It's not the winning that counts . . .

Ok, it is. This is just some lie that losers tell themselves when they need to get over it. As it happens, i don't.

So, over the past couple of Saturdays some stuff has gone down (poker and quizzing), so I'd better get blogging about them.

In three weeks we've had two games of poker, and to be honest, both haven't ended well. Not because I lost, because we just ran out of time, a rushed ending to a game (James got lucky) does not make it a game in my opinion. But that said, we all had fun so that's okay.

Either way, I still yearn to actually have a proper game of poker that we actually finish, I feel like I haven't played since August. Things will all come together in the end!

Yesterday, I went quizzing with peoples. I got Eleanor and myself a lift to Aaron's, where we were to meet the other happy quizzers: Tom, Nicole and Callum (and Rajiv turned up when we got to the hall place thingie). We had named ourselves well: Team Rocket! The most intimidating team there was a bunch of 40-something alcoholics, but that's because we hadn't seen the two "senior" teams at the front. We came fourth, not bad for "young people", as we were called. It won't be the last, we WILL win a quiz someday, someday...

The Playlist. (Made 12/11)

Yes, it's another music post. Yes, I know you don't even like most of my music. Yes, I'm desperate to integrate music into this blog and will do so if it kills me.

So this week I've had a(nother) grand idea. I won't tell you which are my faves in some list and explain why I like them. I'm just going to post my playlist on here whenever I make a new one and you can go and look up the songs, or go "I have that one, it's awesome, and so are you Adam!". As it happens, here's one I prepared earlier, enjoy!

Playlist made on 12/11/09:

The Kill - 30 Seconds to Mars
Punk B*tch - 3OH!3
Umbrella - All Time low
Coffee Shop Soundtrack - All Time Low
Almost Easy - Avenged Sevenfold
Halo - Beyoncé
All the Small Things - Blink 182
The Curse of Curves - Cute is What We Aim For
When a Jealous Man Finds a Gun - Enter Shikari
Situations - Escape the Fate
Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging - Fall Out Boy
Mercury Summer - Fightstar
Hurt Feelings - Flight of the Conchords
Bada Bing! Wit' a Pipe - Four Years Strong
The River - Good Charlotte
What You Waiting for? - Gwen Stefani
Let's Dance - HiTack
Another Way to Die - Jack White and Alicia Keys
Waking Up in Vegas - Katy Perry
Tik Tok - Ke$ha
You Should Have Known - Laura White
My Mannequin Can Dance - Matchbook Romance
Jamie All Over - Mayday Parade
Three Cheers for Five Years (Acoustic) - Mayday Parade
When I Grow Up - Mayday Parade
Your Song - Mayday Parade
Monster - Meg & Dia
Hot in the Dolls House - My Passion
Lifeline - Papa Roach
Misery Business (Acoustic) - Paramore
Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
Come Right Out and Say it - Relient K
Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet - Relient K
Ghostbusters (remix)
Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin - Reuben
Deadly Lethal Ninja Assassin (Acoustic) - Reuben
Antidote For Irony - So They Say
Summer, Man - Taking Back Sunday
Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis
Papercut Skin - The Matches
Invaders Must Die - The Prodigy
Warrior's Dance - The Prodigy
Face Down - The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Call if You Want to - The Riverclub
Reptillia - The Strokes
Bleeding Love - The Wombats
The Bird and the Worm - The Used
Jump - Van Halen
Slither - Velvet Revolver
Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt - We are Scientists
My Name is Jonas - Weezer
Finders Keepers (Acoustic) - You Me at Six
Poker Face - You Me at Six
Save it for the Bedroom - You Me at Six
Kernkraft 400 (live remix) - Zombie Nation

Ok, get revising, I'll give you a test in two weeks.

A snippet from the land of copy and paste.

This is just an improvised conversation I had on msn between Jordan and myself tonight. I've put the definitions of any unfamiliar emoticons in italics next to them. Enjoy!

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*:(
*Where were you on the night of teh accident 8-)
*Mr Batchelor :P
*yoru sounding very reserved :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*i suppose i might be

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*(H) [face with sunglasses]
*You say you recently palyed saints row 2 :O

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*i have indeed recently played saints row 2

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*Surely a video game of thsi nature must effect you psycologically :P
*As in the game you can perform hit and runs, similar to teh one which took place here :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*yeah; if i was a MENTALIST

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*There will be no further questions ?

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*i use semi colons, i can't possibly commit murder

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*Say have you had any health issues in the past 3 years ?

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*there was that thing with my eyebrow
*that was two years and 9 months ago
*i had flu roughly 9 months later
*14 months after i caught a rough cold which stayed with me for roughly two weeks
*and i've not had anything else for the last 10 months

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*okay how does your behaviou change during these periods of ilness :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*got a bit sleepy with the cold
*couldn't move with flu
*bought a sombrero with the eyebrow thing

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*so it seems that when your ill you can;t move :\ stuck indoors your frustration must begin to grow :p

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*no, i just sleep.

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*Really :P
*Any abnormal dreams ?

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*yeah, fire, lots of fire
*an entire city in flames
*anarchy
*and nothing i could do would make it any better
*the dream often repeated itself

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*This is interesting (Y) [yes]
** marcus have what Mr Batchelor just printed and on my desk please *
Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*never had it again after that week though

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
**marcus get taht down *
*Thats just Marcus, he's a wee bit camp :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*and scottish? :P

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*no thats me ;)

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*lol

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*Don't fucking laff at me you wee bastard :@ [angry face]

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*that's a rather aggressive tone you're using
*have you ever lost control and just . . . lashed out at a suspect?

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*No comment :)
*i'll do teh questions thank you very much :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*i suppose the way i'm questioning your authority in this interview is REALLY getting on your nerves
*maybe, you might just want to lash out at me

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*SILENCE :@

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*what? am i getting to you?
*I can see that thirst for vengance already growing in your eyes
*it might just grow large enough to pull off a hit and run incident
*another one, that is
*place this man under arrest!
*you see, you aren't the only one who's been conducting interviews, in fact, i've been getting to your "suspects" before you've been there to bribe them off or threaten them into silence
*maybe i missed one or two witnesses, for that is what they really are, but i have enough.
*goodbye, thank you marcus
*^.^

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*MARCUS AHVE THSI MAN PLACED IN A CELL IMEEDIATELY :P
*AND BRING UP HI FILE PLEASE :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*he won't listen to you, see, i'm the higher authority here
*robert foster, Mi5

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*I don't believe this :P
*Marcus the mans a pyscopath :O

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*he's also Mi5, don't you think his transfer and my arrival here was a little suspicious?
*we've been following your little spree of personal justice for a while
*that includes your deal with the local russians
*now, you can either stay quiet and we'll make you disappear, we do that. OR you tell us everything you know and you get a fair trial.
*the choice is yours

Jordan-is loving you ! Their is a way to make this right :P says:
*fine i'll talk :P

Adam(ip) Viva La Revolution! says:
*damn straight you will.
*:P

Cover Songs

It's been hella long time since I did a music post, and I understand that at least one of you yearns for one :P So, I'm going to talk about my favourite cover songs. You might wonder why I've chosen cover songs of all things, I was inspired to write about cover songs when I found a cover version of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face", by You Me At Six, which is pretty cool.

In preparation for this list of all list, I scoured my massive music library for about 10 mins, looking for all cover songs. The filtering didn't end there though, I then deleted the ones that aren't cool (in my opinion, obviously). Eventually, I had a playlist of about 16 songs, not the best number for a list. But I had another card to play: Nokia Music assigns albums to the songs I already have, sometimes they're different. One of the songs I found was assigned the album "punk goes pop", so I had a peek and downloaded. Once filtering the songs to my liking, I had the perfect number of 20 ^.^ Then I deleted five of them because they were crap (in my opinion).

Anyway, here's my list, I advise/order you to look them up:

15. Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm
14. Feeling Good - Muse
13. Wannabe - Zebrahead
12. The 12 Days of Christmas - Relient K
11. Under Pressure - My chemical Romance & The Used
10. ...Baby One More Time - Bowling for Soup
9. Toxic - A Static Lullaby
8. Can't Take My Eyes Off You - The Ordinary Boys
7. Love Song - Four Years Strong (Sara Bareilles version, in case anyone knows of any different love songs :P)
6. When I Grow Up - Mayday Parade
5. Baby Got Back - Throw Down
4. Get Back - Sum 41 (Ludacris was in this version too, so technically it's a remix)
3. Bleeding Love - The Wombats
2. Poker Face - You Me At Six
1. Jamie All Over - Mayday Parade

Just to clear up, all of you Mayday Parade fanatic will now be in outrage, screaming at me because Jamie all over isn't a cover. BUT, Mayday Parade used to be two bands, and one of these two bands (called Kid Named Chicago) did this song first, making Jamie All Over a cover (or a half cover, as I like to call it ^.^).

So go, look them up. Do it now! Run!

Rage

Today, I'd like to talk about rage. Not the emotion, a film that I watched last night, I mentioned it on here back in september. I don't generally talk about films on here, and I should because they teach me like they wouldn't teach others; a lot of people just see films as entertainment, as they are, but as my amazing friend Eleanor is able to do with books, I can read beyond the entertainment. I can read the structure and messages within colours and angles of shot, sure, you learn that in media. What you don't do, is step back and look at the narrative, and the style as a whole and say "what did we learn here?". I do.

Rage isn't like other films, it makes you think. It does not have explosions and car chases, it merely has one character in the foreground and one colour in the background. That's all there is visually. The grand effect of this is that we are forced to focus on the characters (there are fourteen of them in total), they all have their own story within the story, their own opinion, their own angle. Because of this, we can learn a lesson from each of them, and then take a larger lesson from that. You can try and concentrate on the background, but the only intention of the background is to further project the character.


The entire film is shot through what looks like a mobile phone camera, you never hear the voice of the boy who holds it, you're just given general hints of his image and actions by the characters. It's set backstage at a fashion show, which is very significant because the film is very much about breaking image. The film shows what lies behind the image, it shows the different angles and positions of life and different mentalities that they provide. A few of those viewpoints are broken throughout the film, a character may come back and explain that events have changed their viewpoint.

Up to this point I imagine that you're thinking "such an indie film can't have much talent to it". Wrong. You'll find names such as Jude Law, Eddie Izzard, Steve Buscemi and Dame Judi Dench. So that's one question answered, the other will most definitely be "What did you learn?". I'm actually not going to tell you, because the lessons I learned from the film were personal to me, and when I watch the film again I will learn more lessons. I know that this film is individual, and will teach individual people differently, that's almost a lesson in itself.

Of course, in order to watch this film again I'll need a copy of it, but I don't just want any copy of it. There are 250 (and only 250) special edition DVD box sets sold for £30 on the official website, I do not care for the special edition of the film, I want the signed shooting script that comes with it. I don't even care about the fact it's signed. The set has lots of other stuff too, looks pretty cool, but I want that, more than the rest.

The "To do" list.

As always, I'm bloody disorganised, so it's about time I made a "To do" list. This list doesn't include the obvious things, like "get a job," or "get a girlfriend" I'm being slightly more realistic than that.

I REALLY need to help Eleanor and Aaron (and Harjit) raise money for their awesome trip to America, and I intend to do so in the best way I can: wreckless gambling, I mean poker. The plan is to hold a "win your money back" tournament, which is self explainatory enough. What? It could work!

Second thing, I need to organize a homework priorities list and allocate days for each. I'm thinking it'll look something like this:

1.Maths - Monday
2.Media - Tuesday
3.Biology - Wednesday
4.English - Thursday

I also need to allocate time for watching DVDs, haven't quite thought that one through yet. Maybe Monday and Thursday at 9pm.

I very much need to go back and complete all the games I've left behind, like Bioshock, Mercenaries 2 and Tomb raider anniversary. God knows when.

So if I get all of this awesome stuff done, I have three days all to myself: good plan? I think so.

So here's the list:

• Pitch the charity poker game to the Harley.
• Create a homework timetable.
• Allocate time to watch my DVDs on rental.
• Complete all the games I've bought and stopped playing.
• Live.

Oh, and if you read this blog and want to get notifications by email when I put up a new post, leave a comment on here, talk to me about it over msn or inbox me on facebook (: I'll set it up exactly seven days from now.

The next step.

I'm going to ignore the holidays, the last weekend was fun, albeit incredibly unlucky: got my phone nicked, had the worst luck in poker ever (which seems to have carried on) and bought a headset, unknowing that a fucking book shop was doing them for fucking half price (yes, I'm angry). But I went to a games expo, which was cool (to the geeky side of me, bloody scary to the rest :P) and I played pool and stuff (like a true slacker). I'd show you pictures I took on my phone, but for obvious reasons I won't be.

So, what's the next step? Truth is I don't know, I can either step back into darkness and pretend I still had everything I had back in August or finally step forward into September. Two people I used to call my best friends have slipped into that old friendship where I'll never, ever see them again, except for that occasional off chance sighting, followed by an awkward conversation (due to my fucked social skills) and probably end up making my friendship worse in the end. All I can hope is that they'll carry on reading this blog and keep up with everything.

So, I take the step, try to impress a completely new group of people, half of which really don't seem to be taking a shine to me. I can't give up, that group's all I really have in terms of friends. I don't know, maybe what's left of my so called charm (I'm talking about friendish charm, not "ulterior motive" charm) is getting through, and they just have amazing poker faces, who knows. Maybe they need to read this. I tend to have visions of people spreading the word about this very blog to other friends of mine behind my back (it won't catch on).

The thing is, I have no idea how many of you read this anymore. I used to speak to the majority of my readers, now I don't I know that ONE of my friends I don't speak to very often anymore reads it and that MAYBE someone else still brings themselves to read the very blog that wrecked their friendship with me, but apart from that, who knows? Yes, James and Eleanor, my two bestest, bestest friends obviously read it. I'm not sure about various other people because they just seem so busy nowadays (with work, school work or their very important social engagements). I never talk to them anymore, it's ridiculous. All I can say to whoever's out there is "stick with it", it's one of the only connections I have to most of you.