Daily Archives: March 17, 2008

Thought for the day.

Compare and contrast:

In PvP you start out as the lowest of the low; your entire aim at this time is to struggle and fight fruitlessly against those who are already established in order to improve your standing, while the established take great delight in picking on you and impaling you with their purple weapons. Eventually though, through nothing more than attrition and sticking in there, you become one of the established and powerful people yourself, at which point you take great delight in punishing the newcomers; for is it not the case that you had to go through the self same thing? And thus the newcomers feel the sting of your purple weapon.

In the archetypal all-boys boarding school you start out as the lowest of the low; your entire aim at this time is to struggle and fight fruitlessly against those who are already established in order to improve your standing, while the established take great delight in picking on you and impaling you with their ‘purple weapons’. Eventually though, through nothing more than attrition and sticking in there, you become one of the established and powerful people yourself, at which point you take great delight in punishing the newcomers; for is it not the case that you had to go through the self same thing? And thus the newcomers feel the sting of your ‘purple weapon’.

PvP: the homoerotic boarding school simulator of MMOs.

Reviewlet: Russell Howard

I went to see Russell Howard, sometimes known as “the young blonde one off Mock the Week”, the other night. Didn’t quite catch the name of his support act, Mark someone, but he wasn’t bad; bonus geek points for the first mention of a Slingbox I’ve seen in stand up comedy.

Russell himself has an amazing energy, a quick “any questions?” to get things going leads into a gangsta-aunty-on-facebook riff and then he’s freewheeling away, no obvious structure, no stopping to think, barely a pause over the next hour and a half. He never loses the audience, though, sweeping us along with him. If there’s any theme to his material it’s of hopefulness and optimism, child-like wonder, of things being great and magical. Great performer, very funny.