#69: Earthquake

I was just casually browsing http://www.wowbash.com (excellent site, by the way) and suddenly my monitors started shaking, along with my desk and the walls in my bedroom. It lasted about 7-8 seconds and I wondered what in the blue hell was going on. I thought I was going crazy, but then I alt+tabbed to IRC and everyone in the UK had suddenly become active - “anyone just feel that?” “what the hell” “was that an earthquake?” etc.

Various links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm
http://earthquakepredictionbytiempe.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ous/STORE/X2008nyae/ciim_display.html
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2008nyae.php

That was awesome. I’m glad I was still awake. ^^

#68-2: Liverpool

During my time at University in Liverpool, I didn’t witness much violence at all. Despite the bad reports that you sometimes hear about big cities, Liverpool was never that bad a place to go out. Of course there were incidents, but they were usually minor, and I never experienced any such trouble myself. This may be because I tend to keep myself to myself, but I never felt uncomfortable or unsafe when I was out in the town.

There is a big club called “Nation” in Wolstenholme Square. It’s most well-known as being the home of “Cream”, Liverpool’s famous nightclub which closed several years ago. There are still other events going on there, and during my three years I went to a few drum & bass nights there. They were always good fun, everyone got on (mostly because they were all on ecstasy and too busy gurning and hugging each other to do anything else). There used to be an event every Wednesday called “Medication”, which offered cheap entry for students, loud house music and many single people for the night. I went quite a few times - it wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I like a night out as much as anyone else.

One particuar time, my housemate Paul’s younger brother came over to visit from Ireland. Paul, wanting to show him a good night out, got us all to go to Medication for the evening. We had a good evening, but on leaving at 2am (closing time), Paul got into an argument with the bouncers. He tried to go out of the door holding a bottle of WKD in each hand, and the bouncers (rightfully) stopped him, saying he couldn’t do so. The corridors for leaving were very narrow, and Paul asked if he could step outside quickly to finish his bottles and clear the corridor. The bouncers were indignant that he couldn’t, and Paul downed the remains of one bottle and then proceeded to argue with the bouncers. They forced his bottle off him and pushed him out of the door, where he proceeded to noisily remonstrate with them about the injustice of them taking a drink off him that he had paid for. He asked several times to see the manager, only to be met with apathy and silence.

I’ll admit it now, he was being a bit of a tool. I understood where he was coming from, but the bouncers were only doing their job and making sure that he didn’t go and smash the bottle over someone’s head. Obviously it seems like a good idea to argue when you’re drunk, however.

The bouncers grabbed Paul and dragged him to the other side of a set of security railings, which are put there to keep the crowds back from the exits. There were lots of people around as it was kicking out time, and the scuffle didn’t go unnoticed. An official-looking woman who seemed to be the manager had appeared at the exit, and Paul promptly escaped the bouncers’ grasp and went up to question her on why he couldn’t finish his bottle. He’d barely got two words out before two bouncers grabbed him again, forced him back to the other side of the security railing… and then began to throw punches at him. The crowds backed off and there was a lot of comotion - girls screaming “get off him!” and many people just watching and wondering what on earth Paul had done to deserve this.

He went down to the floor almost instantly, as the bouncers were big and he didn’t really stand a chance. His brother saw this and ran over quickly, punching one bouncer and throwing him backwards, but he took a surprise punch from the other bouncer and hit the floor himself, at which point yet another bouncer ran in, and they both started kicking what I can only describe as seven shades of shit out of them both. I like to think that I’m able to look after myself, and I won’t deny that I was very tempted to jump in to try and help Paul out, but upon seeing the kicking they were receiving, I really wasn’t about to throw myself into it when I wasn’t part of what was going on in the first place.

This all happened very quickly, and was probably over in ten seconds or so. Before this happened though, one of the bouncers grabbed Paul’s bottle, and broke it over his brother’s head. I’d seen enough by this point and I think the crowd had too - the jeers and shouting had become absolutely deafening, and the bouncers backed off and went back to the door of the club, taking a lot of verbal abuse from the irate crowd. Paul and his brother managed to pick themselves up and were in a bad way. Paul’s teeth were wonky, his nose was bleeding and his face was red from the kicks he’d taken - his brother was bleeding profusely from the side of his head where the bottle had struck and he too was nursing a lot of bruises. There was a police van just round the corner and we told them about everything - a few policemen got out and started the questioning the bouncers and the crowd, and the driver gave us all a lift to the hospital.

I don’t think anything ever came of this in a legal sense, but it was an eye-opener for me. I’d never seen violence that bad in real life before, and again I was quite shocked by it all. One thing I will note is that when the fight originally started, one of the bouncers shouted “watch for the camera” as they ran over to Paul - it’s quite clear that the bouncers watched exactly where they started the trouble because they knew they could be caught on CCTV if they did it in certain areas. It’s the age-old “give them a kicking down a back alley” style.

Needless to say, I think that the bouncers in both these stories are pathetic, spineless police force rejects who have a god complex and a serious problem when it comes to abuse of pseudo-authority. I won’t say that Paul wasn’t inviting them to start something with him, but the use of a bottle is never, ever necessary.

#68-1: Hertford

During the summer before starting university, my friends and I were looking for some excitement. We’d all been 18 (and hence old enough to drink) for quite a while, and going out in the same old places had become rather boring - particularly when you consider that we’d actually been doing it illegally since we were 16 anyway.

For some reason, we decided to go out in Hertford, which is the county town of Hertfordshire (duh) and about a 20-minute train journey from Hitchin station. We arrived there one evening (it may have been a Friday night, I can’t remember) and set about having a few drinks - the town was quite busy and we had a good time, ending up in “Zero’s” bar at about 11pm. The place was closing shortly and we were told that we could go downstairs to their club (”Sub Zero’s”) if we paid, as it was open later. We went down, and continued the evening. The place was a bit of a dive, but the music was playing and it wasn’t too bad. Matt and Craig (my male company for the evening) were talking about Matt’s girlfriend, Jo (who was also there) in a friendly manner and there was some goading and larking about on their part as they discussed all this.

As a part of all this, Craig got Matt in a friendly headlock and ruffled his hair. At this point, everything went a bit crazy. Three bouncers rushed over to split them up, then forced each of their arms up their backs and frog-marched them to the exit. I rushed after them, realising what had happened, and tried to explain to the bouncers that they’d made a mistake. Craig and Matt were also doing the same at this point, but of course nobody was listening. They got to the top of the stairs and were escorted to the front entrance and pushed out. Craig turned round and raised his hands, saying “whoa, whoa, you’ve got it all wrong mate”… at which point the bouncer punched him in the face. He didn’t just do it once either, he gave him three or four hard punches - made Craig’s nose bleed but didn’t manage to knock him down. I watched the whole thing happen in astonishment, and when we were standing out on the street afterwards, Matt was full of righteous indignation and called the police.

We went to court on two separate occasions for that incident, but in the end the judge didn’t convict him due to lack of evidence on the CPS’ part. The CCTV footage from outside the club was never obtained because it conveniently went “missing” (funny that) and there just wasn’t enough other evidence to find the bastard guilty. He was suspended from work for six months or so while the court proceedings were going through, and I hope with every fibre of my being that he sat at home and worried about going to jail for a long time. I’m not sure if he still works there, mainly because we’ve never been back.

#68: Bouncer Experiences

Unfortunately I’m not talking about psybnc, as you might expect from a geek’s blog… although, for the record, I dislike psybnc. I’m actually talking about “door staff”, colloquially known and hereafter referred to as “bouncers”.

An online acquaintance of mine had a bad experience with some bouncers last night, and wrote about it on Facebook. I was pretty shocked after reading his note, because it described violent episodes and total lack of reason on the bouncers’ part when he hadn’t done anything to provoke their ire. When I thought about it though, I realised that it’s not actually that uncommon. I’ve had two violent experiences with bouncers in different areas of the country, and although it wasn’t me that was involved in the violence on either occasion, I remember them both as clear as day. My next two posts are going to details these experiences, in sympathy with someone else who didn’t deserve what happened to him.

#67: Tuesday

It’s Tuesday, and this is awesome!

(Yes, I’m a little bit bored in the last half-hour of work, and I don’t have a lot to write about.)

Tuesdays are actually my favourite day of the week. I go to the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and so I don’t get home until later on, and then have to make dinner and don’t usually get to sit down and relax until about 8pm, which is nasty. On Tuesdays, however, I get home at about 6pm and I can immediately start my relaxation. Win!

I am listening to my recommended radio station on last.fm, and it’s actually pretty good - I’ve heard a few things that I shall be following up on. If you fancy listening too… click!

#66: meh.

I’m absolutely fine, I just wanted to post a picture of one of my new ThinkGeek t-shirts (-:

#65: Untitled

It’s blog o’clock.

After having made myself ache by playing with my powerball so much, I decided to learn to start it by hand (as this is apparently what the pros do). It was quite easy once I worked out how, with the help of an excellent YouTube video. Don’t mind the dude’s cheesy voiceover, just watch exactly how he holds it and what he does and copy it. You’ll get there soon enough.

Unfortunately, I bottled out of deleting my Myspace account last week. I never use the thing to edit or do anything with my profile, but I’ve realised that I’m far too nosy to get rid of one of the only methods I have of looking at photos of old friends. I am sorry to have to admit this, but it seems that Myspace has beaten me. Perhaps in the future I will be able to break the hold it has over me!

I have been working at home a lot more recently, I have to say that it’s absolutely awesome. I also got a substantial pay rise from my boss, which I was very pleased about. To celebrate, I bought myself a nice shiny new 22″ monitor to put on my desk at home, so I now have an awesome dual desktop setup going on. I also paid substantially less than the price Amazon are currently quoting - something more in the region of £150, which was very, very reasonable. The monitor itself is fantastic - picture quality is superb (particularly in World of Warcraft, which is absolutely stunning at 1680×1050), it looks brilliant on the desk and it makes doing all my work a whole lot more pleasurable.

I transferred my level 61 alliance rogue over to Kloopy’s server recently, after he got back into playing WoW regularly. I’m just about to ding level 65, and it’s all going very well so far. I’m using Jame’s Alliance Levelling Guide, which has got mixed reviews from people in the past, but I have to say that I find it very easy to follow, and I’ve managed to get four whole levels in not a great deal of time. I’ve not played an Alliance character in ages but it’s all slowly coming back to me. Playing on a PvE server is also very different to the PvP servers I’m used to, and I find being able to level without the threat of being ganked to be a dream come true.

I also ordered myself an 8-bit tie the other day. They look great - see for yourself! (Kloopy and I realised afterwards that we probably should have taken the photo while not staring directly at the sun, however)