As this chart not-so-clearly illustrates, the Sun will ascend into the tropic of Ubiquity around this time in 3 years. We will fly into the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, which will crush us down to less than the size of a satsuma. The whole process will take about two hours, twenty minutes.

Everyone loves a happy ending. Just yesterday, researchers unveiled that the end of makeshift cancer treatments is in sight. And on Friday 18 December 2009, Terry Wogan’s reign of breakfast radio terror came to an end as he was overthrown by employment law and common sense.

Oh, what’s that? Some people love peril and confusion to dominate the human psyche? One such person is Roland Emmerich?

Update: most cinema goers have a hard on for disaster.

Thejamtart saw 2012 ages ago, and although the plot, script, cast and premise left much to be desired she recommended it for a December cinema outing. Having seen a trailer for 2012, I was enthralled by the prospect of seeing (in modern cinema crikey-vision™ no less) the dome of the Sistine Chapel steamroll over a bunch of Catholics on Saint Peter’s square holding a doomed vigil, including a fictional Italian president. Reduced to the heretic subatomic particles of which they so readily and vehemently discredit the existence, I can’t help but guffaw at the irony like an inexcusable expenses-claiming Labour MP.

John Cusack used to be cool. His performance in The Grifters is challenging and novel. That other thing about the record store was cool too, from what I can remember, so I am dumbfounded that he signed up for 2012; I don’t care if he has the debts of Nicholas Cage and Kevin Spacey combined.

The film reeks of American blind patriotism, but to a degree nowhere near as successful as Armageddon or Independence Day. The stock one-liners and angelic Caucasian WASP kids detract from the already superficial and confused “message” in the subtext. A worryingly convincing Oliver Platt as a jumped-up White House official unwillingly forced to the helm of the world’s decision-making puts forward compelling reasons for humanity to be nipped in the bud. You almost wish it would stop there and the credits roll… alas, it’s not cigarette time yet, there are still droves of world heritage sites to devastate on celluloid!

Emmerich tries to include the despair felt around the world by nonchalantly namedropping landmarks as they crumble into the magma. But when a round-the-world trip just can’t be squeezed in, he just uses Las Vegas imitations of said attractions.

Plight of an all-American middle-class family inextricably linked to world-events spanning a billion miles? Check. Renowned sights irreverently destroyed within the blink of an eye? Check. Yearning monologues meant to be profound that barely scrape the real questions at stake regarding the human condition? Check. A black president with an unashamedly beautiful and cultured daughter in esteemed profession? Check.

Yes, this film has it all, except for good dialogue and quality acting, which are compensated for by quite gripping images made entirely with computers. I would have loved to see the vaudeville remix, where title cards are inserted into the live action in place of actual speech, accompanied by an entirely apposite piano refrain.

I give 2012 a not-inclement 6/10 because I have to admit I was gripped. And it’s still bound to be infinitely better than Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, the trailer of which made me even less likely to ever see it.

Donkey Kong: jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey.

Last weekend, someone said to me – while, I might add, they were sitting in my living room, on my sofa – that video games had no story.

I’m a calm and collected kind of guy. I respect the fact that other people have opinions that are nearly as valid as my own. So it was only when this person went on to say the following that I was forced to beat them to death with their leg.

“Look at the typical video game story,” this person said, “There’s nothing to it. I mean… what’s the story in Donkey Kong? Jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey.”

Donkey Kong. Which was first released in 1981, back when Willy Gates was allegedly telling us 640k was plenty for everyone and when people in the UK were starting to wonder whether or not Thatcherism was a good idea. Donkey Kong: a groundbreaking game in many ways, not least for introducing Mario and the concept of characterisation to gaming. Donkey Kong: not a fantastic story. Not in 1981. They didn’t have room for a story.

It’s a bit like saying, “Sci-fi films have rubbish special effects. Look at Logan’s Run.” Jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey indeed.

Games =/= films

Here’s the thing: some games do have rubbish stories. Some games have rubbish stories because they hire rubbish writers. Other games have rubbish stories because they simply don’t require good stories. The various Mario games, for example, largely eschew story for good characterisation, which is a tactic that has worked wonders for gamers’ imaginations since… well, since 1981, when Donkey Kong first came out.

But game stories are getting better. The advent of CDs as a storage device was a big part of this, because they gave more room for words and videos and sounds – although they also caused the horrendous outpouring of “interactive movies” back in the mid-’90s. Smart game developers knew even before CDs that complex, evocative stories were possible, if the player didn’t mind doing a bit of reading.

Admittedly, gaming has a long way to go before it produces a Citizen Kane. Most game stories – even the ones that are trying – aren’t exactly Shakespeare. But games are getting there. Developers are starting to rely on writers more.

Listed below are some of my favourite game stories. It’s by no means a definitive or unbiased list, but all of these games have better stories than some of the shit extruded by Hollywood in any given year.

He's a prince. Probably Persian.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time
This is one of my all-time favourite games. It is beautiful to watch, it has spectacular gameplay… and it has a story that is charming, exciting and well-written. The characters are believable – even likable, which is rare in gaming, where muscles and tits are usually the defining features of the protagonists. The sequels were less than perfect (although they are still fabulous as a trilogy), and Ubisoft seems to be actively trying to ruin the series but, taken on its own, PoP: SoT is a masterpiece of storytelling.

Metal Gear Solid 1-4
There are as many people who hate the series as there are who love it, but one thing is never in dispute: it doesn’t suffer from a lack of story. The MGS series takes a more cinematic direction than most games, packing in hour-long cutscenes sometimes separated by mere minutes of actual game, but the story is pretty much the definition of epic – and of bizarre. Never, ever, play an MGS game without at least 2 hours of time to spare.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Picking out one story from the incredibly successful GTA series is difficult, but San Andreas had it all: gangsters, crooked cops, Hollywood-style superstars, alien conspiracy theories. It might not have been the highest form of entertainment, but it was still remarkable.

Portal
Half Life (and its superior sequel) might be a more famous Valve game in terms of story, but Portal was a masterpiece. Vaguely reminiscent of the middle portion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Portal managed to make a sad, lonely character out of a homicidal computer.

ICO / Shadow of the Colossus
These two games often get cited during conversations about whether games can be art, but less attention has been lavished on the minimalist stories that drive them. They might be a little hard to find nowadays, and they’re a little of the beaten track even if you do, but play both of them – and make sure you have a handkerchief available for their heart-wrenching ends.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Given that superhero comic stories often seem tailor-made for video game adaptation, it’s a wonder that so many superhero games turn out badly. Arkham Asylum not only manages to distil everything that makes Batman cool, it also tells a gripping – if slightly clichéd – yarn. Proof that not every story needs to make you cry.

Mass Effect
Space opera at its finest, Mass Effect doesn’t just give you a story – it gives you a galaxy. Back story abounds, told to you both by the people (and aliens) you meet and by the novel’s-worth of text tucked away in the menu. Even if you don’t bother with the superfluous stuff, Mass Effect’s main plot makes Star Wars feel distinctly underwhelming.

The Final Fantasy series
With game #13 on the precipice of release, the Final Fantasy series marks for many the pinnacle of game stories. That’s debatable, but there are 13 unique and complicated stories in here, ranging from fantasy to science-fiction, steampunk and even romance. Unfortunately, the magic of Final Fantasy has yet to break out of the gaming world: at best, the FF films have been weak on story, and at worst they’ve just been plain awful.

Zork
I only include this because it came out the year before Donkey Kong and is still widely regarded as a sophisticated interactive story. Jump barrel, jump barrel, jump monkey?

So what did I miss? Let us know in the comments!

It's over, I'm sorry. It's not me. It's you.

Because I have an iPod, I use iTunes on my computer. And it regularly pisses me off, to the point where I’m giving up on it.

I mean, doesn’t Apple have a reputation for creating user-friendly stuff that’s free of bugs when they release it to the public? Where does that reputation come from? Because it sure isn’t from iTunes.

Here are all the stupid things it does to me…

• Randomly on occasion reorders songs as I’m listening to an album.
• Cover flow is useless – it can’t handle albums with multiple artists, so every song on a soundtrack appears as a new album.
• Every time it updates, most of the cover art that I’ve applied to albums disappears.
• Every time it updates, it re-adds files to the library that I have removed.
• Every time you add a file to iTunes, it recreates the file in the iTunes library and chews up all your disk space.
• If you play a video in iTunes, it takes over the whole program in such a way that isn’t easy to return to your library.
• And now (straw that broke the camel’s back) it just won’t play a whole bunch of songs in the library, despite having played them previously — and the files are fine. They work in other media players.

Honestly, why would I keep using a program that fucks up this much? I’ve downloaded plenty of updates over the FOUR YEARS that I’ve been using iTunes, gnashing my teeth on every occasion as I laboriously re-add cover art back to the albums and remove the files I don’t want in the library… and the same problems happen over and over again. It’s infuriating and I’ve had enough.

So, who has recommendations for a better music program? Because I’m going to pack in iTunes and only use the damned thing when I need to update my iPod.

He's all class.

Some celebrities will do anything for money.

They must get a taste for it — having a bank account so far in the black that it’s a scientific phenomenon studied by astronomers, closing down entire boulevards on a whim because they feel like shopping without the pesky plebs around, owning garages stuffed to the hilt with ridiculously expensive gleaming gold-plated automobiles… Well, I’m sure that one gets accustomed to such a lavish lifestyle.

But then the recession comes along and wipes out chunks of celebrity fortunes, and suddenly, terrifying normality is knocking at the door.

So what do they do? They sell out.

Back before bankers fucked up the worldwide economy, celebrities could make a pretty penny turning tricks for foreign audiences, and their local fans wouldn’t know the difference. But now they’re having to extend that work into local advertising too.

One dude that I’ve noticed cropping up is Kevin Spacey. I guess he’s bled dry all his funds from winning a couple of Academy Awards, and with the fear that he might have to fire one of his 17 personal assistants, or start catching the bus, he has extended his earning potential… I was surprised to see Kevin selling his soul like this. He seems like quite a well-respected fellow, you know? But now he’s just another Katie Price™. He might as well create his own pink sparkly jewellery line.

First up were the American Airlines commercials, which are so pompous they make you feel like vomiting. The general theme is Kevin Spacey promoting how wonderful it is to be so fucking rich you don’t have to mingle with the plebs when you fly. He might as well have been bashing you over the head with one of his Oscar statuettes: Suck on this, you mere civilian. My life rocks, and these very ads are paying for it, bwahaha.

This was closely followed by a couple of Olympus camera commercials. In the first he snobbily implores the viewer to “not be a tourist”. This camera isn’t for normal people who just like to take pictures. This camera is for the pretentious, elite classes who consider themselves to be more than average. In the next one, he says his Olympus camera can take a picture that’s like a memory. A memory that hurts. You look at the photo and “it does that hurty thing, right here.” As one of the YouTube comments says so beautifully: “That ‘hurty thing’ you get right there is called indigestion, Kev.”

What’s next for Kevin Spacey? Personally, I look forward to seeing him promote the fancy health benefits of eating a can of Spam every day and how it’s like eating a little bit of heaven. I can see the strapline now — “Spam: the preferred food of kings and celebrities and Kevin Spacey.”

The cat ate my NaNoWriMo, I swear.

Someone not at all famous but should or maybe one day will be once said “NaNoWriMo? They should just call it inevitable disappointment delivered straight to your soul on December 1st”, obviously allowing a month or so either way for industrial action in the UK.

So, without much ado and, in fact, without much pride either, here is an update from the team on how we managed our ‘mini’ challenge this year….

~ ~ ~

Ludraman: So I just signed for a massive package of despondence and self-deprecation, delivered courtesy of Self-Hate courier service. I managed to write a grand total of less than 500 words, comprising the opening to several different ideas that are zygotic at best. Combined with the recent acquisition of Left 4 Dead 2 and having sweet fuck all free time in the evenings, it’s hardly surprising I failed so spectacularly. It’s not like I didn’t want to do well this year, but it’s fair to say my heart wasn’t in it.

That said, I’m developing a new story that pinged to life last Saturday after drinking loads of coffee cocktails. All the way home from London I was like a Henri Michaux brimming with mescaline and frantically jotting notes on a Caffé Nero napkin with an eyeliner I borrowed from a drunk gothic woman.

Total word count: 495

~ ~ ~

NotWelshMan: November was a hugely successful month for me. I played a number of new and exciting video games, including Assassin’s Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Tekken 6 (see my review!). Gaming is really taking off as a medium, and I’m proud to be a part of-

Wait – sorry – are you talking to- What do you mean I’m- Well, yes, but- I know but-

Ahem. Apparently I was supposed to be talking about my attempt at Mini NaNoWriMo. Um, yes. Bollocks.

Look over there! Shiny stuff!

Total word count: 1503

~ ~ ~

thejamtart: I have to admit, I didn’t even have good intentions this November. Instead, I was full of the aura of possibilities and maybes and non-committal meh’s. So that’s probably why I didn’t achieve a lot of new words. In fact, I kind of … went backwards.

It’s because I was writing on my existing project, Molly, and half way through the month I made the incredible discovery of the themes of the story. Yes, it took me about 30,000 words to realise what sort of story I was actually writing. So, I had to go back to the beginning and rework it to reflect the themes. And that meant editing. And that meant… losing words. The end result though, is a stronger story with a better base for all those shiny new words which will be coming in December!

Total word count: -212

Ostentatious debutantes eviscerated for your year-round delectation

Somehow we have entered December, after what feels like only a few months into 2009.

Tesco and all the despotic UK retailers have been ready for Christmas since minutes after Halloween fizzled out, merchandising decorations and the like everywhere you turn.

Marketers love spinning sales off the back of the seasonal festivities that pepper the calendar year. September is the ideal time to buy back-to-school home and contents cover. DFS love to drive home the importance of getting a brand new sofa every December, “the ideal family Christmas present”. (That of course relies on you having not already bought one every bank holiday so far this year. But make sure to leave room under the stairs for just one more settee which you’ll inevitably rush out to get at 12:01am on Boxing Day!)

One thing you’ll find in nearly every shop around now is 2010 calendars. There’s a calendar for the usual tastes out there, from cute West Yorkshire terriers to marine life photography. Yay! Dolphins frolicking about in enclosures in the Dominican Republic, secretly plotting our demise…

For all the hormonally addled teenster there’s calendars of Hollyoaks hunks or The Bill babes. Mm, Roberta Taylor in a negligee in January.

But that’s all a bit run of the mill. For more select tastes, you can gawp at goats that’ve climbed trees to gain a better picture of the surrounding pastures.

Or, if you’re a loathsome sadist, there are 12 captivating photographs of non-descript beasts with their viscera caulked all over the highways of America.

Have you got a hilarious idea for a calendar? Are you set to appear in one, in a reputation-shattering compromising situation? Let us know!

Rage against the X-Factor

The latest batch of manufactured X-Factor pop-a-nonnies are trundling inevitably closer to the turgid, overcooked and overhyped grande finale. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid a lot of television recently, so have escaped the show’s grasping and vampiric embrace of my brain. Yes. I have not been sucked in.

I thought I might expound on my disbelief at the 2009 crop of finalists – seriously, I just don’t get Jedward, but I’ve realised it’s useless. Anybody who has not joined the cult cannot understand its inner workings. It’s probably like how, to Scientologists, it’s completely awesome that they have little aliens living inside them but to anybody else, it’s insane.

The thing is, the show is clearly not about finding the person who is the best entertainer or singer or dancer. (Jedward is none of those). It must be a subliminal mindforce that gradually erodes your neurons until you become a fan. The winner is announced, and you go purchase their single, and Simon Cowell is a very happy cult leader indeed.

This year, people are fighting back

Rage Against the Machine for Xmas No.1 is a campaign that has been set up by non-fans who desperately want to shout back to the corporate music-making machine: “Fuck you, we won’t buy what you sell us” is the refrain.

The aim? Encourage people to buy Rage Against the Machine’s single “Killing in the Name” during that key timeframe in December when the X-Factor winner’s single will also be released. If enough folks get on board, they’ll push the new vapid plastic pop song to #2 and the #1 song will instead be one picked by music lovers who have something to say about the X-Factor. And plus, it’ll be a kick ass angry song full of swearing. Yay!

If you are keen to join in, get ready to buy the single between December 13th and 19th. The number 1 will be announced on the 20th!

I bought my shiny, shiny teeth with the money of fools.

Imagine putting “self help guru” when you have to enter your job title on a form. How embarrassing would that be?

Self help gurus are widely lampooned in the mass media, often depicted as deranged, criminal, sad, pathetic, or all of the above. Some of my personal favourites are:

• Greg Kinnear as Richard Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine, a desperate, clutching man whose pathetic quotes fail to inspire his small, yawning audience.
• Patrick Swayze as Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko, a seedy and despicable man.
• Tom Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia, see above.

It’s only if you’re Tony Robbins that the job actually rocks…

The original man from where all self help guru stereotypes sprang, he is this monster of magnetism, a giant-handed guiding spirit with a voice that sounds like tumbling rocks and a huge toothy smile, a closet full of tight black t-shirts and ‘auto-grin’ on speed dial. He is such a stereotype that sometimes I doubt if he is actually a real human being. (I think his photo was depicted in that scene in Men in Black, you know the one which shows a whole bunch of famous people who are supposedly ‘known aliens’?)

It’s possible that the man is formed solely of pure molecules of charisma.

He must have some kind of weird brain zappy laser power at least, to convince so many random people to fork over loads of their hard earned cash in return for cassette tapes they can play at night, and listen to the soothing gravelly tones of Tony telling them they’re okay. They’re okay. They’re worth it. A L’Oreal ad repackaged as a personal development coaching tool. Overcoming your fears by paying a shitload of money for such pithy insights such as:

“Take control of your consistent emotions and begin to consciously and deliberately reshape your daily experience of life.”

“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”

“How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to?”

How much do you reckon those statements are worth? A couple of bucks? You could probably buy one or two from the homeless guy on the corner, if you really wanted to pay something… or you could just sit down and have a think yourself about, well, what is the path to success? Gee whiz, do you think maybe it’s watching telly and eating takeaways?

Breathe the same air as Tony for only five hundred bucks

Or you can attend one of Tony’s seminars to see him in person, stalking the stage like a man-shaped tiger looking for prey, getting you chant along with him as he convinces you to love him and believe him. An authentic cult experience, for just a few bucks.

“Unleash the Power Within” is all about ‘empowering’ and ‘achieving ultimate goals’. General plebs can attend for the minimum price of $600, but true worshippers can demonstrate their devotion by forking out $2600 for automatic numpty status, which includes front row seats and proving their adoration by walking through burning hot coals.

More serious cult members can attend “Date With Destiny” which is only for “those who demand the most out of life”, and will set you back the paltry sum of $5000. During the entire weeklong seminar, you’ll learn such things as:

• How to train yourself to feel good
• The power of incantations
• How to set goals

When you get back from this life-changing experience, you’ll know your true destiny. OMG guys!! That’s, like, pretty cool. And you’ll be really, really good at leaving yourself little post-it notes round the house: “i AM beautiful” on the hallway mirror, “i AM NOT fat” on the bathroom scales, and “you are a strong, independent, empowered woman; ‘loneliness’ is just a word” on the back of the phone so you don’t call your ex during a drunken moment of weakness.

Seriously, the dude is awesome. Just watching a few of his clips and reading his website, I almost forked over my entire salary for the full Extraordinary Life Business Mastery Fulfil Your Destiny Unleash the Power Within Package. I stopped myself just in time. Because what does Tony Robbins really sell you? Common sense, wrapped up in a pretty, charismatic ribbon.

Middle Eastern interior design doesn’t follow trends. Instead the attitude appears to be “write a cheque and get one of everything, and then get a couple of spares, and then buy the companies that made them”.

Have you been contemplating converting your diesel motor, so that it runs on Crisp’n'Dry? This will help you come to a decision.

An e-mail circular alleges that the below images are not a hotel, but an Arabic Sheikh’s house. Yes that’s right, this is someone’s “humble abode”.

My first impression was “It’s like the Abu Dhabi Louvre” but this is probably bigger, except instead of galleries filled with the finest of the world’s most compelling art, we have a compendium of mis-matched but astronomically expensive wall treatments and gilted balustrades.

As anyone with too much money and inversely proportional integrity will tell you, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

It carries on well beyond the limitations of panoramic photography, which is something that probably can't be said for the contents of the owner's trousers.

You know you've gone too far when you need a fisheye lens to capture your entrance hall. Or maybe these people don't know the meaning of "too far"...

And then, there's the living room, again with the fisheye lens. Hawk-eyed property selling and letting types will be spot the use of grandeur and pomp in a failed attempt to compensate for limited physical stature.

I would hate to come home drunk and have to puke here, as I don't think I'd be able to stop retching long after I had emptied my body of all my entrails...

This puts the Audi in audacious: apparently a sheikh had this custom made in silver. Actual silver. That bastard will never even get in the driving seat.

With petrol at £1.09, I’m glad I have an Oyster card.