The ignorant and offensive get their rocks off at christmas

Coming up to my favourite time of year, folks! sweet times. Or at least it was, until the "we're-much-better-than-you-because-YOU-celebrate-winter-for-all-the-wrong-reasons" brigade came to my attention.




Ok first let me cover my ass and say I've got nothing against the Christians who just wanna get their Christmas on. I don't see it as much different from people celebrating Diwali around bonfire night, or Passover near Easter. Actually, it's a bit like the time Easter fell on my birthday and I was all like, well I'll just celebrate them equally (but secretly more my birthday). People clamouring to celebrate at the same time of year is pretty much just one of those awkward, bumping into someone in a corridor and not sure which way to go around them moments.. embarrassing, but it happens.

What gets me is the whole "well obviously you guys are only celebrating the darkest days of winter because of us, the Christians, so stop celebrating it by any other name!! its about us, so do as we say!!" Or worse, and this is what really gets me, people who are like, "this is a christian nation!" WELL, deary, let me tell ya something.


Humans have been living in britain for over 30,000 years and have been observing the seasons, including winter, every one of those years. This country was only truly 'christian' for about 700 years max, and that was pretty recently. Lets just consider that timeline for a minute: It almost implies that humanity did not spontaneously spawn in this country at the announcement of jesus, and has, in fact, started moving on since everyone's getting over it now.

Furthermore, the formation of the United Kingdom, our current 'nation', took place in 1707- in the age of enlightenment- not in the christian dark ages. This country and its culture were never 'founded' on 'christian' values. This isn't America, not that there was even any unanimous agreement that America was ever truly founded on christian values anyway.

And finally, may I make the point that even jesus' homeland won't be celebrating his birthday, and they never have done. Is that because they're ignorant and offensive and don't care? Of course it isn't, you silly tossers. It's because they didn't let people redefine their culture.

I like to think this is all very much akin to roman britons of the 5th century, clinging to what dignity remained in their roman citizenship crying "why does nobody pray to jupiter anymore!! you worthless, uncivilised heathens! Without us and our superior culture you and your pathetic country will never amount to anything!!" But sadly I wasn't around to check that anyone actually said that.

No offense to Christians, of course (whips out "I'm agnostic, actually" card) you're more than welcome to celebrate the season how you want. I'm just not down with all this "We're a christian nation damnit, and you will sing about jesus!" gobshite, because 1) We aren't, and 2) I won't.

Star love

After comments on the last post i did a bit of research into pulsar planets, and found this little diagram detailing just another one of those real life abusive intersteller romances.


You know, innocent sun is all happy with its little pet jovian, then along comes dark and mysterious neutron star, seduces sun into an affair and dumps the previous partner. Everything looks happy for them.. but turns out neutron star just wants sun for its matter! And rapes sun for everything it has! It's a sad story and one we see too often. On the plus side, the jovian wasn't harmed, at least, it seems not.. perhaps jovians just keep all the pain inside. You never know with a jovian.

Interesting fact: PSR B1620-26 b, the jovian of the story, is the oldest known planet. It was born only a billion years after the universe was born. Crazy times.

UV wax + boredom =

Just a quick post to let you all know that incredibly, i'm still still alive, and what i've been upto this evening:

Today i rediscovered my UV body crayons, so naturally i tried to melt them onto myself. It actually turned out to be very un-viable, I could only scrape off and melt a bit of wax at a time, and i only had a hair dryer to melt it with. Also the wax cracked easily, as you can see in the last picture.. all gone. Hence i gave up after a while, so the colouring is only half complete :(

I will be sure to buy a candle at some point so i can melt them easier and make a better effort and a different design, so stay tuned. Anyway this is what it looks like, only, it was a trillion times cooler in real life because UV glowiness rocks, but this is as good as my camera does..








P.S. just to let you know, there are more posts in the bag, they just havent made it out my brain yet.

and the 100th post is...

A big picture what i done drew.


I might tell you about it tomorrow, but theres not much to say, and i want to sleep first.

Night

dvds

Guys, i have a terrible dvd collection, and i dont want them anymore, so i am going to give them away for free. It will save you money and let me clear some space.
I know theres a lot of eastern films in there.. i went through a brief phase of interest and i had a couple of friends (well namely chris) who just kept giving them to me. To be honest, several of them i have not even seen. Actually, about half of these were given to me by various people, i'm really not a dvd person.

DVDS
Evangelion 1-8
sci-bots 'zalo' (i may just charge you 5p for this)
Hero
Arahan
star wars 1-6 (or 4-3, depending on your geek level)
Warrior King
Ong Bak
Time Bandits
azumi
dark city
seven swords
casshern
donnie darko
Animatrix
dark crystal
labyrinth (yes with the david bowie)
battle royale
Spirited away
Moulin rouge
Save the green planet (misleading title.. its a korean horror)
Excel saga vol 2 (no, theres no vol 1. dont ask.)
kai doh naru
ghost in the shell
kill bill pt 1
infernal affairs trilogy


GAMES
psychonauts
project zero
viewtiful joe
splinter cell chaos theory
splinter cell pandora tomorrow
final fantasy 7
brave soul (japanese hentai pc game, never got it to work myself)
GTA vice city (pc)


several of these will get taken to CEX anyway if no one wants them.

clarkson according to me

Ok after a discussion last night i've decided to make this rant public- for future reference.



Jeremy Clarkson. He's a very funny man. But i do not respect his opinion on cars. Normally when i say this, people jump back and/ or look at me with disgust and patronisingly ask why. So here it is.

Firstly, i'll admit the opinion is not entirely my own- i inherited it from my dad. But that's ok, because he designs cars, and if you're going to get an opinion on cars, may as well be from the man behind the drawing board actually designing the damn things.

Anyway, his (and my) opinion on Mr Clarkson is many fold:

The most obvious first of all it's Jeremy's rudeness towards cars he doesn't like. This can't really be helped because he is a reporter and, well, rudeness gets laughs. Still my dad's thoughts can be summed up when he accidentally won a raffle to drive a tank over a ford car, but he refused: 'Some poor buggar had to design that'. To the rest of the world a car is just a metal object that materialised in germany or wherever, but, for some poor buggar it put the dinner on the table for him and his family. Even shit cars take years of effort to make.

As said though, this really can't be helped. But it's worth noting this a little hint at the distance he puts between the car buyers and the industry. Let me explain more.

Environmentalism. Jeremy Clarkson has been pretty blunt about not liking it. You could almost say he promotes the petrolhead, anti-environmentalist attitude on his show. That's fine, that's his personal opinion.. but he is so out of step with the automotive industry it's almost a crime that he's allowed to be seen as the face of it.
The bottom line is, the automotive industry is one big, powerful industry. It is backed and funded by some of the most rich and powerful oil merchants in the world. If engineers didn't want to become environmentalist, they wouldn't have to. In fact, there are oil companies who actively do not want the car industry to pursue environmentalism, and engineers have had to fight, reason and bypass them for any change at all. Why would automotive employees want environmentalism? Let's take a look.

Money and jobs. Research into alternative fuels, research into improved fuel efficiency, the redesign of engines, the manufacture new engines, testing of new cars.. all vast businesses in themselves and these all create vital jobs. Clarkson may like to see the same ideals rehashed in every car ever made but sadly for him the industry doesn't. When you're using something old and established you're minimising jobs and that doesn't go down well with trade unions and employees. I mean, there's a limit to how many jobs adding extra cup holders can make, and people certainly haven't been working 25 years in the industry to make a bit of plastic with a hole in it. More and more research is being done into alternative design, like electric cars, plant fuel and even speed record breaking steam cars.. and guess what, the industry is healthier and livelier for it.
Then there's the selling bit. If people are switching on to environmentalism, they'll buy things with that mark. If you're the first to produce a car with that selling point, you've got a niche on the market. If you can produce a car that's better at it than the last, you've got an edge over your competitors. these are very good things. Now if only you could stop TV presenters getting the public to laugh at them..

Then theres the fact that people in the automotive industry are.. well, people. They aren't evil, mindless pollution-bent monsters like you see on captain planet, they're intelligent, well meaning humans like you and me. They live on the earth too, they eat food too, many have kids or grandkids or want to have kids. The majority are clever, well educated people with sound scientific understanding. When they watch wildlife programmes or read science magazines they care about that stuff just like anyone else would. When my dad tells me about things like the ethanol fuelled cars of south america, or his visitations to the steam car land speed project, he isnt just making it all up to look noble and cool to environmentalists, its because he is an engineer and engineers find this stuff interesting. So please, just stop treating them like they hate the earth, okay? Even if you think you're standing up for them. Actually, especially if. And if you do nothing else, stop blindly agreeing with what you hear from funny men on TV.

So essentially, my thoughts are this. He is a journalist, and he does the job well because he's engaging and he can talk about cars, but he is not a representative of the industry. Think about how many times he's ever had someone from the actual industry on his show to talk about the cars. Or even cars in general- and no, owning a car does not automatically make you an expert. The majority of information comes from his mouth in the form of his opinion, which is no better connected to the automotive world than anyone else's. But most importantly, when he promotes an opinion that goes against the thoughts of the industry, he's essentially standing in the way of progress. And that is why i do not respect his opinion on cars.

Noobs? But why?

[Ive decided to create a new post tag. Its going to be called 'parapost.' These happen when i find a post on the internet that is so mind-wrenchingly stupid that i barely need to change a few words (for the sake of plagiarism) and the rest mocks itself.

I resent the source of today's parapost, and apologise profusely, because 1. it's pissing me off that i've ended up writing about WoW more than usual lately, and 2. I only subscribed to wow.com so i can laugh at the horrendously socially defective people who write it. Still, here it is, and i urge you to read the original too so that you know i'm not joking.]


by Lou Zerr, Nov 8th 2009 at 2:00PM

Here's a perplexing thought. We've already talked about how blizzard is revamping the newbie experience, but we want to know: For whom? I mean everyone I know started playing since launch day and is level 80 now. Sure, when I occasionally take breaks from my 24/7 raiding for this week's latest top-rated gear, I have spotted the odd sub-level79 newbie pipsqueek running about the place. But these are only bored level 80 players replaying the whole game on another character, right? And they have already played the game and naturally won't want it changed, so why update it?

It's an interesting question. Neth, a blizzard moderator, answers pretty tamely, saying that new players are one of those things you get in games, and apparently they like to have fun, too. It's almost like Blizzard is actually anticipating some of these inexperienced newbie types to join the game.. could this be as ridiculous as it sounds?

If so (and lets face it, when a game is 5 years old, why would anyone think about revamping it?) where could these people possibly come from? Are they actually thinking of selling Catacylsm to new players as well or something? I mean obviously catacylsm will bring people back to the game, but I'd assume that most regular gamers have already played WoW and/or another game at some point. [huh? ed.]

Since Wow only normally recieves an average of 2 million new players a year, something must be afoot or else blizzard wouldn't be expecting anymore newbies like, at all. But what? The WoW movie is mentioned by a few players, and that's certainly a possibility [Are you joking? ed.]. The Battle.net system might also help Starcraft II players find out about World of Warcraft. These are the only two sources i can think of, and even when combined they probably won't bring enough players for blizzard to justify making work for their ridiculously overfunded company.

Unless Blizzard has something else up their sleeve -- something like WoW going free-to-play or giving us extra bonuses for selling off more friends' souls. Maybe that would explain why they're making leveling easier. [um rather than because adding more content makes top level harder to reach? ed.] Whatever it is, Blizzard definitely thinks the newbie hordes are coming. As with so much of this game, we'll have to wait and see. [You're a retard. ed.]