Wednesday 27 April 2011

Foreign Guys And Their Sticks

  Sorry again for not having posted in a while, pretty soon I'll be free and on more though :D I've been trying to keep on here a bit just haven't had time to post... So just to keep you on your toes before I get back on to posting frequently, here's a video! 
  You guys better appreciate this; finding a video with only foreign tags when searching the URL doesn't work is hard! (I admittedly just searched for the name, copy and pasted of course)... Either way, it's a guy doing some cool stuff with sticks... Check it out!

Sunday 24 April 2011

Ronald Jenkees!

  Behold the glorious site that is the one and only Ronald Jenkees. Below is a song performed by him, jamming with some drummer from STS9 apparently... I checked them out a while back when I first heard the song and they aint bad... Nothing on the Jenkees though.
  This motherfucking badass is quite possibly the biggest nerd stereotype to ever be known by Youtube. I first came across him after hearing his song "Remix to a Remix" on an Elevator Show video (look them up...), and googled shortly after I exploded in orgasmic fury to his pure musical talent. How this man only has 50,000,000 video views, total, is beyond me. Especially while faggots like Justin Bieber (ft. Ludacris) can get hundreds of millions for one shitty song just because he looks cute for a ten year old.
  Seriously though, this guy's great. I regularly find myself returning to his music, and would recommend him to you all... My apologies for not being again not being able to post about more topical things than a musician, but I again found myself with little time... Plus, this guy's great :D Hope you enjoy...

Thursday 21 April 2011

Just a quick one today

  I've been busy for the last couple of days but figured I'd pop on and post a really cool link that is kind of topical, as it's 4/20 today (near enough; 13 minutes ago), and this is something that is pretty trippy... Ok I just wanted a reason to post it because it's cool :D
  Let me know what you think et cetera... Anybody get up to anything fun to celebrate today then?

Sunday 17 April 2011

Judas

  As I'm sure many of you are aware, Lady Gaga has recently released a new song; Judas. Personally, I don't think it is her best work, but I do really like it. It's catchy and in keeping with Gaga's style; a bit weird. That said, I'm not really sure where it will fit into music; it's a fast pop track but can't imagine it being much of a club song... Not the majority of it at least.
  But oh well, it makes me look forward to her album so much more... If I can figure out how, I'll attach the song in this post xD  

  I'm a genius! (Ok I gave up and linked to Youtube). Let me know what you think of it.

Saturday 16 April 2011

Big Brother!

  Love it or hate it, Big Brother was a massive part of UK television for 11 years before Endemol (its creators) finally threw in the towel. I have no doubt that those of my followers from the UK will mostly hate it (as will those of you from the US and elsewhere, but this is less relevant to you), and will be angered by the knowledge that Channel 5 have bought the rights to it, and it will be returning with an "All star" celebrity version later this year, and then continuing its old cycle from there on. Read more here.
  Personally, I must say I'm chuffed; Big Brother was poor for a few years but the most recent seasons have been great! Plus, it will be returning on Channel 5 with the same crew, so it should continue its improvement. Though, I must say that I am annoyed with it for returning so soon after the "grand finale", only one year's wait before reviving it is just stupid (and the owner of Channel 5 wanted to do it sooner)! 
  Let me know what you think about the program, its return, whatever you like... I'll read and comment back as standard

Thursday 14 April 2011

Aliens

Sounds legit to me
  I recently read online a report claiming that a memo had been found that proved the existence of aliens, discussing them having been found in Roswell in 1950. Now, I have no doubt that this report is bs and the pictures attached are fake (not least because it's a report by The Daily Mail), but do not doubt at all that there is life elsewhere in the universe than on our little planet.
  That said, I do not think that as a species we will ever encounter alien life (not least in my lifetime), because while there are many many planets, and so many inhabitable planets, and so undoubtedly some with life, the probability of any of these inhabited planets being remotely near to us is slim... I know that if what the attached report is saying is true, then surely the species to which the aliens belonged would have come to Earth in order to try to track down their lost comrades, or to avenge them...
Picture semi-related, but also kinda cool...
  But, even if alien life were to be real, what possible positive outcomes for the human race could come from this knowledge? Assuming they didn't completely destroy our planet and us (which if they were able to locate and get to us, shouldn't be a problem for them), they would be very likely to be peaceful towards us. I'd rate the chances of coexistence being about 20%, with negligible chances of us being able to dominate them. Now if these  aliens were to, for whatever reason, fall into that 20% chance of being peaceful, we have to look at what would change for our society.
  Sure, in the billions of years when Earth becomes uninhabitable we'd have somewhere to move to, but it's far more likely that the lifetime of the alien's planet would be shorter than that of ours... We could get their knowledge, their understanding of the universe, science, medicine, and weapons. Understanding would be nice, but wouldn't really benefit anything other than our curiosity... Medicine for our already overpopulated planet wouldn't be great, and alien weaponry would undoubtedly be bad... (Though it could enable us to dominate other lifeforms should that day come).
District 9; good film...
  Anybody who gives the outcome of alien communication any thought should be able to see that it is on the whole a bad thing, yet still people try ever harder to communicate with aliens! Can't we just live our lives without them? Let me know what you think in the comments

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Abuse of Power

Fuck tha police!
  A little while back (well, three years ago), a video was uploaded to youtube, in which a University of Florida student was tasered and arrested at a forum for simply asking a question. Original video here. This is far from the only video of its kind, and sure it may now be old news, but I still cannot watch this video without getting really frustrated! My frustration is not only with the policemen and women abusing their power in doing this, but also with the hundreds of people there, some shouting asking why nobody is doing anythign, and yet not intervening themselves.
   Now, I get that in large groups of people there is a dispersion of responsibility (or whatever the fancy psychology terminology is), but it just saddens me that had one person intervened and put themselves out there where being punished is possible, then it could have all gone differently. We are raised given mixed messages regarding whether or not we should intervene in such situations; as a child I could not tell you how many times I had the poem "First they came" read to me as a child (here), yet was also frequently told to stay out of things that didn't involve me! Told to look out for myself...
   Thankfully I've turned out to be somebody who I like to think would intervene should something be going against my beliefs, and I try to whenever possible. But anyway, below is the video that brought this topic to my mind... The cop in this is being a bit of a douche, but I think it's made better by the fact that he is on his own (pretty much), and that the kids are actually in the wrong... Still, he goes to unnecessary lengths, and as a result makes a bit of a fool of himself... 

Monday 11 April 2011

Religion!

Ignorance is bliss
  These days it seems that the majority of people my age think that religion is a bad thing, something to be mocked. Many people who I talk to with cast judgment on the religious; immediately assuming them to be unintelligent. Maybe they are right; many religions can seem pretty far fetched, but people have dumb beliefs all the time, it's just a matter of the environment in which you grow up. I don't care what some people say about religions, if they were to have had parents with slightly different belief systems, their opinions would probably be completely different.
  I am an atheist, and because of this when I question people's religions I'm very aware of the fact that I come across to be questioning their intelligence or trying to change their beliefs, but this is not the case. I'm a guy who is really interested in not only different religions, but why (and sometimes how) people believe them. While I do not see myself accepting any religion as my own in the near future, I do think it could one day happen... That said, I will never reject evolution; evolution can be predicted to occur simply by common sense. Not believing evolution takes place (from complex systems into slightly different complex systems at least, not so much from simple to complex) can make me question somebody's understanding of it at least.
  Some people do not welcome my questions, even if they are simply what the person believes. Most of the time this is probably because of the person's fear of being ridiculed, but on occasion it is because they themselves do not want to think about their belief, just to blindly follow it. These people really do annoy me; if you really have faith in your religion you should be prepared to have it questioned, and believe it can withstand consideration.
  Personally, I would like to have a religion. I think that the lives of people who are religious must be so much more fulfilled; they have a greater feeling of purpose.... But alas I fear I may never have one. Either way though, I believe that religion is a good thing for mankind. Some people argue that without religion then wars wouldn't have happened and terrorism wouldn't take place on such a large scale. But it is my belief that the people who commit these acts would do so without religion as a ploy; they would always find a reason. Also, religion causes an immeasurable amount of good deeds to take place.
  Many atheists, like me, believe that happiness is the purpose to life, and if religion makes people happy, then are they not just living out their purpose?

  My apologies for the fact that this post hasn't flowed very well, I just had a lot to say and didn't want to ramble too much... I leave you with another song, just because I love it... 

Friday 8 April 2011

Life!

*Post may not be related to Trainspotting

If all of my post titles are short and have an exclamation mark, maybe more people will love me!
  Today I wanted to post on a topic (which you will find out if you read again in like a week, ooh now I have you coming back for more), but realised that if I were to talk about that then I should first give my opinions on life. Life is something I'd wanted to post about anyway, it just wasn't directly on my mind...

             Google is bad for inquisitive faces
  "But what about life?" I hear your inquisitive voices cry, and I'm afraid I must answer in a pretty predictable manner; the meaning of it. If any of you have any ideas as to what the meaning of your life is that differ from mine, or you just want to massage my ego and agree with me, comment; I always like to hear other people's opinions, providing they're open to discussing them (as many people seem to be on this topic; they've decided on an answer and now fear change).
  To me, there is only one meaning to life, and it is disappointingly simple; happiness. Everything we do in life we do for our own happiness. Everything that everybody does they do for themselves, generosity doesn't exist, it's just that some people are made happy by making other people happy. Now, I am by no means saying that this "generosity" isn't a good thing, heck it gives purpose to more people's lives! But this does not mean that people who are generous should be hero worshiped. Now, it may be the case that they are only generous in order to gain social recognition as being generous; something looked highly upon by society. Because of this I guess it would be necessary to keep them feeling they are being recognised in order to keep them generous, but take it easy; them getting their kicks from a different place doesn't make them any better than anybody else!
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake
  For a while I wasn't satisfied with this purpose; I wasn't happy that my life only had purpose because it existed. By this I mean that if my purpose is to make myself happy, if I do not exist, I cannot be happy, so I have no purpose. Hmm a bit of a hard one to word there, but darn it it makes sense to me! However after much deliberation I came to a conclusion; as long as I am happy, in my eyes my purpose is being satisfied, and so there is a reason for me to live... This of course came along with a less positive conclusion, which is that if I were unhappy, I mean really long term unhappy with my life, I would end it. Though, as we only exist for our own purpose, does it matter if we all die?
  All of this thought about life and death caused me to wonder what could make me kill myself, as well as how I would do it if I were to (which I eventually decided to leave until a time when it was actually relevant, if it were ever relevant). Now, I don't know what will happen in the future, and any number of things can cause a person to become depressed enough to contemplate suicide. I came to a solution that I felt at the time made me feel a lot more comfortable with the fact that I would be unlikely to ever commit suicide (I don't like the thought of killing myself; it leaves too much emotional mess which I wouldn't like to burden people with).
Patrick Star; what a boss
  This solution of mine was to come up with a mental list of things which I would do if ever I felt I were beginning to contemplate suicide. I thought it was good fun to make personally, it made me really think about what I think I could change about my life to make it better; it was interesting... So here's a few things from my list, in the order in which I would do them, on the most part ordered by how big a difference I feel they would make (positive or negative): quit my job, spend more time socialising and a lot less on the internet, change my style (conform more!), come out to my parents (bisexual by the way), tell my parents of my occasional drug use, drop out, ask for help (from professionals, family or friends).
  This is of course not a comprehensive list; there's all sorts of things I could to to change my life! Aside from this list I would also like to write an epic suicide note; it would be a fucking novel! I would have to be able to say everything I wanted to say to everybody who had had any influence on my life, which could grow pretty rapidly...
  Note: I am not suicidal! I just figure that one day I could be, and feel better for knowing what I would do if I were.

And so ends my depressing post. I leave you all with an epic song!



  

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Drugs!

  Oooh the title of this post is drugs, therefore in reading this I will become cool, and whoever posting this must also be cool!  I'm not a person that does drugs regularly, at all, but I have no problem with them. (Just to clear that up)... However what I do have a problem with is people that dislike drugs without knowing anything about them!


  Let's talk about cannabis, purely because of its popularity, which has helped, in my past experience, to make it something of a talking point.
  Not to long ago cannabis was not only legal, but embraced! It was a major source of income for the government, offered jobs and an escape from the stress of life to civilians, its seeds are one of the most nutritious on the planet, it's a very effective pain killer, it was used to get closer to god even! Everybody was happy. However as hemp threatened the markets of chemical pain killers, cotton and timber (among others), in the early-mid 1900s it was illegalised in many places, including America and Britain, being claimed to lead to insanity and addiction, and was linked to such crimes as murder and rape.

   Now, I don't know about you, but I have can't imagine myself ever wanting to rape or murder anybody while high; it is a commonly accepted fact now that it chills you out, making you damn near impossible to be angry with anybody! The government makes billions of pounds in the UK alone from tobacco, and could easily get away with far higher tax rates on cannabis (people would just be happy to be able to legally smoke it!), yet instead millions are wasted on enforcing a law that was made for reasons now known to be invalid.
  But, today's rant is not about the illegality of cannabis (as you could easily be lead to believe from the last few paragraphs), heck I don't even care that much that it is illegal, but rather my reason for posting all of that was to try to change something which can easily be changed by a simple post on the internet, and that is the opinions of you, the readers! Too often is it that I come across people who are anti-weed.
A common ailment; a lack of understanding.
   Whenever I encounter somebody who turns out to be against drugs (specifically cannabis, as that is most common and yet most flawed problem seemingly), I become curious, and cannot help but to inquire further. The responses I get when asking why somebody is against cannabis are often infuriating; "it's illegal for a reason", "it's bad for you", and even "I don't know, I just am". People, please try to form your own opinions based on reason and logic, rather than take those of your elders and never question them! I could talk all day on the topic, but I shall not bore you. I leave you with one simple request, that seems to be a request for you all to just be difficult throughout life, but is so much more than that. And that request is that you question everything; take nothing in life as read. Thank you for your attention.

Saturday 2 April 2011

Dumpster diving

  I've never had to dumpster dive for lack of money with which to buy food. What I love about the concept of it is not only that it's free food, which is always nice, but also that it's a bit different. It's not your everyday activity, and you never know what you're going to get, it encourages you to try more things and be open minded, and gives you a whole new respect for food. Unfortunately it is at present illegal in my country, as rubbish is considered to still be the property of whoever threw it out until it is collected.
  This is a law that really bugs me; I get that companies may not want to lose customers due to them not wanting to buy what they can get for free, but I believe that people who frequently dumpster dive probably couldn't afford food otherwise, and so would just go without or steal it, both of which are obviously worse than somebody taking food deemed not good enough for sale.
   Dumpster divers have a bit of a bad reputation, which doesn't help, for being people with no respect for other people's property. Unfortunately I must say that in many cases this is probably right; in the process of getting food people will not worry about the state in which they are leaving the area; leaving rubbish lying around, and graffiting et cetera...
   But in my opinion there is no sufficient reason for which a law should be in place on the matter... The government these days puts in place too many laws, I don't think that anarchism would be perfect by any stretch, due only to the fact that then the greed of everybody would come out in the world, as opposed to now where it's only that of the few people with political power... But I do think that an anarchistic society could deal with some matters far better than they are at the moment... Of course, I am not only speaking about dumpster diving, but the government can get a lot of things wrong. I know it's impossible to please everybody, but it doesn't seem to truly please anybody! Maybe I'm just being difficult though...

Friday 1 April 2011

Something Different

  Sorry to disappoint but I'm afraid that the title of this blog is indicating that this is something different for myself; regularly recording my thoughts is something I have wanted to do for many reasons for some time, but have never done. This blog and every post in it will be something for myself; I write because it makes me happy to be granted a medium through which I can communicate with the world and they can communicate with me.
  Another potentially disappointing point now I'm afraid; I've never been good with coming up with names... For anything... Because of this, the title of my blog may well not entirely reflect its content, but I guess only time will tell that, as I have no planned topics for discussion, simply to come on here and ramble; giving my opinion on matters where I have no place to have an opinion (as I'm sure many other people on here do), for that is what is great about this world we live in; while I on the most part think that the general beliefs of society as a whole are moronic, I do believe that the right to freedom of speech is a very positive result of society.
  As you may well be able to tell, I've been having some difficulty with finishing my sentences as of late; throwing semicolons and colons in damn near every line, with full stops scarcely dotted around the place. But this isn't too important, for while my posts may be hard to follow, at least you don't have to sit there reading through a mess of spelling and grammatical errors (not that I don't make any, I just try not to) in order to be able to conclude what you think of my blog...
  So anyway, I've rambled and have yet to give my opinion on anything! But I assure you that this is merely an introductory post and in future I hope to not go on about such things...
  Something which I've found to really grind my gears recently (ooh Family Guy reference, I must be a funny guy) is the popularity of the song Friday by Rebecca black. Sure, it aint a great song, but there's far worse ones out there, some of which are listened to by many of the people who slag her off so freely without a second thought. I mean, come on, the girl can't be much older than thirteen! I'm sure that at her age none of you could have got seventy million views on youtube for whatever reason... But all of this can be forgiven; people hate all the time on people who don't deserve it. What really gets me though is just how much this joke has been run into the ground; the song's been parodied in the last few weeks more than many songs will ever be, people have ironically bought it, listened to it, sang it everywhere! It's not being clever and different in pretending to like a poor song, it's just prolonging the hopefully short life of this meme...