I've been thinking today about excuses, and the fact that no matter how insane or contrived they actually are, when they come out of our mouths we somehow think they'll work. From Justin Bieber's excuse for not having heard the word 'German' ("Oh, we don't say that in america. We don't use that word.") to an encounter with a shoplifter who couldn't return to the store she'd just stolen from because she had a child with her in a pram, people spurt some utter shit. This makes me think about the biggest excuse fest of the whole calendar - new year. I intend to stop procrastinating, knuckle down, concentrate on my uni work, not leave assignments until the day before, quit smoking and drinking and get some damn exercise once in a blue moon. I've done none of these things and at some point I have to admit what all these idiots should really already know; the only person believing the excuses at this point is me. So I'm going to stop making excuses and sort my damn life out, starting next week. Maybe.
In other news, apparantly while I was spending this weekend with a few of my favourite people indulging for the last time before I get my head back into my studies, the rest of the world decided to go a bit potty. I'm away from any news source for roughly four days and here are the stories and rumors circulating, and a couple of things I've just found out but which have been about for a while. I am including with each a corroborative link, an expression of my emotion and a number between 1-10 on how insane I find this 'news'.
Vince McMahon is rumored to be interested in buying Newcastle United.
http://blogs.loughboroughecho.net/goaltastic/2011/01/new-owner-to-wrestle-control-o.html
:-O (8)
Matrix 4 and 5 in 3D
http://www.metro.co.uk/film/853587-keanu-reeves-the-matrix-4-and-5-in-3d-are-in-the-works
>.< (5)
Completely vague timeline on a supernova explosion for the first time in recorded history
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8275530/Second-sun-on-its-way.html
:-D / :-/ (2)
Vapid reality TV show about pathetic american meatheads comes to the toon
http://www.beehivecity.com/television/geordie-shore-mtv-hit-jersey-shore-to-cross-the-atlantic-13848/
¬_¬ (10)
They're already talking about the Playstation 4. And they're calling it the Playstation 4.
http://www.ps4playstation4.com/ps4-release-date-countdown-begins
:@ ffsfuckoffsony (99)
Hello bizzare parallel universe, is my name even still Dave!?
Monday, 24 January 2011
Friday, 10 December 2010
If this is going to work, then you, have got, to listeeeeeeeen... You're gonna throw that juice at me aren't you?
Disclaimer: I include myself in the following rant. When I say 'we' or refer to general social attitude, I am considering myself to be as guilty as everyone else, sometimes moreso. I say this FIRST so nobody misses it, totally gets the wrong end of the stick and starts complaining that I think I'm better than anyone else. I'm not.
Except for Matt Belamy. I'm better than him.
Why do people ask for or dish out advice? I ask for the simple reason that I truely can't remember the last time I heard the sentence 'Yes, you're right, that is a fucking stupid idea, thank you I'll not do that!'. On rare occasions you'll hear the first part, but often followed by 'but I think it will be ok if I'm really careful' or 'but it's different for me' or, in my case 'but I'm sure that's not what's causing my headaches and impotence' (that's a different story for a different rant). Albert Einstein defined insanity as performing the same action over and over, and expecting different results. If that's true, what does that say about people who not only do something they've done in the past to ill effect, but also don't heed people telling them not to do it. Is there such a thing as Insanity squared? (I tried to use the superscript 2 there but for some reason it doesn't exist in this blog, which I dislike)
By the same token though, maybe I'm insane for continually offering advice when I know it won't be followed. People have called me mad for less. I come to the irrefutable conclusion that our society at large suffers from severalfold insanity with selective hearing and memory. It's made even worse by the fact that a lot of people (and I don't include myself in this one) will listen to, and do, just about anything that involves very little actual thought. Facebook chains being my particular bugbear lately, and I flash back to last year here.
Get rage against the machine to christmas number one, THAT was an example of how to properly use a facebook chain. It wasn't a gimmick, it wasn't purely for comedy's sake (such as this year's surfin bird or rickroll campaigns) it made a fucking point. Fuck you, we won't do what you tell us. We can band together into a cohesive and passionate group of individuals who love music and hate the state of the industry thanks to it's capitalist overlords. We are going to make a statement, to those suited douches and the mindless drones sitting in front of the x-factor with their brains switched off, that the world shouldn't be this way. We should speak as one, and listen in return, respect ourselves enough to think for ourselves, and respect others enough to try to treat their points of view with an open mind. This year? Cartoon display pictures to give peadophiles an early christmas, and numbered statuses for sycophants who, if they really cared about your opinion of them, would already know what you think of them (it's called being friends).
With that, I've gotta say, as one, let's all wake up, listen up, and stop being fucking insane. Now I'm off to grab Unicorn food off a hedgehog in Latvia. Word.
Except for Matt Belamy. I'm better than him.
Why do people ask for or dish out advice? I ask for the simple reason that I truely can't remember the last time I heard the sentence 'Yes, you're right, that is a fucking stupid idea, thank you I'll not do that!'. On rare occasions you'll hear the first part, but often followed by 'but I think it will be ok if I'm really careful' or 'but it's different for me' or, in my case 'but I'm sure that's not what's causing my headaches and impotence' (that's a different story for a different rant). Albert Einstein defined insanity as performing the same action over and over, and expecting different results. If that's true, what does that say about people who not only do something they've done in the past to ill effect, but also don't heed people telling them not to do it. Is there such a thing as Insanity squared? (I tried to use the superscript 2 there but for some reason it doesn't exist in this blog, which I dislike)
By the same token though, maybe I'm insane for continually offering advice when I know it won't be followed. People have called me mad for less. I come to the irrefutable conclusion that our society at large suffers from severalfold insanity with selective hearing and memory. It's made even worse by the fact that a lot of people (and I don't include myself in this one) will listen to, and do, just about anything that involves very little actual thought. Facebook chains being my particular bugbear lately, and I flash back to last year here.
Get rage against the machine to christmas number one, THAT was an example of how to properly use a facebook chain. It wasn't a gimmick, it wasn't purely for comedy's sake (such as this year's surfin bird or rickroll campaigns) it made a fucking point. Fuck you, we won't do what you tell us. We can band together into a cohesive and passionate group of individuals who love music and hate the state of the industry thanks to it's capitalist overlords. We are going to make a statement, to those suited douches and the mindless drones sitting in front of the x-factor with their brains switched off, that the world shouldn't be this way. We should speak as one, and listen in return, respect ourselves enough to think for ourselves, and respect others enough to try to treat their points of view with an open mind. This year? Cartoon display pictures to give peadophiles an early christmas, and numbered statuses for sycophants who, if they really cared about your opinion of them, would already know what you think of them (it's called being friends).
With that, I've gotta say, as one, let's all wake up, listen up, and stop being fucking insane. Now I'm off to grab Unicorn food off a hedgehog in Latvia. Word.
Monday, 29 November 2010
On death, house elves, the moon and Jaffa cakes.
Death is a very sad and singular concept; no matter how necessary and inevitable it is, when it takes somebody close to us it's devastating. With memory, photos, videos and genetic inheritance however, it could be argued that our loved ones are never truly gone from our lives, the same can be said for the effect said person has on you and your personality/values. Still, death has a finality to it that is undeniably affecting.
That being said, what kind of idiot mourns someone they've never met? This started to annoy me around the time Jade Goody popped her clogs, the Internet and media filling up with morons saying things like
"WE LOVE YOU jADE BBE RIP U WIL B MIZD"
"Hope you're sleeping well angel and that your kids grow to make you proud, RIP"
So many things are wrong with this. Don't invent qualities someone didn't have just because they're dead, don't attempt to talk directly to someone who is dead and wouldn't have read it while they were alive, you can't love someone you've never met (especially not her she was a fuck horrible human being) and don't type like a fucking retard (irrelevant to the subject matter but i mean come ON!)
Even just something as simple as putting 'RIP so and so' as your facebook status, what's the bloody point? Nobody who cares about so and so cares that you care, and why the fuck do you care, you don't know so and so. These people leave behind enduring legacies of films, books, music and stuff of the like, that future generations will still get to enjoy. To the greatest degree possible by today's science, they are immortal.
This all brings me logically to my biggest personal gripe of the week, this insane facebook group created to mourn the passing of a fictional, mythical creature. Are you shitting me? Firstly, yes I've read the Harry Potter books so I'm not whinging at the subject matter, but it should be noted that, as far as I know house elves do not mourn death the way humans do, and they certainly wouldn't hold a funeral. So even in the diegesis where it would be most relevant, this funeral is a nuts idea. In the real world it's just fucking loopy, what kind of mind thinks it's acceptable and sane to mourn the passing of a fictional character? They never existed in our world, so the fact that anyone knows about them in the first place is an interesting discussion for a different day, but if they never existed they can't die, and if they can't die you can't have a fucking funeral for them. Simple as. People pass off the event saying 'oh it's just a laugh man lighten up' but the sad fact is the people who took time to make the event probably do believe it was a sad affair for the poor elf to have died, and that fact is representative of a more frightening and unspoken truth that is far from a laugh; Today's public conscience cares more about fictional characters, rich people they've never met and animals (see youtube 'cat in a wheelie bin' if you live under a rock) than they do about people who actually need help and consideration ie. homeless, orphans and poverty stricken in the third world.
Does that not make anybody else sick?
Conspiracy theorists that say we never landed on the moon... fuck off. This utter absurdity has got to stop, every little piece of 'evidence'to support this theory is either subjective or misinterpreted, and it has since been PROVED by pretty much every nation on earth with a decent science programme by sending a signal up to be bounced back from the dishes that were placed up there when last man walked on the moon. If we hadn't been, someone would know by now and seriously, how much of a moneymaker would a second spacerace be? get your heads out of your arses, man landed on the moon.
Finally a thought on jaffa cakes. For the very last time, although they are marketed as a cake (to take advantage of the cheaper tax) and have ONE characteristic of a cake (going hard is left in air) they are a bloody biscuit! What kind of cake is flat and round, topped with actual chocolate, small enough to eat in one bite, comes in a pack of 12 (minimum) and acceptable to eat more than one at a time? Excluding those ridiculous Mr Kippling bars and anything of the same idea. Nothing! And in the linguistic sense of the word, biscuit (from french and meaning 'twice cooked') is more of a bicuit than mcvitties digestives (cooked once). You cook the sponge, stick the jelly on (this is not cooking) then cook the chocolate (from scratch as they do) and pour it on. Voila, twice cooked! Let this be an end to the ridiculous arguement all you cake lovers.
That being said, what kind of idiot mourns someone they've never met? This started to annoy me around the time Jade Goody popped her clogs, the Internet and media filling up with morons saying things like
"WE LOVE YOU jADE BBE RIP U WIL B MIZD"
"Hope you're sleeping well angel and that your kids grow to make you proud, RIP"
So many things are wrong with this. Don't invent qualities someone didn't have just because they're dead, don't attempt to talk directly to someone who is dead and wouldn't have read it while they were alive, you can't love someone you've never met (especially not her she was a fuck horrible human being) and don't type like a fucking retard (irrelevant to the subject matter but i mean come ON!)
Even just something as simple as putting 'RIP so and so' as your facebook status, what's the bloody point? Nobody who cares about so and so cares that you care, and why the fuck do you care, you don't know so and so. These people leave behind enduring legacies of films, books, music and stuff of the like, that future generations will still get to enjoy. To the greatest degree possible by today's science, they are immortal.
This all brings me logically to my biggest personal gripe of the week, this insane facebook group created to mourn the passing of a fictional, mythical creature. Are you shitting me? Firstly, yes I've read the Harry Potter books so I'm not whinging at the subject matter, but it should be noted that, as far as I know house elves do not mourn death the way humans do, and they certainly wouldn't hold a funeral. So even in the diegesis where it would be most relevant, this funeral is a nuts idea. In the real world it's just fucking loopy, what kind of mind thinks it's acceptable and sane to mourn the passing of a fictional character? They never existed in our world, so the fact that anyone knows about them in the first place is an interesting discussion for a different day, but if they never existed they can't die, and if they can't die you can't have a fucking funeral for them. Simple as. People pass off the event saying 'oh it's just a laugh man lighten up' but the sad fact is the people who took time to make the event probably do believe it was a sad affair for the poor elf to have died, and that fact is representative of a more frightening and unspoken truth that is far from a laugh; Today's public conscience cares more about fictional characters, rich people they've never met and animals (see youtube 'cat in a wheelie bin' if you live under a rock) than they do about people who actually need help and consideration ie. homeless, orphans and poverty stricken in the third world.
Does that not make anybody else sick?
Conspiracy theorists that say we never landed on the moon... fuck off. This utter absurdity has got to stop, every little piece of 'evidence'to support this theory is either subjective or misinterpreted, and it has since been PROVED by pretty much every nation on earth with a decent science programme by sending a signal up to be bounced back from the dishes that were placed up there when last man walked on the moon. If we hadn't been, someone would know by now and seriously, how much of a moneymaker would a second spacerace be? get your heads out of your arses, man landed on the moon.
Finally a thought on jaffa cakes. For the very last time, although they are marketed as a cake (to take advantage of the cheaper tax) and have ONE characteristic of a cake (going hard is left in air) they are a bloody biscuit! What kind of cake is flat and round, topped with actual chocolate, small enough to eat in one bite, comes in a pack of 12 (minimum) and acceptable to eat more than one at a time? Excluding those ridiculous Mr Kippling bars and anything of the same idea. Nothing! And in the linguistic sense of the word, biscuit (from french and meaning 'twice cooked') is more of a bicuit than mcvitties digestives (cooked once). You cook the sponge, stick the jelly on (this is not cooking) then cook the chocolate (from scratch as they do) and pour it on. Voila, twice cooked! Let this be an end to the ridiculous arguement all you cake lovers.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
If a tree falls in the forest;
Language is devolving. People will tell you it's just the natural progression, through technology, of the english language from what it has been to what it will be in the future. Anyone who tells you this should be hit with the OED (which actually is a lot smaller these days, such is the dumbing down).
An example of what I mean is this; a lot of words that actually mean very different things are being taken to mean exactly the same thing, with all nuance and context removed. The first instance that bugged me this week was the confusion of a friend when I explained that 'noise' and 'sound' are two very different things.
"But how can that be? It's making a noise. It's making a sound. They mean the same thing!"
No, they really don't. Sound is the scientific name for vibrations in the air that can be detected by anything attuned to them, noise is an excess of (or an unpleasant) sound as it pertains to human hearing.
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a noise?
No. Because there's nobody around to hear it.
Does it make a sound?
Yes, because sound is merely vibrations in air, and any falling tree is going to produce a hell of a vibration, regardless of if any of us parasites is around to go "Ooh, did you hear that noise?"
Another one that really got to me, when did the word 'Soldiers' become synonymous with 'Heroes'? Now, I'm certainly not belittling the work that SOME soldiers do, but by no stretch of the imagination can all members of the armed forces be considered heroes. Personally, I think in the current climate you have to be mad to enlist in the armed forces but I have friends who have and they say it's the best thing they've ever done. This is fair enough, but ask them if they consider themselves to be heroes and they'll be the first to admit they are just doing a job that they love, but there are just as many horrible people in the armed forces that do it for nothing more than a free pass to hurt people. They are not heroes.
I admit there have been a lot of heroes in the armed forces through the years, veterans of wars where they beat back insurmountable odds against actual evil and invading forces. This is the real point worth considering: by that token if those people are heroes and the people following an evil leader are the villains, then the heroes of today are not our troops but theirs. We had no right to invade their countries, we have even less right to still maintain forces there, it's not to save lives they're still there it's profit. The Iraqi and Afganistani 'insurgents' are trying to oust invaders from their land who entered illegally and unjustly because they had the backing of the biggest global superpower in the world, fronted by who is arguably an evil man. From their point of view, these men are heroes, but you don't see anyone selling shit plastic wristbands for them, do you?
An example of what I mean is this; a lot of words that actually mean very different things are being taken to mean exactly the same thing, with all nuance and context removed. The first instance that bugged me this week was the confusion of a friend when I explained that 'noise' and 'sound' are two very different things.
"But how can that be? It's making a noise. It's making a sound. They mean the same thing!"
No, they really don't. Sound is the scientific name for vibrations in the air that can be detected by anything attuned to them, noise is an excess of (or an unpleasant) sound as it pertains to human hearing.
If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a noise?
No. Because there's nobody around to hear it.
Does it make a sound?
Yes, because sound is merely vibrations in air, and any falling tree is going to produce a hell of a vibration, regardless of if any of us parasites is around to go "Ooh, did you hear that noise?"
Another one that really got to me, when did the word 'Soldiers' become synonymous with 'Heroes'? Now, I'm certainly not belittling the work that SOME soldiers do, but by no stretch of the imagination can all members of the armed forces be considered heroes. Personally, I think in the current climate you have to be mad to enlist in the armed forces but I have friends who have and they say it's the best thing they've ever done. This is fair enough, but ask them if they consider themselves to be heroes and they'll be the first to admit they are just doing a job that they love, but there are just as many horrible people in the armed forces that do it for nothing more than a free pass to hurt people. They are not heroes.
I admit there have been a lot of heroes in the armed forces through the years, veterans of wars where they beat back insurmountable odds against actual evil and invading forces. This is the real point worth considering: by that token if those people are heroes and the people following an evil leader are the villains, then the heroes of today are not our troops but theirs. We had no right to invade their countries, we have even less right to still maintain forces there, it's not to save lives they're still there it's profit. The Iraqi and Afganistani 'insurgents' are trying to oust invaders from their land who entered illegally and unjustly because they had the backing of the biggest global superpower in the world, fronted by who is arguably an evil man. From their point of view, these men are heroes, but you don't see anyone selling shit plastic wristbands for them, do you?
Sunday, 14 November 2010
So the inevitable has happened;
Yes people that's right, I've finally given into my ranting nature and started myself a blog to rave away at nobody in particular as the world slowly goes mad. I'm going to try and link this into my facebook account so that I can stop posting rants as status updates, so for those who get immediately irritated whenever they see my name in news feed, you're welcome. For the people who actually read my periodic rantings and are made to smile by them (all both of them) please attempt to help me wherever possible with rendered opinions and in the rare cases something can actually be changed in the world outside the intertubes, help me in the attempt to restore some sanity to society.
Also as a once and future scientist, I'm curious to find the limits of my rantability, suggestions on un-rantable subjects (or subjects you consider imposible to rant on) would be happily recieved, processed and re-blogged as an attempted rant. I'm truly interested in the concept of an object, creature, place or concept I can't pedantically nitpick.
Today's first topic, ironically, is idiots on the internet. Not just the fucking morons who troll forums and post the most inane shit ever on social networks, but in the more general sense the people who do not appreciate what an amazing tool we have at our disposal and now take for granted. I lived without the internet for three days last week. I wanted to tear my hair out. Also, by this time next year, all the possible IP addresses on IPv4 will have been assigned and new broadband connections will have to be refused. People being REFUSED access to something rapidly becoming the most vital life-tool in the world, until IPv6 is globally implemented, is becoming a distinct probability. Imagine building a house then being told you couldn't hook up to the water and sewage system because there was not space for you, the concept is just insane.
Also as a once and future scientist, I'm curious to find the limits of my rantability, suggestions on un-rantable subjects (or subjects you consider imposible to rant on) would be happily recieved, processed and re-blogged as an attempted rant. I'm truly interested in the concept of an object, creature, place or concept I can't pedantically nitpick.
Today's first topic, ironically, is idiots on the internet. Not just the fucking morons who troll forums and post the most inane shit ever on social networks, but in the more general sense the people who do not appreciate what an amazing tool we have at our disposal and now take for granted. I lived without the internet for three days last week. I wanted to tear my hair out. Also, by this time next year, all the possible IP addresses on IPv4 will have been assigned and new broadband connections will have to be refused. People being REFUSED access to something rapidly becoming the most vital life-tool in the world, until IPv6 is globally implemented, is becoming a distinct probability. Imagine building a house then being told you couldn't hook up to the water and sewage system because there was not space for you, the concept is just insane.
So, the next time these idiots post soemthing fuck-ridiculous, perv on randoms, download insane amounts of porn and waste hours playing fucking CALL OF DUTY online (without appreciating the awesome tool they are using) they do it all without realising that soon enough, they may be deemed unworthy of the privilege. God we can only hope...
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