Father's Day

To me Father's day is more of an inconvenience than a day in which to celebrate the love I have for my Dad. It was his birthday only a few weeks ago and Gary is a very difficult man to buy things for. Mainly because he buys anything he wants for himself.


But also he doesn't really have any interests. All he ever does is watch his sky plus and take far too long typing web adresses in his google search bar on his macbook air. He likes football but thinks people who wear football shirts are 'nobheads.' (actual quote) He has things he likes but they verge more on obsessions than actual interests. The average lifespan of a Gary Gillett obsession is about 4 to 6 weeks.


Currently he's into tea, but rather than trying a new type of Twinnings every week, he bought himself a lifetime supply of loose tea leaves and a tea infuser. No point buying more tea leaves. He won't get round to using them.  No point getting a tea pot. He doesn't really like making other people cups of tea.


Saturday afternoon, I had a wander around John Lewis. I Had a quick look at the recommended Father's day gifts. There were things like chocolate lollies with 'Dad' written on them, Homer Simpson socks and various items, such as money boxes and notebooks, with union flags printed on the front of them. I doubt that anyone actually buys recommended father's day gifts. If they do, then they shouldn't. There's about as much love involved in giving a recommended father's day present as there is in writing the script for a Halifax advert. 


I know that whatever I give him, he'll pause his sky plus to open it, say thanks, with a little less conviction than the year before and then go straight back to his episode of Dexter,that he will have recorded over a  year ago but will have only now gotten around to watching it. And that will have been father's day.


Unless I bought him one of those recommended presents. In that case he'd just look at me for a couple of seconds, he'd be thinking... 'why did he even bother?' i'd be thinking... 'should have bought him some new tea leaves.'  He'd miss out the thank you and return to his sky plus without saying a word. I'd go upstairs to my room... and write a blog about it. Probably.

The AGA Saga

As soon as you've actively decided that an AGA is better than a conventional oven then you have successfully made the leap into the upper middle class.


'They're actually more energy efficient than conventional ovens.'  I can see why you may think that a device which, contains 3 ovens and 2 hot plates that are always turned on, is energy efficient. Laws of physics and that may disagree with you though. But hey, them Scientists used to think the world was flat, so there is every likelihood that they're wrong about AGAs.


'But Jack, they heat up the entire house!'  If that's true then great! There is nothing I need more than for my home heating to be unregulated so that my house ends up hotter in summer than it is in winter. But it's not true. Still, who doesn't love an unbearably hot kitchen eh?


'There's an oven which keeps plates warm.' Yeah. There's an expression about straws and clutching which may be apt here but to be fair everyone knows the cornerstone of a memorable dinner party is the warmed plates that the outside caterers serve their food on.


'Oh Fuck off! We pay the damn bills don't we!! Why should it matter if we spend a little more money on gas than the rest of the country?!'


Because you're not using just a little more gas but a lot more gas and you are deluded to suggest that you are a better person for doing so. You're ignorant to your own decadence, I don't care how decadent you are I just want you to accept and acknowledge the fact that you are better off than many others and accept that you are decadent. That aside, you haven't eaten a pain au chocolat until its been heated in an AGA. Quite simply sublime.


Insecurity-ridden usage of sarcasm to one side for a moment, I have no qualms with the upper middle class. If upper middle class was a race, I wouldn't be racist. Some of my closest friends are upper middle class.  They can't help that they've been born into AGA using families. I'll eat their moroccan Humus, lightly seasoned kettle chips and sun dried tomatoes in sicilian olive oil, I'll even laugh at their jokes about the Labour government. But ask me to switch to a bloody AGA!? I'll stick to my Sainsbury's taste the difference range of microwaved meals thank-you very much. Nothing tastes more different than an over microwaved lasagne stuffed full of good old middle-class preservatives.

Profile of a Social Networker

As a lot of our social interactions take place online nowadays, I think it's fair to say our Facebook profile is our avatar in that world. This identity, like any avatar is a creation, it's not real. As much as we'd like to convince ourselves that what we put on our profile is who we really are, the truth is it's not. How can it be a natural reflection of ourselves when we've had time to critically consider everything that we put down?


There is a social agenda behind the majority of things we write on Facebook. Anything you write can be viewed by everyone in your social network, so why wouldn't you consider your audiences thoughts before writing something. In fact you'd have to be an idiot not to. You cognitively filter out all the things you don't think are appropriate for your social network to see, so what's left is what you want them to see, or don't mind them seeing at least. 


So when asking a friend if they are going out to a club tonight over Facebook, its not just out of curiosity or for logistical reasons it's telling everyone that you have an active social life. When writing that your favourite author is Tolstoy you're not just filling in personal information you're telling everyone you are an intellectual. When your status relates to how drunk you were last night and how drunk you still feel this morning, its not a helpful update of where you are in life its a reminder to everyone that you're a boring douche.


In the real world when someone asks you what your favourite film is, you're put on the spot, your answer will generally be a fairly natural one. On Facebook you are given as much time as you want. You can say whatever you like, that you love David Lynch films, that you feel as if David Lynch was put on this earth to make films solely for you. And you probably wouldn't be held accountable for your choice. You might refuse to watch anything but Michael Bay films, but who's to know?


There is a downside to this world where you can be who you want to be. Like with any discourse what you write is open to interpretation. Writing that you like N-Sync as one of your favourite bands may be seen by you to give of a laid-back doesn't take themselves too seriously easy-going sort of impression, but to David Dub-step you're the definition of a generic crowd following zombie retard. They wouldn't wipe the shit off their shoes with you. What if you put your favourite band as Sally's Heroes, that band that you can't believe no one else has heard of, they've had like 174 views on myspace. To your perceptions you are a cool, ahead of the music game indie music guru but to Terry Top40 you're a pretentious fuck. In the real world you say you like N sync or Sally's heroes, people forget fairly quickly and their overall impression of you tends to be made up of the many other aspects of your personality.


On FB people can over interpret your small selection of 'about me' paragraphs. You may have only put your favourite quote as that one from Forrest Gump because its the only quote you can remember. Doesn't matter. I'll read that and think 'ABSOLUTE TOOL.' In capitol letters and everything.


Is there anything appropriate for Facebook? The thing is with a big enough audience you're bound to have a few fans. So write what you like. I probably won't like it though.

The Sound of My Own Voice

The lack of blog entries recently has been due to the revision period i'm currently going through. It's not that i spend all my time working I just find it hard to justify spending an hour or so writing a blog when i could be writing down notes on speech development in infants, or something equally as interesting

I'll quickly talk about the things I have seen though, I saw Thor and i enjoyed it. I saw The green Hornet, and I didn't enjoy it. I think Seth Rogen is just a bit shit.

I'm always trying to make revision more interesting, this week I've started to record myself presenting the lectures. What i've learnt is firstly, i'm not much of an auditory learner, but secondly that i really enjoy listening to myself speak. That may seem narcissistic, i'll admit there definitely is an element of that but I think mainly it's down to curiosity. I'm listening to a sound that comes from me, a voice that everyone around me hears and associates with me everyday. It's so familiar but at the same time, completely alien.

I know it's me but it feels like listening to someone else and I imagine that the feelings that my voice invoke in me are the same feelings that are invoked in others when they hear me speak. And that a fairly eye-opening, or ear-opening concept. 

I have a soft, thoughtful voice, slightly raspy with a tendency to smack my lips whenever I try and annunciate. My 'ermm's' are more like 'ohhhm's' and I can tell when I'm smiling because the gaps between my words become longer. I'm well spoken, a nod to my secondary education, with a faint hint of Mancunian, a relic from my primary education and the fact that i'm from Manchester I suppose. 

Now that I've finally found my voice, back to the library where I'm encouraged not to use it. Revision awaits.

Back 2 School

I went back to secondary school this week, not my old school, not as a student either but as a lab technician/ teaching assistant. The 6.30 am starts were horrific, sleep became the thing I most looked forward to every day. I'd get into school at 8 am and most of my day was filled with the strangely satisfying tasks of setting up experiments and cleaning test tubes. Every so often I'd help out in the classroom.


One of the first problems that I faced in the classroom was what I should let the kids call me. Mr Gillett? Sir? A girl asked me this on my first day and I replied with 'call me Jack, that's fine.' She did and was immediately cautioned by the teacher. 'Don't be so rude! You will call him sir! That's one less vivo point for you!" (Vivo points being the reward system used within the school). 


She looked over at me for support and I was torn between sticking up for her but undermining the teacher's authority and saying nothing but losing the kid's respect in the process. I turned from her gaze and said nothing. I realise that it's not important for your students to think you're cool, their adoration is good for the old ego but it isn't a prerequisite for being a good teacher. I however, am not a teacher, so I gave her an unprecedented 3 vivo points for drawing a picture. We immediately became best friends again, kids are fickle like that. It was a shit picture.


As this is a very new school, the only pupils were year sevens. They're not the most threatening bunch but they were constantly chatting and asking questions. My mum is the deputy head teacher, this means I would get asked at least twenty times a day, 'is your mum Ms Richford?' to which I would always reply, with a slightly embarrassed smile, 'yes.'


Some would say, 'you look just like her' others would say 'you two are nothing alike.' One Design and Technology class thought I looked more like one of their classmates, an awkward looking kid with curly hair. It actually stimulated a little class debate on whether I looked more like him or he looked more like me, I obviously argued the latter and at the time their seemed something quite profound and philosophical about the whole discussion. On later reflection it was probably just the class attempting to waste some time, kids love wasting time. If that was their plan then it proved successful, by the end of the lesson none of the kids had come close to finishing their plywood wind chimes. I would probably try and waste some time too if I had two hours a week dedicated to making a wind chime out of cheap wood.


Being a teaching assistant I don't have any teaching qualifications or training so I was never really sure about how much authority I had. A kid came up to me during a science class shouting 'Sir! Sir! Kade threw a pencil at me!' She had the actual pencil clutched in her hand. My first thought was 'who is Kade?' Not knowing the names of any of the kids in the class my first hurdle was deciding where to aim my discipline. Secondly, I wondered if it was even right to tell someone off based on the word of a kid I'd just met. She did have the offending pencil in her hand but anyone can pick up a pencil and wave it in my face, not just someone who had it thrown at them. Finally I questioned whether I was even allowed to dish out discipline and, if I was, was it appropriate to dish it out onto someone for throwing a pencil, not exactly the worst thing someone can do.


In the end I responded with 'oh...ok.' The kid, looking fairly despondent, walked away. Most likely in awe of my alternative teaching style. I later started to think of the possible consequences of what had happened, how kade would probably grow up to be a criminal because of my inaction. Pencil throwing, I imagine, is a gateway crime, often leading to more serious offences such as armed robbery and GBH.


Ironically, spending time working in a school hasn't taught me very much. I already knew that teachers work incredibly hard and I already knew working with kids can be very rewarding. As a living creature I already knew I had a massive appreciation for sleep and as a human being I already knew I had a bit of an ego. It seems, like the students, I spent most of the week wasting time. I suppose, I learnt that I'm still more of a student than I am a teacher. Then again, I think I already knew that.

Source Code

Sergeant Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a train, he doesn't know where he is, how he got there or why he is there. The pretty girl sitting opposite him starts talking to him but she's calling him a different name. He takes a walk around the train to get his bearings. 8 minutes later the train explodes and Stevens wakes up in a strange pod. He is then briefed about how he must relive the same 8 minutes over and over again, until he can determine who blew up the train, in order to prevent a future disaster. What would you do if you knew you only had a few minutes to live?

This is Source Code, a film which at its most simple is a whodunnit story, at its most complex is a thoughtful and well written sci fi adventure. You may think that watching the same 8 minutes over again becomes tedious but director Duncan Jones (director of Moon) finds a way to make each trip into the past both increasingly intriguing and eventful. Jake Gyllenhaall stars and is wonderful, we enter the film knowing only what he knows, we learn as he learns and we care about him. Its a thoughtful and sensitive performance and is one of the main reasons the film works so well.

Its nice to watch a science fiction film which focuses on ideas rather than special effects. In essence, that's what good sci fi does. It's not about the visuals or the computer generated imagery, its about the concepts. Lazy film makers forget that and try to please the viewer by overloading them with huge visual effects and explosions, leaving less time for a well thought out plot. These films look nice but I often lose interest, I don't feel any sense of jeopardy or tension as I know it's all shot in front of a green screen. Films work well when we suspend our disbelief, in the case of films like Avatar, I can't help but imagine the scenery, the na'vi and the spaceships all being created on a computer and therefore I feel less involved in the film. I get the same feeling watching a thousand na'vi get slaughtered in Avatar as I do deleting a word document on my computer, if anything those word documents probably mean more to me.

On the other hand, the special effects in good SF films like Source Code, Moon and Inception are incidental, they compliment the story rather than distract from it, leaving only the story, the acting and the concepts to hook our attention. 

Back to Source Code, I can't praise it enough. Its smart, thoughtful and pays a lot of attention to detail. My attention is on the story and it rouses genuine feelings of emotion. What would you do if you only had a few minutes to live? Probably spend the first couple of minutes thinking of something cool to answer with before breaking down and crying at how I wasted my last few minutes trying to be cool.

Suckerpunch

The director of '300' and 'watchmen' has created another highly stylised film. This film, unlike his previous two, doesn't use a graphic novel as its source material but rather what would appear to be a fantasy he had during that new-hair-in strange-places phase of his life.


It follows the very sexy 'baby doll' as she is admitted into an insane asylum. Once in there she creates a fantasy where she is no longer trapped in an insane asylum but trapped in a brothel. She then hatches a plan to escape with a group of equally sexy girls with equally odd names by dancing in front of various  clients to distract them in order to steal certain items which will allow them to escape.


Each dance is represented by a battle sequence in a different fantasy. These fantasies include; a Japanese samurai battle, a steampunk world war two zombie battle, a lord of the rings-esque Vietnam battle and a sci fi robot battle. It's as if Snyder is trying to show off his range as a director by squeezing in every single genre he could possibly imagine.


Known for his love for the slo mo effect, zack makes no exception here. So much so that watching it in fast forward probably wouldn't hinder the plot. Like a hipster writing a novel in a little known café chain, the style is there but the substance is not. The girls are sexy but none of their characters seem to go futher than this and although they have all been mentally and physically abused they are still presented as overly sexualised objects for the audience to enjoy. Also, because much of the action occurs in these fantasy realities, there is no real feeling of danger or peril.


Released on April 1st you could be forgiven for thinking this may have been an April fool's joke. So where's the (sucker) punch line? There isn't one. Therefore, if you're in the mood for a film that contains sexy girls, guns, short skirts, mental illness, short skirts, violence towards women and short skirts then this is something you'd probably enjoy. If on the other hand you want a more sensitive approach to the subject matter of abused women you'd probably be better chatting with a serial rapist.