Yes, I have heard of David Restal. He's the central-most character in the eponymous power-troika The Youth of Australia, created by Ewen Campion-Clarke, a firm friend of mine with whom I am regrettably constantly falling out of touch for my own reasons.
And might I add, what a bizarre question to be asked.
Not as bizarre as the answer provided by Kyron Mallet, in a long-winded post that would usually bring me a lot of amusement but I mustn't be in quite the mood for it at the moment. The same cliched, tired, filibustering, elitist kind of response that I seem to get about everything. Well, not that it's explicitly related to me. Let's just wait and see if he mentions "Dave Restal's" unusually angry American cohort Johan Redsen.
A recap to the people who I imagine read this blog which I've abandoned - Ron Mallet is a man who has written a large number of rants relating to Doctor Who and astonishingly bad fan fiction. There isn't much more to it than that. He trash talks at this hyperlink: , which shall self-destruct in 168 hours.
At the first paragraph of actual content, he manages to fuck a lot of things up:
And so begins our journey over to the under, underside of the net: ‘the ones with little to say and without the skills to do so properly, but who spend their whole lives blogging relentlessly.’ And it’s almost always to themselves and an audience of three (which includes their own mother).
I'm working on three novels and I have several unfinished scripts. I have a lot to say. I am highly literate and everything I've written has been better received than the crimes against the English language that are the fanfics Mallett has sharted out onto the internet. Spend my whole life blogging relentlessly? This blog is basically boarded up with cobwebs at this stage, just waiting for a misinformed ass to try and start something.
The audience of three is roughly accurate, but I don't show any of it to my mother. Yes, it's intended more directly to Ewen but the same responses apply.
I mean, if you honestly think that 55 blog posts in the space of a whole year means that you need to be a 'relentless blogger', you are screwed in the head. BUT this is a very common argument of anybody insecure when faced by a verbose argument against them online. When somebody gave a very incisive criticism in 4 minutes on YouTube about how disturbing the message of Insane Clown Posse's single "Miracles" was, they responded by deriding the "college professor who took a week of work to write a response"
It does not take college professors a week entirely free of any distractions to come up with a four minute argument, no matter how perfectly eloquently it is worded. Nor does it take that long for a high school dropout, as the user actually was. These are arguments used by people who do not realise that they are lacking in their ability to construct arguments and follow thoughts down their logical paths, a defence mechanism to invalidate their detractors - they can only win this argument because they have to sacrifice to do it.
No, they don't. They sacrifice as much time as you, even less, perhaps. They are simply smarter than you are.
I am and have been lots of things in my own life: a husband, father, son, brother, employer, employee, success, failure, bankrupt, success, academic, published writer… I could go on and on and on and the reason is, is that I have actually had a life. There’s more to me than a blog and a passion for the now sadly desecrated concept of Doctor Who!
Oh, how unpredictable! Just what we were talking about! The "I have a life!!!" argument. The "I am on a different strata of evolution, so I don't have to answer this crap". That only comes up in every internet argument ever...
Yes, you have a life. It's incredible. Everybody who can't answer a straightforward point has more of a life than I do, and knows this without finding out anything about me other than my own opinion.
About a decade ago and in my spare time
EMPHASIS ADDED - oh dear, this is going to be a theme isn't it? "It takes me no time at all to do what I do on the net, unlike you guys, who take a month of leave from your work everytime you write a blog post". Uggggh.
He then goes into quite a bit of detail about making his own reconstructions, like the Loose Canon ones, primarily for his own enjoyment. Sorry? Didn't you just say that spending a large amount of time on something solely for the enjoyment of yourself and a small audience was a sign of a complete loser? Oh, no worry. I'm sure editing surviving audio and surviving photographs and film from Hartnell and Troughton stories is much simpler than typing some text in a window...
Christ I nearly fell asleep at the part where he explains that Peter Q is totally innocent of being Peter Q. Like... huh? What? "This guy watches Countdown, he'd never be a prick!" seemed to be the gist, I guess. I'm sure he needed...
...actually this is getting incredibly confusing. I am not sure what incidents he's referring to now... half of this seems to be in response to blogposts that I have never read and know nothing about.
It really falls from there into a gigantic quagmire of hypocrisy and confusingly longwinded writing before settling on crass and dull insults, whilst being remarkably uninformed. To say that Ewen has 'never attempted' creative writing similar to Mallet's is the oddest thing that I have read and suggests that his 'research' for this response is incredibly cursory at best. Can we then assume he has any real grounds for calling him a 'piece of shit' other than the fact that this has really got under his skin?
What claim does he have for being somehow a better person when he writes nearly five thousands words slurring somebody else's character? How can he claim for it to not be hypocritical when his foremost beef is that Ewen, supposedly, has slurred HIS character based purely on what he 'thought he knew about' him from online experience?
And your response is based on what, exactly? Nothing more, ever more, never more, and is heard no more. It is the tale of an idiot, full of bile and butthurt and signifying nothing. When you take away the hypocritical arguments (how can one fan fic author have a bigger and more receptive audience on ATAOM for gawd's sake) and downright misinformation it cancels itself out! You're left with 5,000 words that amount to "Well fuck you too"
The funny thing is, this time it DID come from somebody with a Doctorate, who, in all seriousness, has taken some time to pen such a wordy response and research the players involved, no matter how ineptly. Does this warrant a response from Insane Clown Posse therefore?
Eh, why not?
Friday, March 9, 2012
Friday, December 16, 2011
Jared Versus the Machine (Or Foecus Ex Machina)
Like a man stranded on a desert island, reduced to eating boilet coconut skins, I feel the need to send a message to say where I am stranded to somebody... anybody....
The house I'm renting is driving me insane somewhat. I'm letting a room in a house with a Chinese family. I don't understand a lot of what they're doing and their English is virtually non-existent so I can't really work it out. I feel uncomfortable around people I don't know so I spend a lot of time in my room because I don't want to run into them in any of the shared areas.
My room is also like that of a serial killer. There is no decoration, there aren't any adornments. Everything in the room is simply a surface for stuff to go on. This is my fault, but I think it ties in with being turfed out of my first sharehouse - I didn't decorate my second room either. I think I don't see the point. I don't think I'm capable of thinking of Sydney as any kind of home.
I spend most of my time on my computer, even though I have nothing to do on it. I'm killing time like the Hitler of the temporal realm. I don't know why this is. I'm living a weird half life, I feel like I've just given up on real life as a whole. I attempted to turn my RSVP page into a massive rant at the cold hearted superficial and above all boring bitches who populate that site but, typically, I got a notification that it exceeded a character limit (how appropriate) and so it languished on my FaceBook as a note too long for anybody to read.
It almost seems like when I go out I get divinely punished for wanting to do something. Last party I went to ended with me locked in a carpark and some friends getting hospitalised. Next one I attempted to go to I was thwarted at every turn until I collapsed virtually unconscious at home.
I feel like I have lost all control over my day to day life, and now I can understand why people believe in God. When it comes down to it our choices only get us so far. For much of our existence we are nothing but corks bobbing on a tide. Of course, you want to believe that tide is meaningful and benevolent. The alternative is to go completely fucking insane, as I am.
In the midst of this rant, I haven't even mentioned the game I was working on. I was grateful to have a project, that invovled working with other people that would keep me occupied in the wake of losing my job. How wonderful then that they kick me off within a couple of weeks of presenting them with all the code I'd written. Just like that. "Oh, wow, great work! This is excellent, we thought this project was dead. Now fuck off!" That was, believe it or not, a big chunk of my life that got torn out. I had something to occupy me, to keep me sane after everything with any meaning got taken away from me, so of course that had to go too.
So, I become addicted to video games. There, at least I have control over what happens. I can kill whatever motherfuckers I want, drive where I want, do what I want. I can play as Commander Shepherd and watch the whole world fucking burn just because I can. I can play as The Dovakhiin and do the same thing in another world. Or I can play Engie and giggle with glee as an army of scouts run straight into my whirling chainguns and missiles...
To this end I must give a big thank you to Childish Things, developers of International Cricket Captain 2005 for possibly saving me from these doldrums by making the most frustratingly bullshit game I have ever played, you cocksuckers.
It's the kind of non-engagement required game perfect for when I come back from work and need background noise to quieten the soft voices imploring me to kill small animals. Because it has no sound I frequently play while listening to a podcast or a full-cast audio drama penned by my vastly talented friend.
The idea is wonderfully simple - you play a County side in the English domestic competition, possibly turning them around from zeroes on the tables into a winning outfit that can slaughter all comers, and if you do so well enough you'll be picked to captain the national side.
I did well enough. I took Yorkshire, who weren't even in the First Division of the competiton, played them to be runner ups in both one day competitions and nearly take the Second Division title, then in my second season took the County Championship without losing a single match!
Oh, how fun (of a sort) it was to meticulously pick and train my electronic bits to scurry out onto the field and kick arse of whatever feeble offerings Surrey and Glamorgan threw my way. We few, we merry few, we band of brothers that did battle, their names, familiar in my mouth as household names - Phillip Jaques, Joseph Sayers, David Wainwright, Adrian MacGrath, Guy and Hoggard, Lumb and Silverwood shall in my orange juice be freshly rembered, unto the ENDING OF THE WORLD.
This portion of the game was nice and pleasant, because it all made sense. I pick the 11 that looked the best, or possibly gambled a bit more, I get results that make sense. I coach and select others and train them to get better results. They follow my batting and bowling plans.
The problem is... I got the England captaincy.
This is where the game proves itself to be, as I alluded, COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
I could pick the All-Time XI of Wisden Almanac, on a fucking concrete pitch in the sunniest day of an Australian Summer and they'll be all out for 65. Logic doesn't factor into it, other than the computer saying "I have a brain the size of a planet, fuck you meatbag".
I honestly feel more than any other time, the computer is a malicious cheating bastard, glad that it holds the die and the rulebook for this game. I just tried to play the same Test match three times, and every fucking time I get rolled. The reason I replayed the first time is I assumed that I misunderstood the conditions, as it looked like a good batting day but apparently the weather suited the bowlers a lot more. Okay fair enough, I won the toss and bowled.
Ha-hey, Windies all out for just a hair over 300. That's good. My first two batsmen make 115 before anybody's out. Awesome! I'm going to roll these... then every other batsmen gets out for minimal scores, I'm all out for 275. The match goes on to the last day, I need 245 to win. Damn, that's a lot but I give it a go. Strauss gets out for 150 eventually, I need a hundred to win with ninth man Hoggard but bowling all-rounder Swann who's looking damn good on 28 and might just win me the game. I specifically tell Hoggard not to score singles so that Swann is kept on strike.
Hoggard hits his first ball for a single. His next ball he is bowled out.
THEY DIDN'T EVEN GIVE ME A CHANCE! Yeah, I would've lost anyway but the game just IGNORED MY INPUT ENTIRELY!!!
Out of protest, I play it again and this time pick a better team because my two spinners approach went badly. Good, good GOOD first innings. I bowl Windies out for 270, however there's just one over left in play. Obviously I need my batsmen to survive, I tell Strauss not to play at anything.
He plays. He's out. 1/0. Of course.
GAAAH
Ah, well, I send in a nightwatchman, he survives the day, how bad can things get.
Next morning, second over, nightwatchman gets out. Fair enough, that's what he's there for. Then.... Pietersen gets out first ball. Fuck. Then FLINTOFF gets out first ball. I told all of them NOT to play.
What the FUCK computer??? You can just give yourself a hat-trick whenever I'm in the game? Where's my 'bowl a hat-trick' button? I don't fucking see it! I mean I'd like to get your three best batsmen out for fuck all but I actually need to use strategy and patience to fucking do it!
It's like.. the fucking script was written for me to lose the game and the computer was just bending the game's reality to make it happen. Jesus Christ! It's meant to work off statistics in-game. So how come the game says my bowlers and batsmen are better but they can never ever EVER play better than YOURS?
This isn't just griping about one match. The game went even further into 'fuck you' territory before this. England's one-day team was ranked 5th. India's 2nd. I was playing them in a triangular series with the Windies, I'd lost all my games against India but then won the last one before the final. Haha, I think, now I get to go into the final with good form and might just steal away their trophy...
No... the games telling me that I'm not playing the final. Hmmm. I got a test match. Okay, maybe the final's scheduled later...
I look up the calendar. The final has already been played. But not by me. And what do you know, India won by 22 runs.
...WHAT THE FUCK COMPUTER? When I start to win, you don't even let me play the game???
Then before THAT, when I was in The Cricket World Cup. I was third in the Super Eights, so I was going through to the finals. Awesome. I see my next match is against New Zealand, and because they're a team I've beaten three times by then I think "That's cool, I can play a second string team so I have players match-ready in case of injury".
I lose the match. Ah, well, that was always a chance and... yo, what the fuck. I pretty much get a pop-up message saying "Way to lose the World Cup, dumbass."
See, that game was the first in the knock-out matches. It was the quarter-final. Only absolutely nothing in the game told me that.
... please, computer, in the name of all fornication help me understand your motivation.
If I have a child, I should lock him in a room with nothing but this game and a hammer for days. When he gives in and smashes the game with a hammer, I set him free and tell him "You have passed the test. For sometimes, the obvious test IS the right one."
Then get arrested for child abuse.
Anyway, guess what's getting uninstalled right after I press the 'post' button?
EDIT: Sadly, the uninstallation wizard doesn't have a "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" option
The house I'm renting is driving me insane somewhat. I'm letting a room in a house with a Chinese family. I don't understand a lot of what they're doing and their English is virtually non-existent so I can't really work it out. I feel uncomfortable around people I don't know so I spend a lot of time in my room because I don't want to run into them in any of the shared areas.
My room is also like that of a serial killer. There is no decoration, there aren't any adornments. Everything in the room is simply a surface for stuff to go on. This is my fault, but I think it ties in with being turfed out of my first sharehouse - I didn't decorate my second room either. I think I don't see the point. I don't think I'm capable of thinking of Sydney as any kind of home.
I spend most of my time on my computer, even though I have nothing to do on it. I'm killing time like the Hitler of the temporal realm. I don't know why this is. I'm living a weird half life, I feel like I've just given up on real life as a whole. I attempted to turn my RSVP page into a massive rant at the cold hearted superficial and above all boring bitches who populate that site but, typically, I got a notification that it exceeded a character limit (how appropriate) and so it languished on my FaceBook as a note too long for anybody to read.
It almost seems like when I go out I get divinely punished for wanting to do something. Last party I went to ended with me locked in a carpark and some friends getting hospitalised. Next one I attempted to go to I was thwarted at every turn until I collapsed virtually unconscious at home.
I feel like I have lost all control over my day to day life, and now I can understand why people believe in God. When it comes down to it our choices only get us so far. For much of our existence we are nothing but corks bobbing on a tide. Of course, you want to believe that tide is meaningful and benevolent. The alternative is to go completely fucking insane, as I am.
In the midst of this rant, I haven't even mentioned the game I was working on. I was grateful to have a project, that invovled working with other people that would keep me occupied in the wake of losing my job. How wonderful then that they kick me off within a couple of weeks of presenting them with all the code I'd written. Just like that. "Oh, wow, great work! This is excellent, we thought this project was dead. Now fuck off!" That was, believe it or not, a big chunk of my life that got torn out. I had something to occupy me, to keep me sane after everything with any meaning got taken away from me, so of course that had to go too.
So, I become addicted to video games. There, at least I have control over what happens. I can kill whatever motherfuckers I want, drive where I want, do what I want. I can play as Commander Shepherd and watch the whole world fucking burn just because I can. I can play as The Dovakhiin and do the same thing in another world. Or I can play Engie and giggle with glee as an army of scouts run straight into my whirling chainguns and missiles...
To this end I must give a big thank you to Childish Things, developers of International Cricket Captain 2005 for possibly saving me from these doldrums by making the most frustratingly bullshit game I have ever played, you cocksuckers.
It's the kind of non-engagement required game perfect for when I come back from work and need background noise to quieten the soft voices imploring me to kill small animals. Because it has no sound I frequently play while listening to a podcast or a full-cast audio drama penned by my vastly talented friend.
The idea is wonderfully simple - you play a County side in the English domestic competition, possibly turning them around from zeroes on the tables into a winning outfit that can slaughter all comers, and if you do so well enough you'll be picked to captain the national side.
I did well enough. I took Yorkshire, who weren't even in the First Division of the competiton, played them to be runner ups in both one day competitions and nearly take the Second Division title, then in my second season took the County Championship without losing a single match!
Oh, how fun (of a sort) it was to meticulously pick and train my electronic bits to scurry out onto the field and kick arse of whatever feeble offerings Surrey and Glamorgan threw my way. We few, we merry few, we band of brothers that did battle, their names, familiar in my mouth as household names - Phillip Jaques, Joseph Sayers, David Wainwright, Adrian MacGrath, Guy and Hoggard, Lumb and Silverwood shall in my orange juice be freshly rembered, unto the ENDING OF THE WORLD.
This portion of the game was nice and pleasant, because it all made sense. I pick the 11 that looked the best, or possibly gambled a bit more, I get results that make sense. I coach and select others and train them to get better results. They follow my batting and bowling plans.
The problem is... I got the England captaincy.
This is where the game proves itself to be, as I alluded, COMPLETE BULLSHIT.
I could pick the All-Time XI of Wisden Almanac, on a fucking concrete pitch in the sunniest day of an Australian Summer and they'll be all out for 65. Logic doesn't factor into it, other than the computer saying "I have a brain the size of a planet, fuck you meatbag".
I honestly feel more than any other time, the computer is a malicious cheating bastard, glad that it holds the die and the rulebook for this game. I just tried to play the same Test match three times, and every fucking time I get rolled. The reason I replayed the first time is I assumed that I misunderstood the conditions, as it looked like a good batting day but apparently the weather suited the bowlers a lot more. Okay fair enough, I won the toss and bowled.
Ha-hey, Windies all out for just a hair over 300. That's good. My first two batsmen make 115 before anybody's out. Awesome! I'm going to roll these... then every other batsmen gets out for minimal scores, I'm all out for 275. The match goes on to the last day, I need 245 to win. Damn, that's a lot but I give it a go. Strauss gets out for 150 eventually, I need a hundred to win with ninth man Hoggard but bowling all-rounder Swann who's looking damn good on 28 and might just win me the game. I specifically tell Hoggard not to score singles so that Swann is kept on strike.
Hoggard hits his first ball for a single. His next ball he is bowled out.
THEY DIDN'T EVEN GIVE ME A CHANCE! Yeah, I would've lost anyway but the game just IGNORED MY INPUT ENTIRELY!!!
Out of protest, I play it again and this time pick a better team because my two spinners approach went badly. Good, good GOOD first innings. I bowl Windies out for 270, however there's just one over left in play. Obviously I need my batsmen to survive, I tell Strauss not to play at anything.
He plays. He's out. 1/0. Of course.
GAAAH
Ah, well, I send in a nightwatchman, he survives the day, how bad can things get.
Next morning, second over, nightwatchman gets out. Fair enough, that's what he's there for. Then.... Pietersen gets out first ball. Fuck. Then FLINTOFF gets out first ball. I told all of them NOT to play.
What the FUCK computer??? You can just give yourself a hat-trick whenever I'm in the game? Where's my 'bowl a hat-trick' button? I don't fucking see it! I mean I'd like to get your three best batsmen out for fuck all but I actually need to use strategy and patience to fucking do it!
It's like.. the fucking script was written for me to lose the game and the computer was just bending the game's reality to make it happen. Jesus Christ! It's meant to work off statistics in-game. So how come the game says my bowlers and batsmen are better but they can never ever EVER play better than YOURS?
This isn't just griping about one match. The game went even further into 'fuck you' territory before this. England's one-day team was ranked 5th. India's 2nd. I was playing them in a triangular series with the Windies, I'd lost all my games against India but then won the last one before the final. Haha, I think, now I get to go into the final with good form and might just steal away their trophy...
No... the games telling me that I'm not playing the final. Hmmm. I got a test match. Okay, maybe the final's scheduled later...
I look up the calendar. The final has already been played. But not by me. And what do you know, India won by 22 runs.
...WHAT THE FUCK COMPUTER? When I start to win, you don't even let me play the game???
Then before THAT, when I was in The Cricket World Cup. I was third in the Super Eights, so I was going through to the finals. Awesome. I see my next match is against New Zealand, and because they're a team I've beaten three times by then I think "That's cool, I can play a second string team so I have players match-ready in case of injury".
I lose the match. Ah, well, that was always a chance and... yo, what the fuck. I pretty much get a pop-up message saying "Way to lose the World Cup, dumbass."
See, that game was the first in the knock-out matches. It was the quarter-final. Only absolutely nothing in the game told me that.
... please, computer, in the name of all fornication help me understand your motivation.
If I have a child, I should lock him in a room with nothing but this game and a hammer for days. When he gives in and smashes the game with a hammer, I set him free and tell him "You have passed the test. For sometimes, the obvious test IS the right one."
Then get arrested for child abuse.
Anyway, guess what's getting uninstalled right after I press the 'post' button?
EDIT: Sadly, the uninstallation wizard doesn't have a "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" option
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