We’re not really here. We’re in the past. In Episode 37 of Rum Doings we’re speaking to you from history. We’re not discussing whether organic produce is worth the premium for hard-working families.

Can you still lie in? Should God save the Queen? Then something I can’t bring myself to even type. But we can all see who really has the problem, Nick.

Once Nick stops upsetting John with horrible comments (surely this time he’ll garner complaints – come on people, complain), he then criticises John’s job. Then criticises his washing machine.

Why are John and Nick still friends, despite everything? What’s the secret to our parody of success?

Nick needs some suggestions for stopping the nasty boys in his neighbourhood on their noisy bikes. John tries to defend GPs. We then argue for more traffic wardens, and Traffic Politeness Officers. And the taint of BMWs.

Then we ponder the great debate of our time: how do you deal with a fly in your cake cabinet in Starbucks? And when should you sue a Starbucks?

Pencils, handwriting, typing, we cover all the big issues.

Then the tale of when Chris Eubank crushed John’s hand, and his ensuing madness.

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You may have been following the saga of Rev. Stuart Campbell Vs. Benchmark Reviews. You may now be wondering why Stu’s site is dead. Here’s the story.

Someone on Stu’s forum spotted a review on the tech site for a chair. A chair called the Herman Miller Embody. It costs $1200, and will apparently cure world hunger. Large sections of the review read an awful lot like a press release. It was filled with the sorts of daft, exaggerated nonsense that wouldn’t make sense for a reviewer to write. Spurious claims of medical benefits, peculiar puff about its design. Stu wrote about this. People who left comments asking about this found their words were instantly deleted. Stu, who then tried to leave another comment asking why, found himself IP banned from the site. As in, he wasn’t even allowed to look at the site from his computer.

Stu updated about this on his blog. He wrote explaining what was happening, and included some evidence that demonstrated that the text on the Benchmark Review site was absolutely directly from press releases and statements made by Herman Miller. Benchmark responded to this by a) changing those passages that Stu pointed out (then declaring that they’d always been that way), and b) published Stu’s home address and phone number on their forum.

Absolutely extraordinary behaviour. And not, you might consider, the behaviour of a site that had made a legitimate mistake. Were RPS to – and this is the only way I think it could ever happen – accidentally quote a statement from a press release and forget to put it in quotes and cite it, we’d respond to this being pointed out by editing the article so it was correct and saying, “Oops, sorry about that.” We sometimes quote press releases for games that have just been announced, because no independent information is available. So we’d say, “According to the Shootybang VII press release, the game will offer, ‘The greatest shootybangs gaming has ever witnessed.’” Clearly we’d not make such a claim ourselves, but I don’t know, let’s say I had a cold and was attacked by a pirate, I might accidentally forget to put the quote marks in? It seems unlikely. I think it would be reasonably difficult to write an eight page review, and forget every time.

So Stu followed this up, pointing out these changes, and linking to evidence that they had been changed. Around this time I spotted something strange. A huge number of words from this extraordinarily long review for a very expensive chair appeared on another site. A site called Smart Furniture that sold the chair. Entire paragraphs were identical on both sites, rearranged into a different order, and occasionally with tweaks made, but otherwise the exact same copy. So I assumed that there must be a source document, the M to these two sites’ Matthew and Mark. I wrote to Smart asking if they could send me the press releases on which their copy was based. They wrote back telling me it was all their original work. Which seemed more strange.

I wrote back to them asking if they knew Benchmark had lifted it all for their “review” of the chair. I never heard back from Smart Furniture.

Then it got more weird. The Benchmark review, with even more unacknowledged tweaks and changes as the author silently conceded that other parts of the original text weren’t written by him, had some new advertising. Throughout all eight pages are adverts for the Herman Miller Embody chair, available from Smart Furniture.

So now you have a site maintaining it publishes independent reviews, using thousands of words of copy that’s also used on a store selling the product, on which the store advertises the product being reviewed. On no level does it look good. Now, it’s very possible for a site reviewing something to also advertise the same product. Say RPS were to review Shootybang VII, and at the same time the game’s publisher, EvilCorp, had negotiated an ads deal with our ads people, it’s possible that a Shootybang VII review could awkwardly be accompanied by adverts for the same game. Clearly that always looks a bit odd, but as it happens it’s difficult for a site to be dodgy enough to arrange it. Ads are worked out often months in advance, and of course they aren’t specific to one page of the site – the Shootybang VII ad looks less weird on the page talking about our favourite knitting tips. But were our review to contain vast numbers of words identical to those of the Shootybang VII website where you could buy the game, I think it would be very reasonable to start asking some serious questions.

But apparently if you ask those questions, Benchmark get a little cross. Beyond the disgusting behaviour of publishing Stu’s address and phone number, they’ve now started throwing out DMCA takedown claims in every possible direction. And unfortunately most ISPs respond to such claims, no matter how erroneous, by instantly capitulating and removing the site from the internet immediately. So that’s why, if you were wondering, Stu’s blog is currently gone. Hopefully it will be up and running again shortly.

The DMCA claims are completely false. Stu used a screenshot of the Benchmark logo, edited down, to illustrate the piece: perfectly legitimate. (Even the neurotic Google recognises the need to use a Google logo in a story about Google.) And he quoted text from the reviews (oddly enough in quote marks and correctly cited, which perhaps confused Benchmark and made them dizzy), which is absolutely allowed and in no way a violation of copyright.

So if you want to find Stu’s articles on the subject, they are, for now, here.

Welcome to our web of lies. Become entwined in Episode 36‘s multitude of untruthful deceit. Be deceived by our woven evil. Then listen as John’s house falls down.

And while pictures are appearing, here’s that bench:

Then, pear/blueberry cider lengthily discussed, we get around to reading out some of the last million years of emails. And you kept telling us to do this, so you can’t complain.

Does Coke taste better out of a glass? What are the odds of sitting in the United States? Should we stop whining?

Is Nick’s science dodgy? Is that a microphone, or are you just pleased to be recording a podcast? Is Rupert Murdoch Australian? Is Nick safe in your dreams?

Is there a more awful hairdressers name than this?

We then sidetrack into discussing Richard Herring’s As It Occurs To Me, at some length. Then when the name-dropping begins, Douglas Adams.

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It’s a back to basics, good old fashioned family values 35th episode of Rum Doings. Just Nick, John, a microphone and a disgusting bottle of rum. And this week we’re not discussing whether FIFA should have to bring in the rule that they should have the cameras in the goal posts to see if the goals are scored instigated.

We bring you some genuinely excellent news from Sainsbury’s (which apparently might be quite old news), and then move on to talk about John’s weekend break, and the joys of a British B&B. This of course involves tales of ketchup and coffee.

We talk about awful people, and responses to cold callers. Nick predicts the end-times, which brings us to the stories about the BP methane bubble. And where exactly does oil come from?

We finish by talking about Raoul Moat, although this was recorded before Cameron made his remarkable comments about feeling no sympathy.

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“As far as I can see, it is absolutely clear, that Raoul Moat is a callous murderer. Full stop, end of story. And I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man. There should be sympathy for his victims, and for the havoc he wreaked in that community. There should be no sympathy for him.”

Just to be clear, obviously Moat’s crimes were terrible. And his victims of course deserve abundant sympathy. The “wave of public sympathy” to which Cameron refers is the much publicised, and obviously ludicrous, Facebook groups in which people are supporting Moat as a hero. No matter what the circumstances of someone’s life, perhaps it’s reasonable to suggest that at the point they start murdering people one should cross them off the hero list. Unless they’re Batman.

However, the idea that in not supporting/endorsing a murderer’s actions one must backflip to the opposite extreme, and exhibit no sympathy at all, is quite extraordinary. It is, in fact, inhuman.

Whether Moat became so awful after an idyllic or abusive childhood and life isn’t really relevant. Although the chances are that someone who was so frequently in trouble with the police, someone capable of assaulting children, someone whose response to a girlfriend’s leaving him is to attempt to murder her and her new partner, did not have a great life. People don’t wake up one morning and think, “I’ll be evil from now on. Muah ha ha.” But of course many people have shitty lives, and they certainly don’t go on to be the sort of person Moat was. Nothing, at any point, excuses such actions by an adult. Other than, of course, mental illness.

But why does any of this exclude Moat from sympathy? He certainly has my sympathy. To be so broken, so damaged, so pathetic – that earns my sympathy.

I don’t doubt for a moment that Moat could have been quite a different person if given a different life. It appears even he was conscious of this, the latest stories revealing his own denied requests for a psychiatrist. He told social workers,

“The more you block things out, the more numb you become in the heart you know. You get to a point where happiness to you is just like, you know, neither here nor there.”

I feel sympathy for him for having felt this way.

The most remarkable thing to come out of the Moat story has been the response from the policeman who was shot. David Rathband, likely to be permanently blind after being shot in the face, said something extraordinary.

“I bear no malice towards the man who shot me, but now wish to move on with my life.”

To have this response highlights the grotesque nature of Cameron’s remark.

It’s much easier to demonise a murderer than to consider them a human. To cast them as a one-dimensional monster lets us feel much safer about ourselves. To consider otherwise is to consider that it could have been us. Because, of course, it could have.

To reject sympathy is so horribly dangerous. Perhaps it’s partly because so many people conflate sympathy with endorsing something. Anyone suggesting that Moat’s actions were in any way valid is clearly ridiculous. But to sympathise has nothing to do with such suggestions. It is, instead, to recognise Moat as another human being. When we stop recognising people as human beings we enter into a dark and dangerous territory. One our Prime Minister is suggesting we should all be in.

The word “addicted” was certainly tempting enough. And I stress, I find the presence of such advertising annoying, and recognise how dumb I am to exacerbate the situation by deliberately letting my cursor near them, but despite this I do anyway. However, I rather loved the result this time. Click on it for a clearer version.

It’s undeniably extremely targeted advertising.

Which means, of course, staying in a B&B. The Great British bed and breakfast can be a mixed fare, but my previous experience was superb. Staying near Malvern, at the Severnside B&B. An amazingly friendly place, great room, and remarkable breakfasts, it was so pleasant as to have me forget the normal nature of staying away in the UK. As the name implies, it’s right on the bank of the Severn, an extremely pretty place, and not very expensive at all. So hopes and expectations were high for our visit to Woolacombe’s… well, let’s call it Ploppytops to avoid Google results.

Ploppytops looks more like a motel from the outside than a B&B. It’s very wheelchair friendly, but unfortunately is also very dog friendly. Meaning that stupid yappy creatures can appear at any moment.

The lady running the place is peculiarly direct. Orders are barked at you, rather than suggested. “You will pay now,” I was instructed, after I’d collected my key. “This is YOUR room,” she informed Laura as we reached it, apparently our preferences not of interest to her.

The bed on which this post is being typed appears to have deliberately placed the mattress springs on the outside – an odd design choice, and one currently assaulting my elbows. The other bed in my room (B&Bs cannot tolerate the notion that one person may want a room for himself) is more comfortable, but makes noises akin to explosions with every movement, including blinking.

The shower in my room made me laugh out loud. Both days. Turned up to full, and the shower head adjusted to the exciting sounding “JET”, I watched as it dribbled out a few droplets of water. After standing under it for about five minutes I began to detect the first signs of feeling wet. My own surgery on the thing achieved what was barely enough lukewarm water to wash under, and yet mine was the fortunate shower.

Laura’s room had a really rather exciting en suite. Seemingly designed for disabled guests, it was a “wet room”, decorated in tempting red emergency pull cords, where the shower is not segregated from the rest of the ablutive porcelain. When she learned that turning the shower to ‘hot’ caused all the lights in the room to dim, it became a slightly less appealing prospect to stand beneath.

Perhaps the most peculiar feature is the omnipresence of air fresheners. Each is approximately ten inches tall, featuring a single green glowing eye on the front, appearing in every room, on every shelf, and even nailed to the walls in the corridors. There were three in the dining room. And each, every minute or so, lets out an exhausted asthmatic cough, along with a faint puff of the dusty aroma that hangs permanently in the air. They stand like shrunken, white monoliths, their staring green eyes watching you in every inch of the building, monitoring your every movement, and huffing out their paltry breaths to conceal any odours you might emit.

After the Severnside’s wonderful home-cooked feast, my hopes for breakfast were perhaps unfairly buoyant, but enough of this building’s sagging 70s weirdness had led me to expect otherwise. What arrived was a patriotic tribute to all that is British about accommodation. A thick and utterly enormous rasher of unchewable bacon, a single sad tomato warmed to the middle, a small puddle of baked beans, one thin, peculiarly grey sausage, and a few almost-cooked slices of new potato, which the menu had boldly chosen to call “hash browns”. And when I turned the egg upside down, I regretted what I’d consumed so far. This was accompanied by slices of ice cold toast that had been prepared in such a way as to turn them to explosive powder when bitten.

But the most important feature of breakfast was the orange juice. As all British people know, freshly squeezed orange juice is a potion of such rarity that it must be treasured and served only in the tiniest of tumblers, lest a giddy guest imbibe too much and become quite out of control with tingling excitement. However, when your thimbles of liquid have been decanted from a long-life box of reconstituted watery rationing, it screams miserliness and disgust with your guests’ existence. “You don’t deserve my precious ASDA Smart Price orange juice from concentrate! But I will allow you a single sip.”

Of course, decaf was not an option. In fact, so perplexing was my query as to whether they had non-instant decaf available that even after explaining it twice, politely and with a smile saying that it was no matter, our host returned and interrogated me a third time to find out what mystical beverage I had tried to describe. “What do you normally drink?” she surprised me with, appearing from behind. “Decaf that isn’t instant,” I said for the third time. Apparently this time it penetrated. “No, we don’t have that,” was the scolding reply, spoken as she turned to walk away.

(However, to give the place its dues, there was a full, squeezy bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup available to the dining room.)

Such places, with its wonky paintings of beaches on the walls, piles of pamphlets for what local attractions offered two years ago, and 70s décor, don’t seem to be the sorts of accommodation that might have flat screen televisions in every room. A strange anomaly, this modern feature stands out peculiarly against paisley curtains and orange walls. In fact, there’s a very odd theme of misplaced opulence throughout, in striking contrast with the beds, carpets and attitude. The guest lounge looks like a room from a futuristic hotel, an astonishingly vast wide screen hi-def television dominating one wall, the room lined with rich, comfortable black leather couches, looking brand new. Only the bookshelf of Clive Cussler novels and pile of decomposing board games in one corner give the game away.

And outside the building, in the front car park, are parked two red vehicles, one a vaguely trendy useful looking car, the other a sporty, sleek and expensive looking two-seater, each new, each emblazoned with the “PLOPPYTOPS” name across windscreens, and bonnets and side panels. Their existence makes so little sense that one can only stare at them and blink in confusion. Are they sponsored… by themselves? Did they win the lottery, and decide to live out their dream of running a B&B?

Perhaps it is good for one to encounter the traditional British hoteliers (putting the hostile into hostelry). It keeps one humble, hungry, and reminded of the importance of orange juice.

Welcome to Rum Doings 34, what must be the most interrupted podcast of all the podcasts that we have podcasted. This week we’re not talking about whether CCTV cameras have made our lives safer.

Imbibed is a black cherry soda, which we risk drinking without protective goggles. And then within mere minutes the first phonecall arrives. And a cat.

We attempt to explain BP’s real crime, and then the phone rings yet again. Listen in to Nick’s conversations! Be slightly bemused by what’s going on! Don’t call John’s mum!

A period of no interruptions features chat about Richard Herring, ordering wine, and ketchup. And then there’s a knock at the front door.

We then sniff a baby. Who becomes our very special guest, chattering away into the microphone, so quietly we couldn’t hear it ourselves at first.

There’s some actual content when we talk about DVDs, piracy, and DRM. And why some businesses insist on telling their shareholders how badly they’re doing.

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Clearly I’m aware of the irony of a critic talking about the criticisms of their critiques, but as much as this may be, it’s still interesting to think about whether comments can affect me.

(I want to add that I’m mostly talking about comments on reviews, and the like. Comments threads on places like Rock, Paper, Shotgun tend to be much more about a regular community discussing the topic, rather than only people popping in to tell the site why the piece sucked/was great.)

I’ve flipped back and forth on reading comments. I’ve gone through times when I read none at all – I send the review to the editor, they’re happy with it, edit it, and it gets published – so as far as my job is concerned, I’ve done what I’m paid for. Then I go completely the other way and read all the comments, and respond to lots of them, sometimes getting involved in heated discussions. The latter I finally learned, years ago, is never worthwhile, and is something I’ve at last taught myself not to do. People who want to call you names are welcome to, and attempting to reason with them is almost never going to end in satisfaction. My compromise, currently, is to read them unless they’re boring, and to respond to genuine enquiries.

The larger dilemma is working out whether it’s worth caring what they say. I’m hypocritical here. If they’re positive, I take the compliment, enjoy the reaction, and feel good about myself. If they’re negative, I do my best to ignore them, dismiss their thoughts, and rely on the comments of those who commissioned and accepted the work. Which is a tad selective to say the least. And such an attitude of course risks refusing to take on board appropriate criticism and thus not improving.

It’s interesting for me to think about whether this affects me. Anything I write on the internet is inevitably going to draw some negative responses. Even if I write something that is widely praised, that will always then draw in a few who wish to denounce it in reaction, and only more loudly explain why it means I deserve to be tortured. However, things aren’t inevitably going to draw positive responses. When they do I feel pleased and fortunate. But of course the regular response to enjoying something online is to think, “I enjoyed that,” and then water the tomatoes. People are far more likely to complain that compliment. It’s perfectly normal, if somewhat demoralising.

I think I’m reasonably good at laughing off the more stupid and cruel comments. And there’s an awful lot of them. Someone disagreeing with me, and being cross because their perspective wasn’t represented, is perfectly understandable. Wishing my parents dead because of that possibly isn’t. That they tend to be spelt as if typed by a severely mentally ill walrus also makes it a little easier to glide past them. Being a snob helps.

I wrote a piece for RPS on Friday that was born out of playing Singularity for review, and a couple of silly, unimportant things making me think about daft things lots of games do. So I wrote a sort of ‘The Rules For Games’, in the form of Dos and Don’ts. (It was funny to see how many people spotted Singularity as the inspiration. And also funny to see how many people were certain it was influenced by other games I’ve never played. And certainly only a couple of them were inspired by Singularity – most were from multiple sources.) It was written not as a manifesto for the future of gaming, but more as an excuse to make a bunch of jokes, and complain about silly things in games. My aim was to make people laugh, both in recognition and at the gags.

I imagined it may get a few people throwing in similar rules of their own – on RPS a comedy article doesn’t tend to get that many comments, but I figured this one would pick up 30 or 40 on a Friday evening. It’s at around 300 at this point. Which is fun. The vast majority of which are people contributing their own rules, and then others discussing them. It’s representative of why RPS commenters can be so great – big, vibrant threads packed with ideas and sensible discussion. Very few gaming sites can claim such an audience response. There’s also a fair old number of people cross with the article for arguing for something they don’t want. Which is fair enough. However, I don’t think they need worry quite as much as they are that all developers will suddenly scrap their plans and do what I tell them. Even though they obviously should.

However, buried deep within the thread comes a really astonishingly cross comment. What’s perhaps disturbing is not that someone was rude about me – whatever, people are rude about me an awful lot – but that this person is real, and thought this something reasonable to express. I worry about him. Anyway, here it is:

Carrera says: July 3, 2010 at 7:20 pm
God, I hope no developer is dumb enough to listen to this crap. I know you write this shit to get hits on the website but this sort of exploitative journalism makes me sick. You’re as bad as BP and I hope you rot in hell.

I mean, that’s pretty offensive. I’m FAR worse than BP.

It’s ten short, which is where you come in. Can we complete this?

I’m sure many have done it before. There’s probably a website devoted to the subject, and someone else writing slash fiction about the letters involved. But rather than search for that and crib, it’s more fun to do it ourselves. So any suggestions for the missing letters are gratefully received. As are suggestions for better words. L and Y are particularly unsatisfying at the moment. Non-English words are perfectly good, so long as they’re in common English usage.

I’ll edit this post as suggestions come in. When it’s finished, we’ll all win a magic prize.

A: aether
B: bee / bdellium
C: ctenophore
D: djembe
E: eye
F:
G: gnat
H: honour
I:
J: jalapeño
K: knee
L: Llanelli
M: mnemonic
N: Nguyen
O: oestrogen
P: pneumatic
Q: qi
R: Rzeznik
S: sgraffitto
T: tsunami
U: Uighur
V:
W: write
X: xylophone
Y: Yreka
Z: Zaragoza