..and this is my first post/comment/journal in 5 years.

Logging in = Worthwhile.

Some bastard down the bottom of my street has brought a mini moto, which is illegal to ride on the road (unless you get it mot'ed , road registered, taxed, insured & you have a full bike licence or CBT - who's gonna go through all that?) as such he chooses to ride it up and down my road starting at about Midnight, untill about 2am. Police can't do shit because they hide the bike whenever a marked vehicle comes anywhere near, but it's fucking annoying when I gotta go to work in the morning :/

I know they are rushing out the TV dramatisation of the Michael Jackson Trial, but the actor they got in to play Jay Leno today was completely laughable, they have had weak & talentless people in before, but this guy, though admitedly sharing some visible similarities with the comedian, sounded nothing like him... & had the acting abilities of a brick...

I'll be so sad when this trial ends..

I'm not posting this for [+]'s nor am I posting this for responses, & replies will not be very welcome, I'm merely posting this as my journal on a subject that has aggrevated & frustrated me over the last few days, I'f your a regular to this site your probably already aware of my opinion, & those of a certain disaggreable disposition - I am already aware of your opinion so please don't write anything here (keep that shit in the origonal posts).

I'm sick of discussing the merits & faults of Catholicism, & the merits & faults of the leader of the Catholic church, at the end of the day, the issues brought up recently have nothing to do with this.

My main problems over the last few days have been;

The disrespect toward & group of people on this site - Both in a religeous sense (toward Catholics) & in a national sense (toward Poles). I am not pigeon holing anybody into abusing both catogories & I am sure some have written about this, without thinking of the potential consequences of what their comments could do. It saddens me to think that people have left ESReality as a result of some of the comments over the last few days, & the satisfaction shown by the instigators & ring leaders over the last few days, to the news of their departures.

Religion is a powerful idea, & it is an important subject to both, the religious among us, from all religions & denominations & obviously to the Atheists among us, many of whom are making their opinions known. I don't have issues with questioning religion, pointing out its flaws & discussing the negative results of the Popes actions in his 27 year papacy, but there is a place for it, & it is not here in a site, where it can & will strongly offend a large number of the readership.

Many of those whom I have accused of ignorance & prejudice, have responded by saying they have a right to free speech, which is ironic, as The Pope has directly been involved in giving a voice to some whose political circumstance had not allowed it previously (please don't respond to this with negatives he has done). It is also ironic, since historically, those politcal movements whom have tried to suppress religion, also tried to suppress free speech as a way of controlling the masses, so some of you are wanting to allow us some freedoms yet not others.

To the subject of respect - Many of my posts have asked people to show respect to the subject, a request which has been questioned. Just to reiterate what I mean by this, I'm not asking for you to show respect for the Pope, or Catholicism, just to show respect to your peers whom may be affected by this. It is already a difficult time for them & a site like this should not make people feel unwelcome on such grounds.

A couple of people have asked the question. 'Why is the Popes passing more important than any other death?' - My answer;
No two people mean the same to any of us, 1000's of people die every day, we would not progress very will if we mourned each and every one of them. Your family & friends would mean more to you should they die, than to me, but I would show courtesy & respect for your situation should something happen.

I don't know if there is a God, or an afterlife, but it is a subject that is always going to have questions, people are always going to believe in God, & people are always going to dispute it, the sooner you accept this, the sooner, we can all acknowledge & accept each others differences & begin living more harmoniously. Our differences, social, historical, racial, political, cultural & religious, are what defines us as a people, it would be a very spartan & boring world should we all think & believe the same things, our diversity & originality are aiding our intellectual evolution & can only be a good thing.

As a member of a minority group, living in the U.K, I have been very fortunate to encounter racism on a personal level rarely, & it would be very easy for me to dismiss it, but after this week here, I am aware of many of the prejudices held by the younger generations around Europe & the world today, & it is disheartening to grasp just how far away from removing it from society completly.

/My 2 Cents..

If your gonna post here, please post sensibly respectfully & constructively, If you wan't to rant or post aggresively, please use the original Pope forum post.

When it comes to video games I'm about as competitive as a glass of milk, but I have recently noticed that, though I lack competiveness in games and sports I have a level of it in less obvious places;

example 1:

Whilst watching "Jamie Oliver's School Dinners" I discover that the U.K has the highest obesity rate amongst children in Europe, and is slowly gaining on the U.S.A rates of over time.

My reaction, to get frustrated at being number 2 behind the United States.

example 2:

I have recently begun 'ebuying' on eBay, and have fallen victim to eBay's marketing ploy of calling any purchase made 'Winning'.

I have interprited this as, If i don't win the auction I lose, & we don't want that now do we. but £50 for a tupperware set? Ahh well, atleast im not the sucker that lost am I!?

example 3:

I have an addiction to boring sports, Not just any boring sport, Specifically a boring sport that the U.K has the ability to dominate (only during a major tournament & must be televised live), I've pretty much given up on the prospect of us winning a football tournament, So lets all cheer on our ladies Curling Team at the next winter olympics, & hopefully Marvin King can give our nation (and my town) a world darts championship too.

Example 3 brings me to the conclusion, that there is a strong link between Patriotism & Competitivity (Am I a Sherlock Holmes or what?!), which would explain why the U.K sucks at most sports (we are about as patriotic as a toasted sandwich maker).

It wasn't always so, You see, allot of the big world sports now, we invented;

Football, Rugby, Cricket!! Its all us baby, your playing our games!

The first 2 we soon began losing in (yes I know we are the reigning world Rugby champions, but that doesn't help my point! we just lost the 6 nations so im half right!), but with Cricket we hit the nail on the head for a good hundred years, - We invented a game, So rediculously complex (when compared to other ball sports), That nobody else played (let alone wanted to play), That we dominated, that is until a few crazy ex-cons from down under, grasped the basics and took our game from us & our title as worlds best along with it.

My initial idea, was to take this formula (create new exclusive game, keep to my nation, consider us worlds best, satisfy competitive side), and try to recreate our glory days of world domination (in a sporting sense).

I then looked across the pond, at to my horror, I realised it had infact been done already, by another nation - The USA!!

Not 1 game, but 4, Basketball, Baseball, AMERICAN Football, and ICE Hockey. To give them credit, they did their homework, 4 sports greatly increases their chances of world domination on atleast 1 sporting front, but they really hit the jackpot on Baseball, I mean an exclusive competition amongst the American teams called "The World Series". I will honestly admit, this idea is greater than any we had, not only do they have their own game, but they are limiting the world tournament to their own teams, Cementing their status as worlds best, by excluding any other possible applicants to the tournament - Pure genious.

My only issue is the greed of the worlds only Super Power, domination on so many fronts - Are they not content having the highest obesity rates amongst children, must they take this too?!?

Ahh well, I still have eBay..

I really like that Volkswagen Golf GTI advert, the one where the guy modernises the 'singing in the rain' - 'singing in the rain' scene, I also like the citroen dancing transformers car advert.

shame about those half hour slots in between the adverts

My 21st birthday for another 1 hour & 2 minutes..

BBL playing WoW....

Challenge - Noob Bashing.

- Join a UT2004 Atari Demo server & without the use of any cheats or performance enhancing drugs, win the game.
Any of you who can beat my personal best of 110 Seconds, will be eligable to collect 1, 2 stick Kit Kat from my pantry, good luck & godspeed.

EA have a marketing strategy for their FIFA series of games, they connect each game to a Football season & a year, when the year is coming to a close they release the following years version, with a few minor updates & the all important '2005' written on the bottom of the case.

You get the game home and load it up on your PC/XBox/PS2/Gamecube/ZX Spectrum - only to find your playing the same game you brought 12 months earlier, only this time the sponsor on the front of their shirt is different. After the realisation that you have been had, you get over it and begin making your way through the leagues again.. (only to be conned once more the following year).

Epic managed to link their last two Unreal Tournament games to the year of their production, but there is no annual update for the later, leaving us in 2005 playing a game with 2004 attached to it.

Now I have no qualms with the game, but the 2004 does nag at me in the back of my mind.

So I have spent the last 3 minutes creating a new case for our aged game, in the hope that with this new injection of life, the WCG & CPL will acknowledge that the Unreal series is not ''past it'' & reintroduce it to their competitions.

Note - The first person to mention that we should all be playing Pro Evo & not FIFA gets minused for being a pedant.

I want to die like Bill S. Preston Esquire & Ted Theodore Logan die, in ''Bill & Teds Most Bogus Journey'' - By being thrown of a cliff by an evil robot version of myself from the future...

I remember when I got my Atari ST 520, to replace my Commodore 64 as my home computer (solely for games), the NES & Commodore where retired upon the arrival of the Atari & I instantly found myself addicted to one title, other genre's have been improved over the years but, the best beat em' up in history remains IK+

Anyway i've found a flash version of the game online (and am addicted again). Though it never seemed to be this tough before. I think the diffuculty has been bumped up (either that or im just a whole lot worse than I was 13 years ago.

IK++

Over the last few months, i've found myself playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time' a game I have completed about 6 times in the 7 years since its release. Yes the graphics are dated & the puzzles have all been solved but I keep coming back to it, in early 2003 I tackled this by subscriping to Microsofts MMORPG 'Asheron's Call 2' which I played for about 2 months on and off before cancelling my subscription, & I now ask myself what draws me back to a graphically dated N64 game that holds nothing new for me now?

Assholes, or the absence of them.

For me video games like reading is.. escapism, its something to do, when I'm sick of coursework or going down the pub, something to take my mind of whatever pointless shit is going on in my life, I boot up the game & whether it be an RTS, FPS or MMORPG, im trying to avoid the stress & repetition of whats going on in the real world, we are now in the 4th week of 2005 & I have read 5 books this year, I read 5 fictional books in the whole of 2004 spending a substantial part of my unallocated free time playing Unreal or CPMA, & though my friends & family appreciate the smaller amount of time I spend sat behind a keyboard or with a controller in my hand, I'm not aware of a conscious decision I have made to change any aspect of my lifestyle....

So why am I reading more books? And Why am I playing a dated console game?

2004 was the year of the Broadband boom, We are no longer part of an exclusive club, the envy of our 56k friends or colleagues, every Tom, Dick & Harry with a PC now has DSL or cable line, and ofcourse Junior has abandoned his Xbox for a PC, & has decided to harrass me wherever I go, Public servers are no longer fun. You either join & the lack of competition bores you into leaving or the constant abuse that your doing something dodgy results in the same. With UT, no non UTComp server is safe from the 12yr old who has downloaded an Aimbot & is hellbent on destroying any hope you have of ammusing yourself, I hoped this problem was exclusive to the FPS communities & installed Warcraft 3: RoC, in the hope of getting my daily gaming fix, only to have my base destroyed by my ally in 2v2 because it was QUOTE 'more fun than playing vs 2 Undead players'.. was this always so? Where is my escapism?

I don't know if online gaming has changed, or simply my perception of it & as a result my actions, but in my current frame of mind i'm more likely to grab a 6th book than return to the public servers of any of the major games..

Oh & if anybody is interested...
The Black Magicians Trilogy (Trudi Canavan); The Magicians Guild, Novice & The High Lord.
The Wee Free Men (Terry Pratchet)
I Am Legend (Richard Matheson)
These books are good enough to keep you away from games whether you've lost interest or not..