Cameron, Chelski & C...Fulham

Although they probably went about encouraging it in the wrong the way I think young people have become more involved in this election than those of years before. This frankly upsetting video (which Charlie Brooker claims was genuinely produced for this) aside of course. A straw poll of Facebook reactions show this is true, at least amongst my brethren. People were chirping left, right, and (most commonly) centre right about their thoughts and feelings on the candidates. Personally I can't help but feel aggrieved about Cameron's claiming of the crown though. The Tories are renowned for their loathing of the poor and hatred of all things free and equal (BBC, NHS). Yet through a campaign of full frontal nonsense they've squeezed into power like Dawn French clambering into a morph suit. You can't help but feel disillusioned when their obvious and shameful tactics (funded by a man who is so uniformly evil he eats children just for thrill of it) secured them the passageway to destroying a country that is already on the brink of collapse. But then again, given the shit-storm Labour have sat through for the last few years you can't blame everyone for their shortsightedness.

In many ways Chelsea's title win is the perfect metaphor for this. Whilst we revel in the glory of Man United being dethroned we're still celebrating the victory of a team that have bought their way to success with none of their winning squad coming from the youth ranks or even the lower leagues. At least they had the good grace to win it in a romping style though. For that I can commend them. Which leaves us with the only light at the end of the tunnel right now, good ol' Roy and his worthy bunch. I do hope they put in a good showing, it wouldn't half cheer the country right up. Whatever happens though, Fulham have been an inspiration this season and deserve their moment in the spotlight tomorrow more than any other English team.

Prince Of Persia & Football

For handing in my assignment on time I decided to reward myself with a cheap preowned game while waiting for the bus home. Unfortunately the Blockbuster I visited does that annoying thing where they have their preowned stuff outside the shop so you feel like you're rummaging through a stranger's bin more than browsing titles thanks to the looks of disgust from passing pedestrians. Although their disgust may have been that I was listening to Flying Lotus so loud the bass was giving them confusing erotic feelings for the short period in which they passed me. Anyway, I chose Prince Of Persia as it was £4.99 (cheap) and near the front of the pile. I've never played a Prince Of Persia game before because I usually buy games about shooting or football (or Viva Pinata or Pokémon but less about that eh?) but it strikes me as being very similar to Assassin's Creed. Turns out they're both made by Ubisoft Montreal. Go figure. The game starts off frustratingly in that I can't get used to the controls because they're not the same as Assassin's Creed. Things like holding B instead of A confuse the hell out of me it seems. Then there's the fact you die if you try to jump to a slightly lower platform. Not all the time though. Just some of the time. Enough to make you consider trying it when you shouldn't. Then there's the glowing ball things. I know now I'm never going to collect them all unless I get extremely bored. But with my next Swapgame being Aliens Vs Predator that could well happen. Still going to try and finish it because I don't want to add it to Rainbow Six Vegas, Red Alert 3, Viva Pinata: TIP or any of the other games I've never bothered to finish lately.

So last night in the Champion's League Man Utd went to see good ol' Bayern Munich. I don't remember when they stopped being good, when I was a kid they were terrifying team. As was Juventus. I remember that night in Barcelona when Teddy and Olé sneaked a win as well, I was just happy to be allowed to stay up and watch it. Turns out though, they are still pretty good. I know I should want Man Utd to win, but I honestly don't. I'm so fed up of idiot fans talking about how great they are with little or no recognition for the teams they're playing. Football ignorance is a sin in my eyes. I listened to the game on the radio as the idea of socialising or scouring the internet to watch it seemed unappealing. Glad to see Bayern get the result they deserved, kind of happy to see Rooney out as well. Be interesting to see how that affects Saturday's game against Chelsea. Then there was the game tonight. Barcelona destroyed Arsenal in a 2-2 draw. A sentence that makes no sense yet is completely accurate. Next week should be a cracker, might even risk socialising for that game.

Football & Musical Titbits

It's getting to that time in the season that's so appropriately known as "squeaky bum time" and of course this season it's more widespread than ever. Unless you live on the south coast. After getting their nine point deduction finalised I imagine Portsmouth's bums are done squeaking and now just weeping pooey tears of relegation. Lovely. It looks like the title is going down to the wire this year anyway, although there's still a 66% chance that the FA can reuse the ribbons from the photo as Arsenal and Man Utd are both in the running with Chelsea now. During a moment of educational procrastination I deduced that by my predictions Arsenal would sneak the title by a point from Man Utd and Chelsea would be consoled a further point behind in third. But this is coming from the man who has been baffled by the 24 hour system on his alarm clock more than once in the last month. So pinch of salt and that. Also getting closer to those Champions League quarters which I am thoroughly excited about. Not excited enough to remember if it's next week or the week after but still very excited. Messi is going to (unfortunately) destroy Arsenal and whichever poor soul gets stuck at right back defending against Robben for Man Utd will be more embarrassed than I was when I accidentally did a fart when waiting for a train a couple of weeks ago. I was pretty damn shamed by that as well. Still exciting times. Even Newcastle are a little on edge these days, although 5 points clear at the top it's ours to throw away. Or punch into our team mate's face. Whichever is more self-destructive for us really.

Got caught up in leak madness today. Not the frankly disturbing video but that of Flying Lotus and his new album. Luckily I was too caught up in the moral quagmire of whether to do it or not to realise that it was in fact not the actual record but a fake or apparently something miss tagged and generally mixed up. Better off waiting then. To fill in the gap though another song by The National has arisen, this one a studio version from the new album. It's up on the official site. It's good, not quite got the same instant impact of Terrible Love though. Also got the new album by Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip. They seem to have given up on the Radiohead samples and (in places) got into drum and bass. Which I don't mind. Lyrically it can be quite preachy at times but songs like Snob have that much more relatable subject matter of musical snobs. Kicker of a beat too. Also played on Microsoft's Game Room. I say played; loaded it up, decorated my "room", looked at the games on offer, decided it was shit and turned off the 360. Could have been a good idea but at the moment it's an absolute waste of time and money.

In The Loop, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 & FA Cup

It's the Oscars tonight which will undoubtedly be offering a vigorous industry reach-around for Bigelow's ode to testosterone or Cameron's poetic synopsis on how "WE SHOULD LOVE THE EARTH AND STUFF YEAH?". The BBC being the fantastic channel it is offered up it's nominated sweary classic In The Loop. I almost spat out my mash potato when Malcolm Tucker uttered "What is this? The shitting forecast?" in the first scene. The insults only got ruder and cruder throughout. It is essentially The Thick Of It with some added Americans but I don't think anyone's complaining. Great movie, but the only thing that could win a Brit an Oscar is a plasticine man discussing cheese with his pet dog.

After panicking about whether Swapgame would send me a game on time I woke up in a hungover daze on Saturday to find Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sitting under my letterbox. I also found some bills. But that was a whole lot less rewarding or exciting. There is one tempting comparison to make about the game. But I'll resist. So started with the single player campaign which in a nutshell is you and a small band of troops are on a mission to single handedly save the world. You do this via shooting people in the face with guns, tanks, helicopters or even by crushing a building on to them. Obviously onto the face. It all works great and everything but. It's just like Call Of Duty. I don't know which came first or whatever but, it's very similar. I tried to give the multi-player a go but I couldn't connect or I got kicked before it began. Maybe they knew I was a newbie. Still a bit of single player to go (only one twist so far) and no multiplayer but so far so good.

In between all the face shooting there's been another plethora of football on ITV. Which is obviously a mixed bag because it's great to see it on terrestrial but when did Gareth Southgate become their key pundit. At least they've not let Andy Townsend have his fucking computer, that was worse than Andy Gray and his insistence on showing us that wingers will go down the wing for EVERY FUCKING TEAM. Cheers Andy, it's bad enough hearing you take the piss out of Newcastle every time I play Fifa 10 anyway. Anyway very briefly, Portsmouth did well, Fulham v Spurs was dull as hell, Villa had one hell of a comeback after being shown up by Reading and Chelsea did just about enough in another pretty dull game. Here's to Arsenal's uphill task on Tuesday then.

Bioshock 2, Red Alert 3, Frightened Rabbit & A Bit Of Footie

One of the great minds of acting that appear in Red Alert 3 on the left there. The thing I find most amazing was that when I read on the back of the box "over 60 minutes of high def video sequences" I was disappointed. Only an hour? Genuinely want more. The game fits surprisingly well to a console with all your actions mapped to a wheel and there's shortcuts there to help build your power plants when you're scouting out with your team of attack bears. Yeah bears. There's dolphins as well. God knows what else, pretty sure there was a giant robot in one of the FMV's as well. Yet to persevere that far though. I can safely say though that this game was worth the £4 for Tim Curry's Russian accent alone. The bears are a mere bonus.

Polished off Bioshock 2 this week. Feel a bit let down by it, I played through on normal and never really struggled. The only time I died was when I forgot to use first aid. Still thoroughly enjoyed the playthrough. Highlights being the mad ambushes of splicers when collecting ADAM and wandering round the majority of the last stage with my sentry bot chums "Patches" and "Melissa". A solid sequel really. Gave the multiplayer a fair amount of time as well which was a let down. Ignoring the game crashes in the lobby which plagued me throughout it just was pointless. The servers will be empty in a few weeks I'm sure, they were hardly bustling when I was there anyway.

Two final things, got hold of the new Frightened Rabbit album which is fantastic. They sound bigger and brighter which hopefully will see them getting some decent mainstream attention. Current single Nothing Like You has hit written all over it. Also caught the League Cup final today which was both exhilarating and predictable. Vidic should have gone for the last man foul on Agbonlahor right at the start. Apart from that Man United deserved their win, Valencia and Rooney were exemplary and even Berbatov put a bit of effort in. Still wanted Villa to win mind. Oh well, maybe Arsenal have got a chance at the Premiership now. That's my last hope of Man United or Chelsea being embarrassed.