Head Full Of Wrong

I've been doing a little more reading into John McCain and his campaign to be President, and frankly I'm surprised.

Remember when the Tories were trying to discredit Tony Blair with their "New Labour, New Danger" posters showing Blair with glowing red eyes? Tony Blair described the posters as "vicious." Frankly, compared to campaign tactics in the US, the Old Red Eyes Is Back posters were a ringing endorsement.

McCain's campaign has shifted almost entirely from McCain's strengths to Obama's "weaknesses". At the end of July, the McCain camp put out a telvision spot comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The intention was to show that Obama is at best obsessed with celebrity, and at worst intellectually hollow. In speeches McCain has repeatedly stated that Obama "would rather lose a war to win a political campaign." Since Obama has never said as much this shows a remarkable insight on McCain's part, unless of course he has psychic powers. And how scary would that be?

For a 71-year old, McCain is showing a surprising grasp of the usefulness of the internet in his campaign. He's been running a series of web ads which go unannounced in the mainstream media in the hope that they'll spread virally. One is simply a photograph of Obama alongside a photograph of America's favourite insane foreign dictator Fidel Castro, with a caption saying "Fidel Castro thinks he is the 'Most advanced candidate'". The obvious implication is that Castro, that famous enemy of democracy, thinks Obama is great, and therefore Obama must be an enemy of democracy too. In fact, the quote from Castro is a mistranslation of a fragment of a quote taken from an article written by Castro and published in the state-run newspaper Granma. The english translation posted on the Granma International website translates "advanced" as "progressive." Not only that, but the article is one that is otherwise overwhelmingly negative of Obama, but that doesn't matter to the people behind McCain's campaign.

Then there's the advert directly blaming Obama for rising fuel costs because he objects to new oil drilling in the waters of the American Outer Continental Shelf. Of course, he's only one of many senators objecting to the proposals, and he has never, as the advert claims, said "No to indepedance from foreign oil," but that doesn't prevent the ad asking "Who can you blame for rising prices at the pump?" before fading in a backing track of people chanting Obama's name over and over again. Interestingly, McCain said in a speech that the oil crisis is a problem "Decades in the making", so it's interesting that Obama has only been in the Senate since 2005. It's not like he's been there for almost a quarter of a century, like some other politicians. Like, for instance, McCain himself.

Or how about the viral that claims that Obama voted against troop funding? In fairness, he did - once. He voted for troop funding over ten times before he finally voted against it once in 2007. The reason he voted against troop funding that one single time is that Bush had previously vetoed a troop funding bill that set a date for withdrawal from Iraq. It was a protest vote, a sign of a man acting out of conscience. Interestingly, before Bush vetoed the previous bill he was recommended to do so by one John McCain.

The same ad criticises Obama for "never [having] held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan". That's true. In his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on European Affairs, Obama has never held a senate hearing on the non-European country Afghanistan. McCain, on the other hand is the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and yet he missed all seven of the hearings that his panel held on Afghanistan during the past two years, according to ABCNews.com

Or how about the speeches where he states that Obama will raise taxes for 23 million small business owners, despite offering no proof for claims based on out of date figures? Or the radio ad that claims Obama voted to raise taxes on Americans earning as little as $32,000 per year, despite the fact that the resolution Obama voted on actually proposed to raise taxes on people earning more than $41,500 per year in total income, and the fact that Obama's own tax plan would result in a tax cut for people earning $35,000 a year?

Or the Spanish language radio ad which aimed to show that Florida would benefit from the McCain-endorsed Columbia Free Trade Agreement, despite the fact that every single figure quoted in the advert but one is wrong, and the one that isn't wrong is rounded up to support McCain's stance? Or the ad stating that Obama has said no to energy "innovation" and to "the electric car" and to "clean, safe nuclear power", despite Obama's proposal last year for a $150 billion research program into clean, renewable energy and the fact that Obama has said he won't say no to nuclear power as long as it is, wait for it, "clean and safe."

I could go on - no, really, I could go on for a very long time - but I'll spare you. I won't even get into the biased Neocon news services and radio shows. Suffice to say, McCain's campaign is not attempting to counter Obama's policies and statements; it's there purely to portray Obama as dishonest, empty-headed, vain and, worst of all, unpatriotic, a crime that's viewed in America with the same level of disgust we reserve for child molesters and horse murderers.

McCain makes a big deal about his military service, and his bravery can't be taken away from him. But that was bravery 40 years ago. I'd like to think that the McCain who was beaten, tortured and imprisioned for five and a half years, the McCain who refused early repatriation unless every POW captured before him was also released, would look upon the McCain of today with disdain. It's hard to believe they're the same person.

This post was researched from a variety of sources including The Huffington Post and Factcheck.org. I am in no way stating that Barack Obama has not been bending the truth to win the election, but the Balance of Lies seems rather tilted in the direction of McCain. I do not endorse either candidate, because endorsements are dangerous and you should really make up your own mind. And yes it is my business who wins the election because whoever does it will become the most powerful politician in the world and after George W I'd much prefer it to be someone I'd trust to look after a small child or animal without supervision.

The US Presidential race just gets more and more controversial by the hour. First the major American news networks had a go at John McCain for an advertising campaign telling what we in the old country call "lies" about Barack Obama - that he refused to go and see wounded US troops because he wasn't allowed to take the media with him. Now it turns out that Obama has had the TV networks on his side all along, covertly spreading propaganda on his behalf over a period of years.

I'm talking, of course, about David Palmer, the fictional US President in the television series 24, played by Dennis Haysbert. During a conference call to reporters, Haysbert told them that he believes his portrayal of a black man in the White House helped lay the foundations for Obama's campaign.

Here's a quote from USA Today:

"If anything, my portrayal of David Palmer, I think, may have helped open the eyes of the American people," said the actor, who has contributed $2,300 to the Illinois Democrat's presidential campaign.

"And I mean the American people from across the board — from the poorest to the richest, every color and creed, every religious base — to prove the possibility there could be an African-American president, a female president, any type of president that puts the people first," he said Tuesday.

 I mean honestly, how is that fair? John McCain can't hope to compete with a massive tinseltown conspiracy that's been secretly brainwashing the US public via the medium of a violent television show. It's no wonder he has to lie about Obama: it's the only weapon he has left.

£75,000. That's how much it will cost to buy your own Tie Fighter.

It's times like this that I wish I were made of money, because then I could literally give my right arm to buy it. I admit it - I'm a geek, and as such I would love to buy a Tie Fighter. I just can't help myself.

The Tie Fighter is just one lot in a huge auction being held on August 1st by Live Auctioneers. Other items up for sale include the axe used by Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Marty McFly's hoverboard from Back To The Future II and III, a pair of stone tablets as held by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, and, get this, the pistol from The Outlaw Jose Wales, a .44 calibre Colt Walker in its original holster. Oh, and Ben Affleck's costume from Daredevil, which I personally would buy just because it's from a film that contributed to the death of Affleck's career. I would worship it like a shiny leather God.

Actually, there aren't many things in the auction I wouldn't buy. Of course, I would then be bankrupted and living in a house full of largely useless crap, but at least I'd own the sword used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian. It squirts fake blood. Who could ask for anything more?

Facebook, the popular social networking site, was originally created by the CIA as a means of gathering information about internet users.

I have been reading about that today. I have also been reading about attracting hits in search engines by using controversial or often-searched-for words and phrases in your writing. Can you tell?

It appears to work as well. Charlie Brooker's column for UK newspaper The Guardian on July 21st was about exactly that subject. He deliberately inserted the words Poker, Naked, Viagra and Lohan into the otherwise innocuous title of his column - not long after it was published a comment was posted at the Guardian website by someone who had searched Google for the words "naked viagra" and Brooker's column was already the second listing.

My views on the subject mirror Brooker's own. His article was actually centred around his wrath at sections of the printed press who deliberately write their articles in a way designed to appeal to search engines, by inserting certain phrases into them whether they have anything to do with the subject at hand or not. It's already bad enough that we're constantly marketed-at by soulless corporate bastards without having the act of reading the newspaper becoming like walking down the main street in Akihabara with hundred-foot-tall neon signs flashing adverts directly into your eyes at retina-scarring levels of brightness.

Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. Adverts in Victorian penny dreadfuls pulled exactly the same trick with bold, exciting headlines at the top of adverts for utterly mundane things. Almist all tabloid news articles follow the same lines - the Sun even goes so far as to bold exciting or saucy phrases in the opening paragraph of an article just to make sure you've noticed them. This is why I don't read much print media any more - the whole thing is to depressing for words.

As for the Facebook Conspiracy, check out the article here for more details. It's a sordid tale of slightly twisted pasts and not-really-underhand dealings. Some of the people who work at companies that put up funds for Facebook used to work at, or with people who used to work at, some US Government departments. Something's definitely dodgy, although whether it's Facebook or the conspiracy itself is something you'll have to decide on a personal level. I wouldn't want to influence your thinking. That would sound a bit like, well, a conspiracy.

Boy, writing the tags for this post's gonna be fun!

Four minutes past two on a monday morning. I find that I think better at night - or, to be precise, in the early hours of the day. Not more clearly, I should point out. If anything, it's quite the opposite; I think less clearly, and I seem to allow my mind to wander off at tangents and around corners far more easilly.

Back when I used to write on a semi-professional basis I would always do my best work at this time. It was when I'd have my best ideas, come up with my funniest jokes, weave non-sequiturs most easilly into the ongoing text. As a cartoonist I was thinking at a premium in these ungodly hours too.

I wonder if there's any reasonable basis for me feeling this way? Perhaps it's the simple matter of the bits of the world directly surrounding me having gone to sleep, leaving me to think in peace, but I'd like to think that there's more to it than that. I'd like to think that as I become more tired and less firmly grounded in the waking world I also become more inventive. I don't know, perhaps I'm just pissing in the wind.

Either way, blogging whilst tired certainly makes typing more interesting.

It will probably not come as much of a revelation if I tell you that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Even if you haven't moved house yourself you'll have heard the phrase somewhere. And it's true; I once moved apartment three times in two months, and I can now honestly say that I'd rather trap my testicles in a draw than do it again.

Unless, of course, you're not the one doing the moving. If you're just there helping out then it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. It's like that old saying: if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you're probably standing around chortling while your friends stomp about complaining at each other, bumping into one another whilst carrying huge boxes full of books and moaning about how tired they are.

Never underestimate the power of physical exercise to kick you out of a depression. Laughing at your friends' discomfort also helps.

I am angry. I am not angry at anything in particular, I just have general low-level rage bubbling away beneath my skin.

I don't like it when I get like this, partly because I don't know what causes it and partly because it makes me unpleasant to be around. I'm never sure whether to ask my friends and family for help and risk alienating them by taking my mood out on them, or to become introverted and keep myself to myself. I suspect that I'll do the latter; it's what I normally do, but then I get angry at myself for being introverted and not being able to change my ways. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right now I can't see a way out of feeling like this. I hate it so much.

Depression is a funny old thing. Not funny ha ha - that would kind've defeat the object - but funny-how-it-comes-out-of-nowhere-and-kicks-you-in-the-gut-just-when-you-least-expect-it. That kind of funny. Which isn't very funny at all, really.

Thankfully I have a temporary cure, in the guise of Audiosurf. Audiosurf, for those who don't know, is a PC game, a strange hybrid of racing and puzzle games, which takes your music collection and uses it to generate the courses you'll be racing on. For those of you who haven't tried it, I can heartilly recommend that you try the demo, available here.

Audiosurf is fun on a couple of levels. It's fun for the sheer thrill of racing and thinking quickly on the fly. It's fun to try one of your favourite songs and discover that not only is it a great song but it also makes an amazing racetrack. And it's fun for the synaesthetic thrill of seeing the course reacting to the song; glowing lights and undulating courses pulsing in time to the music. It's a rush.

Music and gaming are two of the things I can use to kick myself out of a rut when I'm depressed, so to see the two combined so perfectly is excellent news for me. In honour of what has rapidly become my favourite game I've started a blog to collate ongs which have surprised me in their brilliance. It's called Adventures In Audiosurf and it can be found here. Give it a go.

I arrived here tonight with a very definite topic for discussion, but I've just noticed something that's made me completly forget about it. I am a fickle boy.

The thing that has distracted and amused me is this: The "Write" page for blog.co.uk has a field for the title of your post and, beneath that, a larger field where you can type the post itself. Between the two is a blue bar which contains several buttons for embedding things into your post like hyperlinks and smilies. This is, in itself, not particularly interesting.

Also on this bar are four buttons for altering the font. There's a Bold button, represented by the letter F in a bold font. There's an Underline button, represented by the letter U underlined. There's an Italics button, represented by the letter K in italics. And there's a Strikeout button, represented by the letter D with a line through it.

FUKD. That can't be a coincidence, surely.

Crowds are gathering in Belgravia protesting the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and his upcoming handover to the UN war crimes court in the Hague. They are confronting riot police, shouting, chanting and hurling missiles, according to the BBC. It is expected that this is only the beginning of prolonged and violent protests.

There was some protesting going on in the UK today as well. Dan Glass, a member of the group Plane Stupid - a group dedicated to protesting the building of a third runway at Heathrow Airport - has today attempted to glue himself to the Prime Minister.

Glass was at Downing Street to recieve an award from PM Gordon Brown. He managed to smuggle a small, non-metallic container of superglue through security and coated his hand with it. When Brown went to shake Mr Glass' hand, Glass touched his other hand - the glued one - to Mr Brown's jacket.

Reports from here become confused. Plane Stupid claim that Mr Glass successfully glued himself to the PM. Downing Street, on the other hand, says that the attempt was unsuccessful and that while Glass may have touched the PM's jacket for a few seconds "There was no stickiness of any significance".

I have two thoughts about this. The first is that we're supposed to be on some kind of permanent terrorism alert where we've got to be suspicious of anyone carrying so much as a matchbox-sized handbag, and yet somehow Downing Street security managed to allow a known protestor into the presence of the Prime Minister carrying an unmarked container full of a substance which could very much have been absolutely anything. Sure, it might have been superglue, but equally it could have been poison or mercury or hydrochloric acid. We could have ended up with a nightmarish "Our PM Is Two-Face Out Of Batman" scenario, and I don't think anyone wants that.

The second is that we British must be the politest protesters in the world. When French students are annoyed they run around the suburbs of Paris burning cars. Since they also live in the suburbs of Paris there's a good likelihood that they're burning their own cars, which just demonstrates how annoyed they must be. In Israel a Palestinian has been shot dead after attacking cars with a bulldozer. And it Britain? We dress up as superheroes and chain ourselves to railings. It's not even on the same scale.

Not that I'm calling for more violent protests on the streets of Britain. It's just that I'm not convinced that Gordon Brown will be convinced to intercede in the mutlimillion pound building of what I'm sure he hopes will be an important business link just because someone's put something sticky on his jacket. And not even significantly sticky at that.

I was recently introduced to a technique that many of you have probably already heard of but which was completely new to me, a technique called Mind Mapping.

Mind Mapping is a visual way of representing a thinking process, and it works particularly well for people like myself who find even the smallest problem insurmountable. I'm told that the name for what I do is "catastrophising"; it's where if something goes wrong it triggers the thought that everything I know and do is also somehow flawed or wrong. Mind mapping is helping me overcome that.

The technique is simple - you decide upon a goal and write it in the centre of a piece of paper. Around that you write down all of the things that appear to be standing in the way of achieving that goal. Then you go through those things one by one; for each one you branch off lines of what you'll have to do to make those things happen. Perhaps that will be the end of the process; more likely you'll find that one of those problems can be spun off into a set of further problems, and so on and so forth.

The end result is that rather than having one huge, seemingly insurmountable problem, you end up with a lot of tiny, infinitely more solveable problems. Then you can set yourself achievable goals by compiling lists of these smaller problems and working your way through them one by one. For someone in my position (i.e. an unemployed crazy person) it's very useful to have a system that means that I have definite set goals to work towards.

Now I'll be honest with you - it sounds like management bullshit. I realise, reading back the previous paragraphs, that I've even written it like management bullshit. My fingers want to insert phrases like "blue sky thinking." I'm one step away from suggesting we helicopter the idea around the room and see where it lands.

But it works. It genuinely does. I've used it to plan out some of the things I'll need for a festival I'm going to soon, and I've gone from running around the room in a blind panic screeching like a gibbon with a stubbed toenail to merely panicking quietly to myself, which is far less distressing for the neighbours.

Try it for yourself. If you can overcome your scepticism you may just find it useful. I did.

Now, if you'll excuse me I'm just off to harness some strategic cross-media system paradigms in order to deliver out-of-the-box integration models and leverage analogous pinch-point synergy differentials. And then scrub the inside of my brain out with bleach.

The night of the Great Poker Massacre is over. It was a glorious battle, filled with great and epic contests of skill and wit, but now it is over, no more than a memory to be sung about in the halls of our fathers. We victims stagger home, bloodied and beaten, dragging broken limbs and battered pride behind us, whilst the victors throw handfuls of money into the air and laugh like giddy schoolgirls. Bastards.

So no, I didn't win at poker. It's tough to win when your best hand all evening is a pair of fours. But I wasn't last, which is nice.

I have several fundamental problems when it comes to poker. First and foremost is my inability to keep a poker face. As much as I try to keep a straight face when that killer card comes down on the river, I can feel the corners of my mouth involuntarily twitching. I am now attempting to learn how to do it on purpose so that I can use it as a bluff.

My second problem is that I'm a tight player. I'm fairly risk-averse, which is a sensible outlook in some walks of life but is not particularly helpful when it comes to, you know, gambling. It's all very well holding on to your chips until you get some killer cards, but when those cards never come, as they didn't tonight, you're screwed.

My third problem is that whenever I play I can hear Jesse May and Phil Helmuth commentating on me in my head. It's a little offputting.

Still, I love the game. I'm not great at it and I doubt I ever will be, but I still enjoy the challenge of figuring out the most likely combination of cards on the table, and of trying to get a read on my friends. It's frightening how good at lieing some of the are.

Poker - heartilly recommended.

I'm about to leave in order to go and play Poker. I have never yet won a game of poker against my friends - I placed second once and got my initial buy-in back, but that's the extent of my gambling success.

I probably shouldn't be gambling at all - I don't know that I have an addictive personality, but it wouldn't surprise me. That's why I steer clear of online gambling; at least this way I only gamble small amounts, and only when we can gather a group of players together.

I'll report on my success later tonight. Unless I lose, in which case I might just leave it. Not that I'm a bad loser or anything...

I write this having just arrived home from a friend's birthday party.

Three things have kept me from being depressed today. The first of these is alcohol, which I wouldn't recommend for everyone but which I think is fine in moderation. I am currently tipsy without being properly drunk, which means I'm sober enough that I can still construct sentences in my head but I'm drunk enough to make the process of typing those sentences rather more haphazard than it might otherwise be.

The second is exercise. I arrived at my friend's house nice and early to help set up the party. I've been cooking and cleaning and shopping and gardening and it's been great. I know that exercise is a well known and much recommended cure for depression, but I still find myself surprised at how effective it can sometimes be.

The third is good friends. One of the most important parts of my recovery has been re-kindling old friendships and making new ones, and the people I'm friends with now are some of the best people I've ever met. I'm still an introverted person, but that's changing for the better and it's because of these people.

It's good to sit around in someone's back garden drinking wine in front of a roaring bonfire and just feel like I'm able to relax. And it's an odd feeling to know that, without even knowing they were doing it, the people I'm sitting with have made me into a better person. I should probably tell them some time.

I've been spending a little time listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on the BBC IPlayer. I love that show. Partly I love it for the quick-witted (if groan-inducing) puns, but mostly I love it for the host, Humphrey Lyttelton, who died recently. A first-rate jazz musician and a very funny man, Humph's appeal came from the fact that he was, to all intents and purposes, a very nice, very well spoken old man who just happened to occasionally come out with terrifically rude double entendres. It helped that he seemed to treat the fact that he was a presenter on a radio panel-based comedy with something between dry scorn and outright distaste. What a guy.

So, I was listening to the show, laughing merrily away, and then they did a round based on George W Bush.

The show, it should be said, was originally broadcast in 2005, so the novelty of mocking ol' G W hadn't worn off yet. Humph would play part of a Bush speech and then stop it in an appropriate place, the challenge for the panellists being to continue the speech in as humourous a way as possible. The problem was that no matter how funny the panellists managed to be, the actual quote from George W himself managed, unfailingly, to be more absurd than anything they could come up with.

Something surprising happened to me during this round. I stopped laughing.

Perhaps it's the passage of that extra three years, but here in the cold light of the Space Year 2008 I feel wrong laughing at the fact that George W Bush can't tell the difference between the word "hostage" and the word "hostile". I feel bad about laughing at speeches where he claims to know, deep down, that "man and fish can coexist peacefully". These days I just reflect with genuine sadness that the most powerful man in Western politics is a monumental idiot, but it's more than that - it's the fact that the most powerful man in Western politics has been a monumental idiot for more than seven years.

George W leaves office in 2009. What kind of legacy will he leave behind him? I'd like to think that the best that any politician could aim for is that, when they retire, the world is a slightly better place for the changes they've made. Will George W Bush really be able to say that? I suspect that's a stupid question; of course he'll say it, regardless of whether it's true or not.

That's if he can pronounce it, of course.

I should have started this blog... ooh, two years ago.

Two years ago I suffered a nervous breakdown. I lost my job, and because of that I lost my apartment. I moved back in with my parents and spent quite a lot of time feeling very, very sorry for myself.

I say these things by way of brief introduction. I'm not really going to go into any more detail than that; I don't really feel like dwelling, for one thing. Anyway, going into the aforementioned more detail would require the naming of names, and there are certain people I don't wish to give the oxygen of publicity - or indeed, as the brilliant and much missed Linda Smith put it, the oxygen of oxygen.

That was two years ago, and while some things have changed since then, some things have stayed the same. I still suffer from depression. I'm still anxious, nervous and reclusive. I still feel suicidal on far too regular a basis.

But then, some things have changed. I'm being treated for the depression, and regularly see a counsellor. I am trying to force myself back out into the workplace. I have found ways to boost my confidence, and I am supported by a wonderful family and amazing friends. I'm starting to see some of the positive changes I've made to my life come together and really benefit me. It's an exciting time.

And that's kind've the purpose of this blog. I should have started writing it two years ago - that would have allowed me to more fully chart the progress of my depression and what I hope is my current recovery. As it is I'm starting here, using Head Full Of Wrong to talk about my illness and my treatment. I hope that when I'm down it will serve as a reminder that things can get better, and that when I'm up it will be a marker of how far I've come.

That's one of the reasons I'm doing it, anyway. Another is that I'm hoping that the daily process of bashing out blog entries on a laptop will kick-start some of the long-dormant neurons in the creative areas of my brain and I might just be able to start writing again. I used to write, before all this happened, and I miss it. Maybe the physical process of writing will get my brain working properly again. Who knows?

The other reason I've started blogging is that I like to rant. Who doesn't? Since I doubt the content of HFOW will prove raunchy enough to be made into an ITV2 drama where I'm innappropriately played by Billie Piper, I'm left with the admittedly slender hope that my billious opinionating will be noticed on Fleet Street and I'll be given a lucrative syndicated newspaper column. If it worked for Charlie Brooker it can work for me. Ahem.

I aim to update on a daily basis, and if anything's going to test my resolve it's that. I shall try my best. This is just the start; I'll be interested to see where this goes.