Untamed

Talking with a friend tonight lead to them thinking they knew what I was feeling. They enjoyed using made-up words such as “arguetive” to describe how I was, despite the fact that I knew I wasn’t any of those things at all, at the time. What makes this even funnier is that the friend in question is the ripe age of twenty and should at least have a decent grasp on the English language; the fact that he doesn’t makes taking him seriously a little problematic. What started this? I made one simple comment that said, “I wouldn’t care if you thought ‘less’ of me because of your own opinion about me” and frankly, I wouldn’t.

What I’ve noticed about this “friend” is that he thinks superiority comes with age. Being two years older than me suddenly makes me a “little one”, as if trying to imply that I’m lesser than he is merely because I was born in 1987; a fact of which is out of my control. If anything, he is lesser than me; his immaturity, his inability to spell and hold decent logic – all of which I possess moreso than he. I don’t really have too much of a problem with this guy but admittedly some “qualities” can be rather nerve grating, enough to become slightly irritated over. I’ll be picky and say that his lack of typing skills annoys me, also. I can stand the average “poor” typer, but his is just beyond poor – I mean, some people are at least able to use some question marks and other things at the appropriate times. These don’t even exist to him. At least, not that I’ve seen.

But hey, I’m “arguetive”, so it is of no surprise that I’m making a ranting entry about the things that grate my nerves with this particular person. I suppose that’s just me being the “little one”, though.

I’m spending some time trying to perfect my comedic abilities, seeing that several people now have mentioned how funny I apparently am and how I should be a stand-up comedian. For a first attempt, I’m actually pretty impressed with myself. So don’t be stealing my material, you wankers!

You know what really gets on my nerves? Those snooty bastards on cable Internet connections. Yeah, you know the type; the ones that always come to see you the next day and talking about how their game was lagging when playing an online sever with a few hundred people. “My connection was lagging so much, it was nearly intolerable. How was your night online?” – Well, I wouldn’t fucking know, would I? By the time I loaded Google, four hours had passed and my dial-up connection had dropped. Bastards.

What’s even more amazing is when they start talking about how they’ve exceeded their download limit and they’re shaped down to dial-up speeds. They’re standing there, counting their hundreds of dollars mindlessly in front of you and saying, “I was trying to load something last night, and things were dropped to 29kb per second. It was taking far too long”. Yeah, that’s horrible, spending just a few days of the months being shaped down to dial-up speeds; never mind that I’m a poor, struggling comedian that can’t even afford one fucking hour of cable, your life is completely more worse in comparison to mine.

If only I could have an Internet connection that acted like a penis extension, just like the rest of them.

Another weekend, another rant about a fellow student. This time, it’s about the lack of logic that comes with one of the fellas in my class, when talking to me on MSN Messenger …which reminds me to do something that Steve said. Okay, now that the “something” is taken care of, I must continue with my little rant about a particular student who’s name is Mosh. Now, I know a few things about computer hacking, taking out peoples Internet connections and ruining a few networks and I know that he’s overheard how to do these things.

So one night, after deciding to unblock him after he attempted to get my IP address out of me, I found myself back in the same position as I was many months ago; having to tell him to stop asking me for my IP address. I don’t even know why I unblocked him the first time around, to be honest. The first few messages were okay, as far as I remember, but the conversation quickly turned to him persisting that I give him my IP address, claiming that he doesn’t know why he needs it, but knows it won’t be anything malicious. I could understand him requesting my IP had we been playing a game that depends on my address to join, but this wasn’t the case. He didn’t even need my address and the mere fact that he couldn’t even think of a reason for having it made his questioning even more suspicious.

Having finally getting annoyed with his ability to be unable to take “no” for an answer, I gave him the IP address of a website. It certainly kept him quiet for a little while, but my curiosity was getting the better of me and I just had to know why he wanted my address. After spending some time watching him dodge the question, I diverted him to a friend of mine, Dan, who he also decided to ask the IP of. Dan decided to give Mosh his local network IP and then I witnessed Mosh posting the IP to me, as though he was implying he “got Dans Internet IP”. It wasn’t until I pointed out that it was a network address that Mosh returned to Dan saying, “you idiot, that’s a network address”. Well done, you leet fucking hacker, you.

The next day, whilst standing around a pool table, not even playing, I decided to question Mosh further about his reasons for wanting my address. He said to me that he couldn’t tell me the reason and claimed yet again that he wasn’t going to do anything bad to me. I scoffed at his remark and said, “you may as well have just asked me, ‘Would you mind terribly if I destroyed your Internet connection?’ instead”. He informed me that I don’t understand the reason, by which making me laugh nearly hysterically and saying, “I wonder fucking why”. What’s there to understand if he won’t even give me a reason to attempt to comprehend and understand?

I don’t mind real hackers, in fact, they mildly amuse me. What really gets on my nerves, however, is when idiotic little pricks such as Mosh pretend as though they’re hardcore hackers that want your IP address, for no explained reason. To further aid my claim that he thinks this IP retrieval and hacking is funny, he’s been attempting to send people viruses. Not malicious? Yeah, and the queen secretly enjoys prancing around the palace wearing mens clothing after taking several male hormone tablets.

I know what you’re thinking: “Oh my God, an entire blog entry dedicated to the likes of Adrian Edmondson”. Well, you’re right, because this entire entry will be about Adrian Edmondson; possibly the most funny and comedic genius to come out of England since Prince Charles’ face. (Oh, go along with it! I’m trying to say how much of a genius this man is! (Not to mention good looking.) Wouldn’t it be a turn out if Adrian happened to stumble upon my little blog). Please sign my guestbook in that case, you bastard! And bring Rik Mayall with you!

I first became familiar with the likes of Adrian when I watched several episodes of The Young Ones (that fly is back again and it’s really pissing me off). Though, more recently I have been introduced to episodes of Bottom; a comedy series that is nothing but an Adrian-Edmondson-and-Rik-Mayall-o-rama. (That’s very sexy.) Being interested in the comedic ideas that come from Adrian’s mind, I decided to look around for more things he may have had a part in and to my delight, I found that he wrote two books. One being titled How To Be A Complete Bastard and the other being The Gobbler; the latter being the one I managed to get my hands on.

For those interested in getting your hands on something that Adrian did on his own, I’d suggest reading The Gobbler. Although I haven’t finished the book yet, I do enjoy it enough already to want to recommend it and besides, it’s Adrian fucking Edmondson. So, for those of you too lazy to read the book because of the blurb alone, haven’t read the blurb at all or just want to read a little bit more about what the book sounds like, I’ve decided to write a little bit of the book. It may give you a better idea of his writing style and help you decide if his book is something you’d be interested in reading.

‘Whoever he is, he’s pissed, isn’t he?’ said Nigel, as they sat Julian on the top step where he doubled over, breathing as deeply and steadily as he could. He’d just wait until he’d recovered some composure, he thought to himself, then he’d stand up quickly, taking them by surprise, and he’d land one right on Nigel’s nose.
‘Hello? Can somebody move these?’ came an old woman’s angry voice from the other side of the van. ‘Hello… Help!’
The two men went round the other side of the van to investigate.
‘Bastards,’ muttered Julian to himself, cursing them for moving away when he’d just about worked up the courage to execute his plan – but he was glad of the extra recovery time and was beginning to feel more human with every breath.

*Taken from page 44, Chapter five of The Gobbler by Adrian Edmondson.

An interesting forum discussion was shown to me earlier tonight and my first thought about it was, “Oh, shut up, you pack of hypocrites”. Tonight, I am going to do a little bit of old-folk bashing, so if you’re over the age of thirty, you might want to go back to looking at tea cosie and doilie prices. For those of you willing to battle the word, the topic at hand is new generation “Internet slang”, also known as “leet speak”.

At some time, most of us have probably been exposed to someone abandoning all English and making up their own language to converse in. Usually leet speak is created by replacing letters with numbers that look similar to letters or symbols that make the same shape as a known letter. You most likely have also read people saying, “omg ey will hax j00″ and “u will b pwn3d”. Apparently, the reason teenagers speak like this, according to one person attending that forum is so teens can “slip one past their parents”.

Wrong. I use leet speak at times but it certainly never is to “slip one past” my parents, or anyone else, for that matter. To say why teenagers do it, without even understanding what leet speak serves to do is like slapping one giant generalisation on something. You may as well have said that all sheep in the world are pink. So let’s take some time to understand why some of us use the new way of typing, shall we?

Fun: As much as the English language can be fun in its intended form, you can have just as much fun saying to someone, “omg ey pwn3d j00 so h4rd on dat rownd!1!!1!”

Different: Life already comes with what seems to be 8 sets of 24 inch thick rule books about how to live. You spend twelve or more years in an education system that won’t tolerate anything but proper grammar and then find yourself having to conform to the standard everywhere else you go. Typing like an “elite” can be a good way to break away from the rules and guidelines of reality and the Internet is the perfect place to say what you want without being forced to say it in a certain way. Besides, if you could, I bet you’d say to your boss “j00 r such a n00b” the next time they pissed you off.

Socially Easier: You know, a way to feel socially accepted? It’s easier to type like an idiot with everyone else than it is to pretend you know something about the Spanish Armada or the French Revolution.

What really puts the icing on the cake with this topic at the particular forum mentioned above is that the “older” members seem to think they know what the slang means, even after the very first poster clearly defined what each means and when they might be used. Of course, everyone has their own version of what something means, and of course everyone is never wrong. Yeah, right.

The part that amuses me most is when people ask what these things meant, even after they had been told. I also found it extremely ironic when some members went to the lengths of condemning the slang, then posting their little laughing acronyms at the the end of their post, in response to a previous post they found funny. “I totally don’t like when teens use a language that helps them feel comfortable. ROFL, OMG YOU WERE FUNNY, USER45!” Hypocrites.

These people seem to think that they never had their own little trends when they were younger; they seem to think that because they can spell a few words correctly, they’re better than teens. These people seem to think that just because someone doesn’t want to type with proper spelling and grammar, they want to hide something or they’re immediately “stupid”. Well, look at me, I can slap you with the leet and proper English stick whenever I please and I don’t use any coded language to “hide” something from anyone. That throws your little theories out of the water.

Don’t like it? Don’t read it.