Monday 31 May 2010

May 2010 roundup

Well, May has come and gone and now I await the start of June which brings the Fifa World Cup to the screens. Some people like it, some hate it but I can’t deny that some good memories were made from the atmosphere when matches were on. Not just the matches themselves but memories of having a barbeque while France vs Spain plays on the TV or going on a trip to an adventure playground and coming back in time to watch Germany and Italy face off, and then there’s all the pranks and messing around we did. Good times.

Anyway as for May it seems I went through quite a lot of things this month, just things like changing my phone number back to the original one (thank goodness) which means I don’t have to worry about forgetting my number since it’s so ingrained in my head and is actually quite easy to remember and paying fines and seeing the physiotherapist about my knee have been bit…can’t think of the word right now but ‘exhausting’ wouldn’t be a bad word to use.

I also had an interview for a foundation course for a university and I’m hoping I can get it as if I do then I can really get down to business and actually work towards my goal of living the good life and all, if not then…I don’t know…but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Read quite a few books and manga this month, them being Snuff, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Appeal, Moving Pictures, Men At Arms, Feet Of clay, Dragon Ball Z Volumes 18-25 (because the libraries didn’t have any of the ones before and the very last one either), Angels & Demons, Death Note Vol 1-6 (except 2), The Ring (graphic novel) and I’ve started Mort. Next month I don’t think I’ve read…actually never mind as I just looked to my left and I see a huge pile of unread books that need reading but I best not take out anymore until I get all this done, also getting extremely hooked on Death Note so I keep going to Waterstones isn’t helping but bleh at least I know it’s something that I’ll be buying soonish.

Also, courtesy of Lovefilm I managed to watched the entire Futurama first season and the first five episodes of the second season and will be looking forward to the rest of it, the first two episodes of Dirty Flash Pair but I won’t be continuing watching that, the entire first series of True Blood, The Blindside, Last Exile episodes one to four and Choke. Not as many films as the previous months but I don’t necessary have full control over what is sent my way.

It also was my birthday and I was treated to a visit by Lee and Blaise and had dinner with my family on the day but was baked a cake my my soul mate and ate pretty much all of it when I went to her house for that weekend.

So May has gone and now the sun is shining and the bugs come out in full force…and people are sweating more…and public transport is even more packed with people…with no air conditioning…maybe I preferred winter…

Sunday 23 May 2010

Dream Journal: Part 3

It must be summer if my dreams are taking on the weirdness that I come to associate with it and all. Plus the fact that I get up ridiculously earlier than I would do if it was winter…hey 7:25am may not seem early or ridiculous to some but to me…furr-get about it.

It’s amazing how dreams are reality while you’re in the dream regardless of how far fetched the events in your dream might be, as far as I’m concerned the moment I understand it’s a dream is the moment I wake up. I might be able to fully manipulate events during the last few seconds of my dreams when I’m aware that I can do that because it’s my dream but stronger is the sense to wake up about that time so I never truly get the chance to really exploit it.

Today was another of those weird dreams, I mean weirder than usual in the sense that it felt…different in a way but still one of my weird dreams/memories.

Chapter I- At home

Well it started at home aaaaand that’s all I can remember. That part of the dream I can’t seem to remember all that well actually other than it was at home. I could probably tell when-abouts the dream memory took place but now I’m doubting whether that part of the dream even happened but I assume it’s just my brain trying to forget it in an attempt for me not to confuse reality with dreams.

Chapter II- Oh The Horror!

Back to a familiar setting in that it’s my primary school where the next part of my dream takes place and I’m in the little area just off the side of the unit where a solitary tree is planted and I’m hiding from something, what I’m hiding from I don’t know but I just know that I’m hiding. I peer around the corner and I see Elliott come towards me and that’s when the games begin.

I say games but it was pretty scary at the time that it felt real but I think my mind operates that way. In reality when I’m immersed into a film, game, book or so on, my brain gets so immersed that things become…real and I become extremely into whatever it is that I am immersed into. Real life in comparison just isn’t that exciting and qui- wait a minute, this is supposed to be going in another post, I’m going of track here…anyway, things get a bit more intense when a reddish, alien, metallic energy sphere (which is the best way to describe what was hunting us in the dream) enters the fray and starts to gravitate towards the three people that are in the empty playground (both the infant and the junior sections). With no explanation of the rules and thrust into a setting that we didn’t really understand, the other two people who happened to be in unlucky starting positions and did what came naturally and that was to panic. Quite understandable, they then ran from the approaching energy sphere, one person in one direction and the other in the opposite direction, it was a pretty big playground but as one knows who has ever played a game of tag hide ‘n’ seek or whatever it’s called…you know…the one where you have to run to a base and avoid the person who is ‘It’ (I loved that game). Anyone who has played that before knows that when you are being closed down by someone intent on tagging (or in the case of the dream capturing) you, despite there being a lot of space, things don’t always work out. The second person ran around a wall and through a gap while the energy sphere moved at a steady but deliberate pace towards them while myself and the other person watched and waited for the person running trough the gap to emerge from the other side but nothing…It was then the rules of the ‘game’ became clear to us…well at least to me it did and that was that as long as you are being watched by at least one other or that you could be seen by at least another then the energy sphere cannot kill you. It sounded like a similar concept to the Weeping Angels of Doctor Who but that’s the way it was, as a new player proceeded to enter the game the stakes got higher as while it may have not have been able to kill you while others were watching, it certainly could hold you and we hadn’t quite figured out how to release someone from its grip.

The next thing I know is I’m being cornered by it and it’s predicting my every moment so escape is impossible and while it has a hold on me I see the other two (one of which was Rogue from the X-Men) run off where I’ll lose sight of them and vice versa I can only think “Damn it” as the last thing I see before the energy sphere kills me is red.

Chapter III- The Leader

The transition is a smooth one and I’m now in the playground with more people some of which are friends but for some reason we believe that we are stuck on a desert island and extremely disorganised so I become a bit of a leader in order to get things organised and to guide them to wherever it is we are headed to. After much discussion about delegating tasks and responsibilities oddly reminiscent of my time at Outwards Bounds at Mary Hare but here I am being charismatic and diffusing potentially heated situations and doing just what leaders do. Why I don’t do that nowadays I think is because in a way I don’t need to be, I can be whatever the situation requires me to be. Maybe I should save that for another post but yeah not much happens but it’s a great feeling being in this position and keeping things moving in a way but then the next part of the dream requires me to go inside the building…

Chapter IV- Burn Baby Burn

Now I’m inside a room, quite messy and tipsy as if someone was searching for something in the room and couldn’t find what it anywhere. So while I’m inside it for reasons unknown to me other than than it felt like I should be there (as is the way with nearly all my dreams) when two shady characters appear out of nowhere and we discuss for a bit. What we were discussing I have no clue about (though I do remember dental floss being involved in it) but it is times like this that I wish that there were some way of recording your dreams to watch later but all I remember is that the result of the conversation was me setting the building on fire, very intentionally and running, running as far as I can…then I wake up on a hot summers morning and continue on with my day.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

If I’m honest, I don’t really like any of the starters

So many things to do, books to read, questions to answer, songs to listen to, dreams to remember and all that that I can’t help feel a little bit overwhelmed at times because as I surf the net and read up up on new books or interesting ones I think “I want to read that” or even when I look up video games I get so excited about it. As I missed about a week worth of news, articles and other things on the sites I frequent I was excited when I heard of all sorts of stuff especially the Pokémon Black and White starters being revealed and it got me excited for more and I cannot wait for the release of this game. The excitement for Pokémon Black and White reminded me that I needed to buy myself a Nintendo DS and play or in some cases replay some of the many games that I would be interested in that are available on this handheld. Not just that but there are so many good games that I wish to play on the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii (I don’t own a Playstation 3 unfortunately).

Now I probably could and then just go into extreme focus mode and put my all into playing the video games which annoys a few people how I can do that but in turn it annoys me how they can be annoyed about how I like to do play video games. It is no different to watching TV or whatever else it is that others do. As I’ve been told before, I can be up until 3am playing a game but really how is this any different to watching a film on whatever until then.

Maybe what they were trying to imply is that it is an unreasonable hour to be up but then again, if I have no plans for the next day then I see why I cannot do this. If I’m going to get up 11am then sleeping at the times I do sounds about right anyway for the all the sleep I need.

Anyway what I have been thinking about is how the type of games I like differs to many of my friends including Lee. While this by itself doesn’t bother me a bit, the fact that many people are obsessed with Call Of Duty Modern Warfare and Fifa and the “mainstream” games, I get the sort of look that says “you’re weird and you play crap games” and they do not share my excitement for the games I’m into. Sure there are a fanbase for the types of games I like but it’s just not the same when your close friends aren’t really interest in starting a conversation about Final Fantasy, Pokémon or Street Fighter and even if they do they can only really talk about the one that everyone has played and/or is out of date, yes Pokémon Red was good, yes Charizard was your favourite, yes you didn’t play the other ones and all that but really, rather than discard the newer versions or the less known versions so carelessly, just…I don’t know…Oh well I can’t make them interested in something they are not interested in, but I really wish they’d just accept that the tastes I have in games doesn’t necessarily equate to Modern Warfare 2, Gears Of War 2 and the latest Fifa iteration.

Monday 10 May 2010

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me

Well it’s my birthday today…Well no, I’m actually writing in beforehand in preparation to the big day. Am I looking forward to it, not as such and what bothers me is that I didn’t want to be one of those people that were miserable on their birthday…you know the ones, those who mope about how every birthday reminds them of how close they are getting to death. I’m not going to be like that because I’m going to be like the other sort of people and reflect on what I’ve done with my life so far and then get miserable over that but…as I think about it I liked primary school in Hargrave Park and I liked growing up in Mary Hare and I might not have “achieved” great things but I’ll always have good memories from it.

The last 5 years however including the final 2 years at Mary Hare I have to say has been kind of a bummer and that’s an understatement, everytime I think about those 5 years I think “it’s all depressing, you really did go to shit during those 5 years” and then ponder “What the hell happened?”.

Well the truth is that I’m not even sure what happened but it feels like it was inevitable now that I think about it and that well really I was not ready at all, it felt like I was forced to go at a pace that I really didn’t want to go at rather than go at my own pace in life but I suppose that’s what happens when you live in a society like this.

10th May 2010

Well now, it’s my birthday and what’s on my mind is how things, like it or not, are different. Suddenly everyone wants to be with you on this one day, you become the person of the day and the most amusing of it all (at least to me), the happy birthday greetings.

Maybe I’m being extremely skeptical but would people remember a birthday if it wasn’t for the reminders on Facebook and all these sites? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly got a lot more Happy Birthday greetings this year than last year when I wasn’t part of Facebook and got all my messages by phone, it’s not that I have a problem with it, just that sometimes it can feel as if it’s a case of ‘having’ to say it and be nice just because of it and I feel the same way on events such as Christmas and New Years.

Yes yes I know, I’m being a grumpy guts but seriously it’s because of the other days they act around me that I just think why does it have to be a special occasion for people to have to want anything to do with another person, my own mother who we’ve just stopped talking to each other (except in shouting and slanging matches) for the past 8 months suddenly decides that she wants to take me to dinner? Yes of course I’m going to be a bit sceptical about it, you think I’m a waste of space and yet you still want to associate with me? What happens the next day, do we go back to just not talking? I don’t have anything to say, making an awkward situation even more awkward. This is why I like keeping the status quo and if you really want to change it, don’t pick a day like somebody’s birthday or an event as that just seems cynical to me. I suppose to some it might be seen as a bit of a catalyst to try and change it but it just ends up like new year resolutions, it goes well for a month then you just end up giving up in the middle of the next month and then go back to the way things were before.

Sometimes I like the status quo, most of the times I don’t. I guess what I hate more than the status quo being what it is, is the status quo changing just for the sake of change. If something is going to change at least be serious about it…though I suspect that sometimes people aren’t really aware of that sort of stuff but nonetheless it annoys me.

Tuesday 4 May 2010

Conversation in progress, please do not interrupt

I don’t have many friends just people I merely tolerate. I have close friends but for me it becomes a problem when I see them as popular people as then it becomes sort of pointless.

I’ve nothing against people that are popular at all but there are times when there are a crowd of people in a certain situation let’s say a gathering, there’s usually one person that everyone or at least most of the people there seemed to gravitate towards, the sort of ‘person of the moment’ sort of thing.

Now when the spotlight shines down on them and they get in this mode and they become “popular”, I find myself not wanting to really talk to them, not out of anger, jealously or anything like that but because in a sense I feel I’m not needed there and that they are dealing with a lot of people, I may as well make it easier for them and withdraw myself and talk to them in a one on one or very small group capacity.

I find the way I look at things in big groups such as that is that people are puppies. Constantly seeking attention and the approval of the man or woman of the moment and I just didn’t want to be a part of it especially as if I did talk to them and I found this happening countless times when I was in school is that I’d get into a conversation with them about something only for another person to get ‘jealous’ of the attention that was being paid to me and then constantly try to muscle in on the conversation and switch it. I’ve notice it because me being the way I am, I’m oblivious to certain actions but others stand out clear as day to me. An example would be I’ll be talking to the person about one topic and someone else who wants the attention will muscle in a try to change the topic altogether. I don’t like it and it annoys me a hell of a lot.

I suppose it’s because I prefer to know that full attention is being paid as it bothers me how I might put full attention and thought into what I say and the other person doesn’t really because they have so many other people talking to them about different stuff that it just becomes pointless for me to continue.

I do not blame them at all as it really isn’t their fault, nor do I blame the people who insistently try to get the attention they crave because everyone is just doing what comes naturally to them and I’m sure people aren’t aware of it but that is just as well why I choose not to hover and bother “popular” people as much in the presence of the ‘puppies’.

Monday 3 May 2010

Short and sweet

It has been a bit of a day and I have some serious contemplating to do. Maybe once I finishing thinking about stuff I will be able to get it all down…maybe.

Sunday 2 May 2010

April 2010 roundup

So I entered April with a new perception…of course the perception just happened to be sound as I received new hearing aids to make up for my old ones that were starting to fail hard what with all the whistling and brokenness. The ideology with the new hearing aids were good as voices shall be heard, opinions shall be listened to and the emotions in the voices shall be received but after a while it becomes stale and uninspired. People just moaning about the same things, complaining about things that they do not know the full story and yet they do so just to feel a part of it and involved, oh the ridiculousness of it all…oh
the…something…thingie…yeah I kinda lost steam and forgot where I was going with this.

Anyway…Not only did I start the month with new aids but I started it with a new reoccurrence of an old injury, yep, the knee. As I sat in that changing room feeling a little aggrieved about the performance of the referee of that match I felt a familiar twinge in my knee and knew exactly what it meant…It meant that I would miss the cup matches or at least not be in optimum condition for it and probably take the rest of the season to get back into fitness. It really was such a disappointing end to the season that I’m thinking about staying on for one last season like I explained in my last post. I guess another thing I’m disappointed in is that it wasn’t even during the match it happened. Oh no, it wasn’t during a last ditch slide tackle or a goal bound shot that I suddenly got injured but while I was sitting down. Oh dear indeed.

Anyway something always seems to happen when I go round to visit Lee’s place and this time it was no different but at least I got to watch the first episode of the new series of Dr. Who with Matt Smith as the doctor taking over from David Tennant and I’m getting into his portrayal of the Doctor and the episodes I’ve seen haven’t been too bad either, except well the World War II Dalek episode as that for me wasn’t all that and the Weeping Angels 2 parter wasn’t as good as Blink but I still enjoyed it.

I finished reading several books and lot of those books were Discworld books and I’ve just been in a sort of Discworld sort of mood, which has caused to me to read Going Postal (looking forward to the TV adaptation at the end of May on Sky 1), The Truth, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic all in this month. Not only that but I received some others in the post and borrowed many more from the library which I hope to read during May. Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets and Brigands M.C were the two other books which I read this month and to be honest I’m quite happy with that.

I also got to watching quite a few DVDs from Lovefilm such as Death Note, .hack//sign, Witchblade, Speed Grapher, Tokyo Underground, True Blood and Sailor Moon. With the exception of .hack//sign and Sailor Moon, I liked all of them and will be getting the next set in the series so I can continue with the series.

Finally the best part of the month would have been getting to spend an entire week with my soulmate and doing things with her. Whether it was lying around doing nothing, her trying to hide from my camera as I record her or walking around Swindon trying to find our way to the train station, I had a great time and it just felt right being next to you, so to conclude this post I just want to say…

I love you Emily XXXXXXX

Saturday 1 May 2010

Do I stay or do I go? Well it’s not a knee-sy decision

So by pure luck I managed to secure myself a physiotherapist appointment for my knee which started since 2007, I mean great it only took 3 years until I was finally seen by one. Anyway it was a strange experience being in a hospital, it wasn’t the physiotherapy room that was strange but rather the Radiology department that was. So full of sick and old people it was that it felt weird as I distance myself from all that. In my world that only happens on TV, film, games and whatever medium, people dying and all that. Being in a place where people looked ill and all that…

Anyway, so it’s confirmed that I’m out for the rest of the football season as I take rehab to strengthen my knee and the cartilage inside it which is a blow to me as I wanted to be a part of the 2 cup finals that were approaching but alas it wasn’t to be.

It got me thinking though, that let’s say that I do manage to get back to the player I was before that injury in 2007 and that if I do get the problem fixed and I’m able to cross and fully bend my leg, wouldn’t one more year of fully playing 100% be the best way to go out? Quite frankly I believe this year I’ve underperformed and that I could have played better, but I think I was just fearful for my knee going ever since so I wasn’t the fearless person I was beforehand.

I may just stay another season and prove that I am the best at least to myself and play with everything I have. It depends on a lot of factors.

By the way I make no apologies for the awfully lame pun in the title of this post.