Exams eh.

Aren’t exams stupid eh? It’s like someone who knows loads but gets stressed does poorly and dumbo does well because he’s chilled. I mean how fair is that? They’re like really, really stupid and should be banned. Of course in real life it’s not what you know, it’s what you can deliver under stress that counts but anyway ditch exams. Much better is course work. When you’re judged on course work it’s a completely different story. No stress see. No, you take it home and get parental help. In fact as a parent I did some of my best work getting my son a GCSE. And he wasn’t stressed. In fact he didn’t do much at all. So course work favours students with eager, intelligent parents, which isn’t a lot of use to students when they go away to university. I know, continual assessment. That should do it. Students are assessed week by week on every small element of their subject by teachers who see tick boxes in their sleep. This week we’re completely focused on subject x, level y, section z. By Friday everyone can do it, wahhoo, end of. Of course by the end of next week spent focusing on q, p and r, only a small percentage has any recollection of x, y, z, and by the end of the year they’re only really good at what they did the last week of term. So that’s not too good either. No, what we need is a way of testing students on their long term knowledge and understanding of their subject that they can deliver under the stress of normal life. How about an exam? Yeh exams, they’re like a really good idea.

All your iTunes in one basket.

Ipods and iStore are great. They appear to sell you stuff, that you then appear to own. Imagine then a burglar creeping into your home one night and stealing your CD collection. Not nice. You appeared to own it and now it’s gone. Funny thing, appearances. At least the law, if it was enforced, would be on your side. But if your computer crashes, which is not unheard of, your CD collection is gone just the same. Or put another way, you wouldn’t buy CDs that would only play on one player thinking, quite rightly, if that player broke I’d be sunk. It’s called ‘bottleneck’ marketing or elasticated selling. To combat the publics refusal to recognise that to create and record music actually costs money iTunes have created intellectual property that will always in the end return to its owner like a well trained dog. You’re left with the temporary privilege of owning it for a short while like enticing said dog with a 70p morsel each time. Now I’m not against feeding dogs and cats but I do like permanent ownership of the things I’ve bought. There are three morals here. 1/ back up your iTunes collection onto DVD or such like, or 2/ buy CDs and 3/ lock yourself in at night with a big dog.

X Factor.

As the X Factor logo yet again falls to Earth like some hapless alien spaceship I experience emotions I haven’t felt since the last time I needed a pee and couldn’t get upstairs in time. In Dubai the dirty snorts of Alice the camel, not Alistair Campbell as I first heard, stole the show as Danny and Sis axed the girls. Stacy’s impersonation of Catherine Tate goes down a storm, ‘let’s hear it for Essex Stace!’, as does Welsh girl and the one who’s hair has unaccountably slid to one side. The judges begin their “you will, you won’t” summing up which is like enticing baby mice to play under a guillotine. Joy and misery unbounded, truly reminiscent of getting to the loo in time. Or not. Walsh, Cole and Cowell follow flailing like Attila the Hum in MFI’s kitchen department laying waste to dishwashers. It will ‘kill’ Eathan, Dwain will return to north London to become a victim of knife crime, Candy Rain, if they hadn’t got through, would have continued to take off, their cloths, aesthetically. Jamie will come back minus afro; no one wins X factor looking like a recently shampooed dog, and John and Eric will prove that factor X is based on pure loathing and be voted off by a hail of bullets from the cast of The Wire. Stiffmouse will not be competing due to being genetically incapable of cueing, emoting and having the unbridaled confidence to believe one could be bigger than, well everybody in the entire history of recorded music. Remember every day can change your life; you don’t need to be standing in front of Simon Cowell.

You know this already.

OK. Back. See FlashForward last night? Everybody in the world blacks out and falls over for two minutes and dreams of next April 10th. The world of inanimate objects takes over and many things crash into other things being devoid of pilots, drivers and general bounciness. Which raises a serious design issue; should we be building in far more bounciness into our products. I mean trees sway, frogs jump, salmon leap and even elephants dump about and rebound off each other. But you can’t play squash with an iPod or let a 747 loose on its own without it trashing itself against a building. Unfortunately nothing was made of this important aspect in a supposedly cutting edge drama even though it will require three series and eighteen episodes to cover the same story line as a single 45 minute Doctor Who. Because Americans can spin things out like Rapunzle. Why? Because it takes on average a $2million advertising budget to insert a two word phrase into the American consciousness enough for them to physically respond. So it’s important that the two words thus implanted should cover as much product as possible. That plus in the time it takes to switch a machine on and off again it’ll have produced 10,000 of whatever you asked it to make. So anyway FlashForward is equivalent to reading the last two pages of a book first. You know the denouement, you just don’t know how the book got to it. Except a caught on CCTV man in black, unrecognisable as they always are…I hope I’m not spoiling it for you… is seen walking about during this two minutes silence. Which as everyone knows is just not on. I’m guessing the story will unravel like Lost and the audience, if not lost along the way themselves, will find in the final episode what they knew at the beginning and thus be non the wiser but considerably older. So there we have it, the subtext of TV. It will make you older but no wiser. But I guess you knew that already.

Where’s Bush?

Do you want to know, really, do you really want to know, I mean really? Well when I interviewed him recently for CWBNTV he was depressed. What does the most powerful man in the world do once his kryptonite is exhausted? “Doggy,” he would say, (I ignored the pejorative term) “there was so much more I could have done you know given the time.” I pressed him. (he liked that) “Well nuke Iran for a start. And North Vietnam. OK we learnt a lot about suppression from that guy but he never buys from us, you know. We got the best nukes and we need to show him that. Health care. No strategy. Should be ‘spend your money on useless snake oil and then you die.’ I mean what use are cures? You just last longer as a burden on everybody. No, the only good drugs are illegal. 1/ they make you dumb, 2/ better profits than our inflated pharmaceuticals, and 3/ you die. Bingo, perfect. What else? Democracy. Would have loved to have moved more towards the Chinese model.” And what about the financial crisis? “Wow yeh, never saw that coming. But Barack, or is it Borat, well anyway, he’s your man. Chose him well.’ You mean the American people? “Hell no.” You mean the Republicans!? “No, us…” “Time for your tea Sir. I think you should stop talking to this dog.”

How the world turns- bad.

Being a developed county we, here in the UK, want to give aid to those less fortunate countries containing black people. We are noble and they are poor, but you don’t need to be Einstein to realise you can’t turn a profit from poor people. One, they have no money and two, they would only spend it on enjoying themselves eating and such like. And lets face it we need the money too. So aid must never ever go anywhere near poor people. Luckily though politicians are not poor, they just have to appear compassionate. So Tony Blair whilst in No 10 fulfils his agreed aid commitment by giving x million to Ugandistan. Well the politicians in Ugandistan are equally aware that squandering money on the poor would only lead to education, higher aspirations, and ultimately rioting. And who wants their people to suffer in that way. No, they must keep the peace and what better way than buying armaments. Which the UK government will be happy to supply for, don’t tell me, x million. Tony contacts BAE Systems, or maybe it was the other way round. “Yes, we’ve got some obsolete military air traffic control equipment. Been trying to sell it for years.” Tony contacts Ugandistan, “Lucky for you we just happen to have a state of the art military ATC system.” “Tony, I know we said military but, you know, it can’t be seen to be ...” “No problemo, say it’s civil, improved infrastructure, tourism, that sort of thing. It's not suitable but no one will know.” “And what about, you know, er encouragements?” “You’re new at this aren’t you. No, simple. We just overcharge you. BAE gets extra profits and you keep the difference. Couldn’t be simpler. We get our money back, you get well, encouraged, and we both look good.” “Ah Tony, no wonder England is a great country.” Wuff.
“So what do you think?” “Too serious.”
"Wuff."

Stiffdog joins team.

Whilst jaunting down the Eccelsall Road and popping into ‘Help the Aged’ with my wonderful wife, as we do after buying fresh fish, our prairs were answered. Meet Stiffdog. No more temps, thank God. Stiffdog who is fluffy but extra stiff will be doing in depth reporting of World News and insider dog views on the Stiffmouse Corporation. Please note that his reports may contain the odd Wuff as stipulated in his terms of employment. So welcome Stiffdog, we look forward to your contributions. “Wuff.”