Incel Insanity - An Open Letter to All You Sad, Sad Men

Image by ღ ♠ Aegir ♠ ღ @ Flickr

Do you know why I hate incels? And by that, I mean, utterly despise them? Because I was lonely, gawky, frustrated and isolated too, but I didn't use that as an excuse to be, frankly, an overly entitled twat.

Every Saturday night, I'd go to a pub, get drunk, hope to get chatted up, and go home disappointed. And do you know what went through my head as I flopped back home up a steep hill? It wasn't that women were all whores, or that I was somehow a neglected genius and hero of my own tale

It was that I was crap, and since they had the right to choose whomsoever they wished, there was a brutal truth being elucidated here. I wasn't what they wanted, and why would they want to choose me anyway? I had no right to anything.

Trimming the fat off the obesity debate

Sumos vs. Firemen. This happened.

We should always have doubts when the news media claims scientists have conclusive proof one way or another. In part, this is because science does not work that way. Each piece of research is a piece of a far larger puzzle. Often, what the press claim is a major discovery is in fact just a small step in a very long process.

It does not help, of course, that many reporters don't know the first thing about science and have a bad habit of appealing to authority, filing their copy and then heading off down the pub while the subs argue over commas. The problem is, the public don't read many academic journals so rely on scientifically illiterate or alliterate hacks to get their information.

Warhammer 40,000: Heavy Vibes; New Grav Gun Rules.

Bastard.

Let’s be honest here. Grav Guns are crap. Not in the sense that they are useless - in fact, they’re very effective, to the point that they are spammed mercilessly by the beards. But the other problem is that they are simply repeating the function of an existing weapon - the Plasma Gun (and its little brother, the Plasma Pistol).

Apart from bringing out a slow painful tabletop extinction of the Plasma Gun, with its hilarious Overheat rule, it also reflects lazy game design. Put it this way, if you’re going to come up with a new weapon for the Space Marines, would you seriously just come with one that does what another weapon already does? Seriously? Alright, Matt Ward, we know you would, but still...

Yet let’s not look at the problem from a game design perspective, but from the point of view of a Space Marine Chapter Master. Now, restrictions on the arsenal via the Adeptus Mechanicus notwithstanding, what would that commander want for his battle brothers? Well, the Flamer is there to suppress large numbers of foes with weak armour. The Meltagun is there to waste heavily armoured foes and armour at close range, and Plasma Guns can cut just about anything down in a firefight. But what else would a Commander need?

Apart from the obvious allies, of course...

Well, let’s think about the biggest challenge Space Marine chapters face - they’re outnumbered, often heavily. There is a whole galaxy of nasty, gribbly things with violent personality disorders out there and only about a million Space Marines. Put simply, it’s not cricket for the plucky lads in Power Armour.

Now, flamers, plasma guns and Devastator squads can sort of counter this, but there is only so much firepower 1,000 men can unleash, even heavily armed, genetically altered ones. So, what is the answer? Well, Space Marines can beat up just about anyone - if they have enough time, and time is often very sparse especially when you’re being charged by hoards of angry Orks, Genestealers, or Daemon Cyber Bunnies of Chaos...

 Carrots for the Carrot God

Lettuce for His Hutch of Lettuce

So, the answer would be a weapon that buys time, and slows waves of enemies down, giving the noble Adeptus Astartes time to riddle everyone with Bolter shells. Now, wouldn’t a weapon that uses gravity fit that job description?

With that in mind, let’s retcon the Grav Gun, Grav Pistol and Grav-Cannon. Give them a new job - slowing down the enemy while the battle brothers focus their fire on other targets. In any case, here are some experimental rules for you to play with. Enjoy...



NEW RULE:

Gravity Well:
If a hit is scored roll 1D6, +1 for each successive hit. If over the unit’s lowest Initiative score, it is auto-Pinned for the next turn. A roll of 1 is an automatic pass. Can’t be used on Overwatch. Immobilises a vehicle and also causes 1 point of hull damage on a 6.

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Grav Gun
The most common grav-weapon used by the Adeptus Astartes, the Grav Gun is also one of the most unusual devices in its armoury. For it is, in effect, a non-lethal weapon. It works by launching a concentrated pulse of heavy gravity which expands into a wide area when it hits its target. All caught in the ‘blast’ are subjected to super-heavy gravity. While nimbler opponents can avoid this effect, most are slowed to a standstill and rooted to the spot until the gravity effect wears off. This is a surprisingly useful weapon for Space Marines; while often outnumbered, being able to slow or halt opponents allows squads to hold off overwhelming numbers until their other weaponry can cut them down. The grav gun also has some effect on vehicles, their greater mass risking malfunction as well as inertia. though it is hard to score the direct hit needed to halt and damage them fully.

Strength    Range    AP    Special
   -         24"     -     Rapid Fire, Gravity Well.

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Grav Cannon
The largest grav weapon used by the Space Marines, the Grav Cannon is most commonly seen as one of the mounted weapons on Centurion Battlesuits, yet it is also deployed to Devastator and Tactical squads, where suppression takes precedence over anti-armour and anti-personnel considerations. It is able to fire volleys of pulses, each able to pin down scores of attackers and, potentially, crippling vehicles and even Knights and small Titans.

Strength    Range    AP    Special
   -         36"     -     Heavy 3, Gravity Well.

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(Obviously, Gravity Well doesn't work with a pistol, so here's a suitable bodge:)

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Grav Pistol
At first glance, a Grav Pistol is an unlikely weapon. It is too small to suppress vehicles or squads of troops en masse like other grav weapons. Though this effect could be used in a sidearm, it would, at most, effect a single target per shot, which does not bode well when dealing with more than one foe at a time. Instead, the Grav Pistol serves a different role, though based on the same principles as its larger cousin. It fires an unstable bubble of gravity which expands rapidly when it hits, causing a blast which rips apart the target and anyone nearby. Not the most subtle of weapons, it excels in dealing with massed opponents, and does terrible damage at point blank range.

Strength    Range    AP    Special
   4         12"     5     Pistol, Blast.

All Yesterday's Christmases - a trip to the consumerism graveyard

They all stared at us accusingly as we drove into the dump.

I mean the garden ornaments, of course. Faded in the sun and worn by years of exposure, they'd been lined up along the route to the main parking area. I saw any number of owls, gnomes, Rupert The Bears, deer, pigs, badgers, blue tits, lucky wishing wells, Terracotta Soldiers and licensed properties, all watching us like angry exes at a really awkward school disco. 

They'd been arranged there with care by the workers at the dump, or rather, the recycling hub. This was the new name for the place, and it was no longer just somewhere where you went to ditch your crap. It had to be carefully sorted and placed into one of 13 very long, very deep skips - one for plasterboard, one for paper and cardboard, one for plastic, one for electrics and electronics, and broken washing machines...

A melancholy night at the cinema (with The World's End and Pacific Rim)

Often, going to the cinema is a laugh, and for the most part The World's End, the last instalment of Edgar Wright's ice cream trilogy, was fun. It's just that the mid-life crisis angst and oversold comic hooks were a bit worn out and desperate. If the first instalment, Shaun of the Dead, managed to strike a perfect balance between the genre homages, drama and comedy, The World's End was too sledgehammer in execution, like it was overcompensating as it staggered over the finish line.

Throw in a disjointed final act that is unsatisfying precisely because it is so perverse, and the film ends on a sombre note that's a bit too jarring. It does of course pick up all of a sudden in the last scene, but there's something disturbing about the odd belief in sci fi that you have to sweep away the world to save it.

Then there was Pacific Rim. Jesus Christ, what a load of shit. The absurd characters were cut out of cardboard (seriously, there's more life in a Toho sound stage full of scale model buildings), and were, without exception, utterly vile and unsympathetic. After nigh-on two hours, I even wanted the fucking dog to die. The dialogue was beyond parody.

The stars of the show - the big monsters and the big robots - were, meanwhile, obscured by darkness and water for the most part. It makes you wonder quite what it is you're meant to be seeing, as the murk gets in the way of multimillion dollar SFX to the point that it might as well not be there. As a final insult, the film ends with yet another Raid-on-the-Deathstar via Independence Day reset button. I say final, because the entire film spends its duration insulting your intelligence

Throw in a nasty pro-militarism and authoritarian subtext, and a heartless, banal core to the movie, and you have a veritable mountain of kaiju shit falling out of the screen in glorious 3D.

As the credits finally - mercifully - roll, you just have to wonder if directors of any renown should be put out to pasture after a few years, before they start making inadvertent comedies like Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and this bulbous turkey. Did the maker of Pan's Labyrinth really crap this one out?

And then there is the soundtrack - DERDERDER-DER-DER! DERDERDER-DER-DER! DERDERDER-DER-DER! It's like a really annoying ringtone, a lot like the rest of the film as it happens.

Having fucked this up, will Legendary do a better job with Godzilla? It's not looking good.

Want to hear the punchline? After watching this cinematic gem, I missed the last bus home.

Encounter with a female stag beetle

This morning, while chasing away a Robin that had perched on our clothes horse (they tend to crap wherever they please), I saw a large black object moving some distance away on the ground.

It was a big beetle, and I initially christened what I thought was a 'him' as 'George Harrison' (the only Beatle no one slags off). On closer examination, it turned out to be a female stag beetle, who had a run-in with a cobweb some time before, as you can probably see. 'He' was actually a Georgina, as only males have the famous 'antler' mandible jaws we normally associate with the species.

Seeing that the stag beetle was exposed on the concrete and there were lots of insectivores either flying around or, in the case of our cat, on the prowl, we picked her up and put her on the soil nearby. Then we realised the area we'd put her on was crawling with ants, so we had to pick her up again, all the while worrying we were killing the poor thing with stress.

Then I remembered that stag beetles like hanging around rotting wood, and we had a suitably large, decaying tree stump in our garden too. Finding a nice big crevice to drop the stag beetle into, I was relieved to see she'd survived and, err, beetled off some time later.

Given the time of year, she was probably trying to find somewhere to lay eggs, like - say - a rotting tree stump. Perhaps we'll have stag beetle grubs on our hands soon? I hope so; they are a fast declining species, and it would be sad to see them become rare or even endangered.

So let me end on a top tip. Fill a small bucket with wood shavings and bury it up to the brim in a warm, unobtrusive part of your garden. This provides a ready-made nursery for stag beetles and helps them during breeding season. Don't expect any music, though.

2012 London Olympics: What a load of arse

While on my way to a job interview near Angel today, I found myself in the middle of the Olympic Torch Relay. Crowds of people were lining both sides of the road, from Islington High Street, down through St. John Street, around the corner towards Rosebery Avenue and then onwards to who gives a toss where.

I walked some of the route with a friend. I was tired and stressed, so didn't feel like mincing my words. "Hubristic", "waste of money", "ovine" and "glorified school sports day" were some of the words I was using in a very loud voice as we proceeded through the throng, while the strigiformic stare of  Jessica Ennis emanated disapprovingly from bus shelter advertising.

The thing about the British is that they claim to be individuals, but tend to go along with the group. Anyone around during the time after Diana Spencer snuffed it in a Paris Underpass in 1997 and the resulting hysterical mourning will know this only too well.

The British also don't really have a sense of irony or the absurd, which may come as a surprise to some, but how else to explain people getting excited about a superficial non-entity, fag-end celebrity or Person You're Officially Meant To Feel Sorry For running down the road with a lighted torch? The last time anyone got this collectively excited about flammable objects was during last year's riots. Now that certainly brought the community together.

As I was about to cross the road, all the while wondering if I was going to get arrested for doing so (there were a lot of police about, which makes a change), two of the bicycle outriders collided, with one rider thrown off his bike. He didn't seem too badly hurt, but I didn't want to stick around to see a fight.

While I hurried along, I noticed someone had left a dolly and a pair of sunglasses on the edge of the low-lying wall that surrounds The Lab Building. Even as the crowd chattered loudly amongst itself, I felt an odd sense of melancholy, like something was being lost.

I glimpsed the two bikers cycle past as if nothing had happened.

I managed to get down an empty side street into a secluded avenue of shops before the main spectacle staggered along. That way, at least, I didn't have to see it. In the background, the onlookers sounded like a rowdy funfair full of candy floss-addled 14 year olds while some MC roused the crowd to cheers, despite the torchbearer not even having arrived yet.

The street was comparatively peaceful, though some people were sitting in the coffee shops. I also spotted a fair number of bikers going past as the pedestrianised road had a cycle lane going through the middle of it.

The quiet didn't last long. I saw lots of people run around the corner and past me at speed. They were spectators who couldn't get a good view of the torchbearer and wanted to try their luck up the road, using this backstreet as a shortcut. It was a weird paralell to the run going on nearby.

A little girl was running with her mother. She fell over hard and started crying.

"Oh is it THAT bad?" the mother complained, exasperated as her daughter wept loudly with pain.

Then the mother remembered her priorities. "COME ON! We'll miss it!" The still-sobbing girl limped slowly as she tried to catch up with her mother, who was already running on ahead.

Is it wrong to want to punch someone on the street? No more than wasting huge amounts of money on cheap spectacle and vanity projects for politicians. Other priorities can just go to hell.

I was reminded of what Will Self thought of the 2012 Olympics. They "suck dogshit through a straw", he said. I could only agree.

It seemed like a dreadful waste of a bright sunny day, under the pure azure gleam of a clear summer's sky.