Archive for December, 2009

Last Tuesday was a strange day.

You see, I engaged in exercise. Actually that’s not unheard of but certainly playing competitive football is – I haven’t played competitively for 12 years now and it’s probably been about half that again since I regularly played at all.

But with work now having a team I headed down to Goals on Kirkstall Road on Tuesday for our second match of the “season.” It snowed. And hailed. And rained. But I can see the potential fun in summer 😉 .

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.

The Saturday before last I worked my last McShift.

It’s very depressing because it’s a clear sign I’m getting older. Not that the fact that many of my work colleagues were 6-7 years younger than me wasn’t a constant reminder of my aging but somehow getting up and moving on with my life really drives the message home.

I’ll miss the place, I’ll miss the people. The people really were fun. I like most of my work colleagues but there is something about the fun and the energy of all been stuck in a crap dead on job (not that I was stuck there, essentially working for laughs but anyway) and making the best of it.

Still, onwards and upwards. I have exciting new work commitments now and new challenges ahead with my charity. This chapter may be over but the book has just begun.

Friday night was work’s Christmas party. If nothing else it produced some good photos 😀 .

I don’t know Joe McElderry. I’ve never met him. I don’t know what kind of personality he has, whether he is a enjoyable man to be around, funny, charming and interesting or not.

But if I was to guess I would give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is probably a nice guy. Honest, genuine, just wants to get up there and sing.

Which makes me wonder how situations like this occur.

Look at yourself. You’re throwing darts at somebody else’s head! What kind of sick weirdo does that?

If I was to take a guess I would say a sweet kid who has a great voice on him but isn’t the smartest kid in the class that has been taken by the music industry and turned into a tool for their own use.

That’s why we’re raging against the machine.

For those of you who read NME you may well have read possibly one of the silliest comments I have read in a long time, and this is from someone who reads the Daily Mail every morning.

Cheryl Cole has launched an attack on Rage Against The Machine for sabotaging the Christmas Number One race. Despite the US band themselves not orchestrating the Facebook campaign to get ‘Killing In The Name’ to the top of the charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry, Cole said the battle had now reached biblical levels. “It’s David versus Goliath and it’s not fair on Joe. It’s getting out of hand.” She went on to say that the thought of a US band topping the charts at Christmas was just wrong. “If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas Number One I’ll be gutted for him and our charts” (The Sun).

The obvious first point is that this campaign wasn’t started by Rage, it was started by fans (and someone would phrase that as true music fans for obviously justified reasons). But that isn’t the main point that I want to make.

The reason the comment is so stupid is because the campaign hasn’t sabotaged the race for the Christmas number one, it’s created a race! Until Rage came along there was no race, the only thing this campaign has sabotaged is X Factor’s divine right to have the Christmas number one as it somehow thinks it is entitled to.

And this is what the campaign is about – it shouldn’t just be a fact that X Factor is entitled to take the number one spot every Christmas, we’re tired of it. We want a fair race based on genuine musical talent rather than how much publicity you can spin off the back of an appallingly bad TV show.

As such I cannot imagine what thought process went through her head that concluded “yes, that’s an intelligent thing to say.” Presumably none.

In other news despite the physical single now being out for the past two days it has still failed to catch up with Rage! Saturday will be the real physical sales boost though so Rage needs a big lead and the campaign needs you. You can gift up to two extra purchases to friends and you can also grab some copies for free without a credit card from Nokia Music.

Tuesday night saw the annual Atheist Society Winter Solstice meal. It was reasonably well attended being hosted by LS6 which is like a hobbit hole with little caverns that just keep burying deeper into what looks quite small from the outside but is actually massive.

Afterwards we headed into Headingley for some drinks at the Skyrack.

Here at HAGs we’re making a real push at the moment to premote HAGs and get people volunteering.

It’s absolutely freezing here in Leeds at the moment and it’s often we at the moment as well so if there was any time of year that you don’t want to be stuck out on the streets, it’s probably about now.

As such we really need volunteers to make sure we’re going out as much as possible so if you can spare some time, do get in touch. We’re also working on how we can roll similar schemes out to other cities around the UK, and indeed the world, so if you’re interested let us know.

Last Tuesday saw the last proper meeting of term one at Atheist Society.

Having screened Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden which was a very interesting watch but non-surprisingly very pandering towards the left we headed down to D-Fusion for a night of karaoke.

We recently held the One Life wrap meal to see out the end of the One Life course. I’m not so sure how successful it is, it’s nice to go for meal but nothing is really wrapped up. Even if not I would like to think it brings course participants together but then most people are in A-Soc already. Maybe we just need to change our advertising strategy.

We ended up down at Wagamama which I wasn’t overly impressed with. Their bench seating and place holders that were simply McDonald’s tray liners but without the trays isn’t exactly the hallmark of a good quality restaurant. Food was good, I think, but not really being a fan of it and their refusal to do my chicken in a bun to simulate the idea of a chicken burger didn’t held matters.

Still afterwards we got a long night’s drinking at ‘Spoons so all ended well. Even if it was a bit of a couples fest with Jonni+Kat and John+Lil.