The Best of British Blogging

British newspapers obviously are in a state worse than I expected if this is what they're up to thesedays. The Guardian, one of the remaning newspapers who doesn't need to comment on Jordan and Peter Andre having "sex"... give them time though if this is the kind of crap they're going to publish.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108883,00.html

The Guardian's second British blog awards found the country's webloggers in fine form, with last year's high standards maintained. Simon Waldman, chair of the judges, hands out the accolades

Now, I don't feel bitter about these awards. My blog hasn't been publicised, hell, I don't even know if anyone even bothers reading it. If they do, well done. If you don't, well, you're not reading this - are you? I gotta stop my moronic comments like that. Anyways, each category was full of bullshit, so I thought I'd do the British thing and be as cynical as possible, y'know the type of person who will rant and rave about how crap the blog is, and why it shouldn't have won. Yeah, I think it's worth a try. Unless I get bored and decide a wank is the best alternative.

In the best design category, the winner is Rob Hinchcliffe and Euan Mitchell's The Big Smoker. They narrowly beat Paul Cleghorn's The Bunker. Both blogs combined good looks and clear presentation. But the Big Smoker was a little bit more elegant, sticking to a simple colour scheme and black and white photography for extra effect.

http://www.thebigsmoker.co.uk/

So... this is the best designed British blog? Obviously they must have looked at a wiiide range of blogs, probably all over the internet. Or, they popped down to Brighton to see how they could get the easiest fuck. "Hey, got a blog?" "Yeah!" "Fuck me and we'll give you Guardian acclaim!"

I expected this to be half-decent... I have messed around with Photoshop before, and so has my dog. My dog has created better artwork than this, and she doesn't even have hands.

The design is a sort of foggy yellow... mmm, kind of like it's a yellow that's been smoked out by the 'Big Smoker'. Or not. It just relies on HTML tables. Ooh, that's really modern - isn't it? I don't pay for my blog site, I don't even bother designing it, yet this piece of shit wins. It doesn't look shit, I will give you that. It looks distinctly average... I couldn't point you to a site that looks better than that because I'm not as sad as Simon Waldman to search Brighton for people to blogfuck... but I can assure you that there are people who own blogs that also possess this amazing magical thing called TALENT. It's awesome. Some people actually put lots of hard work, lots of creative skill and thought and get good looking results. It's a bit like Kylie Minogue after Neighbours. She puts in a lot of hard work, creative skill and has a superb arse... Arse is the connecting word. It looks like someone had a dodgy curry and shat on this site. Poor blokes...

Black and white also featured in the winner of the best use of photography category. This went to Rob Gardiner and nyclondon.com for the stunning quality of his photography. We also commended two others in this category: Camerantics, which also featured among the judges' selections in the best design category, and Apparently Nothing - both full of arresting images and enough to make the average aspirant snapper (like me) sick with envy.

http://www.nyclondon.com/blog

Like I said. If I am due to give credit, I shall. I will... this guy certainly can take cool looking photos. But, I think he needs to upgrade his camera to something we like to call colour. Black and white sure as hell looks great, but doesn't he want to test his skills out with colour? Anyone, with enough practice and talent, can capture great B&W images, but colour is a different board game. This guy has ran around London, and just taken photos of them... touched them up in Photoshop so they look nice, and that's it. He has talent indeed, but it seems a bit limited, doesn't it?

The under 18s category was incredibly close. It was a choice between the slightly surreal, chatty writing of Olivia Fairweather's Magnetic Kid Liv, and the remarkably mature A Teenager Blogs by Max Munton. Olivia's writing was excellent and exceptional. But, in the end, we felt Max Munton was running a better overall blog: good design, regular updates, and intelligent writing full of personality. And he's only 17.

http://inmyplace.net/

Oh, this pissed me off. Seeing as this category would be one I should be entered into, I hoped that the "intelligent writing full of personallity" would be just that... I have lots of literate friends who do the same... I also have literate friends who write boring pieces of shit. Oh, if only Max Munton was my friend, he'd come under the latter category too!

On my way to school, every morning, I exchange friendly “hellos” and smiles with the same postman we’ve had for as long as I can remember and a random woman taking her two bubbly, enthusiastic children to the same primary school I went to. That alone sets up the three of us for a better day. It doesn’t take much.

Oh, that's real cute sonny. Every morning I walk past a guy who works in the local library, he says "hello" to me because... DUM DUM DUM... HE KNOWS ME! Damn that! Then I get in a car and drive to a train station. This sets all of us up for a superb day because we are such happy people living great lives! Oh, put Mary Poppins on the VCR, I want to step in time, step in time!

After work on Thursdays I give a couple of quid to the Big Issue seller who sells outside the Majestyk nightclub in City Square. It turns his face, ignored by hundreds every minute, into vibrant delight full of thought and chat that is worth the two quid on its own. “Have a nice day, sir. Take care, sir.” And what’s it to me? A few minutes work, that’s all. It doesn’t take much.

This is cringeworthingly sickening... really bad stuff. A seventeen guy called Max, winning an award for being as soppy as possible. "This morning I supported a homeless guy's heroin addiction..." Yeah, good one Bingo. You can buy two items from the McDonalds £1.00 menu with that £2. Why don't you go buy the guy two items? Because he doesn't want those two items, he wants that £2 to go straight into his local dealer's account as he cooks up some scag.

I guess, in a way, he is trying to do the right thing. If people were more like him then wars wouldn't exist, blah blah, but in reality, he isn't making a difference. People will still get AIDs, some people will be born Welsh, some may even be called 'Rhiannon'... why don't you adopt something beautiful, like snobbery?

What's more fun? Giving a homeless guy £2 or walking past him, laughing at the fact that he hasn't showered since birth, actually, ever, the placenta is hanging off his fingers still. Eating a juicy burger and sipping "a tasty beverage" (oh Samuel L. Jackson you God) whilst teasing him with your designer label clothes and pretty girl companions. Yeah, the latter is so much better. So, what's a compromise? I have it... instead of being a total snob, you can show you are bigger and better than him, but also giving him food. Go to Pizza Hut, like I did one night in the West End, leave one half-eaten, picked up and revolting piece of pizza, wrap it in a cloth, scrunch it a little. Now, find a homeless guy and give him it. Make sure your friends laugh when you give it to him. Then leave, turning around periodically to see him sigh and hate his life even more.

There’s something special about this New York trip. The mere sight of seeing plane tickets for the first time in my life the other day was enough to excite me. The songs I love will come to life in front of me. What was only fiction until now, is about to become reality. Life could change.

Life really could change. These people called al Queda could be on your flight, it could be hijacked, you could be shot on-board, or killed when it penetrates into a deserted field... Yeah, methinks life really could change for you! Haha.

In the best specialist category we saw evidence of the increasing number of top quality niche weblogs. Annie Mole's London Underground Tube Diary won respect for its humour and detail. But the prize went to Phil Gyford's remarkable Pepys' Diary. The project started on January 1 this year: Gyford will put a new entry of the 17th-century London-based diarist's work on the web every day for the next 10 years. As one of our judges said: "The audience is entranced: just look at the number of 'annotations' each entry receives."

http://www.pepysdiary.com/

This is just pure boredom. Who really, in their right mind, wants to read about a total stranger, who also happens to be the most BORING guy in the world? "I was in the office today. I did some work". Oh, that's the way to win an award... BORE THE READER TO DEATH!

The best written category threw up a number of gems. The three winning titles were all very different. Stuart Hughes is the BBC reporter who lost his leg to a landmine in Iraq. Since February he has been keeping a brilliant blog called Beyond Northern Iraq (not endorsed by the BBC). It is an excellent daily take on happenings in the Gulf written by someone with personal experience, providing a really good read with smart links.

http://stuarthughes.blogspot.com/

I like this. I mean, the guy is an idiot for losing his leg, but a fellow blogspotter, who deserves a hand shake for this. I mean,his perspective of life probably has been shaken up by what happened to him in Iraq; he's probably a superb hopper too. I didn't read that much of his blog, but from what I saw; it was well presented, humourous and topical. See? I'm not that jealous.

- posted by Ronnie @ 10:17 PM

 
The Comments You Can Comment On

Now with the power of the internet and these fabolous pieces of shit that are called computers, you can now comment on my comments! Click the correct button and you can tell me how idiotic, moronic, up my self, foolish and stupid I am. In fact, I can even reply and tell you what a penis you are. Wow, it's like a schoolyard slanging match.

Or you could just be nice. Maybe donate some money to my dying mother. What's that mum? Fallen down the stairs again? Your legs are broken again? I can't afford to pay for a new hip for you.




















What do you take me for? Poor? Of course I could fucking afford it. I live in the countryside morons.
- posted by Ronnie @ 10:13 PM

 
Change of e-mail address

I'm not sure if anyone has attempted to e-mail me... (thanks Steve Garfield for the heads up though!) but my e-mail address has changed to ronnie_joice@cerebral.ho8.com. If you tried to e-mail ronnie@ronniejoice.com ever, I wouldn't of got the e-mail. I haven't actually renewed my ronniejoice.com domain yet; as I'm too busy spending money on other things. However, if my host, Nick, does ever read this - he will get another year's payment out of me... very soon I hope too!

More rants coming soon, I promise.
- posted by Ronnie @ 9:44 PM

 
Recap of my life

Blogs are internet diaries... but public. You can put a padlock on these if you want, but well, fuck it... I have seen countless of these blogs around the internet showing how bland their life is. I suppose I wouldn't consider it to be so bland if the writer didn't expect us to know these people personally. Maybe that's the sign for me to stop reading... I don't know these people, I should stop reading. But I'm a nosey motherfucker, and nosey motherfuckers have to know about other people's business - don't they?

So; this leads me to inform you nosey motherfuckers what's happening in the world of Klegg Kool... (it's not like you know my real identity, is it?)

Last Friday I went to a party. A girl named, shall we say Rhiannon? Yes, that sounds like a good name to choose. She invited two guys and her girly friends from college and also some old friends (although whether some of the skater wannabes were her friends is debatable) from her old school. Hardly any mingling, big nice country house... nothing whatsoever to do. Very boring until the night-time when I had to share a room with a couple. Perfectly innocent... they're far too square to even consider anything sexual, I'm too tired to even think they're considering anything sexual.

So everything goes smoothly, I go home, and go to college on the Tuesday... (I scived on the Monday) and Rhiannon is mad at me. Why? Because the guy who's room I shared, called Rio (not really), told Rhiannon that I had a wank in her sister's bedroom. I laughed it off - not for a second would I expect Rhiannon to take Rio seriously; it was obviously a joking comment... expected if anything. I walk to the train station on my own with Rhiannon later that day - I haven't mentioned these "rumours" - but she seems really moody. I ask her what's wrong; she says she's tired. It's her birthday tomorrow, I have brought her a cute card, I almost like her. We catch the train, she is still really distant; I'm wondering why.

The next day I see Rhiannon, I give her the card; she says it's really sweet and seems pleased. I then notice she's gone to the train station without me; this time with her friend... I realise she has to be annoyed at me... she is blatantly avoiding me. I walk to the train station a little later, and she is sitting down. I sit next to her, and get to the topic of the wank. Without me even having a chance to fight my case, she says it's really disrespectful what I did... Hold the fuck up bitch, Rio was joking... are you so fucking blind you couldn't see the smirk on his face? The reason why everyone but YOU laughed about it. I'm disgusted at this, that she thinks I'm such a sex fiend (lol) that I would be so disrespectful. She dismisses the topic, saying she doesn't wanna talk about it. Well, fuck you too.

I get home, it's playing on my mind. I didn't realise she was so fucking deluded... I text her, quite sternly. It's her birthday -- oops! Am I going to spoil it? Not intentionally... but, the next day, I'm told by her friend that the text message almost ruined her birthday... yeah, well fuck you too. I finally confront her about it and even though Rio told her he was joking, she's still fucking in a mood. This makes her look so unattractive, and added to the equation that she's also a little Welsh... damn I don't know why I even bothered with her. This time on the train there are another three people sitting with us, along with Rhiannon, and makes the situation a little easier. Maybe the half-term break will mean we'll both forget about this, I dunno. Welsh bitches are fools, and they shouldn't be allowed to spawn... that's the moral of this story. If you're even 1% Welsh, a female, and called 'Rhiannon'... fuck off.
- posted by Ronnie @ 3:32 PM

 
A Short Film I Wrote...

INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
A sixteen-year old girl, Jo, is standing next to Nick during their drama lesson - with other people in the background rehearsing their plays. They are talking - with it being obvious Jo likes Nick.. she is playing with her hair, touching him, and enjoying talking to him. ‘The White Stripes - Hypnotize’ accompanies this scene.

NICK (V.O.)
Plastic. False. Unreal. We spent three months together... happily I may add. Yet, when she saw the opportunity, she jumped ships. However, when she attempted this jump - she didn't bring a big enough bridge, which collapsed as she walked across it. She's now single, as am I.

Nick starts to play fight with Jo.

NICK (V.O.)
However -- the two months I've spent being over her, she's spent reworking her affections for me. Slowly flirting, slowly dropping subtle hints that she wants me back, but despite all her present beauty, I don't want to hear it. I don't want those three months again. How ever great they were, I am beginning a phase where girls mean about as much to me as cat litter... nothing. The girls I like, don't like me... the girls I don't like, like me... how does this premise work? Do I substitute personality, beauty, intelligence, humour, enjoyment, attraction, social status, friendship, personal tastes, music, clothes I wear, people I hang around with, out of college commitments, just so that I can have someone attached to my arm?

Jo punches Nick in the chest. He falls to the ground.

NICK (V.O.)
I'll pass. I’ll pass on most of my life at the moment. I’ve turned to alternative rock, I’ve stopped drinking, I think drugs are bad, that meat is disgusting, that we shouldn’t kill our environment... I’ve started to care about politics, about third world children starving, about getting good grades, about having a career, that life isn’t just a hazy bubble... Now, if only I hadn’t handed in my letter of resignation last Saturday after another one of those parties...

CUT TO:

INT. DANCEFLOOR - NIGHT
The dancefloor is packed full of drunk teenagers dancing. Nick, looking the most drunk out of all them, is dancing away - looking like a right idiot to those who are sober. He is trying to blend into dance groups, but his poor dancing really doesn’t get him much attention. The dancefloor is pretty small - at the front of the dancefloor is a DJ, surrounded by lights and two big sets of speakers. The lights flash different colours. The music being played in the club is ‘Westside Connection - Gangsta Nations’. It’s quite hard for people to dance as the dancefloor is so crowded, with lots of people on the dancefloor kissing, or dancing with the opposite sex.

NICK (V.O.)
This is the highlight of our teenage life. Spending our Friday nights in a small little club, with a bar that will serve anyone... Getting horrendously drunk, so drunk that we don’t actually remember or feel anything we do. Our consequences stay inside this club, the fights last no more than seven minutes, and the wankers come out of their shell. Great, isn’t it? We try to see what females are interested in us... Expecting everyone we look at to suddenly fall at our feet. That our attraction to them seals a victory. Of course, let’s think about this properly... smelling like the back of a McDonald’s burger van on a hot summer’s day isn’t probably the best way to pull - is it? I thought not.

CUT TO:

INT. BAR - LATER
Nick is drinking another drink beside the bar, which is packed, but not as busy as the dancefloor is. He’s talking to Gail, an attractive seventeen-year old girl. She too is drunk. Playing in the club is ‘ATL - The One’.

NICK
Yeah, so basically...

NICK (V.O.)
This is the first stage of pulling a girl... engaging in babble. If you can throw enough babble at a girl, and she’s drunk enough, she’ll forget about the smell of B.O. and the fact that you have a constellation of spots on your forehead and actually fancy you. This fancying lasts for about eight minutes, and will never leave the club... If it does, God have mercy on you.

GAIL
So, do you want to dance?

NICK (V.O.)
Dance. The invitation to privacy. It’s amazing how when two people want to engage in privacy they move somewhere where it’s crowded, sweaty, hormonal and noisy...

Nick and Gail head to the dancefloor.

CUT TO:

INT. DANCEFLOOR - LATER
Gail and Nick are talking on the dance floor, their dance is pretty much non existent. They don’t have much space, and have to avoid people behind them knocking into them. This, in a way, brings them closer to each others. The song playing in the club is ‘OutKast - The Way You Move’

NICK (V.O.)
Once you stay at the bar for longer than three minutes, it’s pretty hard to get your legs moving again. Your dancing is pretty non existent, your conversation is moving swiftly into what is on both of your minds... Whether it’s a good choice to attempt it on her.

GAIL
So, do you have your eye on anyone tonight?

NICK (V.O.)
An invitation in simply nine words if answered correctly...

NICK
Not really, yourself?

GAIL
I’ve pulled someone already, but not really...

NICK (V.O.)
Not what you want to hear. It’s that shimmer of doubt you want to avoid. Next step; go for the sympathy vote.

NICK
Yeah, I haven’t really tried to pull anyone tonight.

GAIL
Why?

NICK
I don’t know... Just haven’t.

GAIL
Try now.

Gail and Nick’s eye-contact is locked. Suddenly, the whole dance floor slows down around them as Gail and Nick look at each others. The tension is unbearable, she has just made it clear what she wants, but Nick doesn’t know what to do.

NICK (V.O.)
Two things cross your mind. Actually, only one thing crosses your mind. She has just made a blatant invitation for you to get off with her... and then, all of sudden, your hormones fall out of your mind, and you actually don’t want to connect with anyone. It’s like emotionally, you’re selfish, that you don’t actually want to be with this girl, no matter how attractive she is. You haven’t pulled for weeks - this is your big chance - do something Nick, do it now Nick - but no, you’d rather not... You’d rather go home, sleep, wake up and think “should I have?” instead... Wouldn’t you Nick?

Gail moves towards Nick, it’s his moment of choice. Around him, everyone is moving in very very slow motion - he can see Gail moving ever so closer to him as each moment passes.

NICK (V.O.)
To be or not to be. That is the question. Yes or no...

Nick moves back. The dancefloor resumes it’s normal pace. Gail looks dissatisfied. ‘Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place’ starts to play over the film.

NICK
Maybe I will later...

Gail leaves Nick on the dancefloor. She pulls another random guy.

NICK (V.O.)
And suddenly, in a space of seconds, you’re all alone in space. Everyone has suddenly coupled up. You turn around to see the same girl in a mouth-lock with another guy... Do you envy the guy, or do you pity him?
Nick starts to walk towards the bar again.

NICK (V.O.)
You have just wasted your lifeline, and to the bar you head. The slowest walk of your life, as every emotion possible crosses through your mind. You sober up very quickly, you realize the music is crap, that the people you hang around with are as shallow as an emptied paddling pool... And contrary to popular belief, the lack of lust actually completes you. You feel as full as a cherry pie, you feel happy and jolly, and this superb sense of being euphorically happy. You don’t actually fancy anyone in the most popular club, being around the best-looking girls you’ve ever seen...

FADE OUT:

Comments to ronnie_joice@hotmail.com please!
- posted by Ronnie @ 7:03 PM