Wednesday 16 October 2013

A small list of things that annoy me:


1) Getting food stuck between my teeth...you can't tell me that there is a just and loving god out there when I've just spent half an hour trying to get rid of the (as in one, singular) poppy seed from my tasty poppy seed covered loaf that has wedged itself between my canines. Well, you can tell me that there is such a deity, but then I'm afraid I'll have to ask that you prove He exists by sending you to meet Him and report back on the matter. Fire will be involved in the sending...

2) People who exit a building, then stop right in front of the doorway and thus bar me from entering...I don't care what the excuse is, whether it's that they're waiting for their friends to also exit, or they've gone half an hour without increasing their risk of cancer (and what a shame that is as people like this deserve that cancer more than anyone else!) or that upon leaving the building they find themselves amazed, nay, in literal awe that the outside world could be so beautiful it reduces one to a state of catatonia....I really don't care. Next time it happens, instead of tutting and mumbling curses under my breath I'm going to, in addition to the aforementioned actions, tap my foot impatiently, yes, that'll show them!

3) People who make lists of things. I mean really, what is the point, for one, it's insulting to the reader, acting as though they need things to be laid out for them in precise, numerically labelled order. As though they'll read a couple of items and wonder to themselves "Hmm, how many things has he mentioned? Oh I don't know, why didn't I go to school?! Why?! WHY?!" and then they go off and shoot themselves, as is the course of nature in these matters. 

4) The internet. It's too distracting! I need it to do work, but on it I can never do work, so might as well not have it in the first place! That's right, it's a paradox. You all know what a paradox is, right? Well, I'll break it down for you, first we've got "Para" from the Ancient Greek word for besides, and then we've got "dox" from the corrupted pronunciation of ducks, so paradox means "besides ducks" as in "well, this would work on everything, besides ducks" and that's just science. 

5) Scientists. A while ago I was thinking to myself, "how do scientists know what they know" and I arrived at a startling discovery...they don't know...they're all just guessing! Gravity, an invisible force that is all around and keeps us stapled to the ground...sounds a bit like magic, doesn't it?! Show me gravity. But they can't, they're just good storytellers, they "invent" or "discover" all these things, but never show us. "Oh it's there! Trust us!" they say, whilst asking for more and more money to "prove" that such and such exists...but they know....they know they don't know....I'm onto you scientists, yeah *glares at scientists*.....grrrr

Thursday 3 October 2013

The adventures of Adventure-Man

It's been a busy kind of month. (Holy shit, it's been a month?! Well...near enough) I've moved out of my home, started university, moved back home, been drunk, a lot, been deathly ill (not related to alcohol...there was this flu thing going around....felt more like TB...tbh...ha! see what I did there?! we have japes aplenty here, oh my yes), met an inordinately crazy amount of new people and actually started doing work (mostly) when I get it instead of leaving it until the last minute! Imagine that!

Because of all that I've not really had a chance to just chill, you know...get grounded in a sense because this month just passed has gone by alarmingly quickly. This weekend will be the first in a long time where I can actually just do nothing. I mean, I know I'm going to end up doing something exhausting, probably something to do with writing or walking aimlessly around Liverpool at night, you know, that kind of thing. I know, it's not good, I'm always tired because I don't really get to rest because there's either work that needs doing or I create my own tasks for myself because I get bored so easily. Most of the time I could be relaxing I end up writing, or rearranging things in my room, or wrestling the dogs just...anything you know. I hate being inactive, it feels somewhat wasteful.

But I know I need to stop at times. Because I do get so very tired, I'm continually exhausted because I can't just sit there, I can't just watch TV or hell, even read a book. I'm sure it's some form of ADD. I'll be sitting there, reading whatever and you know, properly reading it in, taking it in, but I'll also be pacing the room, stopping every now and then to write something or google something that's popped into my head....it really is quite distracting. For instance, this (so far) has been a very short piece (by my standards) I've stopped four or five times already just to go and read LFC and mmo-champ forums. I get bored very easily. I do sometimes wonder if that's the effect of the internet or video games or just my genetics...

I think worse than my flippancy toward things are the obsessions I get. To a mild extent I think everyone gets obsessed over something. You listen to that same song over and over and over, or get really into that show, you know, the one with the llamas...you sick freak! I'd be ashamed if I were you, but if I were you, I wouldn't be watching it, so I wouldn't be ashamed...but you would still be...as you should be! But anyway, yeah, I think I've talked about this before. I can get obsessed with ideas and things. Really obsessed, to the point it's all I'll talk about...much to the detriment of the conversation. But that's fine, what I'm really talking about is my stubborn ideas. I know I've talked about mistakes not too long ago, and that is basically an extension of this. I know something is a bad idea, but I'll stubbornly pursue it because...reasons, I guess. I don't even look at it in a logical way and it actually, genuinely scares me. I mentioned at the start that I moved back home which has led me to re-evaluating my financial situation. (Short version...it's bad...oh gods....it's bad...) Which meant I had to look at my original calculations...and they were wrong...not just slightly, but really way, way off. I'd basically got it wrong by a factor of three. I remembered my exact way of working it out, what factors I'd included, used the exact numbers and came up with completely different numbers....Now you may think "well, anyone can make a mistake" and that is true. But I went over and over these numbers. Hell, part of the reason I was so determined about the move away was because it would be better for me financially....but I was wrong. Laughably, fantastically wrong, time and time again when I did those calculations over the summer...and I can only rationalise it as me being so obsessed, so determined with moving that it distorted what I was perceiving...and that's worrying, you know....if you can't trust your own brain...who/what can you trust?

Yeah...Descartes would disagree with me...probably, but man, fuck him! If he so great how come he so dead?! Huh?! Answer me that! Anyway, I'm off to enjoy the last hour or so before bed doing washing....well, I say enjoy, it's more like labour through...not quite as arduous as Heracles' labours...but hey, come on, he was a demi god...I myself am a half divine but you know, gods were just cooler back then. Laters.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

The cost of freedom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaAWdljhD5o

Just a suggested song you can listen to whilst reading this. I like it, it's cool (in my opinion)and you should, though, it's just as cool if you don't, because that's the power of freedom! A great many people think we live in a free world, that the country we live in is a free democracy, where we are able to say anything freely...and we are! We are absolutely free to do anything we are capable of any time BUT, and here's the thing, we are free to do them if we accept that there will be consequences to those actions. 

See, I know you'll be thinking to yourself "well, if there's a consequence, then it's not really free, we're not really free to do that whatever example you can think of." Well, of course there's going to be a consequence, everything you do (or don't do) has a consequence. Imposed by either our culture, our families and friends or hell, even biologically. You're perfectly free to go punch a midget (or for that matter call them a midget in the first place, nowadays it's more PC to call them a dwarf...which etymologically, is even more of an insult, but hey...logic, whatevs right, who needs that?) but don't be surprised when you're hauled in for assaulting a person...or being ostracised by your friends for beating up something that is physically as small as a child. You are perfectly free to rant and rave outside abortion clinics that no woman should have the right to their own body, but you know, then you've got to accept that you'll be looked at as though you're the raving bag of distended scrotal rot that you so patently are. 

My point is that you are free to do these things, or whatever else, but there will be a consequence to your actions. How is it that you are free then? Well, because one is one thing and the result is another. What is so often the case is that people mistake the "effect" part of cause and effect to mean the same as the cause, the initial action. The first part, the cause part is absolutely free. You can choose any cause you like, from anything in the world. You can influence it, plan it, devote all your time to it, direct it along the lines you want but you can't always see the future effect, the end result. The end of a thing is not where you can change it or the beginning.

A great example of this is gladiatorial combat....what, hear me out on this....I'm not just mentioning it because Gladiator was on the other night and it is such a great movie. No, I'm talking about cause and effect. The cause in this movie is Maximus deciding to fight. He's in a situation where he seemingly has no freedom. He is a slave, bought to fight for the amusement of others. But he chooses to fight. He could choose not to fight, and he'd have been put to death, but by choosing to fight he upsets the emperor and blah blah blah big Hollywood ending. The real point of that is the choice to fight. The effect or end result was that he would fight, or be put to death fighting, he was going to have to fight, so he chose to. Is that freedom? He made a conscious decision to perform an action one way and not the other, is that not what freedom is? 

I like it when people know that they are in a bad situation, one they can't win, but still try. I think it's the truest expression of freedom in the whole world. There's something awe inspiring about people who find themselves backs against the wall, no apparent chance of making it out, no real hope or belief that change can be effected in their lifetime, but choose to fight...and then sometimes it worries me that people think democracy is an entitlement, not a reward. Entitlement only matters when it's taken away from you. Seriously, think about it. How many people do you know of (the younger generation especially) who actually care about elections? National or local. How many of them are aware of each political parties policies or stances? How many have considered actually running for a chair themselves? Did you hear that little voice in the back of your head saying "eugh, who'd want to be an MP, they're all corrupt, thieving bastards" or something similar? Of course you did, we all did. So then why, after believing that they're so dirty/corrupt do we not try and change that instead of abstaining or merely swapping one puppet for another? Because it's an entitlement, we don't really care so long as it's there. We are free to choose, and often do, the path of least resistance. If the right to vote was taken away today, would there be an uproar? Oh there would be so very many Orwellian references that we'd get bombarded with but then, at the end of it...would we be bothered because we lost an entitlement or because we lost a vote.

So, does freedom actually exist....I think it does, but perhaps not in the way people readily define it. I really do believe that at any time a person can do anything that they want (which is what the classic freedom generally is) but that they also have to accept that actions have consequences. There is a freedom there, but it certainly has a cost to it.