March 2010 roundup

So I begun March with an argument over animal fur and losing a friend, though I’d be hard pressed to consider a person that considers me a murderer for simply not taking her side a friend so yeah, great way to start of the month.

After that I finished Making Money…that’s the book and not counterfeit money. Took me 4 weeks but it was worth it as I consider this to be one of my favourite book of the moment…well until the next one that is. The reason it took me that long to read it was mainly because I usually had other things going on that I never really had the chance to sit down and just read and anytime I did I’d spend it doing something such as listening to music or surfing the internet, so I had to take the book with me for long journeys so I could read them on the trains and whittle away at it.

I also went to my girlfriend’s house and had an excellent time there. We first started off with watching The Lovely Bones in the cinema and we also watched Coraline the same day we just walked around Millet’s and just talked.

But this kind of talk felt really different to me, it was the kind where we just felt really happy with each other and content and talked about the future and other things and quite simply it felt…real and as Emily put it “Like we were a married couple”. I really enjoy seeing her whenever I can because I like the way she makes me feel inside whenever she does something and I especially like how we can talk about anything and that for me is a good solid structure for a relationship and I see us being able to get through anything if we just talk it out and listen to each other.

Anyway this was also the month for anime as I managed to watch Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Death Note all at various points this month…well the first 4 episodes and per disc via Lovefilm. There would have been an extra one but one of the discs they sent (Speed Grapher) just didn’t work so I had to send it back and miss out on that.

Death Note is the one that really surprised me with my enjoyment of it. It is about a student called Light who finds a note book lying around and then discovers the book to be a ‘Death Note’ where he can write down the name of anyone and within a time limit (and unless stated otherwise) will die of a heart attack.

Light proceeds to kill off criminals in the vision of a world of good where is the god, unfortunately his methods attracts attention from the world leaders and the attention of L who is a mysterious detective with a 100% success rate on every case he’s ever worked on. So it leads to a race for each Light and L to learn of each other’s identity so they can administer justice as they both believe that what the other is doing is wrong.

It got me thinking about what I’d do if I came across a Death Note and that is something I might write about another time, anyhoo back to the roundup.

I also read No Time For Goodbye, The Wee Free Men and The General and started Going Postal, the prequel to Making Money this month but I feel that I could have read a lot more books in this time so I’ll be sure to do just that for the next month.

Of course, things aren’t always perfect and you learn that things you did in the past has certain repercussions and a moment of madness (probably due to the lack of sleep) meant I had to pay a fine in which I have no way of paying in bulk, however what is the purpose of having a telephone enquires system if nobody picks up on the other line.

To round up March I’d have to say it has been really good what with all the times I’ve seen Emily and been with her and the books and DVDs I’ve watched and one of the negative things about it is how this fine looms in the air and stresses me out but for the past few days I have not worried about it at all. Mainly because if I can’t even get into contact with them about it, I really don’t know what they want me to do about it so yeah, may as well not stress out about it because I don’t like stressing about things because it rubs off on Emily and I really don’t want her stressed out about my problems but some things cannot be helped.

Ah well, bring on April.

The game has got a hold on me

Oh how much I hate mornings, I am slow at getting up in the mornings, just slow. The last thing I need is when I’m comfortable in my bed is a phone call, just a word to the wise if you are thinking about calling me in the morning you better have a good reason for doing so and expect me not to say much because I. Am. Annoyed.

After getting ready to go I was off to play football for my team, as per usual I hadn’t a clue who we were playing because I just turn up, get told where I’m playing and play. I don’t ask questions because I don’t care. It is kind of a shame for me really because I enjoyed playing football in the past and I’d just play it for fun (ok, football was also serious business in the past as well but…yeah) and love of being the best with a ball at my feet.

But I guess the cost of it all got a bit much, or the fact that I don’t play with winners because to be honest, deep down I knew that I wouldn’t win things in particular teams and yet I stayed and played anyway. Why didn’t I look to a better team if I wanted to improve myself? Why didn’t I go to a team that were used to winning trophies and medals and force my way into the team? I’m certainly good enough to do just that, I always feel I can raise my game at any time I so wished.

Yet what exactly is there to be achieved from it? You have to pay to play in matches which quite frankly is a system that hurts the better players, we’d end up having to pay more because we’d naturally would always be in the first XI so while I’m crippling myself financially all for the sake playing a sport which bores me a lot now and there is no reward at the end. Sure there are promotions and trophies but that by itself is not worth it for me, so I’m done with it all.

Anyway today we’d be facing AFC Bromley and quite frankly it was a match that we could have won if we just kept it simple however it seems that as a team some of the basics are just forgotten and it frustrates me more than it really should which is another reason why I’m done with it all. Also I feel that I’m not needed there and if I feel that is the case then there really isn’t any reason for me to hang around playing in a game where I’m not needed.

I’m too tired to keep ranting on about this especially as there’s a few more games until the season is over then I can finally turn my back on football. I sometimes think…maybe one more season and that might be the game not letting me go but then I quickly remember that I have to stop, I’m not going anywhere with this and think of that eventual day when I can hang up my football boots and start fulfilling my other potential.

Living for today

The world is an ever changing, always progressing place with the emphasis on the future and rarely on the present. You’re told that everything thing you do now has an effect on the future which I suppose in some way it does but what happens if you are someone that likes to live in the now. What happens if you take a look at everything and you realise that when you die everything and I mean everything is for naught. Once you die, it matters not how many qualifications you have, or how much money you have in the bank, or your criminal record or how many friends or enemies you made while living. If you aren’t conscious or aware to see or even feel the consequences of your actions while living then why are we constantly being told, “You must do this otherwise you’ll have problems in the future” or “Save up your money” or “There’ll be plenty of time for that later in life”?

People are constantly looking at Tomorrow, the mindset being ‘Your actions of today affect what you do tomorrow’ and it is just about consequences but what happens if like me you don’t care about Tomorrow because you know that death erases everything that you have done and just want to focus on Today.

The Wee Kend

Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae Laird! Nae Master! We Willnae be fooled again!

Ah I loved this book and I’m starting to be drawn in by the Discworld novels and I really like how I can take the message from a book and kind of apply it to real life. To me this makes it more than just a book.
Oh and the accents of the pictsies (not pixies), I loved it. Maybe I’m just a sucker for different accents but yeah I could just imagine them speaking in that way.

When I was reading through the book I was waiting for Death to make an appearance but as the story went on I was surprised to see that he didn’t turn up at all in the book but I later found out that Death doesn’t appear in this book which disappoint me because Death appears in every single Discworld novel (except this one).

Dream Journal: Part 2

I have weird dreams but to be honest I quite like them, they give you the chance to speak to people that you would never normally speak to, catch up with old acquaintances and just do things that you would never normally do.

Anyway lets see if I can remember my dream this morning.

So yet again it takes place in my primary school Hargrave Park on a Monday. How do I know it was a Monday? Well because I remember talking to one of the carestaff about my induction to the place (it made sense at the time) when she was talking about how I came early and there wouldn’t be much point doing the induction today only for me to come back on Friday to do nothing (as everyone had to). So while we talked about several options we settled on me doing half of the training now and half on the Friday with everyone there.

I started of with having to get a drink (pineapple juice) for Tommy Pickles, yes, that Tommy Pickles who for some strange reason kept morphing into Angelica and my 3 year old cousin and they kept drinking it slowly because it was too cold. That would have been freaky in the real world but since this is my dream world everything is normal for me and makes sense…to a point.

Anyway the next scene takes place outside the building…well on top of it. Where there is some sort of hostage situation/suicidal person taking place on the rooftops and me and my team are sent in to diffuse the situation. The captor/suicidal person I recognise as this person that I see in the library almost every time I’m at the library. He sleeps and wander around in the library and usually heads to McDonalds when it closes and I have no idea what he does after that but it’s the same pattern every day…anywaaaaay, this person who I shall call Wayne is standing on top of the building about to jump while his hostage, yes hostage, is strutting around goading him. I can’t remember who the hostage was but they had a sort of cyborg face and whatnot.

So me and my team which consisted entirely of me and Fat Joe (I really don’t know so don’t ask), as a sort of SWAT team we had to diffuse the situation by arresting ‘Wayne’ or by eliminating him (preferably the former) so we found a ladder round the back of the school and climbed, climbed, climbed until we reached the top where Fat Joe had a problem getting himself over the top rung because he couldn’t manage to pull himself over so we spent a few minutes trying to pull him onto the roof.

When we finally got top we had to sort out camouflage clothing and that took a while as well anyway for all the time we wasted sneaking up to Wayne, the hostage had a trick up his sleeve. Turns out the hostage was some sort of government official and called in some helicopters to take care of the situation and use their missile and guns to eliminate Wayne. After some firing and shooting on both sides (where me and Joe were kind of caught in the middle to be honest), I had a sense of realisation that they were going to bomb the whole surrounding and that it was a good idea to get out of there pronto.

So we jumped down from the roof and went into the nursery play area and into the storage place because there was a bomb cellar down there however I remember that I was probably haunted with ghosts and the likes so we rather not be there (we all thought like that at the time in primary, anything that’s old and dusty is haunted. That goes for the music room in the attic of the school). So we settle for going inside the nursery building and found a trapdoor which led to a square room underground that had windows albeit blacked out you could see outside and 2 doors that led outside (Yay for non-Euclid architecture).

So while my and Joe were trapped underground with the bombs dropping and everything above being wiped out we got message that some people wanted to reside in the underground shelter as they escaped the bombs and needed a place to stay. Now we didn’t really get a message as such resembling a phone call or letters but rather the idea of getting a message in my dream world is just ‘knowing’, if something is going to happen you just get a sense of knowing it’ll happen. I guess it makes things move along quicker rather than me having to read or listen to a message and interpret it all.

While waiting Joe starts eating some blueberry cheesecake and I guess he must have not heard my request for some because he just ate it all for himself (or probably ignored me) while I was stuck with soggy cornflakes and milk with some orange juice. Anyway first off a little cartoon mouse I recognise as Jerry walks inside via the window and walks next to the door when it cartoon fashion someone opens the door and gets flattened like a pancake. The person who opened the door? Thomas.

So after breaking up the fight and establishing why Tom and Jerry have hated each other I then follow Sasha and Michaela outside the room (I have no idea how they got inside in the first place but meh), past the doomsday cult that lived next door into the main building which was blacked out probably due to the bombing.

The scene was set to become a sort of horror movie where we try to escape and survive whatever horrors and creatures lurk inside this ancient building of mysteries where truths shall be revealed about every one of us and we shall face challenges that would have pushed the human body to the brink of endurance and all that jazz………but then I woke up…

Geniuses are often misunderstood in their own lifetimes

Ok, so I’m watching the first episode of Yu Yu Hakusho because I was sent it from Lovefilm and I haven’t watched it for about a month or so (along with volume 2 of Yu-gi-oh) when from watching the first episode a thought occurs.

What would you do if you were a ghost and were free to walk the earth?

Now many people usually think short term when it comes to hypothetical situations such as the one posed above, as for me in the case of the question above…………………I’m no different. For now I’m going to forget trivial details such as how long am I walking the earth for and what we things feel like and can I have an effect on the world of the living and focus on short term things.

In the first episode Yusuke gets run over in the process of saving a small child (isn’t it always a small child) and dies. He later becomes a ghost and goes to his own wake and despite being a bit of a little shit when he was alive he is quite surprised to see people’s reaction to his death. This was the part that got me wondering.

Someone stole my spaggle

So a while ago I had an argument with Foxx and to be honest I was portrayed as the bad guy in things when all I did was make the crime of just simply not caring about an issue I have no interest in whatsoever.

I am extremely apathetic and indifferent to almost everything in life and to most situations. I believe that my stance on things isn’t one that really should annoy people but what do you know, it bothers people quite a lot and it’s really tiring being attacked for not leaning on one side or another, or even being on the fence at all. I’m just in the house watching the others choose their side of the fence. The debate (which could be called an argument) was about animal rights and fur. Now it mystifies me when it comes to people having extreme views on things and then creating two sides. An ‘us’ or ‘them’ situation. You are either supporting the cause or against the cause and therefore you are an enemy…No, no and a thousand times no. Life isn’t so black and white like that, I personally just don’t care about it and the topic really doesn’t interest me at all, does it make me a bad person? Not at all.

So why am I so indifferent to things and devoid of a “moral compass” of sorts?

Well the answer I believe is because I don’t believe things like morals exist. Now before I get the familiar cries of “of course they exist” and whatever, I have to say this do they really?

What are morals anyway? Well they are motivation based on the ideas or right and wrong but personally I believe that the term “good”, “bad”, “right” and “wrong” are all interchangeable and depending on the culture, person and situation they can easily be adapted and changed to suit whatever needs to be there at the time. Therefore the idea of morals is all subjective so there isn’t really a clear guide to what is “right” and “wrong”.

People will shout vociferously (heh, I just wanted to use that word) about how things are morally wrong and we should do things that are right. For example some will tell you how murder is always wrong but this is not always the case. Euthanasia could be described as murder, a person so ill and in pain being kept alive against their will, surely it’s “morally wrong” to keep them alive and continue to let them suffer. Surely the right thing to do is to kill them so they don’t have to suffer anymore?

Well to be honest, yes and no, this is just one example of how “right” and “wrong” can be twisted and shaped to fit the situation. Another example is a person who steals bread to feed their dying, sick and starving family. See how it all can be twisted, this is why nothing can be inherently right or wrong, good or bad. We all have our own personal belief and value system so things will be “right” and “wrong” in your world and those things might differ in another person’s world. This doesn’t make you right or wrong nor does it make them right or wrong and it sure as hell doesn’t make me right or wrong when I say that I don’t believe in morals and the likes.

There is a isolated village with a population of 100 people when a traveller comes to visit and sees a sign saying ‘THE VILLAGE OF UNAMADACOW- HOME OF THE WORLD FAMOUS SPAGGLE’. Naturally the traveller wonders “What on earth is a ‘spaggle’?” So he asks a resident of the village what a spaggle is to which the villager replies “It’s a big giant flying creature with no feathers or wings” and then walks off.

Confused, the traveller turns to ask another resident what a spaggle is and the resident replies “You don’t know what a spaggle is? Why, it is simply one of those” and points to what the traveller recognises as a house on the hill.

The traveller confused more than ever asks a third person what the ‘spaggle’ is and gets the response “It’s that feeling you get after you’ve eaten a big tub of ice-cream”

Thinking that this was of no help either, the traveller then proceeds to ask every person in the village what exactly is this ‘spaggle’ but everyone he asks gives unique and different answers to what it is. One person said that it was soil that lurks underground, another said that it was an item that lies in the blood of the villagers while another said that it was simply a type of cake. But no two people ever had the same definition of what a spaggle was.

So he begins to question whether this ‘spaggle’ actually exists or not when a second traveller comes to the village and asks the first traveller “what is a spaggle?”

The first traveller thinks for a while and then tells her “A spaggle you say? It is whatever you want it to be”

This for me is what I think morals are like, so subjective and given different meanings by different people that giving an objective definition of things like the concept of “right” “wrong” is impossible. It doesn’t exist. We give meaning to it and a lot of other things but giving meaning to something does not mean that something suddenly exists.

Anyway I’m done for now so I will leave it as that and probably come back to it later when I feel like it. In the meantime I’m going to eat my spaggle and then finish off reading my book.

Dream Journal: Part 1

So I’m a building that resembles my flat trying to escape the police for reasons unknown but I’m sure it made sense and I knew what I did at the time, all I knew was that getting caught by these people were definitely not in my best interests. So I’m climbing out of the window climbing down 20 storeys (I probably could just jump down like I do it all my other dreams but for some reason I climbed) while the cast of Hollyoaks are cheering me on and willing me to escape…well I say the cast but I can only remember seeing two people from there and one of them has left the show so…yeah.

At the bottom of the building I find myself in a familiar scene for all my dreams, my primary school Hargrave Park. It doesn’t make sense that my flat would be slap bang in the middle of a primary school playground and disappear now that I think about it as I don’t remember seeing it again after I climbed down from there but I was too busy worrying about getting caught by the police and doctors in white coats to worry about trivial details like that. I find myself running and running from the pursuers I gravitate towards the nursery playground, slide under the fence that separates the infant play area from the nursery playground but they come out of the door that leads inside the actual building so I go back under the fence the way I came and headed to the exit of the actual school.

With the doctors gaining on me with those syringes which I feared due me not know what was in them and the effect they’d have on me when administered, I ran out of school grounds and down Hargrave Road as it looked like in my memory when from nowhere a feeling of defeat overcame me and prompted me to just……stop running as they were always going to catch up to me anyway why delay the inevitable.

After convincing them that I wouldn’t run again so there’s no need to inject me with whatever was in those needles and to provide assurance, they handcuffed my legs together and to other members of the police force and doctors which included Chief Wiggum of The Simpsons fame and Morgan Freeman. While we walked (or rather they walked for me), Morgan was kind enough to point out to me a car that Michael Jackson used to own though for the life of me I had no idea what car he was pointing to but at that moment a car I recognised as being from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game drives past me…I think I’ll look it up and find out what exactly it was……Couldn’t find it but it resembled something like this except it was completely brown so…yeah, that random thing just happened out of nowhere.

Then the next thing I know is that I’m in a small house being lead into a small room with some food on my plate, being asked if I want more which I say yes I do. Then the serious stuff starts, they’re saying what will happen in light of my crime (which is never mentioned but somehow I know what they are talking about), “…and you’ll be executed by lethal injection”

“Excuse me?” I say “What was that, executed?”

“Yes, executed”

“So you’re saying I’m going to die…tomorrow definitely?”

“Yes”

“Fuck this”

Then I woke up, picked up the phone and started texting Emily and begun my day…

Personally I’d call my snail ‘Speedy Gonzalez’

So I finally finished Making Money after more than a month reading it. No I’m not a slow reader but so much has gone on that I didn’t really get much time to sit down and to read it. It is certainly a book that I will have for my future library so I can own a copy of it for myself. I found the book to be quite funny and amusing filled with subtle humour (my favourite kind) and I look forward to reading it again in the future. Now I just have 3 more books to read that I borrowed from the library and are due next week but I think I’ll be renewing the loan on them, I really don’t want to be spending a month on these again but yeah that’s what happens when you live a life like mine.