Good news! I've solved the pensions crisis! And the world economic slowdown! And the oil crisis! That as well! Aren't I good?!

Honestly, I get one week off work and without even getting to Thursday I've already pretty much fixed the Western world. I'll have cracked the Zimbabwe elections by Friday lunchtime. It's a shame it's my birthday on Saturday and I'll be busy (i.e. pissed) over the weekend or I'd probably get perpetual motion boxed off as well.

You're probably wondering what I've come up with to solve pretty much everything that's bothering Britain these days. Well, I'll get round to that in a minute. In the meantime- a question:

Which is the superior gender?

Dangerous turf eh? It's frankly reckless to invoke this sort line of questioning- especially at the point in these posts where I usually start banging on about The Battle of Hastings or Prince. But I think it's worth treading all over this particular theological minefield for one simple reason. Something needs to be said.

Men are better than women. We're superior in every way.

I know, I know- it's very easy to make a case for women as the finer sex because, even discounting their physically aesthetic advantages, they're rarely responsible for wars, death and destruction; they seldom get bogged down by trivia, geekdom and sport and they're much more in tune with emotion, feelings and listening. Though, let's be honest, it's possible to make a case for the lionising of the male gender for pretty much the same reasons. We're unlikely to ever get anything done if we aren't willing to fight for it, aren't willing to figure out the minutae with near-psychotic obsession and are all to willing to be distracted by Claire who's just broken up with that bastard from accounts and needs her mates to come round and watch 'Bridget Jones Diary'. Or Eurovision.

And when men do get round to making and creating things the world becomes, generally, a better place for it. When womankind finally tried her hand at the fascinating world of discovery- Marie Curie discovered radiation which killed her husband, then her then helped Oppenheimer invent the H Bomb. She finally ended up giving her name to a cancer charity which, frankly, is nowhere near as cool as getting a statue dedicated in your honour like any decent bloke would.

Women also live longer than men (probably because men kick the bucket sooner as they're all tired out from achieving stuff) and that means they're the lion(esse's) share of the C4 explosive in the pensions timebomb that, apparently, is due to go off any minute now.
Essentially, thanks to the wonders of medical science, we're all living too long these days so there isn't enough money in either the state or companies to support us in our retirements. Everyone from my generation is going to have to work till they're about 120 years old then spend another few decades in utter squalor while slowly recreating that Nazi face melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And yet, the news every day is full up with warnings about what can kill us. There's the obvious ones- smoking, drinking, eating razorblades, the usual- but there also seems to be hardly a second goes by without something new being responsible for giving us cancer. There's been cheese, mobile phones, deodorants and asprin in recent years to name a few- a list so varied it's staggering to think we can get through a day without a gigantic tumour growing out of our heads and killing us stone dead.

This is confusing.

On one hand, we're being cursed for living too long and crippling the economy and on the other hand, we're constantly being told how to survive well into a thrid century by living a pious lifestyle, drinking organic water and going to bed before Deal or No Deal. Surely the best way to solve the crisis brewing over pensions would be to keep every potential danger to our well-beingsecret whilst simultaneously encouraging the populous to smoke cheese and drink their mobiles. And why stop there- if someone's suffering in a hospital from some ungodly illness, why use medicine to bring them back from the brink when we can get them charlied off their nuts and give them the send off they deserve- high as a kite with not a care in the world beyond alphabetising their CDs and fucking anything that moves.

If pubs sold skag as well as Stella, if smoking was not just encouraged but compulsary and if everyone's diet consisted of the sorts of food which are unhealthy yet supremely tasty for no other reason that there is a God and he hates us; then the world would be a much, much better place. Everyone would be happy and content before courteously popping their clogs before they became too much trouble.

Hell, let's go for the full Logan's Run effect and kill everyone who gets to a certain age. I'd be nicer than the people in the film though. Let's say 50 as an age for compulsary termination if you haven't done it to yourself beforehand. And no jumpsuits. Though everyone would get the chance to see Jenny Agutter take her clothes off.

That way, if we all merrily debauched ourselves into oblivion before we hit the half century, we'd have no need to spend money on savings or private pensions which would free up countless billions of pounds to reinvigorate the economy. And we'd all be too mullered to drive so there'd be no need to make petrol from the crude oil which, by weight, currently costs more than Eva Green's breasts.

And there you have it. If do-gooding scientists would just be quiet and the government got round to actually promoting those very great and extremely fun activities it so routinely warns us against then I'd have solved absolutely everything!

Mind you, it isn't surprising I've thought of such a pioneering and insightful solution.

You see, I'm a man. It's what we do.

Perhaps it's all the surfing ninja's fault. Myabe he's the reason that the fun, the play, the sheer joie-de-vivre seems to have disappeared from video gaming these days. Maybe he's the reason that leaps and bounds in technology have served only to make the escapist universe of the games console more and more like the mundane real world. Maybe he's the one that ruined it all. Maybe. But it seems churlish to blame him. After all, he had to fight the mutant robotic T-Rex.

The ninja of whom I speak is the title character of Sega's 'Shinobi' series which ran through the days of the 8-bit Master System and it's 16-bit sibling, The Megadrive. Whilst I don't want to cast bias on the video gaming worlds of then and now, we shall refer to these years as 'The Golden Age'. I've recently returned to those days via the recent trend for retro gaming on handheld consoles, which has led the discerning PSP owner to be able to buy the 'Sega Megadrive Collection' for their little black box. It's 27 games for about 20 quid. It's an instant games library and the bargain of the century.

It also demonstrates more innovation, imagination and sheer maverick insanity than the combined releases of the all three Playstations and every other console since about 1998. For example, there's 'Shinobi III' where, as mentioned above, our star-throwing hero surfs and horserides his way through hordes of dinosaurs, mutants, robots and robotic mutant dinosaurs; or there's Comix Zone where a comic book artist is sucked into his own publication by his greatest villain, who then proceeds to swap place with him- the artist then having to fight from panel to panel of his own comic whilst his nemesis draws enemies onto the pages for our protagonist to fight en route to becoming a superhero.

Right. Stop. Wait a minute.

Go back and read that description of 'Comix Zone' again. Tell me that isn't the best idea for a video game ever, ever, ever. It'd be ripe for porting onto the X-Box 360 but, instead, everyone's busy playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Now, don't get me wrong, the GTA series is great and IV looks like a massive technical leap forward but it's all a bit 'real' isn't it? Sure you get to indulge your fantasies of car-jacking, relentless violence and handbrake turns across a sprawling and meticulously rendered city but, if we really wanted to, we could go out and do that anytime in the street outside. We probably wouldn't get a second go but we'd at least get a spot on the news which Rockstar Games have still to add as a feature to their title.

And if GTA IV isn't real enough for you, wait till next year when the throbbingly gorgeous Gran Turismo 5 turns up. It'll feature 60 squazillion cars all beautifully crafted by legions of Japanese graphic gurus to offer the most pant-tighteningly 'real' driving experience possible. There's a very good chance it'll be pretty enough to make me cry.

But then I'll probably be bawling my eyes out the first time I play it anyway because the Gran Turismo series, before it let's you get your grubby little mitts on most of their precious, photo-realistic cars, makes you take a driving test!

A fucking driving test!

The driving test is one of the most notorious, nerve-shredding teenage rites-de-passage (it's like losing your viriginity, only worse because it doesn't come with breasts) and yet, after shelling out fifty quid for their game, the makers of Gran Turismo then decree that you must earn the right to actually play it by reliving this whole experience again. By the time Gran Turismo 6 comes out, they'll probably just be asking you to bend over.

Something about this doesn't seem quite right. Leaps and bounds in gaming technology is being used to basically recreate the real world and, frankly, what's the point? If you want to see the real world, don't buy a console- just go outside where, chances are, you'll find loads of it. And it's better than the world of games as well cause you can't buy a Greggs pastie in Liberty City. Or watch Q.I.

So here's a thought. The current generation of games consoles have about 300 times more computing power than Apollo 11- and that went to the moon (according to roughly 65% of Americans). Therefore, instead of meticulously recreating the real-life thrill of maxing a Ferrari or extorting a bookmaker, why don't games producers just let their imaginations runs wild? If Apollo 11 made it to the moon, God knows where a PS3 could get to.

In fact, now I've mentioned Him, let's start with God. Instead of cars in Gran Turismo, why not make it Gods that you control? Gods riding flaming steeds. That are actually rocket bikes. With 7 dimensions. That run on colour. Backwards. And you don't race them round tracks- but through dimensions. That look like noises. And that's just for starters.

My ideas for remaking Grand Theft Auto while making full use of modern processing power cannot be amply described using coherently constructed sentences- I am after all writing this on Windows Notepad which is hardly the cutting edge of home entertainment- so instead I have to do my best to explain it but it would basically play something like this:

"BANG!!!.... AIYEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!.... THRAWK, PURPLE....EAGLES, PINCERS, DEATH FROM ABOVE! AND BELOW! AND THE SIDE! AND OVER THERE!.... CRUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!! 854 OF THEM!!!!!! QUASAR!!!! Bonus Level WIND MADE OF STEEL AND JESUS!!!! Overwrite saved file? YES!!!! YES!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And that's just the first level.

Or you could just play as a surfing ninja. Y'know, whichever's easier.