New YouTube Channel!

What's up! You know how I have my Vlog channel that I do all of my videos on? Well, James Langley, in his infinite wisdom, decided that it would be grand if four of us vloggers were to create a collaboration channel in which we talk about shit and do stuff.

I believe we will upload on a fortnightly basis. This doesn't mean that I'm stopping the production of Cliché Life Stuff videos, no no. In fact, I might get inspiration to do even more videos, and maybe even think about doing regular releases. Actually, no, everyone does regular releases. I do random releases. This is Cliché Life Stuff, where nothing is average.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about it really. I'm expanding my presence into the online world and becoming more of an internet sensation everyday. Soon people will stop me in the street and say things like, "Are you that idiot who posts things on YouTube and thinks that he's really funny?" and I will retort by saying something like, "You're a moron. Get out of my way. Don't you know who I am? I have some funny to deliver, and you're cramping my style." and then I'll strut away like some of the greats.

Apparently my vlogging style is exactly like Toby Turner's. Okay, yes, I got my inspiration from him, but I don't think I'm exactly like him. Nor do I think I'm actually that funny, and yet every time I make a vlog I get someone like Lauren or Medz or whoever else saying things like, "YOU'RE SO FUCKING FUNNY" except less aggressive. I could have just not said that so aggressively, but that would've been the easy thing to do. But seriously, I'm quite pleased with the overall positive reaction to some of my videos.

I quote: "HAHAHA your video is hilarious!!! They always make me giggle!! I showed my flatmate Adam it too and he says you are his hero! Xxxx"

Look at me, inspiring the youth of today.

Anyway, check out Electric Teapots, the video is pasted at the top of this post, subscribe, then go over to my Cliché Life Stuff channel and subscribe to that, and then favourite this blog. Got it?

Pete out.

My Moan About ACTA

In response to my video, I can't really say anything here.

Although if you do want a proper written explanation, you need only ask and I'll provide if my Vlog wasn't informative enough. Comment in the comments' section, or send me a message on Facebook or text me or whatever. Obviously the Facebook and text options are available only to those who have those details. And no, I'm not giving those details out.

But for the love of god, don't let the internet be killed.

If you do, I'll die. Metaphorically. This blog will die. And then what will you do? Exactly, you'll watch really shitly produced things like... like porn. Nobody wants to watch porn. Although you'd only actually be ever only allowed to watch (buy infact) the first ever porn film (the first one with sound), because all others from that point on are breaching intellectual copyright.

Pete out.

Granite Moths Explained

Okay, so a few of my coursemates (in particular one Chris Devey) have been asking me what the hell Granite Moths is all about. Understandably they have no idea what on Earth goes on in any of the videos I share to Facebook that aren't this blog. So here is my guide to understanding Granite Moths.

First off, we need to know exactly what Granite Moths is. It's a direct parody of the popular American webseries, Marble Hornets. Now we're going to have to go one level deeper and find out what the hell Marble Hornets is about.

Marble Hornets is centralised around the Slender Man conspiracy, if you know of it. If you don't, here's where it spawned from in today's popular culture:

See that tall bloke with no face in the background? That's Slender Man.

Apparently (although is probably only a Chinese whisper) this is the last known picture of these kids before they disappeared. People say the figure in the background snatched them.

In fact, the entire Slender Man mystery spawned from the idea of a tall man with no face snatching children in the middle of the night.

Anyway, that's the Slender Man conspiracy. Now back to Marble Hornets. Marble Hornets is a series following a character called Jay, who starts off by searching through the tapes of his old best friend, Alex Kralie. Jay soon discovers that this "Slender Man" (or "Operator" as they call him in the series) is stalking Alex, and then slowly starts to unravel the mystery.

Jay spots Alex doing strange things like filming himself constantly, in order to try and spot the Slender Man on tape. Jay then gets a bit more involved in everything, and finds himself at old shooting locations. A masked figure then starts to stalk Jay, and soon after Jay starts recording himself doing all of the things that Alex used to do. Even to the point where he starts losing memory and getting headaches, much like Alex did. Jay then decides to track down Alex and find out exactly what has been happening.

So, now we can get back to Granite Moths. As I said, it is a direct parody. The series follows a character called P, who is watching back the footage that his old best friend Alec Krayfish burned to lots of DVDs. P soon learns that Alec was being stalked by Slender Man, who in this series is portrayed by the Pink Panther.

And that's the joke. P is a mockery of J, Alec is a mockery of Alex, Masky is a mockery of the Masked Man, and so on.

Marble Hornets also has a parallel channel called totheark, which posts replies to the Marble Hornets uploads every once in a while. In response, Granite Moths has a parallel channel as well called totheRC. Why totheRC? Because RC is the acronym for RichChief, which is the company that produces Granite Moths. So it's kind of like divine influence or whatever.

So in order to completely understand Granite Moths and totheRC, you must first watch the entire three or four hours that makes up the Marble Hornets series so far.

Good.

Pete out.

Cliché Theories: Attention Span

That up there is a new title. I know, I'm doing one of those classification thingies to make it easier to find posts. I'm getting better at this.

This new idea was sparked when I came up with this theory and decided it needed to be written down. My first idea was to immediately text Lauren (who does psychology) and tell her about it, but it was 3 in the morning and thought it would be quite rude to have her thinking about stuff when trying to sleep. Either way, from now on I'm going to occasionally do a post with one of my theories in it, so that there is a written form of the things I think about. And if I write it, you can't argue about it and say I'm wrong. Because you know what's great about being agnostic? The ability to think properly. See, all of these scientists that surround me do indeed have immense knowledge and understand how things work, if indeed the path that they follow is correct. I on the other hand, might be more correct than they are because I think outside the box.

Life as an agnostic is great. I'm not bound by words spoken by morons in large, white coats. That analogy works for both atheists and religious nut-cases if you think about it.

Anyway, my latest theory is to do with attention spans, and why what we do affects it. The basic principal is that kids have much longer attention spans than adults, and teenagers have the shortest attention spans at all. I haven't actually done any research for this, so knowing my luck every psychologist in the country is going to turn around go, "Yeah... we know."

Either way, this is how I came up with the theory.

I was thinking about the difference between kids' TV and adults' TV. Josh recently showed me three episodes of Dragonball Z. The intention was to just show me one, to show me how awesome it was, but it turned into three because we waiting for ONE THING TO HAPPEN. Seriously, the job for the animators was ridiculously easy. It was three episodes of people standing around saying shit like, "He must be hiding his power level!" and, "He can't win!" and then finally something stupid happened that was supposed to relate to something that happened in the first episode. As an adult, this was the most boring nonsense I've ever had the pleasure of not paying attention to, but as kids we ate that shit up. You remember, right? It was so easy to be engrossed in things that just didn't matter.

Now take a look at everything we watch today. It's all quick-cuts and massive explosions. A conversation can't last more than three minutes before the movie becomes drivel. Now think back to the Teletubbies.

"I'm the bear. With brown fuzzy hair." I don't give a fuck! And yet, as children, we did. We really gave a fuck that that bear had brown fuzzy hair, and that lions were scary on the top, and scary underneath.

So now you see where I'm going with this.

"But kids needed things like the teletubbies that repeat things a thousand times so that they can learn the words."

And here's my next point, Audience. Let me finish for once. Jesus Christ.

I think our attention spans are driven by our need to talk. When we're small and tiny, we weren't very good at conversation. So we listened. We listened so hard. There is no time in our lives where we listen more than when we were like three years old.

And then we grew up a bit, and suddenly listening to people became boring because we were rude teenagers who just wanted to interrupt all the time.

"And if we look at Darwin's theory of evolution-"
"FART!"
"Listen, kid, if you have the audacity to interrupt me in my lesson with loud, annoying noises, do you think you could have the courtesy to actually fart?"
"POO."
"Okay, yeah, don't do that one. Or do, and then you can fuck off out of my classroom."

Oh memories of teaching. What a joy it was.

Anyway, it soon levels off and we gain the ability to listen again, so long as we have visuals.

So that's it really. When we're kids, we listen but rarely talk, when we're teenagers we never listen and talk all the fucking time about nonsense, and then when we reach adulthood a sort of equilibrium is established.

And if you were to plot that against our attention spans, then you will find that it has a positive correlation, exactly like the length of women's skirts and the economy. The higher they are, the better the market is.

Next time on Cliché Theories: Did dinosaurs really invent the iPod?

Okay, that's a lie, I won't be doing that.

Pete out.

Down with PIPA!

Fellow interneters,

It has come to my understanding that a bill is rushing through American Congress right now that threatens our way of life. The American government wants to censor the internet.

We cannot let this happen.

For why?

Because of the freedom of information act. Because of the right to freedom of speech. Because of our need to accumulate knowledge with ease.

The idea is that with this bill the government will be able to shut down sites that distribute illegal content. But how far will they go?

As we, the internet, know every government that has ever existed has tried to keep things from us. Occasionally they do outrageous things outside their jurisdiction like, for example, shutting down Wikileaks. In fact, not so long ago the British government used taxpayers money to buy up every single copy of a book that revealed sensitive information just so that it didn't get into public eyes. Technically there was nothing wrong with the book, and that's why the publishers went for it, but because the government didn't want us to see it they bought up every single copy that existed.

And now they're trying to do it to the internet.

Okay, yes, it's fair enough that they want to try and stop illegal material from being distributed around the world and preventing industries like the film industry losing money. But at the end of the day, who gives a shit?

Better yet, why would they stop there? The bill is ambiguous enough for this censorship to spread through to sites like YouTube and Facebook, which means that those companies would lose millions of pounds because they'd have to censor their users to stop the sites from being closed. At the moment, social networking sites operate under the pretence that the users are responsible for the content that they put up, but with this new bill it would be the site owners' problem, which could mean that the biggest money makers in the world right now (Google, Facebook, YouTube etc) would lose millions, and that would impact on the economy a hell of a lot more than a couple of films not making much money.

The internet is the biggest and fastest growing industry in the entire world. And that is because not even the sky is the limit, because for once it is down to the audience, people like you and me, to generate the content. A lot of it is mindless drivel, yes, but it is there.

I pull you back to a point I made in the essay I did for A-Level Media. The entire mid-east uprising against dictatorship (Libya, Egypt etc) started on Facebook. So what if the governments got the ability to censor that? There will be much more room for corruption, information would be scarce, and the world would turn to shit.

Now, of course there are many problems with a machine like the internet. It may look like it is constantly spinning out of control. But you know what it actually is? It's us. In our raw form. Saying what we want because no one can stop us. The way things should be. In fact, I concur. If I couldn't get my word out in this blog then I'd just be a voice in a head, to be heard by no one. What kind of a world would it be if Inside Voices couldn't be heard? It would be horrific.

And so, today, dozens of websites blacked themselves out to represent a world with censorship. To raise show what will happen if we let this bill pass. Wikipedia, the world's biggest encyclopaedia, pissed off loads of people because they couldn't copy and paste things into their essays. But that's exactly what our lives will be like if we let this bill pass.

"But Wikipedia doesn't violate any - "

Let me stop you there. Wikipedia is a vast resource of lots of things copied and pasted onto one massive site. It is literally like every single GCSE student in the world got together to plagiarise the shit out of everything they could. So yes, Wikipedia would be affected very much so because it technically violates some crap about protecting creative licensing, or whatever. That bit might be wrong, but you catch my drift. Either way, no one cares, not even the creators of the original content (in fact, they probably had a hand in putting it in Wikipedia) because we love the idea of having this sanctum of knowledge at our fingertips.

So if you don't want to know about the world outside your living room, then you can go ahead and let this bill pass, but if you want continued freedom of information, then we, the most powerful voice on the planet, must put a stop to it.

Now turn to your right and give the person next to you a fist bump. If there isn't someone to your right, then hopefully you're to the right of someone else. If you are alone, GET UP AND FIST BUMP SOMEONE.

P.S. On a similar note, if we were censored, then I couldn't say radical things like this: If Twitter tweets, then Facebook faeces.

Pete out.

I'm 19!

Whoo! *party pop*

Oh bollocks. Totally missed a trick in the vlog there.

Never mind.

The only thing I need to really put here is the message Josh sent to me on Facebook since he was too late to get a mention in the vlog.

"I should undoubtedly post something witty on your wall round about now. Something so hysterically funny that it makes a duck look like a squirrel. On the subject of nonsensical analogies, I hope your birthday party was like being kidnapped by strangers who had an affinity for kittens and pancake parties. I don't feel that I need to justify that statement. And as you can see, I put the wit in twit. Happy birthday xxxx I love you xxxx <3"

Well done, Josh. You had the second-most original way of saying happy birthday. But I'm afraid that no one can beat Lannah. She won. She won hands down. Her card was so jam-packed full of fun and mayhem that I didn't know what to do with myself. I was speechless. I mean, seriously, as soon as YouTube stops being a cunt and processes my video you can check it out.

While I'm blogging, I'd also like to formally thank Lauren for the magnificently hilarious present she got me (again, vlog). It means a lot that you want me to have some childhood fun with those wacky crayons and bundles of sweets :)

In fact, it means a lot that fucking loads of people stopped what they were doing on the internet for a moment and decided to congratulate me on becoming a year older. So thank you :)

Seriously, guys, you all mean so much to me and I appreciate all the cards and the well-wishing and what-not. Makes me feel all warm inside :)

So, what did I do today? Well after I got up and opened my cards I went out for lunch with the Demon TV lot, and then Lannah made me open her card and I was gob-smacked, as I have explained. After this I went into town and bought myself a new hoodie, which is just fantastically warm and comfortable and definitely what I needed. And then when I came back I met up with Hannah and Lannah again and had a chat, and then my fellow vloggers asked me to help them film the introduction to our new channel, ElectricTeapots. It's going to be amazing.

So yeah, it's just been a genuinely nice day. Nothing bad happened, I didn't need to do any work, no one asked me to do any stuff. It was just nice. I even had a nice dinner. Pasta with a cheese, tomato and bacon sauce. Yum. I should be on Masterchef with that stuff.

Anyway, yes, thanks again. Who knows what the 19th year of my life could bring? Nothing exciting I hope, because that'd ruin the illusion I was on about yesterday.

Pete out.

Another Year

Tomorrow I turn 19, which is a pretty average number. In fact, it's very average. It is divisible only by itself and by 1. There are no laws surrounding the age of 19, since most of them were unlocked at 18. There is literally nothing special about this number at all. The only thing special about it is that it's the number between 18 and 20.

And that's a good thing.

That means that there won't be any massive celebration, only to culminate in absolutely nothing happening, and ultimately therefore being disappointing. For example, 16 is the first massive milestone when you're growing up into a young adult, and that was quite literally the most depressing birthday I've ever had. It made me despise everyone for a short while, even though that resulted in me making out with a random chick for the first time.

When I turned 18, though, that was easily the best year of my life, and the first proper celebration of having a multitude of things unlocked for me, like alcohol and ... well I'm sure I did other things that involved being 18. Either way though, my idea of the best year of my life would pale in comparison to what other people do, and there's a very good reason for that.

And this is why I love the number 19. There's no competition to see whose "coming of age" party will be the best. There's no disappointment because half of your friends can't go out with you. It's awesome because it doesn't matter.

And to celebrate this doesn't matter-ness, the only thing I'll be doing tomorrow is making a vlog and going out for lunch. I'm taking the day off. Just one day in the year where I'm not expected to do stuff, I can watch a film, perhaps even two (living the dream there), and also be in the company of people I like and pine over the people whom I miss. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Don't think I'm not doing anything to celebrate though. You remember how Josh did that birthday party for me? Yeah, that was cool.

But it doesn't end there. On Friday, Dukey, Joe and Laura drove up to Leicester to see me and then all my Leicester friends gathered in a pub and decided to buy me drinks.

This was both good news and bad news.

See the way I normally do drinks is I have one, finish it in a reasonably long amount of time, wait a while, then get another. No, they weren't letting me. I was half way through my second drink when Tom Elliott came in and asked me "what are you drinking?" and sure enough another minute later a second Desperados was sitting next to my current. And sure enough twice, Hannah bought me another one when I was only half way through that. Oh, and a shot of Tequila, which is always a bad idea. Alannah also decided it would be hilarious to tell the bar manager that it was my birthday, but this next bit is actually quite funny.

There I was, petrified because another shot of the dubiously clear liquid was placed in front of me, everyone egging me on to down it, me refusing profusely because I'd already drank too much to have a shot and struggle to not throw up. Then I downed it, and a strange thought process had occurred.

That's an odd taste. I've never tasted any alcohol like that before. You know, it almost tastes like water. But that's stupid; humans can't taste water. Although isn't that the taste we taste? Nothing, and therefore must be water because I'm not dying.

"That was water."

That was also hilarious. Then a shot of Jaeger was placed in front of me, and everyone expected me to drink it because they were singing happy birthday to me. Lannah dipped her finger in it to taste, and told me it was her pathetic Vimto drink or whatever it was, and I was stupid enough to fall for it. Damn her Irish charm.

The next few moments were odd. I was like a stubborn child refusing to take anything. I even pulled the face. I couldn't really feel anything, and I knew I was at that odd tipping point where being drunk turned into dying. Fortunately I clawed my way back into real life and I was drunk again.

I say fortunately like being drunk is a good thing. Well, it's better than being dead.

People started to leave soon after and at about half midnight we decided to leave as well. For the second time ever (only the first if we count the ones I actually remember) Alannah decided it appropriate to walk me home, despite the fact that I had a Bear Jew, a ... okay, I can't come up with tough guy names for Dukey and Laura, and that's probably because they're too feminine, anyway this clause and the further subsequent clauses are starting to detract from the main topic of the sentence and so it's time to reel it back in, with me. I even offered to walk her home, but she wasn't having any of it. She absolutely insisted that we go straight to Liberty. She then learned that Joe doesn't do hugs.

Oh, and then there was the fiasco of getting everyone into the flat. I had warned everyone at least a thousand time that if we weren't careful the security guards wouldn't let us in. I asked them to look like I wasn't letting them in, and of course that's a ridiculous thing to ask of them because they're literally the most conspicuous people on God's green Earth and I could only sign Laura in, so I had to ask my flatmates to come down so that everyone could get in.

Jesus Christ.

Either way, getting up the next morning wasn't nearly as difficult and we were actually quite good at it. We're usually always late for everything, but this time we did quite well. We touched home at like midday because for some reason Dukey (as always) needed to be home, which is ridiculous because I wanted to do some Granite Moths (it was so the perfect opportunity) so now I have to shout at Dukey for that.

No wait, on Tuesday I have to shout at Dukey for that because tomorrow is my day off.

Good.

Well, thank you to everyone who came out on Friday, and thank you twice to the people who felt it necessary to make me drunk, and thank you a third time to the dudes and dolls who came all the way from the humble town of Kettering to come and see me :)

Aww.

On second thoughts, I should have really posted this tomorrow so I could incorporate the vlog... No wait, I'll just rip off what I did last year tomorrow.

Good.

Also, this is my three-hundredth post! Whoo! *Party pop*

Pete out.

Aaanddd.... Relax

I haven't posted in ages, and for that I do apologise, Audience. But, however, I have been very busy. 

I am indeed back at uni now, which of course means I have little to no free time left ever, but fortunately today I managed to get some time off. 

I arrived back on Sunday night and then went to go and see Lannah because she was so desperate to see me. It felt a little odd though, just because nothing was happening. Back home something is always happening, like an upcoming birthday party or Granite Moths or whatever else, and usually something is always happening at uni too, whether we're going out or doing stuff with Demon TV, whatever. But I think this was the one day in like... well, ages, where literally nothing was happening. Maybe it would have been different if all of my uni friends had gotten together so we could all chat about our holidays and what not and blah blah, but yeah. We had a good chat nonetheless.

I think I can maybe put it down to this new thing of having two completely separate groups of friends, so that Sunday night was the transitional period between being happy to be back at uni and being sad because I'll not see my friends for a long time. Guess that's just something I'll have to get used to doing. I don't think I often appreciate exactly how much you guys mean to me. And that's for either group of friends, so don't feel left out. 

Quit whining, Audience, I've never even met you. I just talk at you and you read/listen. I'm sure you're all lovely people (although statistically that can't be true), but the fact remains that I can't cater to everyone's needs, so shut up. 

I'm joking, Audience, I love you really. 

Anyway, Monday was an interesting day. It started off with Demon TV getting together at stupid o'clock in the morning (roughly translates as 0930) and chatting about what we would be doing that term. I think. Wait, what did we actually talk about? I'm not even entirely sure that anything was decided... In fact, it may have been our least informative management meeting to date. In any case, Stan soon left and then soon later Ben left and James and I had an argument about something probably, and then he left and then Lannah said we should go to the Western to try and get this room booked. So we did. As soon as we exited, though, a wild Hannah appeared and she joined us on our walk, and we all agreed that lunch (despite it still being breakfast time) was a good idea. The Western happened to be closed, and probably because it was still morning, and pubs are cleverer than us morning people apparently. 

I hate mornings. 

So we strolled back to the SU and had breakfast in the Graduate bar. Lannah tried her first ever hash brown, but she kept going on about how awesome Irish food is. No. Something the English got right is breakfast. I doubt that the Irish version of the Full English could possibly be any better. From what I can tell, it doesn't even have hash browns. Heresy. 

Anyway, after seeing that the lovely people at the bank had given me £1900 and then subsequently taken away £1400 for rent, I had £500 to play with, so I bought some food. In true keeping with my resolution, I didn't buy anything that could be thrown in the microwave. Hobs and ovens only (apart from the occasional tin of meat or baked beans, and even then I'll have to cook something to go with them).

Then it was time for the first lecture of the term! Yay! 

It was uninteresting. 

So later I went to the marketing meeting with all the intention to do some editing to my photo montage on the massively powerful i7 8GB dual screen (with one screen being a horrendously expensive photo-quality screen) computers that we have kicking about in the Queens building, but then Rhys turned up and wanted me to edit the sketch that we made at the end of last term. So I edited it. Then the rest of the marketing group came along and I didn't really get a chance to do my work. Go figure. Anyway, when I got home I cooked some rice and had a chilli con carne and got on with my work.

Tuesday was easily the busiest day of the last week. It was also a massive pain. I got up to go to my lab, and then I found out that it was cancelled. But then it also turned out that my lecture that day was cancelled as well, so I thought I'd be able to relax a little with a day off so I could get on with my coursework. So I strolled into town to print off my photos, meeting up with an Asian guy and a different kind of Asian guy on the way. Printing off photos in Jessops is actually amazingly easy. Sure it took three different machines to read my pen drive, but I wasn't angry. I then had an hour to kill, so me and my Asians went into WH Smith to buy some card and glue. This is where it gets interesting. 

Person: "I'm sorry, but your card has been declined. Do you want to try it again?"

Outside Voice: "Really?"

Inside Voice: "Your machine is shit. It clearly broken. I'm not trusting it. Just hand over some coins."

Outside Voice: "I'll just pay by cash if that's okay."

Little did I know that this slight embarrassment was to be the start of something much, much more complicated. 

So I went into TK Maxx *shiver* to buy some cheap *shiver* kitchenware, because I can't afford expensive stuff. I found a really good wok for £6.99 and I was happy. So I got to the till.

Person: "And what payment method will you be using?"

Outside Voice: "Card."

Inside Voice: "Why the hell do you need to know? If I'm paying by cash, I will take money out of my wallet. If I'm paying by card, then I will obviously put my card in the machine. Are you stupid?"

Person: "Okay, can you just pop your card in the machine."

Outside Voice: "Okay."

Inside Voice: "Christ this better work. Shit I hope this works. Work. Work. Work. Work. Hurry up and tell me that my card is fine and that WHS's card readers are shit already!"

Person: "Sorry, but your card has been declined."

Inside Voice: "Shit on a tin house bricking duck fucking horse radish digestive biscuit malevolent best squatting over the bed!"

Outside Voice: "Oh shit the bed. Do you mind if I pay by cash instead?"

Person: "Certainly."

Inside Voice: "Fuck-cunting wank-shitting bollocks-ripping dick-shredding Robinson's fruit pastilles. Fruit pastilles aren't even made by Robinson's! What the hell do I do now? I know. To the bank!"

So I went to the bank. 

Outside Voice: "So I've just checked my account and it says that I have zero funds available, but my bank balance is over a thousand pounds? But that doesn't make sense anyway because I should only have £500 odd."

Banker: "Well it looks like a company called... Liberty Living have tried to charge you twice, but the second payment is still only pending."

Inside Voice: "Those butt-fucking arse-monkeys!"

Outside Voice: "Okay, I guess I'd better go and shout at them then."

So I got on the phone to Shelley Bellett (the accounts manager at Liberty Park) as soon as I left the bank.

Shelley: "Right well... my records show that we've only charged you once,"

Inside Voice: "Oh you would say that wouldn't you?"

Outside Voice: "Well I have a bit of paper here with all of the days' previous transactions, and the rent payment comes up twice."

Shelley: "I'll have to phone Barclays, who are our bank who the money is kept with. It could be a glitch in their system."

Outside Voice: "Well I'm sure it is."

Inside Voice: "I would normally complain for the benefit of the audience in the future... but she's actually being really helpful. I wonder if she's hot... No, she can't be. She sounds friendly enough, but for god's sake she must at least be in her thirties and not particularly attractive to be working with numbers instead of something more... degrading. I mean umm, something with more face time."

Shelley: "I'll phone you back as soon as I've been in contact with the bank."

Outside Voice: "That's very helpful, thank you very much."

So then I went to get my pictures. 

Crazy Guy at the Till: "Hey! Take a look at this! New toy!"

Outside Voice: *polite chuckle* "Whole lotta fun there."

Inside Voice: "That's just a shitty Fujifilm camera that's not even worth the extortionate amount of money that it costs! Why would I care! In fact, why would you let me have a glance at it and then put it back down with something on top of it? Crap, now I want to have a look at it. Hmm... well played, crazy guy. Well played.".

Soon later Shelley called me back to say that the bank had claimed adamantly that they hadn't charged me twice, and I again made my point about the payment being made twice, so I then went into Liberty Park and showed her the evidence myself. She then showed me her evidence. It was at this point that it seemed that it wasn't Liberty Living's fault at all, and in fact I had to go and shout at the bank again. But instead of going back to talk to Shitty McUseless in the bank, I decided to phone. 

This was a mistake. 

Phone: "For transfer enquiries, press 2."

Inside Voice: "Yes, that sounds exactly what I'm looking for."

Phone: "On the 9th of January, two thousand and twelve."

Inside Voice: "Apparently I was wrong."

Phone: "To return to the previous menu..."

Inside Voice: "Yes, okay..."

Phone: "Service menu. For bank account enquiries, press one. For transfer enquiries, press 2."

Outside Voice: "Fuck!"

I then hung up. I then tried again, looking for what I obviously needed, which was somewhere I could complain, or indeed enquire about a transfer.

Phone: "For transfer enquiries, press 2."

Outside Voice: "OH FUCK OFF!"

I then hung up. I then tried again. 

Phone: "For technical support..."

Inside Voice: "Yes, for god's sake that will do. Just give me a fucking person to talk to who'll lead me in the right direction."

Phone: "Hellooo, how can oi help yoouu?"

Inside Voice: "Oh yeah... Yorkshire Bank. Northerners. Great."

Some time later I got somewhere.

Phone: "Whell it soounds laike it's a shadoew transfer, and the money should bounce back into your account tomorrow."

Outside Voice: "Okay, thanks a lot."

Inside Voice: "That sounds an awful lot like code for 'we fucked up but we didn't want to tell you'. Shadow transfer. How stupid do they think I am?".

Oh well. At least it's sorted now and I have money again. Stupid banks. 

So yeah, on Tuesday I didn't get much of a chance to do any work either. Yesterday, though, I worked my flipping arse off to get it done, and exactly 0134 of this morning I threw the burned CD onto my bed with the rest of the photographs and I leant back in my chair and sighed a sigh of relief. 

You know what's a bonus to that? I got today off, so I was able to watch a film! That's a rare treat these days. I watched Rango, which is actually a surprisingly good film. 

This has been a fucking long blog post. 

Pete out. 

Peter's Childhood Adventures Episode 3: Birthday Party

I was hardly going to escape this, was I?

I didn't want this to happen, mainly because I'm about the only person in the world who doesn't crave attention, but yet I was told it had to happen because I hadn't had one before. Damn. 

Either way, I was completely taken aback by the whole thing and I will thank Josh and his family now for hosting and organising the entire thing, so that it could actually happen. Thank you. 

It does genuinely mean a lot to me that because I had such a depraved and horrible childhood, my friends have set out to reclaim my lost time and make sure I have all the fun I can, all the fun that all kids have, before I become too old. I love you guys, and that's never going to change. 

Anyway, I arrived at Josh's house at about half 1, and immediately was asked if I could help dismantle a church while everyone set up, because apparently I wasn't allowed to see anything. So I helped dismantle a church. I say dismantle a church, what I really mean is that I helped Andrew (Josh's dad) take down some decorations that were hung up in the church for his wedding. It makes sense. Jed then arrived and I asked him if he'd like to join me running along the railway lines. He agreed. We then got to the railway lines and instantly noticed a problem: fences. It's like they didn't want me and my expensive camera to be potentially flattened and cut in three by a massive 70-tonne object moving at a hundred miles an hour. So we climbed the bridge and I snapped some pictures of the line. I then took some more. We then found a way onto the railway line, but by this point I had noted that this particular section of track was heavily infested with a frail man's worst nightmare: trains. I took some more pictures. We then headed back to Josh's house. 

The time was now about 3, and in that time almost everyone had arrived and were waiting for me to walk in. Oops. It's not my fault that I saw the moon when it was still daylight and therefore had to take lots of photos with it with my telephoto lens. It's a picture waiting to happen. 

So now that I was here, the party was in full swing. We started with an odd game that involved moving a balloon through your knees and passing it on to the next person. Lauren's team of her and Harpreet beat my team of like 7. Oops.

We then played wink murder, which was fun. When it was Harpreet's go we all decided that no one should be the murderer, and that we'd all die at random points in the game so that she'd be all confused.

We then did pass the parcel:

The prizes included a funny gorilla thing that wolf-whistled, a toy gun that Jed got to play with, and these happy chappies: 

The final prize was a box of Weetos, obviously. 

Some knob-rocket then decided it would be a good idea to put lots of candles on a cake and make me blow them out. 

But there was an extra funny about these candles. They had magnesium or something in them, so that when you think you've blown them out, they reignite. Hah! Well, at least that was hilarious. I showed those candles what-for though, and before too long (and definitely after losing all of my breath) I blew the shit out of them. They were less on fire than a cat in a washing machine after I was done with them. No funny man is going to fuck with me and make me look like a fool in front of all my friends. Next time you decide to pull a hilarious prank, think again, because I've got lungs of... well I suppose the stuff they're already made from is the best to use. Latex would probably be too weak. And steel would definitely be a bad choice. 

After I fucked those candles up, I was tasked with cutting the cake for the first time ever:

That was fun. 

The party had reached its climax, and an assortment of sandwiches, cakes and sausage rolls were wheeled out to keep us nourished. 

Soon though, Lauren and Harpreet had to leave, and I was sad. But in true kids' party fashion, they didn't leave empty handed:

Party bags! How cool is that? Lauren left me with a present, but one of Lauren's rules is that I can't open it until my actual birthday. I hate that rule. But at the same time I kind of like it, because it keeps the tension. 

Anyway, after they left and Westie and Tom Hoier joined, charades happened, and that continued for like... a lot of hours. David Hilton and his friend got the nicknames Brokeback and Mountain because ... well just because. We would constantly think that Westie was talking about either the Human Centipede or A Serbian Film, because that's the kind of stuff he's into, and we would shout Holocaust film names at Joe because he's Jewish. I mean um... that didn't happen. It's cool. He laughs at it. He's as bad as everyone else. If not worse. 

Anyway, it only leaves me to say that I had a wonderful time, and it was certainly interesting to delve into this part of childhood and experience it finally. I thank Josh and his family once again for making it possible. I also thank everyone who attended for being wonderful people, and helping me to achieve my dream of living a normal life.

I love you guys.

Pete out.

2012's Resolutions

So it's officially 2012! Whoo! *party pop*

There's a video up top for you to celebrate with.

So what does 2012 mean? Well, as I said, it is the year to not look back. If some lunatic in the world is correct and we do all die on the 21st of December, then we need to make sure we get it right. But you've heard and read all of this already, so let's just get on with it.

Unfortunately my first batch of resolutions will just be rehashed from last year because I was an idiot and didn't complete them. So let's do it!

1. Find someone
I hate how this has to be the first one. I also dislike the idea of having to "find someone" because I don't have a particular someone in my life. Why can't they just appear, right now? Well, things aren't that easy are they? I also think it's fruitless to "try" to "find someone" because let's face, trying doesn't get you anywhere. It's just doing it that counts. But then again, what are the chances that I will actually find the person who I'm looking for? What a stupid resolution. Wish I'd never convinced myself to write it.

2. Make and retain actual workout sessions
Okay, yeah, it's actually vitally important that I do this now that I'm at uni so that I don't wither and die each term before I come home. Now it has become clear that I need to do this in order to gain and maintain weight.

3. Gain weight
It should go hand in hand with number two if all things go correctly. But I haven't really put on weight in a year, so now I really do have to change that.

4. "Don't make a girl a promise..."
Last year I decided to do this so that I would stay committed to my resolutions, and I failed it, and it crushed me because I failed a resolution by default. I don't like doing that. So it's back.

5. Get a job, no, a real one
It's all well and good being Head of Production for Demon TV, but this summer I aim to make lots of money. And that's what I'll do.

6. Learn how to cook
Haha, yeah... I should have done that already. And to be fair, it's not all that difficult. I just haven't done it yet. My meals don't even have to be magnificent, I just have to wean myself off ready meals and move onto substantial food that is actually a big enough meal.

7. Don't let childhood slip away
I reckon that should have been one of last year's resolutions. I'm turning 19 this year, which is the last of the teens, and I'd say that's the last year in which someone can well and truly still be a kid. The number 20 looks massive, and that's why I don't want to leave things until then. No, this year I will attempt to complete as many of my missed childhood adventures as possible.

8. Get on stage/radio
I don't know why I want to do this, but I do. I don't even know what I want to do on stage. But at some point this year, I need to be on a stage and I need to do something. I can do everything over the internet, sure, but I've never really done anything on stage... so now I'll do that. Also, radio counts.

9. Move into HD
Last year I made strides in the way of advancing the technology of Granite Moths, and now I have a HD Handycam. It's time to up the res and go pro with our webseries.

Optional: Knock my habit of accelerating ferrous projectiles towards black people
Yeah. That's what it says. Okay, yes, Josh did say this one, but it was too stupid to not put in my blog. You know how it is, Audience.

So that's 9 good resolutions to keep myself occupied for the year. Like I said last year:

10. On December 31st, laugh at yourself for ever considering the other 9 resolutions as challenges
Challenge: Accepted.

Now, it's time to get on with the year and stop dithering about. Make sure you give yourself reasonable and appropriate resolutions. Like Josh's resolution could be to continue not destroying the planet, and Joe's resolution could be to sneak as much non-kosher food into his house as possible, or Dukey could actually be on time for fucking once, James Langley could stop telling bad jokes maybe, or indeed the Audience could stop following me with a camera in front of my face.

I'm joking, it's actually me holding the camera. Most of the time.

Anyway, I'm done.

Pete out.