Hypocrites and bigots dot com

Copyrighted, but free for any purpose

Well, right now is the time I should be revising for my exams, what with about twelve days to go before my first one. But right now there is something else more testing on my mind…

Being all in for democracy, equality, fairness, free speech, free money, free choices and general liberty as a whole, there is a recent issue which I think needs to be raised as deeply serious. I know to many many people the issue of internet piracy is a taboo subject and is of course, rightly frowned upon – I myself am not going to give my own views and experience of it here because it is not the point of my post, although being a twenty year-old student, I would be lying to you if I said I’d never exploited the mass source of freely exchangeable information that exists within the internet. I’m sure some of you are aware I’m talking about the recent banning of The Pirate Bay on nearly all the major UK ISP’s. Well, for now, I’m not going to talk about this specific act or anything too much to do with the nature of The Pirate Bay itself, except for the fact that the attempt is quite simply not only futile but utterly pointless and to an extent potentially counter-intuitive in the long term. What I am going to talk about is the principles of the matter and the definite degree of bias and injustice in this frankly naive ruling…

DISCLAIMER: The opinions and views expressed in the following post, no matter how controversial, flawed, stupid, backward, ignorant, naive or otherwise, are my own, and only my own. It is also only a basic argument, without any proven facts or firm evidence. If you would like to discuss this stuff, feel free to comment!

I shall start with this, which I think sums up the real essence of my argument, spoken by the venerable legendary promoter of philanthropy, love and peace himself:

‘Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think
that people own it.’

John Lennon

Who can argue with that?

I’m not going to go on an all-out rant about oppression and censorship and loss of liberty and all that because frankly that blows it all out of proportion, and because, at the end of the day, where we live is still a relatively free, equal and tolerant society. And this is the point. If it was one of those intolerant, oppressive and close-minded cultures ruled by an undemocratic government then there would be little point nagging about the closure of one tiny website because it would just be part and parcel of it. No, the issue is that in this outwardly self-promoting fair, democratic and lawful society where everyone has the right to their say or to fight their corner, certain corruption and hypocrisy takes over and the views of the few ignorant powerful override the beliefs of the masses and injustice – whether knowingly or not – takes precedence.

The Pirate Bay vs. RBS: which is more respected by its users? Which is more concerned with actually promoting its own fundamental ideals rather than making money? I wonder…

What really irritates me in this case is that there was no trial, no investigation, no real justification for the closure of the website. Indeed, it does beg the question where will it stop?  It seems the people making the judgements had insufficient evidence or knowledge to make it a fair one. I think the people on top miss the point that The Pirate Bay is, in fact, a place not only for the sharing of ‘illegal’ files but also for the promotion of truly free material, especially for music artists who have neither the money or persuasion over big profit-hunting corporations to promote their talent more widely. Here, there is no emphasis on money making, selling, buying, or any restrictive and frankly irritating ‘copyright’ issues. The emphasis is simply on sharing entirely for free with like-minded people a talent and a passion where the only gain is further promotion of and expanding that talent and passion. All, bare in mind, at the expense of a company willing to provide such a service for free. Where is the illegality in that? Apart from the fact that attempting to block a website like The Pirate Bay is like shovelling snow whilst there’s a blizzard, the more one person tries to stop something, the more the masses will resist. Yes, everyone has a right to be rewarded for what they do, but similarly, I don’t think a small group of people have the right to decide how people go about spending their money, and on what, and through what medium, if only because, at the end of the day, as we all know, most big corporations only care about the money. Once they’ve got that, the rest is largely irrelevant.

Perhaps they might have realised that had they geared themselves towards providing what people actually want in the way they want and listening to the fair and humble voices of the many, then people would be more willing to give their money to them, but in fact the paranoia that results from people getting their services elsewhere means they are missing out on making more money, and that is it. Unfortunately this money issue is what governs much of the world, and what governs a lot of governments; we would be lost without it, of course, but it should not provide the backbone of our principles.

To avoid an utterly epic rant, I can conclude with my main point in just a few lines. If the people at the top are supposedly righteous, selfless and just and concerned with the welfare of others more than their own gain, whether that be financially or otherwise, then it is fair enough that they try to righteously, justly and fairly promote the ideology that others do the same. However, if those at the top are responsible for equally selfish acts concerned with their own gain, whether that be financially or otherwise, and without taking note of the judgement of others, then I do not believe they have the right to demand the exact opposite behaviour upon others.

After all how can a company that makes – relatively speaking – next to no money on the services it provides in the way it promises to do so continually and reliably; possibly compare to other companies or national corporations that make money off their own inadequately provided services, misleading promotions, stupid mistakes, immoral behaviour and exploitation of people, and who continue to be rewarded for the effects of these surely equally criminal acts?

The only comparison I can see is that they are blinded by their own clouding of their own moral judgement by other ‘more important’ matters – something, of course, they would outwardly deny. Something which places like The Pirate Bay, just by their very nature, cannot and do not deny.

Related articles

• The Pirate Bay Speaks Out Against UK Ban, Offers Workaround [The Pirate Bay] (kotaku.com)
• Virgin Media cuts Pirate Bay access for millions of punters (go.theregister.com)

Tolerance for the intolerant

Abu Qatada. Look at that smirk. Don’t you just want to punch him?

Well, it’s been over a month since I last posted. I am slightly ashamed by this fact, although I’m now averaging over a massive five visits to my blog a day. Excitement. Interestingly, that last blog about the lull in the trend that is blogging might have been my last blog for a very long time, except for one vital flaw – there is always something to write about. You just have to decide what you care enough about or what you want others to care about. This week, I have found that material which at the moment overrides everything else, and which makes me angry to the bones. And I mean punching-a-wall-repeatedly-until-you-bleed-profusely angry.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions and views expressed in the following post, no matter how controversial, flawed, stupid, backward, ignorant, naive or otherwise, are my own, and only my own. It is also only a basic argument, without any proven facts or firm evidence. If you would like to discuss this stuff, feel free to comment!

Terrorism. To many, it’s a subject which is now the source of a lot boredom and disregard for what it actually means to the everyday person. Understandable, since the wars in the Middle East which were supposedly supposed to sort out terrorism seem to have now stagnated and serve little purpose, in short. Well, to me, terrorists are worse than paedophiles, worse than murderers, worse than tyrants, worse than even war criminals. Why? Because at least each of them – except, of course, paedophiles and most murderers – stand by their own principles, no matter how deluded. Terrorists stand for nothing. They are the biggest, most terrible arrogant hypocrites around. The combination of those two attributes alone makes for a pretty dislikeable person in my opinion, but add to the mix that anyone they don’t like or think are undeserved of their own lives and who disagrees with them should be killed and in such a horrific way, you have a truly terrible human being. I’m a philanthropist, but I have absolutely no positive feelings towards terrorists, other than pity. Most terrorists being, in this particular context of course, extremist religious persons with an ambition to kill people whom they do not even know and have never met. Scum. Scum of the Earth. They all need at the very least a massive punch square in the middle of the face.

Exactly the kind of thing that Muhammad would have wanted, I’m sure.

What is so frustrating is that they supposedly are ‘advocates’ of their religion – whatever that may be – Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism; any of them, and yet everything they do completely contradicts the fundamentals of what religion is which is – allegedly – learning to live with your common man and also, erm, not doing things like killing. As far as I was aware, mass murder was not the first priority for Jesus or Muhammad.  Yes, of course, there are many many many other bad things that happen that don’t have anything to do with religion, or terrorism, or intolerance, or hypocrisy, and nor do I agree with the U.S. being the almighty ‘police’ of the world, but that’s another story. What I do disagree with is the merciless intolerance and disgustingly pretentious and deluded attitude of terrorist organisations. Being quite a left liberal kind of person politically, I have quite a far right view on terrorism, which is 0% tolerance. This might be because it completely goes against my attitudes on equality, liberty, peace, and people of all different backgrounds and cultures being able to live together and accept each other. This is precisely what terrorists don’t want. And it’s as if their opinion and life-style is the only one. They deliberately live to obstruct peace and progress.

What has brought on this raging rant is the recent discussions in the news on the Muslim alleged terrorist Abu Qatada and his lawyers, oh and the European Court of Human Rights. If there was ever a time to explain why political correctness and the enforcement of human rights has gone way too far, this is the best example ever. The fact that he has lived in our country – albeit under some form of ‘arrest’ – for over a decade, living off our taxes, using our services and taking advantage of everything this tolerant country provides, whilst also, taking advantage of our free speech, outwardly hating every British person, saying we should all be killed and have Sharia law installed (an example of his deluded mind, given the fact that out of over 60 million people in this country, only 2.7% are Muslim, and far fewer than that actually want Sharia law) makes me disgusted that this hasn’t been reason alone to deport him already.

Inciting hatred, racism, encouraging acts of terrorism, apart from which he has probably attempted to carry out a bombing in his own country, are all crimes which justify a trial to me, no matter where he is. Of course, other criminals like one-time Mars bar shop lifters and people who are doing 32 in a 30 are obviously in need of a trial and conviction sooner. And it also doesn’t take ten years for such ‘criminals’ to be sentenced. Qatada needs to go away, now. What really annoys me is despite all his completely unjustified hatred for our government and laws, he is actually taking advantage of them to their very best – not only by obviously using good lawyers (why they would want to represent him is another question) and exploiting ‘loopholes’ in the system, but making it work in his favour. And this is the hypocrisy of it all. Genuine RAGE.

As for the ECHR’s ‘argument’ for not sending him to trial. Well… As far as I’m concerned, if he thinks he has the right to sentence other human beings to death and pain and suffering for no obvious reason and to enforce his own backward and completely destructive opinions on other human beings against their will and without trial, then, I don’t care how illiberal it is, he forgoes his own rights which would otherwise be available for more ‘normal’ people. It disgusts me that the ECHR let any appeal ride in the light of the effects of terrorism. Ultimately I’m not really bothered what happens to him when he gets to Jordan, so long as he gets some kind of punishment for the things he’s done and the things he encourages I’m happy. It may be a slightly awkward concept, but I am tolerant and accepting of most people, except for most of those who are extremely intolerant.

For the need of avoiding an essay-length post, I will only mention the following bits briefly: that twat Al-Megrahi responsible for the Lockerbie Pan Am flight 103 bombing was allowed to leave his life imprisonment basically at his request. And then there is Christopher Tappin, extradited to the U.S. on grounds that he sold batteries to alleged terrorists, unknowingly, against his rights and the rights of his family, etc., since they had, and still have no idea why. Begs the question why Qatada has firstly not been extradited to Jordan and why the U.S. has not taken an interest and extradited him, where he’d have no room for appeal whatsoever, apparently, going on Christopher Tappin’s case? I can’t stand that kind of inequality and injustice. I think a massive kick up the arse with a huge boot that sends him flying in to Jordan by himself is what’s needed.

Personally, depending on my mood, I’d like to purchase a large calibre sniper rifle, get some basic training and some practice, then give him a clean shot between the eyes. If anything it’d get rid of that stupid untrimmed and untamed beard and that constant blo*dy irritating self-satisfied smirk from his face. After all, it would take him out of this world he hates so much. But where would be the justice and humanity and that?

Despite all he’s done and all the crap he deserves to be jailed for life for and suffer for, he needs to learn that actually there are people out there who are willing to tolerate – even, accept – and give supposed ‘scum’ a fair and equal chance.

Rant over.

________________________________________

Interesting links:

http://spiderplantland.co.uk/get-him-on-a-damn-plane-and-out-of-here/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17781831

Related articles

• Abu Qatada (xymalf.wordpress.com)

Edited 4/5/2012

What the horizon brings…

So they say blogging is dead. I don’t know why, but they do. This is not a particularly good fact to learn when one is just starting out in the endeavour of blogging. Of course, if every blogger is like me then this fact is perfectly understandable. After strangely waking up at 8am on a Sunday, which is a very unusual occurrence, the  day has passed me by without little activity. Except for my continuous mental reminders that “I should probably write some more of my blog, since I haven’t written on it for a while and I have no excuse not to, now I’ve finished essays and am just blobbing around,” and the occasional cup of tea, snack and various other miscellaneous activities, I have done not much else, as usual. Basking in the feeling of relief that completed essays bring, it is only now, in my opinion, writing this blog post, that I am doing an important task. After all, it’s out there to be judged by people like yourself.

Yes, this one’s more life and times reflective drivel, I’m afraid, since life seems to be happily flowing forward quickly and easily without obstruction or particular phases of excitement, at the moment. Once again, it is nearly the end of the term, essays are finished early, Easter break is on it’s way, and I’m still longing for the long warm summer, in which I can finally shake off the noose of this marvellous student financial deprivation. But for this to happen, I have to work. Which is the cruel crushing irony. Rather than taking a well earned break (of course) over Easter I will – most likely – be working to pay for the overdraft I’ve delved into this term and to pay for the car insurance renewal, which, happily, is not bound to be quite so astronomical this time, just maybe atmospheric. It never bl*ody ends. My dreams for genuine prolonged periods of doing bugger-all seem to still be beyond the horizon yet… Even far off are the realisation of my dreams of attending music festivals for a weekend or so and adventurous UK road trips…

A sweet horizon at sunset. The only interesting and relevant image I could find for my blog.

It’s not all boring and arbitrary though. Fortunately this week I’ve had some sort of guidance about which direction I should head in to that vast, mysterious and bright horizon. For a long time I’ve been interested in a few main ‘fields,’ if you like, including motoring, aviation, and as you’d expect, writing. After only half an hour of official ‘careers advice,’ I had officially come to the conclusion that writing was the way forward to somehow indulge in all my interests, precisely how that indulgence will manifest itself is another thing. So, that’s good, I suppose.

Sigh. I realise how I’ve literally just typed out my memory recollection and endless thought streams, hammering my laptop keyboard mercilessly. How boring. But life goes on.

Well, since it is now pretty much official that I should take up writing in some form or another at some point in my life, I will say I haven’t forgotten about that short story I intended to finish five weeks ago. If I manage to bring myself to not do ‘nothing’ this week, I will have a modest crack at finishing it, at some point. Rest assured, you will know if I do, most likely.

So, my first lesson about writing learnt today: find some genuinely interesting material to write about.  Let’s hope I do for next time, hey? So much for keeping blogging alive.

Nevertheless, now to indulge in my passion for motoring. Bring on Top Gear, the only interesting event on my student Sunday nights.

Laters all.

Excitement and apathy

Crikey, it’s been a while since I last wrote, a whole month in fact. Apologies to those who faithfully follow my blog (haha), I’m sure you’ve been eagerly pining for my return.

Well, this is only a quick one, I’m afraid. I won’t do you the injustice of not explaining my absence though. My reasons are fairly pathetic, ironic, or valid, depending on who you are. Basically it is that time of the term again where essays need to be written. Those arseholes of essays. The use of the not-so-harsh-as-one-that-might-have-been word ‘arseholes’ there might have been because I was seeking a word better tuned to my new found love-hate relationship with the relentlessly merciless intellectual enlightenment form. Yes, I did just imply I don’t actually have too great a problem with essay writing. Why? It isn’t just because the only thrills in my life at the moment are looking forward to the time when the central heating comes on, or when I discover a half-drunk stale Fosters buried in the fridge. Although I am currently writing two four-thousand word essays at a time, which might initially sound like an extraordinary act of insanity, I promise I haven’t resorted to jumping from a fifth storey window or drunkenly crashing my car into a lake yet. This is because I have worked out an ingenious and highly efficient system to in fact minimise the impact essay writing has on my life. Because after all, I’m so busy all the time, being a student and all.

I am going to bore you with the details, since I am ironically procrastinating writing essays today. Ha. According to my somewhat limited mathematical skills, I have calculated that if I start writing a month before the deadline I only need to write 133 words per essay per day. This means I can ramble and bullsh*t for all of about half an hour (it does take that long to write that many words thanks to having to sift through piles of text to try and find some random quote from some radical intellectual which instantly makes personal arguments completely valid, no matter how much other bullsh*t they contain) and then continue on with my life. As it happens, I normally average more than this per day, meaning I have nearly finished both essays, some twenty days before the deadline. Yesss.

Despite this, this time around I have picked questions which I actually find more stimulating than watching anti-climb paint dry. For one module, I am writing about people who write about writing itself, which, after five minutes or so, makes my head explode. For the other, I am writing about the butch-ness of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the Alien films. At least with regards to her nearly being semi-naked and waltzing around shooting phallic sadistic aliens with massive guns in the first two films, nearly makes something else explode. Say no more.

I can see this is quickly becoming a not-quick post, but I’m not going to go back and edit it or delete bits, because, quite frankly, you should be interested in every aspect of my massively exciting life. With regards to the short story, I will admit it has rather taken a place on the back burner, writing 266 academic words of an essay a day takes a phenomenal toll on one. It will, inevitably be released, and it will, inevitably, no matter how much time I end up spending on it, be utter rubbish.

Anyways, there’s not much more to say… of course, having about -£500 in the bank, I don’t have much else going on, although last Friday night, of which I mostly cannot remember, must have been a particularly exciting night, because on Saturday  I awoke in an incredibly awkward contorted position and aching in places I never even knew could ache.

Perhaps I should go back to watching anti-climb paint dry after all.

When something next happens in my hectic and chaotic life, you’ll be the first to know.

Peace.

Return of the procrastination: the inspiration strikes back… or does it?

(Yes, I did just use a crummy film reference, but I’ll get to that…)

Well, it seems that in the epic battle between procrastination and motivation, procrastination is Muhammad Ali and motivation is Frankie Cocozza (if you watch reality T.V. you can see why I’ve used him, I’m sure, if not, think of a teenage rock/punk star wannabe with stringy legs in skinny jeans and begrimed untamed hair and who probably has multiple STDs). In other words, motivation is more than very much dead. Yes, if you had cared enough to see my latest post, you would have learnt, from my new ‘Hot Press’ section (designed to inform the faithful readership of new and exciting developments, plans and ambitions in both my blog and my life that everyone should know and care about), that I intend to upload my first ‘official’ piece of literary work – if you will – at some point in the not-so-far off future.

Win.

To get to the point, right now I couldn’t care for much, it’s too bloody cold in this stupid mouldy student house so that not only can I see my own breath inside on a regular basis, but I have about twelve layers on, over my thermals. And the snow isn’t deep enough to actually cause any kind of disruption to the humdrum routine, and that irritates me at the moment. My bank account seems to continue p*ssing itself down the drain even though I literally do nothing to utilise my already measly financial resources. For some reason, which I cannot for the life of me explain because I have done nothing out of my ordinary lay-about activities, my body aches from my twatting left little toe to the outside corner of my right eye. All this has only exacerbated my procrastination. Hence, and to finally arrive at the main subject of my post, I have taken a little longer to write my ‘short story’ than I had intended. Still, it is making progress, and I have surprised myself in learning I have written the equivalent length of an entire essay in my short story in less than two days, which is about fifty-eight days less than it takes me to write an essay. That must say something.

Already hacked off with most of the values and outlooks that many in their ivory towers seem to take on the world (interpreting anything from anything  - such as the theory that the author of a book is entirely irrelevant in any context – and insisting their own theories are relevant to everyone’s daily lives and those who don’t agree should be condemned to the far corners of the world of Academia), I feel I would like to express myself fully – when I’m not ranting to my Mum or mates, particularly one or two long-suffering house mates – via the medium of writing… By that I mean non-academic writing. Writing which isn’t writing about other writers’ theories about other writers who write about the many anxieties in their life story. Yes, that sums up my degree. Sometimes I would rather grate my face with an industrial lemon zester.

Also, if you were indeed wondering, I have no idea why I picked that title for this blog post, because looking at it now it seems almost total sewerage. Other than a semi-pop-culture/inter-medial reference to a world famous space opera franchise which helps to objectify the two ends of the spectrum which determines a person’s ability to induce or produce something, as well as having a very vague level of appeal to a wide audience, it serves no other relevance to the post. But, thanks to my non-existent care, I don’t care.

Fail.

I will leave you with a more detailed update of the writing situation. I imagine I should have it finished in the same length of time it took for the events in a far far away galaxy to be told by a Mr. Lucas, or there abouts.

In all seriousness, watch this space, when my motivation finally does return – which I guarantee it will – it will only be a matter of time before you read the greatest piece of writing on this blog in all of history.

________________________________________

For your amusement whilst continuing to be doing things you shouldn’t be doing but are doing to avoid doing things you should be doing: http://www.wimp.com/procrastinatemuch/  (My life summarised in under two minutes).

Hot Press: coming soon…

Afternoon all. Expanding on what I said in my last post, I have decided I will shortly be uploading my first ever ‘official’ short story, the inspiration for which I had in the shower this morning. I won’t tell you too much about it other than it is, of course, random, and the story itself is partly inspired by my passion for freedom, flight, as well as my philanthropy.

No idea when it will actually be released, just that I know that I have the idea for it and want to write it, and I will. Going on current procrastination levels I’d give it a week. Whatever happens, I hope it is the beginning of a successful endeavour. I also hope it will be less pointless than the rest of this blog!

Watch this space!

Stephen King watch out…

Beast. My beast.

Well it’s nearly one whole month into 2012 and it still feels like only yesterday (to use the much overused but increasingly meaningful in older-age cliché) that I was dissapointingly only vaguely intoxicated on New Year’s Eve.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, mine would end up being counter-productive, at least that’s the thought I comfort myself with completely hiding the fact it would actually be down to my inadequate willpower. Rather a subtle ambition I have is to at least at some point this year take my interest and passion in one of my fields of interest one step further, so to speak. Since flying planes is ludicrously expensive, and believing I have the resources to purchase either an Aston Martin DBS or a Maserati GranTurismo S would be slightly insane, my most realistic option at present is writing. I have decided I can have at least some arbitrary corporeal elements of all my interests merged into one, which is the “immaterial” medium of writing. Since those interests which require the use of, manipulation, or acquisition of material items normally requires money, and presenting my feelings for these interests in writing, which apart from the ink itself, any interpretation is purely mental, but which most importantly is always free, writing is indeed the way forward… and already I am rambling. See, must be talent there somewhere.

So, in short, I have decided I am going to write a short story about something or other whenever I feel like it. It will normally be about stuff I care about or something completely different about which I may or may not care but still feel the need to write about. It may even turn autobiographical… but don’t expect any revealing secrets!

Anyways, I am so f*cking knackered, my eyes actually feel like planets, and it’s only 11pm. What has my life become?! So to finalise you can expect this so far random-natured and slightly dreary example of writing to get at least a tiny bit more interesting in future.

I am sure you’re thrilled to learn this fact.

Back to reality

Greetings.

A happy New Year to you all.

Just a quick one today, as I can’t really bring myself to write an essay at the moment. Hope you’ve all had a fat, lazy and indulgent Christmas and can remember at least some of New Year’s Eve! I didn’t write at all over Christmas because for the first time in a long time I have genuinely been busy so that I have felt tired in the evenings not because I have stayed up for 27 hours being idle, procrastinating and wilfing; and procrastinating over wilfing, but because from the actual crack of dawn I have been up and actually doing stuff. How things change! Since the first week of me being home I’ve been working. Working in a warehouse. Working my arse off more than ever it seems – I am going to be utterly zombified when I return to Uni! Ah well, it’s all part of the many fibres in the rich tapestry of life.

It seems only right to talk briefly about both the cultural memes that everyone talks about this time of year, and also those specific to this year, in fact. New Years resolutions? None. There, that’s the first one over with. One of my things in life nowadays is try to have few regrets, we learn something from everything we do, and unless we’re stupid, the lessons we learnt will mean we won’t do that thing again. Or we will be technically ‘insane.’ Also, 2012 is supposedly, to those who are of either a more gullible or less rational nature, the last year in all of time. So why not live it like our last? But shouldn’t we do that every year; since no one knows when they are going to die? I can tell you for one, if the world does end this year, it won’t be due to the designers of the Mayan calendar running out of parchment or sensibly thinking that their civilisation could not possibly survive for over a thousand years, nor them being restrained by the physical impossibility of writing to infinity, but it will be because of the breeding of stupid people.

Anyway, I’m off to make some lunch.

How else would you have it?

Yeah yeah, I’m writing about Christmas, but, what else? My only plan for today is to lose my self awareness in a bout of celebratory drinking later this evening.

It’s that time of year again when we can all lay about carelessly eating and drinking to excess such that we soon resemble trembling grotesque greasy blobs of shameful animals. What really is the true ‘spirit’ of Christmas is just this snowballing chain reaction of complacency as most people are more content than usual, perhaps because of the anticipation of the excitement of an entire week off work, or not giving a toss about exams, essays or revision, or then there’s the thought of endless hours of cheesy but somehow feel-good Christmas movies starring such talent as Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler. Then of course, it goes without saying, the consumption of gallons of cheap Stella, Carlsberg, some deceivingly-claiming-to-be-up market champagne, or cheapo wine from bottomless cardboard cartons, and then of course there’s the stuffing one’s face full of molten-hot mince pies, sausage rolls swimming in their own Olympic sized pool of boiling fat, Christmas cakes and puddings crammed full with bullets for raisins. All this lovely little lot and so much more fills us with a sense of fulfilment when we can have indulgent fun and stick a finger up to the elements who try to make us miserable at this otherwise depressing time of year, when the wind whips the rain in our face or the ice repeatedly tries to make us face plant the pavement.

So what does irritate me, among the few things that do so at Christmas, is people who still insist on being moody pain in the arse complain-persistently-on-War and Peace-proportions Scrooges. Why can’t they be very slightly positive for just one month of the year; is that too much to ask?! What specifically ticks me off are those people who are angry at everything in society, and insist that

society is deeply flawed and that all  human beings are plainly shit. Sigh. O, person with a chip on your shoulder, why must you be that

Nothing's perfect. It is what you make it.

way? What they fail to realise, as I have said before, is that we are only animals, and that animals can only do so much, and as goes the course of life, animals can never be perfect, so why should that entity that surrounds our individual existence and our habitat and all other human beings and what they do and don’t do, which we have come to call ‘society’ be perfect? The fact they question the ‘perfection’ of society and the actions of other humans goes entirely against their beliefs on the human race: if humans aren’t perfect, then why would society be too? Stop bitching, it doesn’t make any sense.

Then ask them what they would rather have… Communism, Socialism? Yeah, good one (claps sarcastically). I’d far rather have someone tell me what to do and shoot me in the head if I don’t do it than make my own choices and not be shot in the face, obviously. This country, as most other civilised (yes, we are – would you like to live in North Korea, or Zimbabwe… no, didn’t think so) countries are, is a Capitalist Democracy. Apart from the fact this is a cumulative result of centuries of cultural, political, economic and religious and scientific development – hence, part of the natural course of the progress of civilisation –  it is pretty much the fairest and most rational kind of society. Yes, there is corruption, manipulation and fixing throughout any Capitalist culture, but it is the system which is most analogous to the human conditions of evolution and survival. It rewards those who work, and doesn’t reward those who don’t. Simple. Democracy is there to help regulate the Capitalist system and help those out who do struggle. You can think of them as a bull and a lion pulling a sled together. Fundamentally it’s all about what we do with ourselves and how we do it, with Capitalism being the what and democracy the how. Anyways, enough with the laborious technicalities. Today, our country is within the 15.6% of all countries worldwide which are truly ‘Full Democracies.’ Quite astonishing. There are those who take an instant dislike to anyone who shows any inclination to desire acquiring money. This is ironic, since in reality we all want some amount of money. What we need is another matter, but we all need it. I cannot really think of better way of representing the value of the trade between labour and goods or services which shares equal value with everyone… Pine cones? Meatballs? Fig leaves? Grains of sand?

Ultimately, as far as I’m concerned, society is never ‘perfect,’ neither are animals and hence humans. So stop bitching about it and strive to make or extract from it what you believe is ‘perfect,’ or close to that definition. If everything was ‘perfect,’ then life would be really, really, really boring, and then you really would have a reason to nag your vocal chords to shreds, presumably about the ‘perfect’ society being flawed in its very existence. Do you see the sense?

Merry Christmas all.

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Stuff I used for facts:

http://www.spectacle.org/496/demo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_index (yes, I did use Wikipedia. Some of my lecturers refer to it too, you know?)

Same difference

That’s it. All done and dusted for another year. Well, almost.

I say this because I have just achieved the word limit on my essay, meaning, no matter how much of an irrelevant, pointless, unreadable, off-on-a-tangent laborious example of turd-quality drivel it is, it’s done. Yes. I am pleased with that. Chuffed, in fact. As I have stated before essays are the bane of my life at present. But how I ever thought I wouldn’t need to write at least one whilst at University studying for an English Literature degree I have no idea.  Probably because I’m a tad nuts.

All that’s left to do is polish it off and upload it, but using my previous description, you can’t polish a turd, so yes, I am done with University work this year. And according to the chronological order into which various periods of ‘parts’ of my life fall, this means I’m basically done with this year too. And what a year: I finished my first year at Uni’, and started my second; had some utter cretin write off my first car; nearly killed my cretin self and at the same time crashed my first car myself, bought my second car (which is exactly the same as the first one); landed myself a far better job than the completely cack one I had for three years from which I earnt almost £13.76 in total; started renting a house for the first time; learnt that those intriguing machines stuffed into walls of banks don’t actually give out an endless stream of free crumpled paper, and that month old sweet and sour sauce smells exactly like dark chocolate, but God it does not also taste like it. At all.

An eventful year then, I hear you state. Yes, I reply, yes indeed.

I also turned twenty years of age, which I guess is also vaguely important. Sometimes I remember that I’m no longer a teenager and when I randomly remember I think “oh yeah, I’m twenty.”  It may be a knackered-as-Grandad old cliché but you do really never know what’s around the corner, literally sometimes. If I was to be serious, though, one thing I have definitely been educated on this year, relevant above most other things (except that farting in the bath after a curry is basically suicidal) is that thing we call life really is what we make it, and the gap between life and death really is as thin as is short the story of Ann Widdecombe’s sex life.

Me. On January the 1st 2012, 2pm. Beautiful.

Well, all that aside, I am looking forward to acquiring a few stone over Christmas, loosing a few thousand brain-cells through getting “merry” and a few hundred-thousand more through the effects of being utterly gazeboed. In addition, although I’ve been enlightened by an almanacs’ worth of stuff this year, making me a wise old white-haired wizard compared to me a year ago, I intend to leave this year exactly the same way I entered it: very very out of my mind and very off my face.