Television: Not Watching It Makes Me :D

I used to watch television a lot. There was a point in my life where I just had to watch all the crime shows: CSI, Law and Order, NCIS, Numb3rs (my personal favourite;) I didn't care, so long as there was a mystery to be solved. Predictably enough, the shows got... predictable :P I'm still up for a bit of TV every now and then, but YouTube will always be the best channel. No ads and no signal interference; just an infinite supply of Becker and Whose Line is it Anyway? I could watch that show forever! The knowledge that you will not see what you saw last time (a few running gags aside :P) makes for a damned good television programme. The rest of the televised world is something I love to hate. Whenever I watch a television broadcast (as in, the live feed from the aerial, not the stuff worth watching) I am persistently and openly mocking almost everything I see (much to the disdain of those who live with me :P) No over-dramatisation goes unnoticed, and no advertisement goes unridiculed; I swear, I do not have the ability to pass the opportunity to take the piss out of an ad unless it's genuinely good... and that ain't often :P

What gets me, though, is the rivalry between the networks. Here in Australia, we used to have a show called The Chaser's War on Everything. This was another programme I used to watch a few years back, but this show, unlike all the others I've mentioned, was canned. It wasn't canned because it was shitty; it was canned because it was actually too good! The show was political and commercial satire on crack, and the 6 blokes who were the Chaser team were both brilliant writers and gutsy performers. Their vox pops and outrageous public stunts really set the mark for political and social commentary in this country. After only 2 seasons, the Chaser team was far too easily recognised for the show's future success to be viable; the team's spontaneity relied highly on their relative anonymity. I can almost guarantee you that the show's cancellation was because of all the dumb motherfuckers video-bombing, wanting autographs and "waiting for something cool to happen!" This is why we can't have anything nice :P

The team were renowned not only for their political humour, but their never-ending piss-takes on the Australian media, particularly the commercial networks (Channels Seven, Nine and Ten.; real goddamn original :P) Channels Seven and Nine are fierce competitors; same shit, different channel, but always going at one another. Today, I actually saw a video where Channel 9 "apologised" for putting 3 watermarks across the middle of the screen - not the corner, or even the edge, right smack bang in the fuckin' middle - because Channel Seven was "stealing their content" and even pushing said content as "exclusive material." Much to my not-surprise, this was actually true, but get this: Channel Seven not only stole the footage, but they blurred the watermarks... as in, the ones Channel Nine put in the middle of the screen. o.O There is an entire strip of the screen that is just... blurry! I've seen blurred watermarks before, but this... this is just ridiculous!



Can you believe this? This is what happens when two groups of arse-wipes go at it: they'll stop at nothing until the other is down and out for good. Shit, that's what capitalism is, hypothetically: a never ending fight. Guess what, fuckers: all fights end. That's the entire point of conflict: to find a solution! Conflict can not last forever, and eventually, we'll have one media conglomerate, one global nation, and one giant facepalm (if we're still allowed, that is.) For the moment, capitalism is the lesser of two evils, so I suppose we're stuck here until we find a better way to deal with how fucked the human mindset is. Until then... enjoy the epic bitch fight :P

Oh, and Channel Nine... we don't see it first on your channel because you "work very hard." We see it first on your channel because you're run by CVC Asia Pacific, who (like any large corporation) manipulate the lives of the puppets they call their "employees" and throw money around like rice at a wedding to lather "news stories" in their own conservative coating before anyone else is able to get a fucking word in.

Oh... and I saw it on YouTube first :P

B-Log? What's a B-Log? Where's the A-Log?

So, here we are! The blogoland-tube-sphere thing.

Let's get straight to it: I've got a sore throat which is why I haven't been making videos as of late, of any variety. Once this bastard is healed (and no, I don't know when it will; I don't own a DeLorean) I will resume making videos ASAP. Time is still, and always will be, an issue with my upload frequency, so just be patient and you will see videos in that box soon :D The acing videos will be priority one; you guys have been asking for the last few (the most important :P) so they'll be the first videos to be uploaded. My "Minesweeper: Behind the Scenes" video will probably follow, and while I was sick, I started a new level, so I might give you guys a sneak peak of what little there is of that too. It's another remake, so don't get your hopes up for "new ideas," but it'll be complicated; mega-complicated ;)

I've also been contemplating a lot of subject matter for commentaries (if I'd been at home not sick, I would have been talking my judgmental arse off :P) and this has mainly been along the lines of YouTube partnership (my lowly opinion of its transformation of YouTube in to Hollywood through subversive manipulation, not my "road to stardom" :P), women, the education system, and a bunch of other shit. After thinking it over, I realised that I simply don't have the time to say all those things in videos, nor did I see the point in putting video game footage behind my ramblings (are we that simple, people?) This way, I can quickly type something and let you guys read it. I'll definitely keep doing commentaries; I love doing them, and you guys appear to love listening to me talk (just going off the comments here :P) but I feel that non-gaming subject matter need not interfere with the gaming footage, so I can stick that stuff here without any dilemmas.

Speaking of commentary... LittleBigShow; we've gotta talk. LBS was highly successful and extremely well received by you guys. It was also a pain in the arse to script :P Going through 50 levels (the majority of which aren't up to scratch at all; just the law of averages speaking here) and picking 3, only 3, to feature was painstaking and overbearing. If you guys like that kind of production, then I should keep doing it, but it just takes too long to script. This is where the improvised commentary idea came from: it was a way of cutting down production time. If I can just make it up as I go, why write it down and then say it? Fuck that :P LBS can continue with this change with only minor side effects. First, levels would still be submitted by you guys via Google Moderator, personal messages and channel comments, but I would now simply request LBP.me links and look at the happy/sad face ratio (not how big/small those figures are, the ratio of happy faces to sad faces) to decide which levels to feature. Levels would therefore have to have been played at least ~50 times for them to have enough ratings for me to judge their worthiness, but from there, I can just stick them on my queue, commence playing/recording/talking, and cut out irrelevance and dead silence during editing. Simple :D

Well, that was a shitload of words. Take a breather - a nap if you need to - and I'll catch you guys later :)