BenPaddon.co.uk

Someone: “Are you British?”

Me: “A little bit, yes.”

Someone: “I thought so.”

Me: “It’s the hair, isn’t it? It’s a dead giveaway.”

Someone: “It was your accent, really.”

Me: “Really? How surprising.”

I’ve been living in America for an entire year.

It feels… well, it feels odd knowing that. One year. 365 days. Just shy of 8,760 hours. I’d write out the number of minutes but then there’d be a dangerous risk of more than one of us bursting into song. Nevertheless, a year is a long time to be doing anything, and even though on the day I arrived in LA I was mostly spaced out from a lack of sleep it still counts.

A lot’s happened in that year. I’ve been working at Disney for 11 of those 12 months. Jump Leads launched a mere two weeks after my emigration and has received critical acclaim from a number of unlikely sources. I’ve made friends, I’ve failed to start learning to drive, and I’ve become the Producer for SoulGeek Media. I’ve been to Disneyland so many times I’m starting to feel guilty about it, considering the number of terminally-ill children who’d love to go but can’t because their parents can’t afford it. I’ve amassed an unhealthily-large collection of Mr Potato Heads (for those of you who want to know, an unhealthily-large collection is basically owning more than two - I presently have nine). I’ve been given free entry to Comic-Con because of Jump Leads, and received $600 from the American government just for existing. I’ve seen parts of California I didn’t even know existed, I’ve been to Houston in Texas, and in two months I’ll be trekking up to Seattle, WA for PAX08.

So what are the plans for the year ahead? Absolutely no ruddy idea. It’s all been very “as it happens,” really. I’m going back to England for two weeks in September, and again in December, and then probably again in March. I’m trying to get fit and lose a little weight (even though absolutely everyone who isn’t my Mum or my friend Westy insists that I don’t need to). I’m hoping to see more of America, to maybe head up to Canada, and to definitely, definitely learn to drive. Fo realz this time.

In the more immediate future I’m hoping to get rid of this ruddy headache.

Living in LA has given me a ton of opportunies and opened up a number of doors for me, and it looks like this next year could be very interesting and very, very busy. Here’s to another Awesome Year, I guess!

So hot they named it twice. Also, fuck me that’s hot.

Before I approach the story of the Fetish Ball, I have to talk about my commute into work this morning. There are probably very few subjects in the world less worthy of being written about than the act of going to work, but today was different because today I got on my shiny new bicycle and cycled into work.

Cycling from Sunland-Tujunga to Burbank is no small feat. It took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to do it, and in doing so I realised that a lot of the roads my Dad usually drives along to get to and from work are very, very long, but moving along them at a slower pace allowed me to take in much of the scenery, sights and sounds that I had previously not paid much attention to. I never really take in much of Sunland Blvd when we whiz down it in the car, but cycling along it I got to see some interesting things. There are a few houses in dire need of a good bit of work, for instance. A small row of houses absolutely stank of pot. And no, that really isn’t a large enough plot of land to keep horses on.

I’m still largely unfamiliar with Californian Traffic Law and how bicycles factor in to them, so I tried my best to adhere to what I remembered of British Traffic Law and hoped that would do me (obviously I decided not to cycle on the left side of the road). I was fairly relaxed, although I probably would’ve been a bit more relaxed if I’d had a helmet. Unfortunately the store I bought my bike from haven’t had any new helmets for a while as their supplier’s warehouse recently burned down in Mysterious Circumstances™, so my head is relatively unprotected. Well, I say “relatively”. I mean “absolutely”.  I’ll ask Dad if he’s willing to make a detour to Target on the way home from work today so I can pick one up.

Getting to work under my own steam was fantastic, and I can’t wait to get up tomorrow morning and do it all over again. I feel like my legs are going to fall off, but honestly I don’t think I could care less about it at the moment. I’d forgotten just how much fun it was to cycle long distance like that.

It still surprises me that buying a book in London in April led me to a Fetish Ball in Hollywood in December.

I imagine that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I’ll try and explain.

You may recall that way back in April I had to pop down to London for my medical. I had a lovely lady stick a bloody great needle in my arm and steal some of my vital fluids, although I don’t recall whether or not I was offered a lollipop by way of apology. I never understood why children are allowed lollipops, but grown ups aren’t. Heigh ho.

But anyway.

Before the medical, I’d passed the time by popping into a bookstore on Oxford Street and picking up an inexpensive book. The book in question was Yes Man by Danny Wallace, and anyone who has ever read the book or heard me talk about the book before probably knows where this story is going.

I’d started reading the book in London while waiting for my appointment. I then read more of it on the tube back to King’s Cross, and then a bit more of it on the train from King’s Cross to Luton. I read a bit more on the bus from Luton Train Station to my Mum’s home, and then a lot more that night. I plowed through the book in a couple of days, and when I’d finished it my outlook on life was irrevocably altered.

At the start of the book, which incidentally is a true story, Danny had broken up with his girlfriend. He’s stopped going out, stopped being sociable, and had largely kept himself to himself. That was more or less what I’d been doing when I broke up with Amy - I kept myself to myself, I didn’t go out or do much. Danny’s life was changed when a stranger on a bus offered the advice “Say yes more” quite out of thin air, for no real reason whatsoever.

So Danny did. He said yes to absolutely everything, from “Would you like sugar in your tea?” to “Buy our amazing Penis Patch”.

I won’t go into further detail about the book, but suffice to say I decided that I was fed up of saying No all the time, and I decided henceforth to start saying Yes again. I wasn’t going to take it to the extremes Danny took it to, but I was going to be receptive to new experiences, open to new ideas, and above all accepting of new opportunities.

In a way, the book is responsible for my contacting JjAR to see if he’d be interested in doing the art for Jump Leads. A friend, Bonz, had suggested I get in touch with him, and after seeing his artwork I’d wanted to. The old Ben wouldn’t have bothered, figuring he’d get a negative response, if any response at all. The new Ben, however, decided there was nothing to lose. So I said Yes, I’d email him, and he said Yes, I’ll do the artwork.

The book is most certainly responsible for the Fetish Ball attendance, which I shall have to write about at some point later in the day as it’s gone 1am and I should be asleep. Until then!

Wal-Mart, the huge American supermarket chain who you might recognise as the owners of ASDA, have an ad on television at the moment which I find most confusing. The advert exudes pride and warmth at the fact that the company now have more employees working at night, the apparent benefit being that this frees up more people to help customers during the day. Personally though, if it were me, I wouldn’t boast about the fact that my company had more employees doing more work at night. Wal-Mart now seem like a bunch of wankers to me, although to be fair they seemed pretty wankerific before then.

What makes this ad even more ridiculous is that the employees are all incredibly cheerful, remarkably attractive people in their early 20s who apparently enjoy working at stupid o’ clock in the morning. They’re smiling and working and changing the cash in the tills, all to the accompaniment of what I can only assume is a cover of King Harvest’s Dancing in the Moonlight.

Who is this advert for, exactly? Who are they targeting? Because besides the song - which is a cracking good tune, incidentally - there’s nothing about this ad which seems at all positive to me. Again, it just puts forward the message, “We are Wal-Mart, we are dicks. Come shop with us!”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - American TV advertising makes no bloody sense.

I think I came into the country with a very narrow view of how the American tax system works. I was terrified of “doing my taxes”, and that fear was largely based on things I’ve seen on American television shows - for example, the episode of The Simpsons where Homer does his taxes incredibly late and incredibly poorly, and gets Severely Audited. But the reality is very different - “doing my taxes” was incredibly easy. It took about ten minutes overall, I think. Nothing to worry about.

Pre-orders for Jump Leads Issue #1 aren’t exactly rushing in, but there have been six issues out of the 100 pre-ordered so far. A few of my work colleagues have said they’d like to snag a copy, which means that so far I’ve got between 10-20 copies allocated. I know there are more than a few people planning on buying their copies at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing in March.

I’m incredibly excited about the Thing. It’s my first time exhibiting at a Con, not just for Jump Leads, but for anything. Despite planning, I didn’t go to any conventions for Fried due to cash shortages. It’s probably for the best I didn’t, considering. It would’ve been a waste of money.

I’m going to start off this entry by addressing something that pissed me off when I discovered it. Every time I’ve gone to write about it it’s left me red in the face and just… angry. Here’s an excerpt from DeViney’s follow-up to my Microsoft article on GP (bold emphasis mine):

Then the whip came down: it became clear that in order for me to proceed in my efforts to finally capitalize on being one of Microsoft’s biggest supporters in the video game industry for over five years, Ben Paddon was going to have to hit the road. I was advised by a friend at Microsoft to “remove any potential sources of contention” and that would allow me to resume my efforts to bring about a Microsoft sponsorship of GamePartisan.

That sentence left me feeling really, really pissed off. I had been told by DeViney, and by another GP writer, that Microsoft had pretty much demanded it or else no dice. Instead it appears DeViney was “advised by a friend,” which is something entirely different. I’m not happy. I feel like I’ve been manipulated by DeViney, used by him to further his agenda with GP.

He called me on Tuesday to let me know he was stepping down as Editor in Chief for 90 days and offered me the position. At the time I accepted because when he called I was on my way home from work having been sick, but the more I think about it the more utterly repugnant an idea it sounds.

It’s a two-sided coin. On one hand, it gives me the opportunity to do something really good with GP. I feel that GP’s weaknesses are its lack of internal structure (meetings are called that never happen) and the fact that a lot of the news posts are just directly copied and pasted from Press Releases. That’s just lazy, in my opinion. These days I find myself more and more turning to Kotaku for my gaming news, and I really like the editorial manner they relay gaming news. I’d be inclined to lean towards reporting news in that manner, but with perhaps a bit more of an Amiga Power style humour slant to it. At the same time though, the idea of deepening my involvement in the site leaves me feeling cold. Following this revelation, I really don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other about the continued existence of GP, or my involvement in it.

The issue that started the entire Microsoft problem - my immigration - is being handled by Larry Hryb, better known to the gaming public as Major Nelson. We’ve been emailing each other back and forth this week and he’s assured me that he will at least try to resolve the problem within the next few days. Fingers crossed it gets sorted.

With that out of the way, how do I feel about life in general? Well, no sodding clue. Mostly, right now, I feel il. But you don’t want to hear about that. I’ve been paid today, so I have a very strong urge to buy something nice for myself. A family friend, Patrick, once suggested that I might have a shopping addiction and I’m starting to think he might be right. I’ve been going up and down my Amazon Wishlists thinking to myself, “Yeah, I’d quite like to buy that.” I’ve been looking through Steam to see if there are any games I particularly want. I’ve been looking at inexpensive laptops for writing on. I’ve been… well, I’ve been window shopping so far.

I think I’m going to try and chill out this evening, maybe throw a DVD on and go to bed a little earlier. I really feel out of sorts…

The article I wrote for GamePartisan can now be found here.

UPDATE, JAN 14TH @ 8:33PM: I just got back from Houston. Major Nelson at Microsoft has been in touch this evening, and we’ve had a lovely conversation via email. He seems keen to help, which bodes well for me. I also got an email from “Steve” in Xbox Escalations.

UPDATE: The article I wrote for GamePartisan concerning my ongoing Microsoft issue can now be found here. Thank you to everyone who has Dugg this, and thank you to Mike at work for putting it on Digg in the first place. I definitely owe you something from Starbucks at the least.

I’ve been given the go-ahead to discuss what has happened concerning my Microsoft issue. It’s a particularly big thing, so you may want to sit down.

I write for a couple of gaming websites at the moment - RealVG, which I helped found in 2006, and GamePartisan, which I’ve been writing for on and off since 2003. My relationship with GP has seen its ups and downs, but right now it’s at a high point and I can only see good things going for that site in the future. So, apparently, do Microsoft.

Yesterday, A Microsoft rep spoke with Jonny DeViney, the Editor in Chief of GamePartisan. While I can’t discuss the ins and outs of what the phone call involved, I can tell you that Microsoft asked DeViney to drop me from the Editorial team - to “remove any potential sources of contention” between the site and Microsoft. I’m not sure what DeViney’s answer was exactly, but the general jist of it from what I’ve heard is that he told them to take their hand and go fuck themselves.

Not content with denying me my request to be able to, y’know, pay for my Xbox Live services, they’ve now taken to flat-out attacking me by trying to lose me a writing job. Well, no. I’m very thankful that DeViney has decided to back me on this one - it would have been so easy for him to shove me out the door, and he would have valid reason to given I haven’t written anything for GP in weeks. I’ll be writing an article about this which will be going up on GP tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest.

The gloves are off now.

Digg This

I’ve just spoken to one of my colleagues at Game Partisan, and apparently there has been a monumental development in this situation. I need to speak to Jonathan DeViney, the Editor in Chief of GP, before I share any specific details, but in short it’s not good, and it doesn’t exactly show the good side of Microsoft.

Further details as and when I can share them. For the time being I’m grouping all of the posts concerning this issue under a “Microsoft” category on the blog, and I’m also looking into setting up a separate website for this issue so that other people can come forward and share their experiences. Stay tuned.

Here is the email I received some moments ago:

Hello Ben,

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support.

I am sorry to hear that you are not satisfied with our customer support. I understand that you would like to change your account from a United Kingdom account to a United States account.

I am sorry, but this is not possible. You cannot change the country in which you want to be billed. After you have selected the country when you created the account, that field is locked and cannot be changed. If you want to be billed in another currency, you need to cancel your account and then create a new account by entering the appropriate country.

I deeply apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for understanding.

I am, of course, livid - I have no qualms now with playing the discrimination card.