Usually a target is easy to spot. In university there are obvious attributes: loud voice, first or second year student, lots of friends who are not as impressed as they pretend to be, and most importantly, a clear deficit of their supposed skill. In the real world, this identification is a fraction harder, but most of these prerequisites apply. The targets outside of the university are usually workers in a shop who foolishly believe that because they work in that area, they are a master of their skill.

In my last update you may recall a bumbling idiot who set out to ask a ridiculous question. I have corrected many who have fallen to the dark side of a bloated ego in this fashion, but my most memorable correction occurred at a video games shop some time ago.

It was the dawn of the PS2, and shop owners everywhere were learning new games to impress would-be customers and perhaps even sexual opportunities (if only in their own minds). Being the enthusiastic sort of chap I was, I frequented a shop in particular, to examine the range of games available and quality of the titles, I was unimpressed as a general rule. However, one game I did want rather badly: Tekken Tag Tournament. As most of you will know, as my fame often preceeds me, I am quite good at this series of games.

So, as I perused through the titles, an idiot of epic proportions who I am unfortunate enough to know starts ranting about how he bought one yesterday and the usual babble about how cool it is, despite the fact that he clearly didn’t have any ability whatsoever. He also mentioned during this rant that the shop owner was rather good at Tekken, and went as far as to say that he would beat me easily. This was obviously a job for… The Ego Removalist

So I introduced myself and asked about Tekken Tag, got myself a challenge and proceeded to watch the guys face go from smug to absolutely horrified as I wiped the floor with his character. I obliterated all confidence he had in the game and humiliated him in front of his boss and the customers.

I’m sure one day he will thank me for correcting his issues, but for now, his facial expressions were all the thanks I will ever need. Another successful mission for The Ego Removalist.

A Beginners Guide

Over my many, many years at both university and school, I have noticed that questions need to be asked. Clarifications, if you will, of the content being described by the lecturer (or in school’s case, teacher). However, often these questions just make the asker look utterly stupid. The skill is to remain cool in appearance and yet learn information, as this pamphlet will show, the best result is simply not to ask and wait for someone else to.

For example, in one of my lectures, a rather boofy geeky type asked a question about logic which clearly showed that he wasn’t listening. It went something like this:

Lecturer: So the simple way to prove that all crows are black is to find all crows in existence and show all of them are black, or alternatively to find all non-black items and show that none of them are crows.

Questioner: But aren’t you taking the problem to another level and ignoring the fundamental properties of the crow? (Or something like that)

As the question was carefully phrased, it seems that this was an attempt to seem deep and learned. It resulted in him looking very stupid, although he was clearly so stupid he didn’t realise this, and five seconds later did a not-so-sneaky peek to see if he had any ardent admirers. He didn’t.

Unfortunately, there are far worse than these. I have three question askers in my engineering class. Of these, the worst is known as The Boofy-Haired Dickhead. His special ability is to repeatedly ask the same question over and over again if the answer isn’t exactly what he wants. This can happen during lectures or afterwards. If it happens during lectures most lecturers will try to gently let him down, whilst the rest of the class wants him dead. There are the rare and very pleasurable moments though when a lecturer finally caves and tells him where to go. After class, he can be seen hurtling towards a clearly dreading lecturer to ask the same question again. Clearly he has not studied the subtle art of question asking and we can safely conclude that he will never understand anything.

There is an advantage to not asking questions. If you don’t ask duiring class, you can always e-mail. Thus, if you are asking something redundant, you are safe from ridicule, whilst, if you ask something sensible, your name will be in the glory of a mail forwarded to the rest of the class, you can’t lose!

And finally, there is also the ability for entertainment. If a lecturer makes a glaring mistake whilst writing something down, many minutes of subtle laughter at the professors expense can be had whilst he furiously tries to figure out where he has gone wrong. So, don’t correct him, enjoy the moment of your lecturer stumbling about his own work. After all, he probably laughs at your exam write-up.

As you probably know, my oh so fervert readers, I am currently enrolled in one computing subject this semester and pretending to be enrolled in another. This is great fun, easy subjects, complete lecture notes and good lecturers. It’s everything engineering and maths fail to be.

With this in mind you would expect those in this subject to breeze through and score ridiculously high marks, with very little study. But this is not the case. Oh no, far from it. Instead you get clueless idiots, both male and female, even the supposed geeks lack an ounce of skill with a box of silicon. Allow me to make some comparisons for you:

In Engineering and Maths: You are lucky if your lecture notes cover even three quarters of the material you are expected to learn for an exam. Past exam papers are usually only relevant for about the last two years since lecturers change all the time. In short, you have only notions what you will be asked and how to actually do it.
In Computer Science: The lecture notes cover everything you will ever need to know and even if you are unsure, the amount of references that are easily available are huge. Past exams are strictly adhered to, so you may revise thoroughly before an actual exam.

In Engineering and Maths: Laboratory sessions are confusing and difficult. Usually for some minor prac which involves listening to an incomprehensible tutor who often has little grasp of the English language, you must write an eight page report which is worth just enough of your marks to hurt if you don’t do it and just too little to actually put any effort into since you will never get a perfect score anyway.

In Computer Science: The laboratory staff are usually excellently chosen, with decent to excellent communication skills. The tasks are clearly defined and the submisssions required are usually insignificant or even non-existent

In Engineering and Maths: Assignments are always worth few marks, but require Herculean effort and usually involve concepts not covered in lectures or anywhere else for that matter. Even if you go and see the lecturer, the chances are they will just tell you to work it out for yourself, or they won’t speak English very well and will yell an answer at you which is not even closely related to what you are talking about. So you have to guess, and you always get it wrong. Bye bye marks.
In Computer Science: Assignments are clearly written, with no ambiguity, timelines are extremely generous and help is always available from the lecturer or tutors. And as for the marks, well it is easy enough to get perfect marks and the marks are actually a decent portion of the subject.

Why is it this way? Who knows, but I suspect the reason is simply those that do the actual course. Engineering attracts genuinly smart people, who learn fast and are quite intuitive, hence the course is harder, but the jobs are easier to get. In computing, you get idiotic females who can’t even figure out how to turn on the computer, or social rejects turned geek, but still don’t have any talent. They bitch and whine that not enough information is given by the lecturer about the exam or assignments, they show off (and quite regularly get their result wrong whilst showing off, much to my amusement), and they are just plain stupid.

These people are our software future, these idiots, these cretinous bludgers who clearly wouldn’t know a computer from a large plate of garlic topped with grasshoppers, will write the programs which we depend on.

Nice to know we’re in such good hands, huh?

A brief overview of failed styles

I haven’t given very much to read over the past few weeks, so here is a tribute to you, my obedient and worshipping audience, a brief dissection of the horrible world of bad comedy.

There are many comedy styles that have developed throughout the ages, most of which are specific only to the time and become redundant as time passes, however now, more than any other time frame is the day of ‘romantic comedies’, or ‘wacky comedy adventures’ or so on and so forth. Junk, all of it. You’ve seen all those shitty 80s comedies lining the back of a video store, the ones that are usually on sale for about $2 each, that’s what will become of these stupid ‘comedies’ that run rampant on the silver screen now

But it doesn’t end there, bad comedy is splattered all over the TV hiding in hi-budget shows, and often low budget shows, almost demanding you to ask, “Why don’t these idiots realise they aren’t funny?”. There are several streams of particularly bad comedy to be on the look out for:

• Impersonations - The skill of impersonating a character relies on copying and exaggurating their nuances when speaking as well as their accent, if the audience can see the impersonator it is vitally important to at least make some attempt to look like the person you are impersonating. So, putting a massive comic nose on yourself and pretending to be anyone and everyone without altering your voice or movements doesn’t really count. See “Comedy Inc” (a rather ironic title when you think about it) for the worst kind of impersonations. “Dead Ringers” manages to be the best of this style I’ve seen in some time.
• Sex jokes - A joke is a joke, some jokes about sex are incredibly funny, but mentioning a sexual act is not exactly humourous, particularly when it is done over and over again for no real reason. Of course, try telling this to the American film industry, pumping out film after film with gratutious nudity and random mentions of sex in a funny voice and they call it a comedy. Expect a lot of these gathering dust in the video stores in about 10 years time.
• Slapstick - A horrible style that is usually bad, but is occasionally done brilliantly. The worst offender of the times is Hilary Duff, who relies on randomly walking into things to make her career, so she must be eternally thankful to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. After some time though, her face is going to look ugly and she’ll start to look old, and suddenly walking into things won’t capture the limitless imagination of the American population anymore. The goodies also pioneered much of this style, some of it awful, some of it good. Thankfully this is no longer very common, but I’m sure it will make a grand comeback.
• Discomfort - Incredibly popular in films at the moment, this genre focusses on creating situations that are as embarrasing as possible for a character. Mostly, this just makes me (or the audience if I can extraploate) feel queasy, the rest of the time calls for changing channels out of boredom or irritation. The entire American Pie series seems to rely on this and sex jokes. Haha, so very funny, now please stop.
• Forced laughter - This horrible trend, most exploited in the very early 80s consists of bad actors spewing out uninteresting and predictable scripts, pausing at the end of each phrase for raucous laughter straight from the can. This is still abundant today, mostly in black comedies.
• Character assasination - The backbone of much british humour, including the sensational Blackadder series, this is another genre perverted and destroyed by the less than subtle mind of the Americans. What was once beautiful due to the intricate use of language has become scripts of boring repetitious crap. The worst offender of this crime? Hard to pick, but I’d put my money on such incredibly funny series as “Veronicas Closet” and other generic “comedies”
• Spoofs - The quoting or reproduction of another film in a witty and humourous way. Started in the mainstream by a truly amusing film called “Top Secret”, this is one of the types of comedy that almost everyone knows to avoid. Much of the humour from this style comes from subtle introduction or seamless inclusion. Unfortunately, you end up with pap like “Scary Movie” or “Another Teen Movie”, which, when you see at a store for $2 usually has blurbs like, ‘The spoof that took the world by storm! Sick of those [insert genre here]? Well this movie shows them all [generic insult here]!’. Exclamation marks seem very important in marketing these otherwise unmarketable films.

Perhaps one day the Smash-Hit Comedies!!! will stop being thrown at us from uninspired writers and we can start enjoying real humour, but until that day, try to avoid elephants and people with the name Jeroen, (this could be hard if you are in Holland).

Followed by the sound of an axe

I thoroughly apologise for not having time to write scintillating entries into this blog thingo, but unfortunately, I have been bogged down by masses of work from design and so on and so forth. Firstly, I have passed all my exams and the design seminar went well, but the report is causing some problems. More on that later

Very soon, I shall have this design done and with it the glorious feeling of not having work overdue. But then of course, there will be new work to not do and have hanging over my head. The joys of uni.

Time is an issue for the moment, but soon I will write some lovely new articles, but for now, ’tis time I buggered off.

Next Entry: Comedy that isnt, a brief overview of failed styles