I'm all smiley faces, all the time.

The Point of Personal Responsiblity.

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:24:00 +0800

People like to have excuses. They like to have reasons why they couldn’t do something, why they shouldn’t take a risk or why they fail.

I know do, it beats admitting to myself that I let myself down, that I was lazy, that I should have worked harder or paid more attention to detail. I like to rationalise why I didn’t do as well as I could have and usually I place it to external factors, make the reasons the faults of others. But deep down I know it’s really my own fault that I didn’t do as well as I wanted to and it’s my own fault that I didn’t get what I wanted. But then I rationalise those things too. It doesn’t help to assuage my guilty feelings but I do it anyway.

I struggle with the rational and the irrational and the search to balance them out and to get on with whatever needs to be done. But that’s not my point. My point is that people spot a rational reason for not doing something and then use it like a crutch for the rest of their lives.

They sit around and go “I could have done that but…” and then fill in whatever reason there was why they didn’t achieve what they wanted or they sit and go “I can’t do that because…” and then list a reason why they can’t get on with what needs doing.

My problem with this line of thinking is that people are installing limiters on themselves which at first limits what they can do, then exacerbates an existing problem to levels where they can’t change and then finally they use it as a reason and justification as to why they are that way and why they can’t change.

There are a few big social excuses that entire groups of people latch onto and use as their crutches and they’re all pretty controversial. Discrimination is a big one, mental illness is another and then there’s the concept of personal context.

These are actual issues and would be good reasons as to why you can’t achieve something at least they would be if they were actually the factor that caused the issue.

Take the feminist idea of discrimination for example. I’m going to make a big generalisation based upon anecdotes (never do this in anything of any real value. EVER) that women look at the reason why they aren’t earning (on average) as much as men. And women (at least in my peer group) often go “Well, that’s because of sexism that women aren’t paid the same amount”.

The problem with the idea that men get paid more for doing the same job is that it’s not true. At least not in Australia since the sixties and if it is true then you have a legitimate law suit.

And yet women like to make that claim, that the reason is sexism, the reason is discrimination and that society and men just won’t let them succeed. And then we jump at shadows instead of facing the problem.

The same idea is put on some forms of mental illness, where people just claim that they’re suffering mental problems and then fail to get them checked and treated. And then they use it as an excuse to say things that people would avoid and hide behind like a shield if anyone calls them out.

Take the idea of “nice guys finish last” and the “friendzone”; half of those situations are imagined. They finish last simply because they don’t start. Guys go, “Oh I’ll get turned down, so I won’t even try,” or “I don’t want to risk it, so I’ll just wait until they come to me”. Problem is no one is coming and if you don’t risk it, you don’t succeed.

So, now to the real point of this: AT SOME POINT YOU MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF. You must decide that you are only thing that you can exercise control over and that you must try. Your problems are real and do affect you but not as much as you would like to think.

The question is where does the point of personal responsibility start and end?

When do we need to say, “Yes, I am to blame for my own problems because I did not do what I needed to do”?

At what point do we say, “Enough of your goddamn excuses, take responsibility for yourself!” ?

The Challenge.

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:20:27 +0800

Never do I feel more alive, never do I feel more awake, never do I feel more powerful than when I beat a challenge that I once thought was insurmountable.

Whether it’d be beating a personal best time in running, doing more exercise than I thought I could endure or completing a task that I had ran up against a wall while working on it, the defeat of the challenge makes me feel alive, awake and powerful.

I can shape my creativity to climb up the wall.
I can push my strength to bust through the wall.
I can use my mind way to move around the wall.

Never mind if my challenge is someone’s routine and disregard the end quality of the results. If I can beat it, if I can survive it in a sense and push on through it then I am powerful.

If only for a moment.

Advertising.

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:11:32 +0800

People like to advertise.

They like to advertise everything from drinks to disposable toilet seats and everything else for that matter including how they’re feeling, what they’re doing, who they’re with and why they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing. People just like to advertise as if by telling everyone on their facebook that they’re ‘OUT WIT THA GIRRRRRRRRLLSS’ that people would care or think better of them.

It’s the people that like to do this sort of thing:

7PM: ‘“Gonna go out tonight with my people! Gonna get messy! =)” with so and so and that person and the other friend’
9PM: ‘“Getting jazzed up with my people”” with so and so, that person and the other friend.
10PM: Idiot 1 was tagged in a photo. *Insert standard photo of people posing idiotically and pretending to like each other in front of a mirror* (The caption reads “PRE-DRINKS BITCHES”
12PM: Idiot 1 was tagged in a photo at a place. *Insert a photo of people in a line to a club/doing shots or something*
9AM: ‘I had such a good time with all my beautiful friends last night! MUST do it again soon,’ with so and so, that person and the other friend

And they do it like once a fortnight, to break up their almost constant updates of what the hell they are doing. Apparently people like to tell me these things and other people actually like reading them. It’s like the thought that if you don’t like those statuses which tell us exactly what the hell a person is doing that you’re not a good friend.

This constant updating of everything that’s going on is incredibly annoying. People really don’t need to know what you’re doing at all times and we definitely don’t need a picture to accompany the lame update that’s been given. There is only three things worse than that constant reminding that they actually do things and they are:
1. People who constantly talk to their partner in statuses while remind each other how much they love each other. 2. People that use public statuses to say that they are sad/depressed/angry. 3. People that write an entire Oscar Acceptance speech for something as simple as passing an assignment in uni/tafe/school.

I just don’t understand the motivation to do these things.

Well... Shit.

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:20:00 +0800

I don’t know if anyone has realised just how versatile shit has become. I mean, look at the ways you can use the word.

Shit can describe things, smells, tastes and people.

‘Look at all this shit!’

‘YOU SMELL LIKE SHIT!’

‘Man, this beer tastes like shit,’

‘You, sir, are a shit!’

It comes in different varieties. You’ll get horse-shit, bull-shit, sheep-shit, pig-shit and bird-shit. But it’s not just limited to varieties of animals; it also comes with different with different IQ levels, if you were to believe the expressions, ‘dumb-shit’ and ‘smart-shit’.

Yet with this menagerie of shit, you’ll rarely find someone who gives a shit, let alone two shits. But the paradox part of that is that people love to give you loads of shit and you can constantly feel shat upon.

It doesn’t stop there though.

Shit can talk, fly and fuck if you believe those sayings about people who talk shit, don’t give a flying shit and yell ‘fucking shit’.

All in all, shit does more than you think and you do more shit than you think.

You can talk shit, make shit, do shit, eat shit, drink shit and take a shit. There can be a storm of shit and a house of shit.

You can be shit, feel like shit, feel the shit, feel the top shit. It can be hot, cold and warm. it can even be royalty if you like to say, ‘King Shit of Turd Hill’. Shit can be too big for the bowl or it just be a small shit.

There are lots of ways you can use the word shit and lots of things you can describe with it.

Just don’t let it hit the fan. That shit gets messy.

What your first name?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:03:13 +0800

Who wants to know?

The World of Social Intrigue

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 20:42:23 +0800

As much as we like to believe that we get along with our friends in a perfect simple harmony most of the time, the truth is that one look at a Facebook drama will show us how messed up these interconnected social worlds can really get.

It makes the house of representatives or the UN look like a fucking picnic hosted by happy-go-lucky teddy bears.

When we’re interacting with our own group of people that we know on any form of decent level, we’re essentially acting like little nations.

There’s just so much gossip, sniping, passive-aggressive verbal artillery and a lot of wheeling, dealing and trade agreements.

You’ll hang out with those guys just to keep on their good side for the next party.

You’ll like a friend’s comment on arguing/shitstorm status because they’re your friend… and their status was both funny and cuttingly critical of that douche bag you don’t like.

You’ll decline and accept requests of friends and events, always trading status, position or wealth in one sphere or another.

You watch the back-biting and hack-n-slash discussions of wall posts and personal messages. Or the sheep like behaviour liking a status because they think it might associate them with the ideas being expressed.

Know that people don’t like bogans/idiots/dumbasses?
Post a status saying that and see just how many people that you would place in those categories like it.

I watch people make an absolutely generalised and rather scathing comment only to pretty much back flip when someone suggests that the statement might encapsulate someone they know.

Example:

Person 1 : ‘MAN, FUCKING BLONDES SHIT ME OFF! BEING ALL DUMB, WHOREY AND STD INFECTED!’
Person 2 : ‘Dude, I’m blonde…’
Person 1 : ‘OH MAN, I DIDN’T MEAN YOU’
Person 2 : ‘Then who did you mean?’
Person 1 : ‘ERRRRRRRR’

Ridiculous.

The point is that, to me, the very facebook newsfeed gives away a whole lot more than just bullshit statuses about ‘gearing up for the weekend’ or ‘hitting the gym’. It gives me this imaginary world of little nations playing politics with the occasional war breaking out or massive alliances forging and failing, cold wars starting due to blood feuds.

It’s pretty entertaining or irritating depending on how you feel.

But if you’re bored then just imagine that you are now the sovereign nation of you and you’re deciding whether or not to go to the next G8 summit rather than just plain old you deciding whether or not to go to the get together. Your decision has political repercussions. You might stop a war. Or start one.

Enjoy the heady feeling of being one of the most powerful nations in the world.

Or you can just go to the damn party and stop that dumbass from breaking up with his ‘on again off again’ girlfriend for the ninth time.

Foot in Mouth Syndrome

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:37:15 +0800

If you’re anything like me then there are people that you kind of don’t want to talk to at all. It’s not that you don’t like them and it’s not that you don’t have anything to say but the more fact that anything do say can and will be taken as insult, put-down or personal attack.

Or at least it feels that way.

I suffer from this sort of syndrome where what I say makes perfect sense, is not attacking at all and just in general pretty plain. And yet through some error in delivery or when other people hear it, what I’ve said becomes the equivalent of ‘FUCK YOU. YOU ARE FOREVER USELESS AND UNATTRACTIVE,’. Even when I’ve said something as mundane as ’ Hello! You look nice today!’.

Now, that doesn’t really bother me if people I don’t see or talk to often are affected by this problem. I don’t really care if the stranger at the party thinks I’m dick because ultimately their opinion is worthless to me. What really bothers me is when this trait of unintentional implied attacks is applied to my friends or people I actually have to associate with on a regular basis.

At that point, it becomes a major issue.

It can start to break down group dynamics and bring out retaliations that seems totally uncalled for from my perspective. So, my issue is trying to decide where the problem is influenced by me ends and where the problem is influenced by others begins.

I mean, is it just the way I operate or say things? Or is it because people are listening for insults and are making their own version of what I’ve said through misinterpretation.

And what I come back to is a 50/50 split. It can’t solely be attributed to everyone else because it affects multiple people and I’m the only shared factor. But it can’t just be me either because it only affects certain people.

So, the next problem is identifying which people I need to watch my mouth around and then the problem after that is deciding at point I should no longer be held accountable. I say that because trying to consciously pick every fucking word you say is exhausting and terribly difficult because sometimes even carefully thought-out remarks backfire.

That means at some point, it shouldn’t just be my responsibility to watch what I say but also the other person’s responsibility to not assume that everything is a go at them.

That said, like most things in the world, it’s a two-way street and you can never really know what other people are thinking or going to do therefore the only person you can rely on to act a particular way is you.

The Future is Far Away and with Good Bloody Reason.

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:34:49 +0800

I hate thinking about the future and my place in it. It freaks me out a little and stresses me out more than a bit. It’s partly the idea that my life is going to be largely unpredictable and partly the idea that perhaps things I am doing now will hinder my quality of life later.

Essentially, though it gets to me because it breaks my little maxim of ‘Prepare for the long term but deal with the short term,’ because sometimes when you’re dealing with the short term, it throws your entire long plan to the wall. I can plan for my career, where I want to live, where I want to go and I can prepare for those things but short term events can affect that long term on a huge scale.

When you think of your future life and even if you set some pretty reasonable goals there are still a myriad of unknown factors which influence that. you can’t possibly know every outcome and things often don’t go according to plan. They generally work out but your plans can be messed up.

The other part is doing things now which affect your future. Say right now, you don’t know what you want to be or you messed up some little thing. It doesn’t seem like a big deal and you move along with life but then a while later it turns out that decision has cost you a lot of time. I’m now looking at one of those scenarios and it freaks me out.

The real problem I have with looking too far ahead is that I try to work out the possible situations and then assume the worst one. Even if I rationalise a scenario or some event, I know the negative alternatives are still possible and just that doubt absolutely plagues me. I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather be getting stuck into it. The doubt, the anticipation, the nerves and the stress go away when I’m actually in a situation because I don’t need to think; I just need to do.

So, I don’t like thinking too far ahead. It reminds me of mistakes which are going to cost me time and money. Mistakes are fine but I hate making them, I feel all ‘failed’ and the like. I’d rather handle a situation and get it done.

I can’t change the past and I don’t know the future but I am in the present.

And that’s what I would prefer to be enjoying, not stressing out about what came before and what might come after. Just enjoy my everyday moments.

Photo

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:13:48 +0800

Photo

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:13:59 +0800

5 Everyday Gaming Terms!

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:34:13 +0800

Everyone knows that if you play any online game that there is a separate lists of terms or language for that game. Specialist vocabulary for gaming if you will. Yet, even if you haven’t played any games ever, chances are that you know these terms or words. Whether it’s because gaming people brought them to you or something else, it’s these terms and their origins that I find interesting. We’ll start basic.

5. Owned/Pwned:
Pretty simple term which means, ‘You got thoroughly beaten and possibly humiliated. Haha,’. Now, research suggests that this started in pretty much the first RTS game ever, Chess. The term owned was used in chess for sometime before computers but then ‘pwn’ became present with the computer age. Experts trace the creation of the word ‘pwn’ back to the early days of MIT where Chess players used the term as abbreviation of ‘pawn’ or ‘pawned’ to indicate that a pawn was kicking your knight’s ass.

As gaming, hacking and computers developed the term transitioned to combine with ‘owned’ to pretty much mean the same thing. Some people put this down the QWERTY keyboard style and say that ‘pwned’ was a typo of ‘owned,’. Yet, I like to believe that a bunch of computer chess masters spend days crafting a staple gaming word.

4. Uber:

The word comes from the German word for ‘above’ or ‘over’. Now, some say that it was brought into the mainstream by ‘80’s punk bands who used the term as part of a parody of an old German slogan from World War 2. Anyway, it came into gaming around the early to late nineties and stayed true to the original German meaning. The only change was the dropping of the little dots above the ‘u’ because no one either knew how or could be bothered to type the correctly accented letter.

The term was brought back into the mainstream with Team Fortress 2 when it was used as part of the Medic’s medigun’s ability: The Ubercharge. The Ubercharge made both the medic and whoever he was healing at the time temporarily invulnerable. Still, the word makes its rounds as more of adjective rather than a noun or adverb. Common usages are: Uber-powerful, Uber-pimp, Uber-Beast (See Beast/Beastmode for more information). So, the word does go uber and beyond the call of duty.

3. Epic:
Epic means what it always has: a thing of great importance, heroics and lasting impact. It’s the kind of word which describes something which needs an orchestra to back it. The Battle for Helm’s Deep. The part of a war movie where the hero jumps out of his foxhole or cover, runs across the clear land with bullets whipping past his head and then he saves his buddy or kills every last fucker in his way. That kind of thing.

Epic came back into favour with the release of World of Warcraft. Epics were items with purple name text which were rather difficult to obtain and therefore the word took on that meaning. As the game spread more people starting using epic to describe certain things. Epic movie, epic car, epic game etc etc. As that usage took off, the word spread to mean different things. It means something incredibly hard, awe-inspiring or just of a marathon length. Yet, the core idea that the word epic should be joined with the sound of dramatic orchestral music was never lost.

2. Beast:
The definition is something like an incredibly powerful or great person, a person who can single handedly sweep through a game and save your entire team. Or do small things or a ridiculous nature. Anyway, the term originates from the old CGI Transformer animation: Beastwars. The Transformers in Beastwars had two modes: robot and beast. Anyway, they would say, ‘Beastmode activate’ or something similar to turn into their beast forms. Beastmode became a popular for gamers when they went on long killstreaks, to do so was to go ‘beastmode’ or to be a ‘beast’ or to be ‘beasting’. It stuck and found it’s way to other areas of life, you can now ‘beast’ your way through food or drink, you can be a ‘beast’ of a person if you work out enough and you can be a ‘beast’ for consuming copious amounts of alcohol.

1. Legendary/Legend:
It means ‘very well known or ought to be very well known because of how fucking awesome/epic that/they was/were,’. The term was popularised once again by World of Warcraft as a legendary item was an item was orange name text that was incredibly rare and hard to obtain. Such meanings were kept as the word was brought more mainstream by How I Met Your Mother. Barny Stinson uses the word often and many people picked it up from there. However, legendary was also truncated to ‘legend’ to describe individuals. ‘He/She is/was a fucking legend because he/she absolutely wrecked the other team in one clutch moment,’.

That about wraps it up. Naturally, these aren’t overly accurate but they do provide a base of some of the origins for these words. Like superheroes, these are debatable and subject to personal preference but the origin story is always cool to know.

The Top Ten Creepiest Places/Most Haunted?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:47:35 +0800

I don’t believe in ghosts, spirits or any of the other crap but I do like the idea of them. There’s always a big audience for those documentary styled, Blair Witch like, friggin’ stupid camera quality movies and there’s always a big market for horror/scary films and games. Yet, I find that the environs are never as creepy as they could be. I think instead of just the same old haunted house or running through the forest wily nily, horror writers could go the next step. Some on my list are pretty stock standard and others are personal preference. So, I present my list of and reasons for…

THE TOP TEN CREEPIEST PLACES AT NIGHT!

I’ll do it count down style.

10. Forests/Bushland:
Forests and random bushland aren’t going to get past number ten ever. Despite all the hunting trips gone wrong, dead teen camping trips and failed family fun times you throw at me. I kinda like the quiet surrounds of the nature at night. But they rank in at ten by popular demand and precedent. Blair Witch, Friday the 13th and nameless other movies will have some dumbass teens bumbling through the woods being chased by a vengeful spirit. What makes these areas of nature creepy at night/haunted seeming is the fact you don’t have four walls around you. The camera flicks from one side to the other. You can’t see through the brush. Anything could be peering at you just behind the branches… that and all the pissed off angry magical critters ever dwell in the deep woods.

9. Abandoned Warehouses:
Abandoned warehouses get number nine because they’re so empty, big and broken. They’re supposed to be bustling buildings of workers and produces and instead they’re all cracked concrete and shattered glass. What makes them creepy is the echo effect. The fact that your voice booms out and returns to you. Is it really your voice? What if the echo was something different? Are they the echoes of your footsteps or the reports of someone/something else’s? The big empty space of the factory floor, the repeating tight hallways of the offices above and the same crooked light and echoing noise. That’s what gives them the heebie-jeebie factor. Also, just how many workers went postal there? How many lost their sanity? Took their own lives? Could leave restless spooks…

8. Abandoned Theatres:
These hit number eight because they’re areas of show. They were designed for performers and action and entertainment. The acoustics also fuck with them. What goes on stage spreads out to you. Moth chewed curtains, moonlight spotlights, actors’ shades floating entering stage left. These things out creep forests and warehouses because performers are notoriously unstable and they like to perform. To put on a show. What if the show is you? And the act is the last man hanged? That and there’s a bit of history to them. Accidents on stage, suicides, murders but also plays and movies. Macbeth’s tale alone should make theatres seem fuckign creepy. Chicago fires. Big ticket creepy items.

7. Underpasses/Tunnels:
These are always creepy and the only reason I place them here is because it’s incredibly hard to set anything longer than a scene in an underpass. They’re still fucking creepy though. It’s the tunnel effect and being underground. There’s two ways in or out and a whole pile of weight hanging above you. The walls are close together, the sound echoes nicely and travels further. So, there’s that but there’s also the fact that shady dealings go on in underpasses. Drug deals and assault being chief among them. Always creepy to go into an underpass because you can become trapped very quickly. Adds to the claustrophobic creepy value of it.

6. Cemeteries:
Now, this one you would normally. place higher on the list. No one likes being around the dead for too long and at night that’d take a bigger aspect. But it ranks sixth because of predictability and the sheer overuse of it. The whole hands punching through the dirt and clawing at the air as lightning crashes in the sky scene is overdone. Still, there is value in creepy cemeteries. Surrounded by the dead under the earth, in supposedly peaceful rest or some cremated and drifting softly on the wind. If there was ever a gathering point for haunts, it’s a cemetery. Should be enough to give you a shudder

5. Abandoned Prisons:
This one is understandable and you’ll probably wonder why it’s so far down the list. It’s because it’s predictable that it’s down the list. You expect that kind of crap in an abandoned prison, so it kinda limits the strike value. If you’re writing and you want to freak people out, then put them in their happy place and then turn that to spikes and ghouls. These are places where deranged people once spent their lives. Where violent criminals were held. People surely died or went insane. Some executed or took their own way out. Bound to happen. And the cells. Imagine stepping into one supposedly empty cell, the door slams behind you and then you’re the fresh meat. Not fun. I do recommend the Fremantle Prison Night Tour if you come to Perth. Highly freaky.

4. Abandoned Hospitals:
Hospitals alone are freaky. They smell of disinfectant and bleach. They’ve got the sick, the dead and the dying as well blood and organs on tap. There’s plenty of death and plenty of creep. A metric shit tonne of potential for writing. A doctor who went over the edge. Someone doing a vivisection. Someone breaking children’s legs so that they stay in the hospital forever. Freaky stuff. But hospitals hit number four because of the sheer range of haunts that could be left in there. You could always make them creepy.

3. Abandoned Asylums:
Similar to hospitals but creepy because of their patient range. The mentally ill. Some are nice and friendly. Others are disturbed and violent. And that’s just the patients. What about staff? Watching people with low sanity must take a toll. At night, an abandoned asylum would have noises; creaks and groans. Doors would open or slam shut because of the wind. The wind would sound eerily like the screams of the demented. All over verrrrrrrrrry creepy.

2. Playgrounds:
This one you can sorta chuck in with the number one but I give them their own place here because they are freaky on their own. Little kids shouldn’t be scary but they are. Their laughter, their actions, the way they talk and the fact you just can’t quite understand the way they think. The fact they have invisible friends. Playgrounds have that nice connotation of echoing with kids’ laughter as they play nicely on the equipment. But that’s at day and that’s when things are shiny and new. Things break and accidents happen. Kids could crack their skulls on the swings or fall off the monkey bars and break their necks. Child ghosts are the worst because you think that they cannot hurt you if they were alive. They’re not supposed to be able to. As the pissed off dead though… different story.

1. Schools:
The playground piece ties nicely with this one because of all the points. Kids are supposed to be easy to stomp if you’re an adult. But not as ghosts. Then there’s all the settings a school has. Offices, libraries, canteens/cafeterias, classrooms and playgrounds. There’s also staff that used to work there. There’s long corridors and echoes. And the fact they’re supposed to be filled with people. They are freaking creepy because the sheer amount of crap that goes on at schools. Bullying, self-esteem, suicide attempts. Hell, we had one kid storm the staff room with a knife before getting his ass tazed. Between that and the sheer range of issues young people get, it makes for some fucked up little monster ghosts. They have a range of props to fuck with. Rulers, projectors, tvs and pcs. They’ve got sports stuff. Desks and chairs to move. Boards to write on. All kinds of hollywood horror routine gear.

Anyway, that’s the list. It’s probably a little broken and there is always room for improvement but I like it. Those places are creepy and easily haunted.

Still, what’s creepy to me isn’t creepy to everyone.

What do you find creepy?

You Get One... Just One.

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:20:02 +0800

You don’t get twelve.

You get one. Just the one per year.

What I mean by this is that you only get to celebrate your anniversary once per year. Just the once and that is only for things one year or longer.

You shouldn’t be celebrating your ‘six week anniversary’ or your ‘six month anniversary’ because it’s an annual event and if you haven’t made at least one year, then why are you bothering? I mean, that’s not really worth celebrating. So, don’t do that and celebrate stupid, petty, meaningless and pointless anniversaries.

You also shouldn’t be celebrating a relationship’s anniversary if you’ve broken up with the other person in that relationship and then gotten back together. I mean, say that it was 2 years ago that you first started dating but in that time there was a period of four months where you guys split up and tried seeing other people, then started dating again. You don’t start from the first time you guys started, you go from the most recent time you started because technically, you didn’t make two years of complete relationship. It’s like me going to uni for a semester, dropping out for four years then coming back and saying I’ve done four years and a half of uni. I haven’t. I did a semester. Just like you haven’t done 2 years of relationship.

And don’t celebrate your anniversary multiple times a year after the first year. I mean, if you’re celebrating your anniversary every month then it shows how much validation you need for that relationship. And how fucking clingy you are. I don’t mind you setting aside a day every month where you and your partner agree to spend it only with each other, just don’t call it an anniversary because it isn’t. Call it ‘Couple’s Night’ or ‘Trading Romance for Sex Day,’ or whatever else.

Ultimately, celebrating pointless/incorrect/stupid/ marks of time for your anniversary is like fucking around with your birthday. I don’t celebrate my birthday every fucking month. I do it once per year just to remember how old I am. That’s how your relationship should be; you celebrate it once a year to remember its age.

You get one a year. That’s the rule. Don’t break the rule.

If It Were Real... They'd All Be Dead...

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:12:00 +0800

I was sitting down and writing something for a project I’m working on. It involved quills and ink and that brought up the idea of Harry Potter because that’s the first story involving quills and ink that popped up. I got to thinking on a bit of a side track that a pack of biro pens would have made their lives so much fucking easier.

I mean, they’re writing with quills and bottles of ink. Where are they getting the ink? They’re writing on parchment. A biro would speed up their writing time and stop them spilling shit every where.

That one thought started the snowball.

What do they learn in school?

Defence against the Dark Arts. Potions. History of Magic. Muggle Studies (Elective). Herbology. Astrology.

That’s fucking useless.

They don’t know basic Math. Or English. Or science, but that’s kinda moot. They don’t know any History besides their own.

They get taught stuff which isn’t universal from age eleven. And only those muggle/half bloods get to go to school until eleven anyway.

THAT’S A LOT OF RETARDS.

Who taught them to read and write?

How the fuck are they writing a coherent essay if they’ve never been taught?

How the fuck do they do their maths?

They’d have no medicine beyond magical and physical injury. No vaccinations.

Let’s see them diagnose cancer, let alone cure it.

And then you get to more mundane matters. They’d all be dodging ‘muggle’ taxes. They’d have no ID.

And they’d be fucked in a real war.

No defence force, crappy government which doesn’t seem entirely democratic.

Let’s looked what happened in the series:

One guy starts a civil war which is only ended when he fucks up and fails to kill a child.
That guy comes back, gathers a small force of wizards, convinces a number of magical creatures to join him, including the guards of the only prison.

And who is left to stop him?

A few Aurors, who suck and serve the useless government, a handful of almost militia from a secret society and a bunch of school kids.

NIIIIIICE.

If any opposing nation from that universe declared war on the wizards of Britain and used modern military strategy, Britain would be lost in four days. Seriously, four fucking days.

Fuck.

Let’s just sum up some of their problems:
-Poor literacy
-Poor numeracy
-Technologically backwards
-A corrupt and inefficient government
-No formal military/defence force
-No modern medicine
-A bunch of powerful artefacts that they don’t properly protect
-Environmental issues

Okay, if it were real, they’d be dead. Just dead.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd Now I'm Done With MW3.

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:07:42 +0800

It took forever. It took everything I had and the other team to be full of terrible players but I did it. I got the M.O.A.B. I killed 24 people in one life. It was probably the most intense thing I have done in ages. I’m a little ashamed to say that but it’s true. You just invest so much into it and there’s this huge rush when you get it. Everything is just so intense, double rainbow intense you might say, and it’s the most fun I’ve had playing that game.

I was on Carbon, a map which I actually kind of like and I was using the MP5. I came one kill off of getting the M.O.A.B once before and it was Carbon as well, so I always felt the expectations rise a little when I go into that map. Anyway, the games before had been pretty lacklustre, hit my specialist bonus a couple of times but nothing greater than twelve kills. So, I wasn’t prepared for it but I did have some nice music going and I felt a small rush.

I started the game pretty nicely with a couple of close kills before being shot in the back. I came out again, got some pay back and then was promptly cut down. So, I charge out a third time, straight into a double kill. After that it was just me trying to hit specialist and after what felt like a goddamn century I hit it, that’s when shit got intense. Ever since my first close M.O.A.B call on Carbon, I count my kills after I hit specialist. Just, ‘8, 9, 10,’ etc, and usually it stops after 10. This time it kept going and by the time I hit 18, I could barely see from the adrenaline.

There was a couple of really close calls but I kept my cool and ran from those battles, moved and out-flanked people. I lost count around 22 because shit was massively intense. I knew I was close but just not how close. I went down those stairs in that generator like room and run into a guy. Fuck knifing, I just open up with the MP5 and down he goes.

‘M.O.A.B awaiting your mark,’

‘FUCK YEAH! SHIT YEAH! HOO RAH BITCHES! HOO-FUCKING-RAH! DOMINATING!’

Called it in as soon as I could, ran around to finish off a couple of guys and then got picked off by some guy in a long sight line. By that stage I couldn’t care less. I had my big bomb and I was smiling in all my bracered glory.

I think my music played a nice role, keeping me focused on killing and distracted from the streak itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpqy0yFx-uo

I had that song going the entire time. I mean the song ended and I just flipped it back on. It was my lucky charm and I like it.

M.O.A.B.

Fuck yeah.

Now, I can stop playing that damn game.

Morbid Curiosity and Why Do You Care?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 20:37:36 +0800

It’s always freaking hilarious to see a post on facebook which says, ‘Like this status and I’ll give you my opinion,’ or something to that effect. I laugh because generally I know what to expect and I laugh because there’s usually a lot of people who like these statuses. I always give them a like, just to see whether they meet my expectations or not. Sometimes, you get surprised.

Now, I’ve mentioned this before, most of the time when someone does one of these things, they lie through their teeth and just go for the most diplomatic approach ever. It’s like watching my Mum be introduced to a stripper or something. She’s secretly judging the living crap out of this person while she’s sitting there making pleasant conversation. Fuckin’ hilarious.

At any rate, you get the usual:
‘Like: That we had a single class together and you were good at that class
Dislike: That we don’t talk any more,’

And that’s the entire thing. It’s a bit of, ‘why bother?’ and a lot of whoop dee doo.

People know this and they know to expect this but they like ‘em anyway.

Why?

Fuckin’ curiosity. People want to know what others really think of them, expecting it to be all terrible and not believing a single word that’s positive despite it being true. Everyone thinks that everyone else hates them. Straight up.

It’s not entirely wrong. A lot of people will hate you for no reason and a lot more will hate you for some reason. Whoop dee doo.

Why do you care? Especially if it’s someone that you mutually hate.

Other than that and related to that, when someone posts up one of those statuses and says they’re going to be honest or brutal, they hardly are. I did one and it’s tough to dislike shit about your friends. I mean they’re your friends. But I found/invented stuff for them. Other people copped a full swing of dislike. I made sure to make the positives outweigh the negatives and to keep it civil. None of that petty name calling. I didn’t lose anyone but that was never an issue. It was a case of ‘it is your fault for clicking like,’.

But some people freeze up. I understand that it’s hard but, shit, for the people that you don’t talk to much, it becomes a fuckin’ cake walk. Why sugar coat it? Why do you care? Is one person’s opinion of you so valuable? Are you still seeking their validation? Are you that insecure?

And if you answer, ‘Yes, I am insecure,’ then why bother doing one of these things? You’re going to over-analyse it and fuck it up.

These things don’t take an incredible amount of courage or at least they shouldn’t. It’s one of the cases where you throw somebody enough rope to make a noose with it and then see if they hang themselves with it.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

What I would like to see is a status where the original poster invites others to give their damn straight, brutal, honest, cold-blooded opinion on them. Imagine that. Imagine the amount of drama that could be caused.

Of course I’m not going to give a shot.

Not just now.

Last Humans Alive? Potential Loot Carriers.

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:40:24 +0800

There’s always a lot of hype about the end of the world. A tonne of hype and almost love for the eventual apocalypse. A lot of people have a plan and assume, naturally, that they survive despite having zero survival skills and a tendency to suck in pressure situations. I’m one of those people but I know that come the apocalypse, I end up like one of the extras in any one of those end of the world movies. I end up dead in the first thirty seconds of some real shit going down. Anyway, the apocalypse that people most want to see is actually probably the hardest to survive and it’s the zombie apocalypse.

The zombie apocalypse is the hardest to survive because you have all the normal problems of survival, (food, water and shelter), and the added danger of being killed/turned by zombies. That’s just a side-note, the important thing is the most dangerous thing in all apocalypse scenarios is other people.

You look at most major zombie apocalypse/apocalypse movies. Someone always gets shot or at least gets a gun pulled on them. No one trusts each other more than they can fucking throw them and the first stop in other movie/book is the fucking gun store.

Take a look at Day Z, a mod for ARMA 2, which is making the rounds on the ol’ youtube these days. It’s pretty much a zombie apocalypse simulator and looks like fun. I’d play it but my bandwidth sucks and I’m spending cash on other stuff, so there’s that. People kill each other on that game almost as much as they group up and a lot of people hate it.

You watch a video of someone actively hunting and killing another player and the commentator always mentions the hate they get in the comments. And sure enough, there is hate. I don’t know quite what to make of that. It’s a possible redeeming factor of humanity, to know that would rather group up with a person than shoot and them and take their gear.

Or it’s a flaw.

Ultimately, you benefit from teaming up because there’s more eyes on the landscape, someone’s watching your back and gives you time to chill out. But how much can you trust the guy you teamed up with? Or the next person you meet?

The core issue seems to be trust and the mentality of ‘better me killing you than you killing me,’. It breeds a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ mentality but for everyone that’s shooting other survivors, there’s another who is teaming up. At least until the point where they have a suitable amount of people they can trust. After that, it’s ‘kill ‘em all and take their loot,’.

The big questions are, assuming you survive, do you trust others?
And what lengths would you go to just to survive?

Letters to People That Will Never Read Them? Well, I Read Them.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:44:00 +0800

I always like stumbling across those threads which start off with, ‘In this thread, write a letter to someone who will never read it,’ because they are just so fascinating. I don’t know whether it’s human nature or I’m just a nosy bastard but reading someone’s letters is just compelling. You read through and you get a little glimpse at someone else’s problems and life.

What’s not to like?

You cruise through and you see some stuff that makes you laugh, see some stuff that strikes a cord with you and see some stuff that makes you think a little. There’s a lot of tales of friendzoned people, some people that just want to move on with their lives, some that want someone they care about to start caring for themselves and some that just want someone to read their final message to the world.

And it’s great for me. I know that sounds strange but some of them give you this sadistic satisfaction with your own life because when you compare theirs to yours, yours fucking rules. There are others which you can empathise with or sympathise with and that’s decent too. You know you’re not alone with that thought.

What I especially like is how when you see the initials people use to sign their letters, you instantly try to connect it to your own life. See one which is addressed to J and is from a L and start connecting dots which aren’t there. It’s that little seed of paranoia that is fun to see.

Other than that, what gets me with these things is both the attraction people have to posting in these threads or lurking in them. Humanity is quite happy to share its deepest thoughts with the world anonymously but is petrified of sharing it to a few of their closest friends as themselves.

That gets me every time. I can understand it. It’s good to vent stuff and doing it online and anonymously means it’s fairly safe while still being out there. Still, if it isn’t that big of a deal, why don’t try saying it aloud. Why don’t you try owning it?

In the end, I suppose these letters serve the purpose of letting people see their private thoughts out there in a public forum while still retaining the safety of anonymity. Which is to say, they get it out without owning it.

Would you write a letter to someone who will never read it?

Would you want to read one of those letters that’s addressed to you?

'Oh let's rant about that!' 'Oh wait... that'd be hypocritical...'

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:46:21 +0800

I tried to sit here and write up a post about something. Anything really. I wanted to sit and have a good ol’ fashioned rant. So, I went looking for stuff. I saw some interesting potential subjects but when I tried to write about them, I had a case of the conscious. I was happy until I realised that I was really just having a crack at something useless.

I was going to yell about some blog which tells the story of a sexually coerced person. I was going to just rant about everyone that reblogged it and commented with shit. Then I got caught about by my conscious. What if it is legit? Then what the fuck am I doing? Supporting a rapist. Greaaaaaaaaaaaaat. The only thing I could really yell about would be the overreaction and massively defamatory method this person has undertaken. I mean the victim here is putting posters up which calls this guy a rapist and tells people where he is and the like. Now, that’s probably only just counter-productive, gives the guy a counter case if anything actually does happen and when you factor in the time period, any case that does emerge will be the victim’s word against the supposed attacker’s.

So, that was ruled out.

I moved on to the ‘Suicide Hotline! Reblog this and save someone’s life!’ picture that’s getting the reblog treatment. My first reaction was the same as I had to the ‘Reblog and stop Cancer!’ thingo. It’s just, ‘HOW THE ACTUAL FUCK DOES REBLOGGING A PICTURE STOP CANCER? IS IT MAGIC? IS IT A MAGICAL PICTURE? NO,’. Problem is reblogging the suicide hotline could actually save someone’s life. I still kinda believe that if a person is really out to kill themselves, and not just make a last ditch attempt at getting attention, then they’re just going to do it. No fuss, no muss. Just straight down to it. But… then again it could work. At the very least it could stop an attention seeker from actually succeeding by accident or something.

So, that’s that up in flames.

Disappointed in my diminished ability to yell at potentially controversial topics, I checked my facebook. There was a post which said, ‘Cute Date’ and tags the happy couple. Bingo. That’s like the ultimate in yelling material right? Nope. I was starting my big, ‘WHO THE FUCK CARES?’ rant and then stopped. I thought to myself, ‘People could, and probably do, say the same thing about my posts,’. It was like a magic trick. One second, there’s an idea and BANG! Next second, it’s out the fucking window.

I suppose I could yell about ‘cute’ (Seriously, what gives with that?) or people who post couple shit on their Facebook like they need to validate their dating by getting likes on Facebook to show how much people approve. Isn’t a date supposed to be a private and intimate thing? Just you two? Why bother tagging yourselves in and sharing it with everyone?

Eventually, I settled on ranting about failed rant ideas. How’s that for originality? I mean I could probably just start a shit storm by going around on people’s Facebook posts and saying, ‘Why post this? Do you really feel this way? Or are you just an attention whore?’ and then just running but that’s exhausting.

Ahh fuck it.

Oh Tech Priest, you so silly.

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:32:17 +0800

Oh Tech Priest, you so silly.