If everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other. No. No we wouldn’t.

Another book that was quite enjoyable for me to read. The Host is romance novel about aliens who have mostly taken over this planet and invade humans bodies like parasites. They control their bodies, minds and have their memories and so on. Wanderer (the alien parasite) who takes over Melanie’s body finds that Melanie won’t give up possession of her mind and basically, things happen and they’re in love with the same human and travel to go and find him as he is alive and hiding as part of a rebel group and the adventure begins.

 I could talk about the book and what I thought of it but I thought something else caught my attention and it was basically the treatment of humans to others and their emotions.

Now my opinion on humans is that their greatest strength which is the depths of their emotions is also their greatest weakness. The ability to care deeply for one another and being loving, kind and courteous does not disguise the fact that they are also capable of the most hateful emotions and the likes, but when it comes to hate…see now that is a very interesting emotion.

Rock bottom. You’ll know when you hit it.

I’m a bastard. A complete and utter bastard. Why am I so obsessed with pushing away the only good things in my life? It’s almost as if I want to hit rock bottom, as if reaching it will cleanse me and motivate me because the only way to go from there is up. I also have this obsession with underachieving, I’m intent on proving everybody wrong about me, just a shame that what they think of me is that I can hit the dizzying heights and have massive potential (I’m starting to hate this word) to be a success.

Dilemmas, dilemmas and more dilemmas. He wants to change, he really does but to change would be to admit that there was something wrong with him and that he shouldn’t be himself so he stays the same way but it isn’t working, he’s still heading down down down. Towards rock bottom, all because he doesn’t want to change, he knows that there is nothing wrong with him. He knows that wanting everything for as little as possible is right in his mind, he knows that people are stupid creatures with emotions that cause them to make the most illogical and irrational decisions. Not only this but he contradicts himself at every opportunity and yet it feels right, to be interested in people and not interested at the same time, to crave privacy and yet yearn for recognition for his actions.

I refuse to believe I have any flaws as without the bad the good wouldn’t be as good, without the sour, the sweet wouldn’t be as sweet and so on. Our “flaws” is what makes people who they are, without them they are not the same person and I genuinely believe that.

i have no idea what point I’m trying to make but I just thought I’d attempt to get it out because this hatred has become a sort of sickness, it’s making me ill, so very ill. It's not even hate but indifference as well, as sort of ‘I don’t care’ attitude mixed with ‘but you are incredibly stupid’.

22nd January 2010- Again the temptation to just do it arose again, what triggered it? Simply not being able to get a simple password, but failure to get this simple set of letters would have resulted in disaster for the rest of my life and a waste of the past few months. I don’t know exactly what happened but what I said to Foxx is something I should never have to do, the anger and intensity wasn’t even her fault as all she was trying to do was be a good friend and yet, I’m obsessed with pushing good things away from me. Emily was lucky that she left as I might have taken it out on her and the last thing I wanted to do is to do that to anybody but sometimes I just needed to be left alone and some time to think.

Why do I care so much about the friendships from Foxx, Emily and everyone else I know? I don’t know, I just want them to hate me because it would make all of it so much easier but they don’t and it throws me off, even after I do unpleasant things it just…hahahahahaHAHAHA, oh it’s funny, without emotions things would be a lot simpler. I think emotions are humanity’s greatest strength and flaw at the same time. I’m sorry, I never meant to make you cry and all, you aren’t a waste of time, it’s just my moral is at an all time low, well, at least I thought so but apparently it’s still dropping.

So I’m going to cry myself to sleep because of what happened, I’ll probably look back on this with utter shame but……oh god I’m just going to stop, there doesn’t seem to be anything to say that really explains it.

Tomayto, Tomahto, Potayto, Potahto

“That’s the best song ever” “That’s the worst film ever” or “How can you like that?”

Opinions, that’s what it all eventually boils down to, whether you think something is ‘good’ or whether you believe that something is the worst thing in the world at the end of the day it’s all subjective. Reviews for films, games, books, music etc are just a single person’s viewpoint and opinion. Sure they might try to be as unbiased and objective as possible to help give a general view but I find that ridiculous, how can you look at something like…oh, off the top of my head ‘The Dark Knight’ and say that it’s a good film or that a song is bad when different people will get something different out of it. One person might enjoy blood and gore in films or a simplistic melody in a song while another will enjoy the storyline and a more complex melody, this is all down to the individual so I’ve never really understood when people have said things like The Godfather is the best film ever or just recently I watched a show which stated that Snow Patrol- Chasing Cars is the best song of the decade while Top Gear is the best TV show of the ‘Noughties’. There is no such thing as ‘best’ or ‘worse’ as it’s all subjective.

I spoke to someone earlier who grew up reading Marvel/DC Comics and watching the Batman videos through their eyes would have been completely different to somebody who had seen the batman movies for the first time. Lets say that the our Comic person says that “The movie was awful as they messed up the portrayal of a specific character and that they performed a lot of ‘out of character’ moments and the movie isn’t faithful to the source material. The newbie says that “The characters were intense and they were sucked into their personality and the story was really good”. Different people view things in different ways, it’s all a matter of perspective, so why do people insist on saying things like “Those movies sucked after the third instalment”. I’m aware that every has their own take on things but it bothers me so much that I keep hearing the statements people make as “facts” and besides, how do you measure something objectively?

Opinion (noun)- A personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty

Objectivity (noun)- Judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices

Ok so as I understand it, this makes it quite hard to review certain forms of media because very few things are quantifiable and can be looked at objectively i.e X-men 2 is longer than X-men 3, that’s being objective, you cant argue with that, we have clear defined rules about length of time so saying something such as that well it can’t be argued with, 10 is more than 9, 59 is more than 34, 133 minutes is longer than 104 minutes. You can’t convince me otherwise, don’t piss on my head then tell me it’s raining.

But this is where the problem starts, apparently the public don’t want to be told stuff like that, being told the facts of a movie, book or film isn’t consider a ‘good’ review. The public are dumb creatures that need to be told how to feel about something, because they can’t make up their own damn minds. So reviewers review and give recommendations and scores to these things yet bitch and moan about a reviewer giving a negative review about something they liked or about them not liking what is critically acclaimed or popular (Remember kids, popular =/= good but also remember that popular =/= bad either).

So we’ve established that people need reviews and critics for reasons I can only fathom as laziness (Not saying it’s a bad thing but…), so critics criticise and reviewers reviewise review and people are happy. The critics nudge the public towards ‘good’ stuff such as Ellie Gouldin, Plants vs Zombies and deter them from things like Soulja Boy Tell’em and the Twilight saga and then wars are fought over matters which neither side can possibly win and it’s always 2 sides, those who like it and those who don’t, you can’t be in the middle for some reason. This in itself is illogical because how do you define ‘like’ and ‘hate’? What if a person who ‘hates’ Twilight likes a certain chapter because Edward dies in it or something does this mean s/he likes the book albeit for different reasons in contrast to a person who ‘likes’ the book…anyway…what was I saying? Oh yes, when you say something like The Simpsons is better than Family Guy (which seems to be the general consensus in some places), that’s where we reach another problem because everyone has different perspectives on a matter which is 100% subjective.

Lets say The Simpsons has traits which I’ll label ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ while Family Guy has traits labelled as ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘E’ and we ask people what traits they like. Person 1 says I like C’s and person 2 likes B’s so Person 2 will probably find The Simpsons better because it has B’s but Family Guy doesn’t. This doesn’t mean any one of the two is better than the other when it’s all a matter of perspective, that’s why it irritates me when people act snobbish and claim something is better than something else and state it as if it were a fact e.g “Melee is better than Brawl” “Fifa is better than Pro Evo” “Mainstream music sucks and underground is 10x better”, that’s not a fact, that’s an opinion, learn the difference people, it’s not that hard. I’m a firm believer of the belief that the only person you can speak for in this world is yourself.

I’ve also had people use the retort when I state my feelings on a particular item “yeah but lots of people like it”. SO WHAT!!! That again means nothing except maybe that it’s popular which like I said isn’t indicative for how good something is. A song sells millions and becomes the best selling record of all time, does it make it a good song? On that fact alone, the answer is no, no it doesn’t because its all based on what society deems as ‘good’ which leads nicely into morals but I think I’ll leave that for another post.

To be honest I’m stating such obvious stuff which a lot of people say they know this already and believe things are subjective as well but it just doesn’t seem to bother them as much as it does me the pointlessness of it all. The reviews, the discussions, the ratings all on these things telling you that this is good and you should buy/do/listen/play it…I’m just fed up with it all, which is why I don’t read reviews anymore and if I do, it’s just to find out what something is about rather than how it should make me feel and whether it worth giving a go.

To finish this off, let me just say that everyone should watch Sherlock Holmes if you haven’t already…it’s a good film…9/10…

The scariest thing ever

Saw V, I watched it for the first time last night. I had seen Saw I and loved it what with all the twists and turns, though I couldn’t stop thinking about the pig’s head thing especially whenever I was in the dark (thinking too much will do that to you). Saw II was just as good and I enjoyed watching every second of the first two instalments. Saw III was……hmm…*thinks*…I struggle to remember what it was about even though it was played on Channel 4 the other day which by the way I still haven’t figured out why exactly they played the Simpsons movie one Sunday and then a week later decided to play the movie again but this time on a Saturday, ok it wouldn’t be so bad except it just bugged me that they kept calling it a ‘Network Premiere’ when it wasn’t, the lies, oh the lies. Where was I? Oh yes…Saw III, wasn’t exactly memorable for me but it was ok, I preferred the first two and the twist didn’t do much for me at least not to the same level as the first two did but nonetheless it was a decent watch.

So now I have Saw IV and V on their way in the post except Saw IV goes missing in the post (the bloody mail) and all I’m left with is a half open envelope with Saw V inside, I’ll be complaining to Lovefilm about their shoddy sealing of envelopes, because of that I had to watch it out of order and hope that they didn’t make too many references to Saw IV so I popped Saw V in my laptop and proceeded to watch…………………

How to start a book

So I finished Carpe Jugulum recently and this being my first Terry Pratchett’s Discworld book, this would decide whether getting into the books would be worth it because the last experience I had with the Discworld series was a long time ago in a point and click adventure on the PS1 and even then that was only a demo. But I found it an amusing story (even if there wasn’t much to play) but sadly I didn’t get into the books until later. I picked up this because as frequenter of the TV Tropes website Discworld is oft mentioned in different examples in my browsing of the site and me being the sort of person always on the lookout for new material decided to give this a go and see what I would make of it.

I enjoyed it very much (even if it seemed a little weird but in a delightful way) so I decided to look up the other books and to read the books properly (as I only just picked up this book randomly) and in order, only to discover that there is no sort of order and that it really doesn’t matter what book you read because any book in the series can be read and you won’t need to have read another book to get through it. Originally I found it daunting but after a bit of research about the arcs and the supposed reading order of Discworld I have to say I feel much more comfortable about the whole reading out of order business so I hope to get started soon, just need to finish the other books I’ve got first (I’m looking at you Harry Potter).

Eclectic taste? You better recognise

Somewhere to store all the music from my CDs and listen to any song whenever? That’s brilliant!

That was probably going through my mind when I first heard of the iPod shuffle, later I owned my first iPod but it was pretty short-lived as it broke within weeks of owning it.

It broke down in either a History class or Form time as I mostly remember it being in Year 11 and me and the rest of my class were all in Mrs Whitehead’s room when for some strange reason it just stopped playing (I later learnt that there was some sort of fault with the early editions of the iPod shuffle) and I was just sitting there wondering why my iPod had stopped playing when Hattie conveniently waved an arm and hit me where the iPod had been sitting in my inside pocket albeit lightly and accidently. Maybe I was still annoyed about the fact that something that I had expected to last a long time broke down so soon after buying it but I decided to place the blame on her and claim that she broke it and forced her to pay for a new one…well to cut a long story short, words were said, beds were soaked and she eventually only paid me £13.50 rather than the £90 I was looking for but I guess she must have thought it was unfair or something to replace it and that it being an accident excuses her from replacing it.

My next iPod was an iPod Nano which lasted me a very long time in fact it might still work…but I wouldn’t know as I gave mine to Lee when I got my iPod video. Here was something that had 80GB of space for music, videos and other stuff or enough space for 20,000 songs, so I’m thinking, that’s a lot of space right there for someone who is going to primarily use it for music, but I hated it when my last few ran out of space and I had to get rid of some songs that would no doubt pop into my head at a future date and I have no way of listening to it.

So my goal was to have a collection of songs and albums that I’ve heard in the past and only filled with things that I like as there’s no point having a something I don’t like on it, I mean the iPod is for me personally, not for your party or your car or something you can listen to whenever you want so don’t be bitching when you borrow it for a party and then suddenly ‘Gotta Catch ‘em All’ blares through the speakers.

So like I said I wanted a huge collection of music but the problem was I’ve heard a lot of songs in the past which even now I’m just remembering some of them and wanting to put them on my iPod. The other problem is that I like a lot of songs…I say like but that’s not to say that they’re good songs…actually that’s another post, the point is I try to listen to a song by switching off my mind and getting the song to control how I feel so I’m not listening with bias or whatever. I have songs that are good for getting me pumped up for something, songs to relax me so I can sleep, song for when I want to feel miserable, songs that’ll make smile, a song for every mood. But this meant I had a lot of songs that stayed on my iPod where another person would have definitely gotten rid but hey, it’s primary audience is me so yes if I want a lot then I will have a lot.
I was up to approximately 2000 songs when coming back from a football match in Reading. I am just enjoying the sounds of Michael Jackson while feeling a bit sore waiting for the train to reach it’s destination when the iPod stops playing right in the middle of ‘Pretty Young Thing’ and dies. Seriously, 2000 songs all gone just like that and no-one to blame it on, it sucked that there was no way to retrieve the songs I had stored on it because I didn’t have any back-up for them. The cost of repairing it was…well, let’s just say it was far more cost efficient to just get a newer one so I did and the slimmer iPod video (and I really ought to think about getting a sort of hard drive for when it goes kaput) 80GB I’ve had it for a year and a few months.
6 January 2010 12:36pm and I have used 31.9GB and have a total of 5952 songs (though some haven’t been listened to yet and will be deleted if I don’t like it), with more on the way. It’s good to have so many songs as it means there’s always something to listen to and I won’t get bored with the same song so easily however listening to it on ‘shuffle all songs’ is a very strange experience.

I’m not going to use this post to convey my thoughts on music as I’ll save that for another time but rather list every single artist I have on my iPod and my favourite/most listened to song, I’m sure I can’t have that many…can I?

The calm before the storm?

Something’s just not quite right. I feel…nothing…and I don’t what I need right now. Do I need companionship? Do I need solitude? Do I need to argue with someone? Or maybe it’s a new challenge.

The point is, something is just not quite right, I haven’t the urge to do anything at the moment. Learn how to dance? Learn Spanish? Nothing. Not even the suicidal thoughts have ended my head. I’m just feeling nothing. I’m just getting on with my day and nothing is bothering me yet.

Curious indeed, I wonder how long this’ll last.

While I'm still sane: Diary of Me

And so begins another project which you’ll put so much effort into until you get bored of it and move onto something else, it happens all the time, why should this be any different? I guess the challenge is seeing how long I can continue before deciding something else needs my attention.

I tried something like this earlier which I probably now have an excuse to dig out and continue with but it was a bit more personal and stuff. I’m in two minds about how personal I want this to get, on the one hand writing everything that you feel is exactly what you’ve wanted to do but the moment it goes online your thoughts and innermost desires become public property in a way for people will scrutinise it and judge you which...let’s face it, isn’t nice but it’s you and if you aren’t going to write how you feel then why bother. It’s not as if you are going to suddenly become famous for this and have a million followers especially when you’re just a nobody, you’ll be lucky to even get 10 followers so why do you bother putting it all online?

Simple answer, because it’s something I feel I have to do. I’m going to say this now, I’m not original other than the fact that it’s coming from my brain, I’m most likely am not going to stand out from the crowd especially when there is lots of others like this, I’m probably not going to be laugh out loud funny nor will you possibly find this an interesting read, I don’t know, you might do but I’m making no guarantees. I’m not going to suddenly change the world with my insights and musings or anything like so, I’m still trying to make sense of the world myself and I have so many things rattling around in my brain, so many thoughts that I thought it’d be good to get it down onto somewhere, so that if I ever come back to this in the future I can witness my own train of thoughts and marvel at the change (if any) of thinking from when I read this. It’s for that reason I’ve decided that this will get personal especially in the cases of people and events because I do not want to hold back anything; I want it all off my mind and off my chest, sure I might offend a few people if they ever were to read it and if this turns out to be anything like I imagined it in my head then there’s going to be a lot of moaning and whining but basically this isn't for you it's for me, if you like it and keep reading, good for you, if you don’t...well, don’t expect me to care.

How I wanted to do this had me thinking for days and days, what style of writing should I employ, what should I call my blog/online diary, what should I talk about and when, should I explain certain things when I decided to just go with the flow and see what happens, see what bits I like what bits I hate, what I could tweak and so on but I had to start somewhere. The problem with me has always been starting things, I like to consider myself as a locomotive, a slow starter but once it gets going it becomes hard to stop, I just keep going and going sometimes even spending a bit too long on this that it just goes on and becomes waffle to everyone that is not me but you know something. I wouldn’t change who I am for anything.

So how did I start this thing then? Simple, with a title, once I get that down, everything else will naturally come to me so...

“While I’m still sane: Diary of Me” or “Wisdom”. Yes I’m aware it’s two S’s but just the one looks better, I suppose I could call it “While I’m sane” but I felt the “still” had more impact and implied that I should have gone insane a long time ago which is certainly how I feel about things but anyway, I spend too long pondering things that I just know that someday I’m going to go crazy from it, so I felt this was a suitable title for my blog, in fact I actually really like the title of it.

So these are my thoughts and my pearls of wisdoms, I hope I do get to continue this longer than my other projects but if not, it was a good idea at the time.

And before I forget...I’d like to say thanks to Emily, now on with the show.