Some Defenitions For You

I just thought I'd share some definitions with you; these are all courtesy of Douglas Coupland (Author of Generation X, among other books). You might have heard of some of them before but hopefully they'll be some new ones and there all words that seem to have become increasingly useful over the past few years.

Historical Underdosing: To live in a period of time when nothing seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines and TV news broadcasts.

Historical Overdosing: To live in a period of time when too much seems to happen. Major symptoms include addiction to newspapers, magazines and TV news broadcasts.



Veal-fattening Pen: Small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall partitions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the small pre-slaughter cubicles used by the cattle industry.



Safety Net-ism: The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.



Mental Ground Zero: The location where one visualizes oneself during the dropping of the atomic bomb; frequently, a shopping mall.



Voter's Block: The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the current political system by simply not voting.



Tele-parabilizing: Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots: "That's just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses!"

How About One That's Just About Life?

So I thought I'd just make a post describing this weekend - it’s been a good/strange one.

It all starts on Friday night - Andy's house party was starting at 8, Liam got to my house at err 8:45 to give me a lift there...although in his defense he'd spent the previous three hours arguing with his extremely paranoid fiancée. Call me harsh if you wish but I'm not really sure why they got engaged - every few weeks she has a fit and says he must be cheating and they don't talk for a while, and I can vouch that he's never cheated on anyone. But hey - it’s his life.

So we got there about 9:30 and everyone’s already drunk, so of course in order to make everyone else make sense I had to start drinking pretty quickly. Spent a fair chunk of the night on the trampoline - Joel got in a strop with everyone, lots of people got so drunk they couldn't walk, Jack split hand open after getting in a fight with a window, Ben came out as Bi and I managed to drink without having a breakdown. All in all a good night.

I didn't get any sleep and we left at like 10 AM, I got home had a shower, checked the news, shaved and had lunch. Then it was off to the train station to go to Norwich, looked at phones and clothes for a while it was just me, Joel and Liam while other peeps arrived. We booked a table in Pizza Hut (Under the name of Flodger of course), killed some more time getting kicked out of the mall for playing football, went to pizza hut where everyone helpfully left a message for the waitress including my phone number and a tip that consisted of a smiley face made of coppers.

Went to the train station and while we were getting tickets a man dressed as the exorcist walked through the station. He walked through the barriers the wrong way and a group of massive men that must have been in there forties just stood to one side silently, he bowed and walked through. We got our tickets and as we walked towards the barriers he re-appeared… from a different platform. The train station went completely silent as he walked through then everyone continued as if nothing had happened.

We got on the train but it was canceled so we got to wait an hour and forty minutes which consisted of running up and down the train and generally being knobs, then people started to arrive for the belated train - most of them where drunk and a women who must of been thirty was kind enough to through some high heels at Liam before hitting Andy on the head with one leaving a nice bruise - its funny now and it was funnier then :D

Today I finally got around to getting a contract for my mobile - unlimited texts for £10 a month - I can see this saving me a lot of money, Watched Iron Man 2 with my family and then I came home had dinner and began to write this.

I'm not really sure why I'm writing this - maybe this is just a point I wanted to keep written down, even if it does sound a lot more interesting in my head. I'm starting to come to terms with the whole gay thing - I still feel like shit a lot of the time though and living with the constant worry my parents might find out is always fun.

I think I'll just see how things go from here - I've changed as a person a lot this past year, I've finally got a grasp on who I want to be, the music I listen to has changed, the things I'm interested in have changed, the people I'm friends with has changed a lot and I think I've got a lot more mature.

Exams are coming up really fast and I need to get revising, people are going out more. I'm staying with my brother for a while in the summer which should be good fun, drinking, playing pool and seeing bands for a week should be pretty awesome. Who knows maybe I'll tell him - he's the only person in my family I can have a conversation with so maybe he'll understand.

Sorry for the length and dullness of this - it sounded a lot better in my head but either way - thanks for reading. It means a lot.

Sam x

Typing have

When I spell checked my lost post I'd spelt have as ahve nearly everytime, I don't know what it is but whenever I type remotely fast that always happens...Wierd.. Anyway on with the show.

The Newspapers..

There seems to be a big deal at the moment about how so many less people are buying newspapers and the recession means less money for advertising, Journalists are losing jobs. So on and so forth. I think that if anything this should have been a wake up call to the newspapers - if people wanted to read a load of celebrity gossip interspersed with semi-reliable news stories then they could just buy a gossip magazine and watch the news on TV.

And let’s be honest if you can get something for free why would you pay for it? There loads of free news sources on the internet, a lot of which are non-profit which means they have a lot of reports/columns written by university lecturers, authors and other public figures - people who generally know a lot more about what there writing about then journalists. This makes it more reliable then something you’d have to pay for...

Its not too hard to spot the problem here, Add to that the "Who really owns what company thing" and it gets even worse - would I be so happy if I found out that the owner of the newspaper I buy invested a lot of money in right-wing campaigns? Would I prefer it if the place I got my news wasn't making a profit to invest in those campaigns? I think you can guess my answer...

I feel sorry for people who are losing jobs in the newspaper industry but with the internet here, how did you really think paper news would be top dog for?

And anyway - there’s a whole new online industry for reporting news and sharing your opinion - One that's constantly evolving and completely adaptable. Not to mention completely un-censored (Well within limit...).

P.S. I couldn't get pictures to come out with the text on them readable so You'll have to stick with boring text again everyone...Although I'll have a play and get it to work next time I post :)

In The Name Of Democracy?

I just thought this was an issue that too few people were aware of:
"Cancer - The Deadly Legacy Of The Invasion Of Iraq"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/06
Just to quote some of the main points from the article for thoose who can't be bothered to read the whole thing: "Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities." "Many soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2 and alleging that they have developed cancer due to exsposure to depleted uranium in Iraq."

The fact that depleted uranium is poisenous has been known for years - in 2001 there was even a BBC news report that stated that it was "Chemically Poisenous and radioactive" but just like with Agent Orange all the complaints and campaigns against its use were ignored. (And there were numerous campaigns http://www.psr.org/news-events/press-releases/president-signs-legislation-depleted-uranium.html for example) Jim McDermott a U.S. Representative said: "The Millitary denies first, and then after the evedence builds to the point where they can no longer deny, then they do the research" He said that in 2006 and he was completely right, because the millitaries (It wasn't only the US army that used it) Wouldn't face the facts and as a result thousands of Iraqs are getting cancer and having deformed children and Soldiers who have been in combat zones are also dying from cancer and having deformed children.

In 2006 Anti-Flag released an album that had the song "Depleted Uranium Is A War Crime" on it and the lyrics have never been more fitting:
"Gonna cut through thier armour, then cut through your lungs. If you make it out alive you'll still die young. A greedy gang of liars, yeah we've seen it all before. A moneymaking scheme led by war-profiteering whores."

Love, Respect and Solidarity

Sam

The smartest Generation ever..Or the most ignorant?

This is my first post on a Blog, I was a bit angry and thought about putting it on the internet like everyone else seems to, just to see how it'd go. So here we go:

What I want to know is why in this age of easily available imformation and were learning about the world and how it works is incredibly easy people seem to be becoming increaseingly ignorant to the world around them? They beleive what the papers say and never put themselves in other peoples shoes - They expect everyone to be far more moralled and innocent than them.

For example take the facebook groups that have popping up recently like "We care about Great Britain- Do You?" (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=271541202925&ref=nf ) Here say "You're paid from our taxes so start earning it and stop stealing it" They've swallode up the intire MP expenses story without knowing anything about the MP expenses system. Expenses were originally introduce because it was the only way people from poor or middle class backgrounds could afford to become MPs when the option first became available (Mps were paid very little and they needed to have two houses) as a way to give them the ability to be an MP as a career, without having to raise there wages by a large amount because that would have caused controversy. This system stayed in place with MPs easily being able to claim money, it was essentialy there for the taking, Who can honestly say if they offered money and they'd be no consequenes for taking it, that they would say no? The MPs were just using the system a way anybody would.

It also says "If you burn our flags, we'll burn your benefit handouts", On top of the recent campaigns to stop extremeist religious groups from being able to peacefully protest, shows an incredible amount of ignorance. There making demands of the goverment..at the same time as asking them to restrict peoples ability to protest? What happens if the goverment does stop extremeist groups protesting? How long is it until no-one can protest against anything the goverment does, without being arrested? They'd soon be complaining if they weren't allowed to protest immigration.


Thanks to anyone who reads this (If anyone does lol), please leave comments - I'm not bothered if there petty aslong as there constructive or debate style :)