And The Winner Is...

Do we really need awards ceremonies any more? This is a question that struck me today and I can't help but wonder why we place so much faith in them. I've never judged a film by the number of awards it holds, purely because there are movies I've loved without any wins to their name and some I disliked, such as Slumdog Millionaire, that scored big in all the major trophy giving ceremonies. So why should we even care about which film the voting committees thought was best, especially when there are now about three thousand of them every year?

Celebrity culture is ingrained into every aspect of the modern world, much to the chagrin of any Joe Ordinary who cares less about what some drugged up actress did last night or what the intelligence-challenged pop star wore to Harrods. Even sports stars, most of whom would have been recognised in the past for being great at what they do and nothing more, are now snapped by every paparazzi in the vicinity while models, merely people who look concerned in a number of black and white photographs, are treated like people we should worship.

What this means is that being a celebrity is now a self sustaining industry. In fact, people can break into this infinite cycle of fame by doing nothing except talking about celebrities who do nothing (such as the despicable human being known as Perez Hilton) and are followed and talked about as much as all the others. At least acting is a little bit like a skill. This brings me to the Oscars, the Grammy's, the Golden Globes etc. I turned on the TV to see the latter this year, and there was a special two hour program on before the actual presentation about the red carpet and all the people arriving on it. When there is more coverage of the entrance than the actual awards there's something majorly wrong.

Which leads us to ask what the awards actually mean nowadays. As far as I know, the winner of each award is determined by a very select few people all sitting down together and coming to an agreement about which person or which film should take the prize. But isn't it human nature to vary in our tastes and our opinions? So why do we need to be told who is the greatest actor of the current year by the basis of what they filmed in that period of time? After any winners list is revealed, there are always disagreements where some people believe certain individuals were cheated out of a win, and then other times people will feel an actor/actress deserves it this year for always missing out on it previously, and essentially it become a jumble of conflicting thoughts and beliefs and nobody ever agrees. Ever.

The worth of a film or a performance should be judged by all the people who watch it. That's why sites such as RottenTomatoes and Metacritic are so successful, because they take a vast number of opinions and generate a success rate or an average score and a pattern forms telling us whether it is universally liked, disliked or mixed. The few decisions reached by a tiny number of probably like minded people shouldn't really have the power to determine who is a success this year, that should be down to the audience as a whole. If you are a great actor, this will show through your work. If you produce a great film, the people who see it will love it. That's how you should find out if you've won.

In conclusion, it seems that today awards ceremonies have become celebrity zoos where people watch to see the exhibit that makes a fool of them self or the one that's been groomed the best. Thus I propose three options for the future; i) radically change the methods in how winners are chosen ii) get rid of anything that turns the ceremony into a celebrity fuelled experience such as the red carpet and the glitziness or iii) get rid of awards ceremonies completely.

Drugs

I had a revelation about something just now, and this was the first place I thought to post it. Essentially it involves my inbuilt aversion to drugs and my inherent dislike of the people who use them recreationally and repeatedly. I think I finally figured out why this is.

I don't necessarily have a grudge against these people, as I have a tolerance for people of all backgrounds, personalities and positions. Some of these could be considered quite low (Rude and ignorant people, racists) but there is still that initial chance for them to prove to me that they are not as bad as they seem. Druggies seem to annoy me for one reasons. They seek out these emotional highs without putting in the work.

Throughout my whole life I have been told that you must work for what you want. Experiencing those incredible high emotional points, a recent example for me was finally getting that xmas job I wanted, was all the better because I had put in a lot of work to get there. I spent ages on the form, I tried my best to impress at the interview and I persisted through various applications for two months of seemingly limitless job hunting. When the news came in on the phone that all of that was had paid off, I felt incredibly ecstatic and couldn't stop smiling for hours.

If somebody told me that instead of all that, I could be given a little pill that would give me a similar effect that cost me say £50, I'd feel rather cheated and I would also swear blind that this couldn't possibly compare to the joy I felt getting the job. I will never be able to prove this, but from the multiple stories I have heard and read that both positively and negatively looked at the effects of drugs, I'd conclude that maybe I am right after all.

If people are willing to forego the difficult and sometimes arduous tasks that pay off with the incredible rewarding feelings, then I don't think they have earned it, even if they did compensate for it through financial loss. That is why drug users annoy me.

Over cautious under age

There has been a recent incident involving yet another misuse of the 'Think 25' scheme, where a mother who had brought her 17 year old daughter with her to Morrisons to go shopping was not allowed to buy a bottle of wine in case it was bought for the youngster.

Even after this case was brought into the public light, the head office refused to admit they did anything out of the ordinary, claiming that there is a reason they brought the think 25 scheme into effect. While clearly this is ammo for the 'Big Brother is watching you' conspiratists(sp?) I happen to believe it is getting close to the point of ridiculousness.

The kids out there who want to drink alcohol at an illegal age may not be the smartest in the world, but I'm quite certain that most, if not all of them, would not accompany any adult they have convinced to buy them said drinks into the shop where they are purchased, if only because it would be very weird and/or suspicious. In fact, if this were the case, then by making the law as strict as Morrisons are, then these kids will learn that this will not get them any alcohol in future and will work around this, most likely increasing the amount of theft.

There is only so much the government can do to try and prevent illegal drinking, and this way will not be a successful method. It only inconveniences normal law abiding people and that makes us more inclined to despise the people who are trying to protect us. For really effective prevention methods, why not try a new spin on it; try and show them that drinking is not as cool as they believe it is. Take this photographers view on a night out in the Welsh capital: Maciej Dakowicz If this doesn't put people off, or at least get them to see it in a different light, I don't know what will.

Genius? More like imbecile

There's one thing that bothers me most about Apple right now; their 'genius' function in iTunes.

I would perfectly understand the company's motives, if the feature were used solely in conjunction with the online music store. After all, many other companies have released software whose sole purpose is to suggest music that's stylistically similar to that which is playing. It's a cool feature, and Apple could use it to sell more songs, I realise that, because its a business.

However, what doesn't really work, is why they decided to use this feature to suggest songs from your library that go with other songs in your library. When it comes to my music selection, I'm quite confident with my knowledge of all the artists and songs in it. I don't feel I need a feature that will tell me what songs I like when I was the one to put every song in it. Strangely enough, I only put in songs I enjoy.

So who would use this feature? We're talking about the people who do their best to fill up their mp3 player with as many songs as possible without even listening to most of it. They borrow, download and take every record they can to add another few gigabytes to their collection. If we're only talking about people who's music collection is all legal too, then we're cutting that figure even lower. My point is, there aren't that many.

And why did Apple decide that they should help these guys out? I think they should be punished for not listening to the music they have! I do agree that this is such a strong argument for such a minor issue [Some may even say a 'non issue'] but it does annoy me that there are shallow people who would actually use this feature, when anyone relatively sane would know what songs they liked in their own collections!

I don't do political blogs. However, the whole idea behind this blog when I started was to express my feelings on subjects I would otherwise simply ignore. Knowing that my rant wouldn't really rate well with my peers, I implore you to read it and feel just as annoyed as me!

Okay, it's not a long one, so it won't take too much of your time. It's about the current economy crisis. Now, to begin with, I felt this issue was a slow burner. It didn't really hit me, or even affect me, until quite recently. While I was aware of it, I just chose to ignore things because to be quite honest, being a student it had no effect on me; I still spend the same amount and didn't lose any more money than I usually would. Then I did start thinking about it when places like Zavvi went into administration and Woolworths actually closed down [I have an opinion on Woolworths I might rant about sometime]. It was too in my face to ignore.

So I thought about how it begun, and then I remember my stepfather telling me something one day during the holidays which was this; the media played a huge part in turning this bad situation into a much worse one. Think how much of it had a say on the matter when it first began to garner headlines, and think about how outrageous some of it was. Newspapers like the Sun and the Daily Mail used their usual extreme bold font to make everyone who wasn't braindead completely aware that this was the WORST THING TO HAPPEN IN THE UK EVER! Thanks for that. Instead of just reporting the facts and trying for an optimistic approach which would have been extremely sensible, they exaggerated it to increase their revenue. If there was any justice those outlets responsible for such behaviour would have been the first casualties in this gloomy downhill slide.

And so we get to the reason why I decided to post this today of all days. A headline in at least two newspapers today referenced the following story in such a negative way because of further bad news that occurred in the past 24 hours, including the stock market taking another nose dive. What's the big deal? Well, this woman was clearly either a) trying to kick start a positive reaction in such bad times by suggesting things might be about to turn around for the better or b) noticing something she clearly believed was some small step on the path to recovery. Either of these situations is fine by me. IF she's wrong, the embarrassment would be quite unbearable I imagine but it will be on her head, but what do the papers do? Tear her to pieces and do their best to remind us that, and I'm paraphrasing here, everythings definitely not all right, the country is still going to pieces, and she is definitely completely and utterly wrong! I would like to give a huge middle finger to those papers that led with that story and continued to emphasise in a hyperbolic manner how bad things are. Thanks for that, you just won't quit will you UK print media?

Though I will say that at least my favourite newspapers didn't follow this trend and sensibly buried it away in some section away from the front page, so there is some justice!

Monkeyz

Is Damon Albarn a musical genius?

Let's have a think about it for a second. He is credited as having popularised the Britpop genre with his band Blur which, even if you don't like it, defined the music scene of the 90's. Then, having made progress with that, goes on to produce solo albums in a completely unique style. After that he forms the worlds first [and only?] animated band in the form of the Gorillaz, who are two albums [and another at least to come] into their career. And to top this, he has adapted a well known mythical Chinese story into an opera which has won a ton of acclaim.

I think he is.

Customer Satisfied

I've been having problems with my internet, and these problems are not the simplest ones; first up we had to change from the cable connection in our house to a BT landline, and so we needed an engineer to come round to ours and fix it manually. Our first date was missed because my housemate was working full time and didn't reschedule, the second date a week later had the guy not even turning up, the third time another week after that saw him arrive but after waiting the few days for our line to activate saw nothing happen. After getting another engineer around, we finally had a phone line!

Next task was to get our broadband provider (ISP) to use our phone line to set up an internet connection. We had to wait for our modem to arrive. A week later, we had a router, but lo and behold, the internet wouldn't work. They sent us a new router a couple of days later, very quickly, but that didn't solve the problem. The problem [i]was with our line.[/i] This was getting ridiculous.

They had to send somebody to the exchange in my city to fix something there. After a few days of waiting and contacting my ISP, they eventually got there and it seemed to fix the problem. After so many weeks we finally had internet! ... Except it was slow as hell, problematically slow to be precise. We were told to wait a few days to see the connection improve, which it did marginally. The thing was, our ISP was due to unbundle their connection [Boiling it down, we were currently 'borrowing' BT's lines to connect and unbundling was the process of replacing BT's stuff with the ISP's own which would mean a faster connection] towards the end of september but it happened actually towards the end of November. The fact that we hadn't unbundled meant we had a much slower connection than we should.

Eventually the unbundling happened and we had faster internet. However, that was not the end of our problem, as we have not only had to suffer through various lagged connections but also the connection dropping completely, sometimes once every five minutes or so. I've frequently been on to the ISP's customer service line about this and it seems to be easing itself into a usable line now and so I finally think the light at the end of our internet problems tunnel is within sight.

Now why did I bore you with such a long tale of woes about something I'm sure you couldn't care less about? Well, the reason is that I want to stick up for why, even though I couldn't have predicted most of these problems when I signed up with the internet company, I decided to go for them and have no qualms about it. Customer service.

Do you know how much we are at the mercy of big companies? A recent example is Guitar Hero. Apparently the guitars that you play it with are only under guarantee for 90 days, which means that should you experience a break after a mere 100 days of using the controller, you would be expected to fork out another £60+ for another one, and that's just one. What about if you played often with two players? If like me, you look after your stuff and never thrash it around, and you find both quite regularly break quite soon after the warranty the maximum you can expect to pay for your Guitar Hero experience is around £400 a year. Now I disagree with this completely. These things should come with the warranty of about a year because it shouldn't be fair to fork out so much because the company didn't make something that could withstand that much play. £60 could buy you a digital camera and I'd certainly expect that to last me a year. The normal controllers cost around £30 each and I'd really wish mine to last more than a year. So more expensive controllers? They should last a LOT longer than three months.

So why did I choose my ISP over other ones? Because of it's great customer service. Price is obviously a key point amongst students like us, but this shouldn't be the first nor only thing you consider when choosing a company to give your money to. The foremost should be whether they care about their customers. The worst possible thing you could want is to be stuck in a contract with a company who only want your money and don't make the effort to help you at all. This is why I'm so glad we went with who we did, because throughout this whole ordeal they have been nothing but helpful and done their best to sort us out even when the majority of it hasn't been their fault at all.

So please do keep this in mind when choosing your next internet/utility/phone provider, as I wouldn't want anybody in my position with a rubbish company.