My housemate and I are sitting out a half-year contract in our current abode. So after we realised that NTL only offered 12-month contracts, we decided not to pursue their (probably incompetent) services after all. That was despite one of their representative’s assurances that “it should be alright. We probably won’t sue you when you move out.” Yup that’s great. Thanks.

I’ve had this yearlong contract problem rise up before. On the previous occasion it was my attempt to undertake a monthly payment for unlimited Internet access with another debt-ridden and slightly less incompetent media company called Telewest. I had about seven months or so till my moving out date yet the agent seemed determined to somehow convince me to commit to 12 monthly payments. It seems that when a company finally realises that not every householder is able to undertake an entire year’s contract for a simple service, a sizable amount of money will be theirs for the taking.

It’s all due to superficial boardroom thinking of course. The fat suited ones obviously believe that such yearlong restrictions can only possibly benefit them. That same sort of thinking occurs around the probably malevolent boardroom tables of supermarket companies. They don’t like providing those smaller more useful trolleys because of their naïve belief that if you are wheeling around a big fuck-off unwieldy mother of a trolley you will want to fill it up and spend more money. What they don’t count on are the grumpy cynical bastards like me who notice their tactic and react accordingly with a steely determination to spend as little time in their money-grabbing, plasticy and hellish stores as possible. The greedy manipulative cunts that they are. But my opening gambit here is a mere digression from the main and urgently relevant topic I wish to discuss today.

Aliens.

It’s not that I believe they are out there or anything (belief is a strong word banded about far too regularly by people who could barely explain the first thing about the thing they claim to believe in; let alone the concept of belief itself) but I’ve been thinking that if there was a civilisation of sophisticated aliens who were aware of the existence of life on Earth, than they would almost definitely be lurking near us watching over our technological development. Because our world, presumably having developed independently from any outside influence, would represent an unbelievably large treasure trove for any alien species – even though they would be way in advance of ours. Just think: a detailed study of just our biology alone would produce original ideas worth huge amounts to any alien species. Our technology has been developed and invented completely autonomously - and in an alien way from their point of view - and would surely provide countless interesting and new concepts, ideas and spin off inventions.

So the aliens would wait nearby and watch, knowing we would make their alien version of a fortune (or newly conquered oil-producing middle eastern country). And if they wanted to they could make subtle corruptions to the flow of information around the globe to affect the results they desired. It would be in their interest to prolong our development and keep us from self-destruction because the further we came along the more we might have to offer. So for instance the Allied success in decoding the German’s communications during WWII may not have been as remarkable as we first thought. A subtle injection of a single but vitally significant key in some radio link somewhere could do the job of preventing the destructive evil of Nazism from prospering. However if and when we do make the final steps towards destruction, they would be forced to show themselves to save us and then to finally take their prize.

Hopefully they will not seek to conquer but to learn. One can only hope, but I wouldn’t put money on it. I wouldn’t even accept a sportsman’s bet on that one I’m afraid. And afraid could be the right word; if they are anything like fat boardroom types, they might consider our destruction to be a faster and simpler way to a quick buck. Shit the bed then. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that fat boardroom types could never achieve the necessary intelligent required to evolve into a space faring species.

The aliens could happily monitor all our privately and publicly broadcasted material and would wait until we had a reliable communications network that they would then be able to participate in easily. This of course is our Internet. So they will probably be reading this very page using their version of an immense processing machine or group of analysts along with every other page published. No doubt they will have noticed that the rapid blossoming of pornography sites reflects us human’s blatant sexual repression across the board. With the aliens superior technology they would have no problems disguising their presence effectively. It’s not that they wouldn’t leave signs of their existence it’s just that they’d make us think we were seeing something else. An entry into our orbit for instance could be made to look like an asteroid impact or a nuclear test. Craters can be faked, information manipulated. They could pluck one of our space probes out of the sky to examine and easily make it look like a reasonably explained mechanical failure.

And if one looks at the record of probes sent to Mars, just a few too many have failed. So I’m thinking that they may be hiding with Mars being used as a blind between them and us. There are a few more probes heading towards the red planet as I write this. Watch them potentially tumble into disaster this winter.

But as we develop they won’t be able to reliably keep themselves secret for too much longer. So reveal themselves they soon must. And as the Internet grows in importance and size so their power to affect themselves upon our world balloons. It is the tool they need to facilitate an increasingly greater amount of control over our information ebbs and flows, and so they can then do things that they previously could not. This should already be happening. The final pieces are surely being moved into place. Perhaps soon they will covertly approach an open minded human and they will whisk him or her off in their vehicle to converse with for a few years and learn yet more. It would be an historic and risky moment but a precursor to the huge revelation of their existence. (You read it here first folks.)

And since there is even the vanishingly tiny possibility that I’ve hit the nail on the head concerning all of this, I’m hoping they’ll see what I’ve written here and choose me. Just imagine all the women who will want to sleep with me after I return. The chat shows would be all over me – naturally I’d turn them all down. Neil Armstrong would be like a children’s television presenter when compared to my fame and world importance… HA HA HA HA HA HA… I’d have to watch my comments for fear of upsetting religious types of course. That would be hard, but I’d take the duty seriously. The Daily Mail will inevitably invent some horrible and morally reprehensible story about me, and link me with the Trotskyite movement somehow but I’d be so popular the hoarding masses would tear down their offices and lynch the meaty right-wing lunatics within (well, one can but dream). Presuming we were not the victims of an interstellar pogrom, there will be kids reading about me in a Millennia’s time and stuff. Marvellous.

Come on aliens, I must be impressing with all this. Beam me up and project me into world stardom and threesomes with beautiful women - alas I cannot afford the plastic surgery to achieve that on my own (today’s society is oh so superficial).

Bah.

I continue to wait for NTL’s response to my request to become a member of their obviously exclusive club of paying customers. So I come before you now with the intention of enlarging this current period of alternative Charging Through The Midfield entertainment. That is, with no time to surf and thus unable to proffer the usual linkage fantastico, please find this text-only entry as my gift to you. And a fine gift it very much is.

And with gifts very much at the top of my mind, I will now strive to meander my way through some sort of gift-related piece of writing.

Um… Well, here is me believing I can choose a subject matter at random and then write entertaining prose for public consumption without any prior planning or ideas. And naturally I’m failing miserably. Of course there is much I can write on the subject of gifts, but it is mightily dull fare. For instance this weekend is my housemate’s girlfriend’s birthday and the dilemma that looms (well, “looms” is a bit hyperbolic really but it makes for a more interesting read don’t you think?) before me is at what level of gift (or even mere acknowledgement) I should be striving for (too many bracketed comments in this sentence by far). By level I mean - and I ask you to at this point to correspond with me here regarding the actual boredom you experience here - this:

There is the top level of course, which is always reserved for one’s partner. This is a breaking of the bank arrangement and the gift equivalent of the US military’s DEFCOM 1. Any given person will always be prepared to strive higher and higher in order to show a loved one (who can realistically leave you at the drop of a hat should you fail to butter on enough attention) what they mean. Not preparing a gift for such an event is the personal equivalent of a state accidentally dropping its entire nuclear arms cache on another bigger and richer country containing lots of religious zealots who have just slightly different religious beliefs (massively different and it wouldn’t be so bad; it’s the ones that differ only fractionally that hate you the most). So quite bad then.

Next in the hierarchy is the parent’s gift. Instead of the sole emotional necessity to keep one’s lover close to you, here the motivation is also a moral one. It would be simply wrong not to present a gift for a parent’s birthday (unless they’re estranged of course – if so, fuck ‘em in the ear). However failure to do so would probably not result in a catastrophic abandonment by your parent of you. Although be warned that repeat offences will result in many minutes of upset pleas and questioning. Basically though, this is another must-buy gift situation. Not buying a parent’s gift is the state equivalent of an all-out trade war and diplomatic fall-out. Highly damaging, concerning, and liable to take up lots of emotional energy. But usually alright in the end with only the tiny danger of things going completely tits up should foolish action continue unabated.

Below this comes a sibling’s birthday. Some would put this close to the level of parent’s. Not me however. My brother and I have a long-standing agreement that we needn’t bother buying each other presents. We can realistically put the money to better use by purchasing for ourselves (this point drives a stake square into the philosophical heart of the matter of gift purchasing, but we’ll smoothly glide past this with only this tangent as a healthy nod toward the real cornerstone of the issue at hand). The illusion or reality of fairness is of paramount importance when it comes to relationships between siblings. So bit of an odd one this. But my brother’s existence is important to me and thus the position of this category remains high. Although I buy no gift, it is still vitally important that the situation is squared one way or another. Not buying your sibling a gift without some sort of arrangement of equality is the state equivalent of a particular Government falling out with its religious leadership. Ties usually get repaired in the end else you end up casting the whole relationship into the dustbin; but if you let it get to that stage you obviously never gave a fuck anyway so why worry?

Now come your friends. The question here is what import do you give the gifts that you receive yourself. If you buy generous gifts, you will be very likely to get equally generous presents in return. And this arrangement can be applied across almost every adjective. You go for imagination and you increase the likelihood of receiving a gift borne out of your friend’s imagination somewhere later down the line. So if you hate receiving books, don’t bloody buy them for all your friends first. Of course you want your gifts to your friends to be an embodiment of your friendship, so they are important. But failure to buy coupled with a reasonable excuse will lever you out of the situation nicely enough; not like in bastard category 1 (despite what your partner may publicly claim). Failure to buy a friend’s gift is the state equivalent of arresting and trying a foreigner from a country with an active media in dodgy circumstances and for murky reasons. You can probably get away with it then, but you will not be a popular bunny. And you’ll never hear the cunting end of it.

Another consideration must be bloody kids. The self-centred little fuckers always expect a whole array of presents when their birthday comes rolling around. And how is it possible that their day of the year appears to occur more frequently than your own? You don’t have to be a close relative or friend to feel the pressure of the present buying situation here. If somehow you’ve been dragged out to be with them at any point during their birthday week you’d better be carrying a gift, else be prepared for silent and unspoken grumbling from child and parent. Luckily however the little cunt will probably be satisfied with some cheap shit you picked up from Woolworth’s (unless you’re the child’s parent or grandparent of course. Bwahahahahaha!!!). Not bringing a gift is the state equivalent of closing the pits and putting everyone out of work. Not popular, not pleasant, but you get the feeling that you’ve done the spoilt brat a favour in the long run and everyone will forget your foul deeds soon enough.

Finally comes “accomplices”. That is the term I have decided to use and stick with it I will. Now “accomplices” represents a whole rainbow of those people in your life who are not represented in the categories above. Neighbours, work colleagues, teachers, distant relations etc. And just because this is the final and lowliest category does not mean the people within it are unworthy or not liked. This is a list of people to buy gifts for remember. Small tokens of your acknowledgement of their birthday should be enough - often expressed in the form of the classical birthday drink. Marvelous. Of course the danger is that the person you regard as nothing more than an accomplice regards you as a fully blown paid-up member of the friends category. So they’ll be pretty peeved to discover you’ve only given them an accomplice offering. Sadly where to place people in these categories is wholly down to you. Charging does not accept any responsibility for any crap you may experience should you blunder. Failure to offer up gifts to your accomplices is the state equivalent of the Government not providing a spokesperson on the BBC’s political discussion show “Question Time”. No one will care but even those lonely and sad enough to notice will forget within the hour.

There is another category. Hatred gifts. Filling a brown paper bag with dog shit, putting it on your enemy’s front step and setting it on fire before ringing the doorbell is such a hatred gift. Failure to occasionally serve up a hatred gift is the state equivalent of not declaring a pointless war in order to satisfy your arms dealer and oil baron sponsors. Everyone will like you, but you may not get very far. Think about it: arms have a shelf life of about 9 years anyway so if you dump them on a country once every decade that war is practically free. Likewise, dog shit is also free, so why not put it to good use?

For the record, my housemate’s girlfriend falls between accomplice and friend. So I shall be providing a gift this year, or at the very least a nicely written card. Not doing so would be the state equivalent of not providing a fireworks display on New Years Eve. I wouldn’t attain popularity or gratitude, but everybody will be far too intoxicated to spare even a second’s thought on the matter anyway.

Well this is pretty poor isn't it?

Whilst the Internet changes and evolves ever upwards (does evolution go upwards? Perhaps not; I think it just adapts to survive. Therefore the use of evolution as a metaphor in this case is bunk. But fuck it, I have no thesaurus to hand, it'll have to suffice) Charging Through The Midfield remains standing stock still.

And here I sit at an Internet Cafe in Tottenham Court Road, central London. I have none of my Favourites to click onto; no time to surf aimlessly through mountains of utter shitness in order to find a tiny percentage of worthy links. I find myself being required to delete most of my emails because I have no hard-drive to store my messages and attachments.

I find myself losing the thread my mind is working through due to the conversations of those around me: the endless explanations to those members of the computer illiterate population echo up the isles of this place. As I write I become wary that someone could be reading this over my shoulder and becoming offended.

Fuck 'em.


And why is this all happening?

Because NTL are cunts.

We called them to get a phone line installed (I do find it ironic that in order to get a phone line installed one must use a phone line) and they said it would take them a week simply to get our details onto their computer system. Sorry but what century is this again? Three weeks later and we haven't received any correspondence from them. I'm not optimistic. A colleague of mine used to get cable through NTL. He cancelled his account with them, stopped payment and asked NTL to pick up the box. They didn't bother. Being the honest sort, he phoned them several times more to remind them that he still had their equipment and was still recieving a signal. It took them three years to make it round to his door in West London during which time he enjoyed free television. We're only in our place for a few months so I'm wondering if I'll ever get a phone line in which to surf and write these entries. Anyway, I'm not the honest sort so I comfort myself with the knowledge that we are getting a free NTL service through a chipped cable box... In fact we have two, such is the shitness of their staff in collecting out of contract equipment.

Do I worry about publishing this fact? Well, no frankly. Even if this entry was spotted and reported to NTL in Winchester (for that is where they are I believe - at least the technical gubbins is anyway) it'll probably take them several years to get up off their lazy arses to call their lawyers.

In another sense of course all this laziness from a cable TV company is quite admirable. They are a company collectively acting like a couch potato. Perhaps a few more Internet Service Providers will start doing something similar. When you call up for technical advice, they could start telling you everything you need to know, but about two thirds of the way through might begin to speak really slowly and then totally stop for a couple of minutes before finally finishing.

Or something like that anyway.

I would write a lot more on this subject and convert this mediocre entry into something more fullfilling, however I remind you that I am in central London and need to get back to my abode before the rush hour takes off. And that is the worst thing about leaving my home to surf the net.

I know who I blame: the fucking bastards that they are.

Bah. Had I attended a tarot card reader recently, I would surely have overturned several death cards. I have moved and all has changed. Hence the utter lack of activity here in the past weeks. Please be assured that this blog will return to its usual service as soon as I find a desk on which to place my computer (and we set up a phone line in which to enable Internet gubbins).

Again, bah.

Play Cunt Trumps

It is the tinkering that always gets us in the end. After finding Try2Hack, which challenges one to hack through increasingly difficult levels of login pages, and having reached the dizzying heights of level 3 (which would be quite shit excepting for the fact that this was a first ever attempt at any sort of hacking), this writer achieved a level of computing confidence more akin to brazen arrogance.

Sad computer geek makes lava lamp casing (which does look quite cool though).

And so it came to pass that seconds later, when a lovely G-Force graphics card displayed itself in my hand, excessive driver software fiddling became a destiny. The results were as inevitable as a Daily Mail leader column the day after Prince William had met a young asylum seeker for dinner and a friendly chat.

Had it been capable of it, my monitor would have wept. I had transformed it from a displayer of wonderful and curious images to a conveyor of black nothingness and doom.

And thus so I did rip my hair...

Difficult bastard of a game.

Hence I come before you now in an all-new super humbled form. Behind me are the days of writing in a style that is somehow ignorant of the concept of the first person. I see now that such an approach is wholly inconsistent with the ideals of a Weblog, which is after all the ultimate personal publishing tool. To exclude words such as "I", "me" and "myself" was of course wonderfully ironic and novel. And actually, yes, it was quite good wasn't it?

Fuck it.

Ah-ha. This hosting business is coming together. After suffering the indignity of being an advertising space every time the hosting site let the site down, another more reliable host was sought. And thus we came to where we are now. And one result is that a second musical composition of mine is available to you now...

Download all 7.8Mb of the mp3 Unleashed Radioactive Terror Man.

Talking of downloads: do you have the time, inclination or bandwidth to download a 328Mb file? If so, Rockstar Games are giving you the opportunity to download the original Grand Theft Auto for zilch (apart from the incurrance of a multi-pound phone bill). They've even optimised it for your sparkling new computer.

If not, let Charging take you by the hips and spin your body around until your nose points towards these nice smelling online games:

The hardest geeky game on the Internet: Who Wants To Be A Squillionaire? ....test your Spectrum game knowledge.

More fun is to be had at Snake Jump. Fine over-addictive jollity.

And the beautifully crafted Butch Mushroom. And please do not think that this means that mushrooms aren't disgusting obscene objects of putrid and disgust. Anything that can be so common and yet so foul practically disproves the existence of a God who it is supposedly omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Still, quite a good game though.

But don't get like this.....


.....although this invention suggests that it is our destiny.....


Today is Friday 13th folks. The day the author of this site was painfully pushed into existence. And here's a news story on said occassion.

Charging Through The Midfield has set up its own hosting recently, which means that any piccies you email in can be posted, plus it means you get to hear some music that the writer of this site has composed...

Download an mp3 of Morning Over Chaconne Valley (1Mb). More to come soon.

All this probably means that you will see lots more little boxes containing an x. This isn't because hosting is less reliable, but rather because there has never been a recorded instance of trouble-free computer tinkering. In actual fact, there is a faint hope that all this gubbins should improve the service. Sadly however, such reasoning is wildly optimistic. Bah.

If you want your computer to do all that green Matrix type stuff, go here.

Sign the petition to have London's tubes running till 3am at weekends. What with Red Ken taking over in the next few weeks, London's Underground is primed for changes; although whether it is realistically going to happen is a whole other affair considering the state the underground system is in. But sign away my friends.

The 25 Lamest Superheroes Ever

This optimistic site asks: "Why keep your credit card numbers to yourself, when you can let everyone see them? No other website will give you the chance to show everyone your credit card numbers (including your pin number).....Register now and you will also get to see your details animated to the theme tune of Magnum P.I."

Two players - one with the keyboard the other with the mouse - can have a thrashingly good time with Spastic Chess. Else one player can make good the name by setting left hand against right. The excitement.