Monday Morning Shame

The beginning of each week is starting to feel like Groundhog day.

I wake up in a cold sweat, riddled with guilt over my selfish actions the night before. Evidence lays strewn across the kitchen, left as haunting reminders of my grotesque actions. As my thoughts transpire to that of shame, I know what must be done. Picking up the stone-cold, lifeless husk, all that's left is to devour the remains, and pray that no one remembers my terrible actions the night before.

Wiping the shameful tears from my eyes and ketchup from the corner of my mouth, I swear one last time:

“Seriously – THIS WEEK I'll give up take-aways.”

Seriously. This week. I mean it this time.

Life Progress: Fitness

In a vain effort to get fit (with the hopes of an "overall better health" side-effect) I've started to exercise - a word I've so rarely used in my adult life I genuinely just had to check how it's spelled.

Going through sporadic, albeit fleeting, bouts of fitness isn't a new concept for me, but the genuine lack of motivation or goals always reduces my efforts to a week of gentle jogging, before collapsing in a wheezing heap of asthmatic mess on the floor, resembling something a smoker might hack up on the pavement.

Asthma is also a major hindrance to any exercise regime I attempts - not through any medical reasoning, but because I can deploy the self-pitying excuse as soon as I get wheezy, allowing me to back down from any physical activity while convincing myself I don't look entirely lazy. People don't mock others with undisclosed levels of minor health issues, right?

Never-the-less, it's that time of year when I should start thinking about looking after myself, put down the butter-infused IV drip and start waddling around until my face drips with the unfamiliar salty sweat my body tries so desperately to keep inside me.

The problem still looming was that of continual motivation. It's all very noble to try to better myself and live a healthier life style for the same reasons as everyone else (and overwhelming sense of self-satisfaction and the pungent stench of smugness), but that's never been enough for me. There are plenty of other things - easier alternatives - that I can develop to lord my deity-like talent and worth over people/feel better about myself. Even easier still is to invent something to be better at.

What? You can't Skypar? That doesn't surprise me...

This new bout of fitness, however, has an alternate goal - one I've never trouble myself over in the past: Vanity. Or, less succinctly, to help curb my ridiculous physical appearance while wearing a skirt and delivering a speech to a large room full of people.

As I've mentioned several thousand times before, I'm set to be best man at a wedding in Scotland come September. This inevitably means having to wear a kilt and have my photograph taken as I awkwardly hide my awkward nature behind an awkward facade of confidence and comfort, a concept that is about as natural to me as a dog training a hamster to shit out tiny star-shaped pellets to decorate a child's lunchbox. Only with less appealing results.

So here I am - slowly building up my endurance, and something called "cardio", with a milder variation of an MMA fighters exercise/warm-up regime. Although instead of doing 15 minutes a day, three times I week, I'm working at a gentleman's 5 minutes a day, with 3 hours of weeping and 4 hours fruitlessly licking at an emptied packed of Haribo in a desperate attempt to remember what sweets taste like. (Did I mention I'm also trying to eat healthy? Probably not, as that's going about as well as Tory Lib-Dem coalition. SATIRE GET!) (Incidentally, that joke could be seen as a direct metaphor to how well this fitness milarky is going).

So that's that. I have a goal, I have a plan, and I have minimum required level of enthusiasm to tackle the task.

Now, if you don't mind, I'm off to do another 5 whole minutes of exercise, complete about 3 minutes of it (I've got asthma you see, which stops me from getting as much air into my lungs and stuff, so I can't breathe as long as normal people can, you know, when they exercise and that), then complete another 12.8 Skypar permiations.

It'll be a new world record. But I don't expect you to understand.

An idiots guide to: Arguments

After an emotionally charged exchanged with a loved one - be they friend, relative, or "other" - you can always be sure of two things:

1) The collective plural for octopus is "octopuses", not "octopi"

and

2) Someone will inevitably hurt someone else's feelings.

Under some circumstances, those frayed edges of emotions can be easily preserved, by either party recognising the minor suffering and withdrawing their position from the discussion (making sure their original point is still withstanding, it being the correct one and all).

The more common outcome, however, is to relentlessly and incessantly repeat your statement, enforcing it with emotionally-charged speculation, and other people's conveniently similar opinions, rather than solid facts.

*Side note: Facts can be your friend in an argument, often even rupturing the other persons position with infallible logic.

BUT BE WARNED; in exchanges regarding opinion and emotional (and often general) ignorance, facts may prove irrelevant, and the misplacement of facts could cause your side of the argument to crumble into obscurity when faced with the icy tundra of an emotionally-charged ignorant mind.*

There are several ways to win such arguments. The first and quite possibly the most simple technique is to berate your opponent with an onslaught of wild speculation, fortified by unnamed sources that have been said to agree with your chosen statement. All the while, make sure you maintain the illusion that you are, indeed, taking their side of the discussion on board. As their opinion is incorrect, however, feel free to interject their soliloquies of logic with repeated variations of your original statement.

In certain situations, your opponent may seem to start winning the exchange of intellect. This is when you use your secret weapon - Guilt.

Guilt can be used in a variety of ways. A simple execution of this move is to refer back to a time in which they were incorrect. Specific references aren't necessary, but if you can use examples of similar situations, that will aide your cause substantially.

This version of Guilt, though easy to implement, rarely weakens their stance on their own opinions, which is the real key to success in emotional discourse.

The best execution of the Guilt maneuver is to make your opponent feel sorry for you - or, more effectively, guilty for their actions and attempts to reason with you. The easiest way to achieve this would be to show how much you dislike yourself, making sure they understand that it is their fault for reminding you of such heinous thoughts. This technique also allows you to reference mistakes you've made yourself, taking away ammunition from their arsenal of condescension (the fact they've yet to use them against you should be a shinning example of their lackadaisical approach to the argument in the first place. Or that they may in fact have a conscience - something a vastly opinionated argumentor should never adhere to.)

Continue repeating these steps, ensuring to increase the levels of self-pity and, subsequently, guilt throughout, and you'll soon find your exhausted opponent erupting in unharnessed and explosive frustration (therefore leaving them vulnerable to logistical paradoxes, in which you can claim your opinions are facts, using their current outburst as "proof", and their new emotional state will prevent them from formulating a coherent reply).

Either that or they'll leave the room in fear of what their unbridled emotions may project.

In either situation, you may consider this a valiant win of prodigious proportions.

Follow these simples tips and you too can best those who wish to reason with you coherently!

The Old and New Year

Note: Those those who have inadvertently stumbled across this post, this'll all probably seem pretty inane. Just another pleb online, whining about how tough life can be as they sit in their warm house, typing away on their broadband connected laptop with stuff playing on the PS3 in the background. How can we possibly cope in this cruel world of Starbucks coffee and cheap bacon?

I don't need to justify writing in this blog, but fully understand how melodramatic it may appear. And by "may appear", I mean "is".

There are no prizes for reading any of this - I've not even glanced at it myself. There's something torcherously pleasurable in posting inane warblings without reading them back. Expect plenty of repeated words and unfinished trails of thought.

I could say this year has been tough. I wouldn't be lying, but I would be uttering the same inane words that that majority of people in first world countries love to complain about.

I could complain about work. Firstly, the soul/health destroying work I entered the year with, ultimately leading to a climactic absence of any work at all.

I could complain about all that, but I won't. I chose to work a shit job. I chose to leave it. And I chose to sit on my arse, stagnating while I wished the world around me to get better.

But that's not how things work. Life will always find a way to kick you when you're down. Good things can always crumble to dust. Most people will always be untrustworthy - Not necessarily because they're horrible people, but because we try to entrust them with too much responsibility... Without actually telling them. (Well, in my case at least.)

Things, at times, have seemed pretty bleak... But it's not all be bad. There's no point in focusing on the negative aspects of life.

..But let's do that anyway. This is the internet, after all.

This year has shown me how pointless my existence is within the world of manual labour/traditional work.

It's dealt me painful blows from family; from heart-wrenching guilt trips, to soul destroying realisations of your own unimportance to relatives, digging up painful memories of past pains.

It's shown me how little some people think of you - people you thought you could trust.

And it's dealt me some of the most gut-wrenching heart break I've ever experienced.

I've felt more alone this year than I have ever felt in my life.

But that's not all this year has been about. As hard as it has been at times, I've also been, quite possibly, happier than I've ever been.

I moved home, started setting up my own business, found new hobbies, improved old skills, invested in excellent equipment, made some films, created some music, met many new and interesting people, had one of the most amazing summers of my life, and fallen deeper in love than I think I've ever fallen. For a while, at least, I was phenomenally happy.

Looking back, that's more than I could have hoped for, really.

And I hope that when I cast nostalgic eyes on this year, I'll remember only the happy times.

Sitting in the park in my birthday during a summer festival, hung-over after the impromptu drinks with new friends the night before.

Laughing at terrible films I'd never seen, with people I felt privileged to have met.

Dancing and laughing and various parties until the sun rose.

Wandering around, admiring the beauty of new surroundings.

Filming brilliant projects and festivals, using a heap of new equipment.

Becoming managing editor of a brilliant video games website, building a steady readership and ultimately getting over 35,000 views on a single article.

Getting into photography, and losing myself within a new world.

Sent films to festivals and received greatly uplifting feedback.

Started new and interesting projects with colleagues old and new.

Cooked delicious meals I'd never cooked before.

And, most enjoyable of all, simply spending time with someone I cherished more than anyone I've ever shared my life with.

During this time I felt something I had never felt before - content. For once I didn't want to keep moving. I wasn't thinking about where I'd be next, what my next plan was or how long I'd stay put. For once in my life I'd found a place I was happy - with people around me I wanted to spend more time with. It really was alien to me this feeling, but I was finally happy to to settle down for a while and focus on what I could do right here and now.

Sadly this concept scared and confused me - like a meandering kitten wandering aimlessly across a road. I didn't know at the time whether to stay safe at the side, or do what I always do and wander blindly into traffic.

Once I had finally realised what I wanted, though, it was too late. Things were changing rapidly, and I couldn't keep up. Through the good times spawned bad.

It seemed the better things were and the happier I became, the less I could handle it. My self-destructive nature and recent emotional hardships caused simple changes in my life to backfire; imploding on themselves until I'd unknowingly pushed away everything I held dear to me.

As bad as things seemed, I still had things to latch on to. I started foolishly clinging to false hope, desperately attached to the notion that things could simply go back to the way they were, when things seemed simpler. Happier. I was stagnating in a world of fantasy, leaving my life on pause while I waited for things to fix themselves. But, as stated in the forth paragraph, that's not how things work in this world.

For things to change, we need to make change. I needed to make changes.

Things may have been tough, but things have been tough before. I've been through hardships and heart-breaks. I've gained and lost friends, learnt the hard way who I could and couldn't trust. I've failed at things in the past.

But I've also succeeded. And I've only succeeded when I've refused to give up.

By focusing on all the negativity in my life, I'd forgotten about everything good. Or, more importantly, everyone good in my life.

Times felt tough, but there was always someone over the phone to talk to. A call, a text, an email, a letter... That's all I needed to pull me through. And there were certain people still around me I could trust - people right under my nose that I could confide in, that would listen to all my belly-aching without judgement. People that have always been here when I've truly needed them, but were momentarily lost to my narcissistic pessimism.

Like the feeble protagonist in a spin-off to a Disney film, I realised that all I needed were these close friends all along. Old school friends, university pals, house mates, Tinman, Scarecrow, the entire cast of Care Bears... All with me as soon as I needed them, without me even having to ask. I won't name these friends here - as much as I appreciate their help throughout absolutely everything in life, it just somehow seems tacky to name them. Nor do I want to offend people by not listing them. Plus, there has been a plethora of other people who have shown their friendship in other ways.

Besides, I'm sure these friends know I'm talking about them anyway.

Except you, Reuben.

I've got strong plans and convictions for 2012. Normally I just have a vague plan of at least 1 thing I want to achieve in the year to come - something I often fail to remember, let alone attempt to accomplish.

I've got film projects in the pipeline, involving things I've never done before. I've started developing ideas for films with old colleagues, experimenting with different mediums. I've invested in plenty of new film and lighting equipment, meaning I can finally shoot the things floating around my mind, as well as making better projects with others.

I've started focusing more on music, too, improving my current "skills", developing and improving music I've created new and old. I've started learning how to edit and manipulate recordings, and even started learning new instruments.

Creative writing - a long term passion of mine that's inexplicably lay dormant in recent years - is coming back with great vengeance. My mind is once again a whirl of inspiration, spurring my fingers on to slap the keyboard in all manners of nonsensical ways. Suddenly, colourful explosions at the edges of my mind are seeping into my peripheral vision, forming swirling masses of images and words, begging to be written down, or scrawled into a notepad with crude, child-like pictures etched over the pages.

As well as all of this creativity floating around, I've just been given some fantastic news. My oldest and dearest friend recently asked if I could be the best man at his wedding late next year. I almost choked up with honour that he even thought to choose me. Not only was he the reason I had one of the greatest Christmas's of my life this year, he's also given me something to focus on into 2012 - and the perfect opportunity to finally visit Edinborough. (Hopefully my best man speech won't be as erratically irrelevant as this).

So, once again, thank you... Nameless friend.

(Wanless)

So I relish the harsh times ahead. They'll happen regardless, so I might as well embrace them. Learn from them. And if possible, in some masochistic way, enjoy them.

There's no point wallowing in self pity. Not everything happens for a reason. Things happen, both good and bad. They're coming. You probably don't see them coming, but they're there, lurking around the corner, ready to strike when you're most content.

I need to be at peace in my own mind, it seems, before I can truly be happy. That's not a new years resolution – it's just something I should have done a long time ago. But now, things have changed. I've changed.

2012 - come at me, bro.

Christmas 2011

It's been a rough few months. I've been wallowing around, not sure what the future holds for me - stuck in an unsure place, fixated on past happiness and too scared to move on.

I locked myself away for a month or so. Barely leaving the house, and accomplishing very little in the process. I had some very tough decisions to make about my future; what are my options? What do I want? And can I do it without certain people behind me?

I now know my options. I know what I want. But I don't know if I can go through with it without certain people by my side. I've finally got to a point in my life where I know what I want, and it's well within my grasp to accomplish it... But there are things outside of my control that will affect the outcome, and my decision on what to do next.

This lack of control has thrown me. I moved away to be more in control of my life - to make the decisions I couldn't make before, to finally empower myself to do the things I've always wanted. I never thought I could be brought to my knees so easily. I never thought that a decision that could change the rest of my life could fall so brutally in my hands - one which was so alien to me so many joyous months ago. But here we are.

Being alone at Christmas was never the plan. We were set to feast on steak and enjoy the merriment of fresh friendships, new traditions and welcoming families of friends. But snowballed events can effect every aspect of a snow-less Christmas.

As stubborn as it may have been, I still stuck to my word. I wasn't to head home at Christmas. I said I'd be down south, and here I sat, as alone as an atheist can be this time of year.

At first I was fine with the idea - hell, it was my idea to begin with so I should be, (albeit it more lonely than originally intended) waking up with all the days company in one bed; though the not so surprising solitude was less than comforting today.

Emotions rose and fell throughout the morning, depressing me with the thoughts of traditions this Christmas I would miss, and cheering me up with the thoughts of traditions this Christmas I would miss. A shower and a change of clothes would be absent on this, the most sacred of days - Sunday; the day in which normal people indulge in the slobbish festivities we unemployed call a weekday.

So alone I sat, wallowing in self pity on the settee (it was the weekend, after all). That is, until I remembered the plan.

A month or so ago, my friend Wanless sent me a curious package; a large envelope, containing a single DVD - the most important DVD of my life.To most it would seem pointless, the rest would probably disregard it entirely, but that one DVD contained what could only be described as my fondest memories on this earth.

I first started making films in high school with a few close friends. Being the only person with a camera, and the only one with an interest in editing, I was involved in making plenty of amateur productions. As such, we played around with film making for a few years, unwittingly carving the path towards my future career.

Though the memories themselves may not have been my fondest, the films cast my mind back to the time I fell in love with film making. And I was terrible at it. We all were. But I've scarcely had more fun devising plots, filming friends and editing memories.

And so, a plan was born. On Christmas day I would watch every film I've ever made (or at least those I had a copy of) in order. From Nerd Hunter to Pineapple of the Dragon, Trautman to Technical Difficulties, with a few Spence Mcfarlane Eruption webisodes in between.

Although the morning felt rough, I forced myself to put in the DVD. What the hell was I doing? Sitting here, alone, in a big, cold, empty house, watching shit I'd filmed before I could grow facial hair? I honestly couldn't imagine how much lower I could sink in my pathetic life.

...So I hit "Play".

And within moments, as the first few words were uttered in our first film, I smiled. Then I laughed. Nothing funny had happened, but just he memories of making that film overwhelmed me. And I laughed harder than I've laughed in a long, long time.

The next film came on, and it was even better. And the next. And the next. Films which I would never show anyone - films so bad I could re-make a fraction of the length, with most of the "jokes" cut out. But with that, they'd lose their soul. Our soul. My soul.

I scoured my hard drive for every scrap of film that had left my memory as I had aged. Music montages I'd made at new years eve with my first girlfriend and friends. Music videos I'd cut together from footage of friends playing acoustic guitar when we were 16. "Special effects" editing I'd made my friends doing martial arts to the Benny Hill theme. Old poetry, thoughts, feelings - everything that made me me, immortalized in some way. All forgotten, but all there.

Each video, although technically terrible on their own, showed me my roots. I could see the foundations of the film-making motifs I was carving for myself. Without realising it, everything I had done in the past was directly influencing my future - in film making terms, at least.

This became even more clear once I moved onto watching my university projects. Although my technical abilities had vastly improved by first year, I could still see my history in everything I had made.

Moving onto the university stuff also showed me what influences those around me had. Each project was unique due to the variety of talent around me. Even the projects I resented at the time, and people I may have held in contempt, seems beautifully sublime in context.

I watched these memories all day and night, until I'd reached the end of the line. The elusive ellipsis flirtatiously looming into the future.

And now I sit, still alone, still Christmas - but happier than I've felt in a long while. Not that I haven't been happy - a few months ago I felt happier than I've ever felt before - but this happiness feels... different. Happiness in knowing that this isn't the end. I'm still learning. I'm still growing, both as a film maker and, pretentiously, a person.

When the new year comes I've still got some hard decisions to make. I know my options, and I know what I want... But I can't wait around forever. If looking through my memories has taught me anything it's that waiting around for change has never helped. I need to make change. Nothing is certain, and happiness is wherever I can make it. I know it's never as simple as that, but I can't just give up. I stupidly felt all happiness was lost... but all it took was one DVD from the dearest of friends to remind me who I am.

As my friend Shorty used to introduce me to folk -

"His name is Spence. He makes films."

My name is Spence. And I make films.

My thoughts on: "How To Stop The Anger About Video Games, From Outside And Within"

This brief resurrection of my old blog is merely to easy my pained mind about a recent Kotaku article brought to my attention by a friend on twitter. She expressed her opinions on the matter, which caught my attention, and asked for a link.

What follows is a list of thoughts that crossed my mind as I read said article, entitled:

How To Stop The Anger About Video Games, From Outside And Within

I recommend you read the article first, otherwise this will not make sense. The number before each paragraph relates to the (un-numbered) paragraph from the main article itself.

-------------------------------------------

4 - Toilet humour- why is this all of a sudden succinct to gaming? This was originally coined for TV- have we moved on enough to accept this in niche sectors of the TV market, but not in niche markets of gaming?

(internet went down, but research prior to reading article suggests) "M rated games only made up 16% of all game sales"

If this is so, then niche "potty mouth" games make up an even smaller percentage of said market shares.

If gamers do not wish to be associated with such toilet humour, they aren't. Except in the eyes of articles such as this, forced to lump all gamers into a neat, singular group - ripe for poking fun at and hold their values in front of an imaginary inquiry of peers. TV (now) has no such debacle. If a show is deemed "immature", "Juvenile" or "offensive" - it is lumped with similar programming, not TV as a whole (although this is only a recent departure from the norm - other forms of media famous crucified TV as cultures downfall, and even recent "events" such as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross' splooge of indecency (on the RADIO, of all things) caused a wide-spread hate of all things TV; hate spread like the bubonic plague through more flimsy means of social media like the newspapers and, ironically, the radio. But that's another issue altogether... Relevant, but subsidiary.

4 (still) - Yes, as a gaming society, we have somewhat grown tired of the Duke Nukem Fishguard - which is why his forthcoming return has stricken critics on the head, storming to the forefront of "unexpected" ironic male antagonistic protagonist. His entire existence is seen, now-a-days, as a joke - and THAT'S THE JOKE.

5 - "Plenty of gamers would rather not be part of a community where a person, concerned about rape victims, can say she thought a rape joke in a video game web-comic wasn't funny"

This is a horrible - HORRIBLE - example of what life is like on the internet. But I say "internet", and not "the culture of gaming." Although the two worlds often inter-lap, they are different. I am in no way saying that what happened here is acceptable, nor am I saying it's decent in any way, but this does NOT represent or reflect the gaming culture as a whole.

6 - This is a fair enough BROAD statement to bring up as a question, provided you bring in substantial evidence to support/demolish this theory. Sadly, this article instantly side steps away from that, making it seem like it endorses the INCORRECT theory that "some vague amorphous collective of hyper-sexed and over-violent video games is leading today's youth to commit rape". Truly despicable.

8 - The notion of "Games as Art" is an incredibly complex one. By simply throwing it up as a fleeting possibility of something to talk about is, frankly, insulting to the art. I wrote an entire dissertation on the matter and my conclusion was, essentially, that I had merely grazed the surface of the matter. Jason Rohers magnificent game "The Passage" played a part in my dissertation, and I feel appalled that it is mentioned in such rough terms as this. For me, this is like saying:

"We also are part of a world where some people would like to see paintings as art. Some people are having fun with their drawings, thank you very much, and they don't see why Pablo Picasso's The Matadora, a low-res, easily viewed painting where you basically look at a few shapes and walk away, holds any kind of entertainment value."

Obviously this is a crude way of looking at it, but so is how this writer has chosen to approach this subject - trivialising an entire culture into a throw-away paragraph in a ferocious article.

9 - Although this sentence appears to be "I'm on your side!" It's really saying (keeping with the painting metaphor) : "Yeah, I like paintings, for example. (no example given?) I like the range of emotions and pretty colours. But I also like join-the-dots. I colour them in."

I won't get into the sexism thing here and now (that's another kettle of fish, one which men have less to say than women - and by that I mean a LOT of women have INTERESTING and more SUCCINCT things to say about the matter then I - but will simply point out her glaring inconstancies in that closing sentence. I'm not saying women can't enjoy Bayonetta, I'm just saying you can't say "I HATE women being objectified!! ... Except Bayonetta, she looked awesome!" - without offering up a real argument/justification.

14 - "We all make fun of people who play FarmVille"... Who's generalising now? They mocked the general public for generalising gamers, then feel it's okay to do it themselves.

16 onwards - this "love one-another" spiel feels like something to clog up the end of a null and void article- a "feel good message" to make up for the nagging and misquoting of previous paragraphs.

----

Overall I feel this article, although theoretically setting out to "aid" the gaming community with "sound advice", it instead damages it, by further segregating the communities. All "gamers" know their role in the gaming society, and where the fall in the community. If a gamer is hesitant, or dismissive of a game, they avoid it. If, however, the are fans - they praise it.

This is an incredibly loose approximation of the matter, but non more so than the writer of that article is concluding - albeit without the "holier-than-thou" attitude (or I hope, anyway).

I don't know. It's late (6:20am) so I'm struggling to think/write coherently myself. The only difference is this isn't an article for a prestigious and highly regarded website.

Send all positive and negative feedback to @0Spence0 on twitter. Would really like to know what other people thought of this article (the one I'm talking about, not the one I'm writing).

MIND (slightly) BLOWN!!

Damn you, you pesky Toadstool...