Its a late blog today which I am sorry about, but it had to be late because I had two lunches to go to. Yeah that’s right. Two. That’s how I roll ladies and gentlemen. I roll like a fat man who’s had two lunches and is going down a hill. Both were awesome and with nice people but as I haven’t got a gig tonight I will save anything interesting for tomorrow’s blog or it’ll make for dull reading. Which probably won’t be much different to normal, but I like to think I try.
Fat Tuesday was ace last night. A slightly odd crowd drawn by the lure of Mark Thomas, which seemed to consist of left wing IT workers. About 70% of the room seemed to work with computers in one form or another. The word ‘form’ here is used for type of work, not that some of them would work in the form of a squirrel or robot. Although some of them seemed so super geeky that the latter could be possible. They were, as most geeks are, very nice and very up for the gig, despite my poor attempts at binary humour and gags about them not having any friends. I do constantly find it interesting how a group of people who so herald new technology spit in the face of social networking. On my mention of Twitter there was a hiss louder than a hot air balloon deflating by a bunch of snakes. Surely being able to communicate with people all round the world is an amazing development in the world of computers? Its constant advancements are one of the best things about machine wizardry until they get around to building actual Transformers. Then I realised that its because IT people love the isolation of the job that is just them and their screen. True geeks see Facebook in the same realm as talking to real people in the face.
Well that’s what I assumed, but then yesterday I was informed of the term ORLY which means, oddly enough ‘Oh Really’ and has become popularised by a picture of an owl.
http://my.opera.com/o_rly/blog/
This saddens me on many levels. Firstly I have never been an advocator for text and web speak. Yes I smiley because sometimes it seems appropriate after making comments that require the power of sarcasm. The only way you can convey that in text is by typing said nasty statement, offending the person then smiling at them to make it ok.
‘ Maybe he dumped you because you are a complete fucking idiot. 🙂 ‘
Admittedly it didn’t work so well that time and I lost a friend. But other than smiley’s I don’t like limiting words when you have enough space and the right keys to type them all properly. It makes slightly more sense on Twitter with only 140 characters but then again you could just say less. So I felt like ‘Oh really’ could have been said instead of ORLY which just lead me to get very confused as I went to school with someone called Orly and I thought it had something to do with them.
The other thing that bothers me about it is that whatever expression owls may give I don’t think they give the one that states raised eyebrow inquisition. I think it is more often the expression that says, ‘If you come near me I will rip your eyes out with my talons for I am ever wise and I can turn my head 360 degrees like the exorcist’. Although that would end up as IYCNMIWRYEOWMTFIAEWAICTMH3LTE, which is far more confusing than ORLY. Also there are probably less times you can react to a post or statement with that unless of course you are describing how much like an owl your expression is. Anyway things like that make me fully understand why IT peoples fear the social networking. Its hard enough to have fun in binary let alone bizarre acronyms.
Every act at FT stormed it last night. Holly Walsh, Paul F Taylor and Chris Neill made up the excellent first half despite some microphone problems. I say problems but it made a sound like you were surrounded by bees everytime you shouted. This bizarrely only seemed to affect over noisy me, and not any one else. Maybe the bees were giving me a sign. Luckily one of the staff at the bar came upstairs and pressed one button and fixed it in the interval which made me feel like a technophobic moron. I often press buttons on things and it stops them working. I long for the day when after four years of setting up our gig I finally know how to make the sound system work. One day.
Then the second section was some nice new material from Benny Boot before the floor was taken by Mark Thomas who did 50 minutes of brilliant stuff about the state of the world’s economy. Its both excellent and irritating how good he is at understanding the situation and making gags about things that are anger inducing. I’m not even sure how I go about attempting to do that. I think it probably requires reading more stuff and playing less Xbox. I will start with that. Next time you see me you will be able to point your finger and say ‘Look yonder for there is the new political comedy revolutionary!’ Or more likely ‘ Look at that two lunches fat hobbit rolling down that hill at incredible speed.’
