So there I was, bumbling along the internet one evening, checking on some friends, stalking some enemies (now wouldn’t that be fun if you could add someone as your enemy?), and generally being a good internet citizen. I’d even recently paid for something on the internet which I would normally get for free (by fair means or foul) and I feel this for some reason works to up my internet karma and cancel out the fact that I stream practically all my TV from legally dubious websites. You know the type – the ones that are dead set on pawning off some Russian bride to you while at the same time giving you the one ‘strange old tip’ that will make you magically lose all your unwanted weight by smashing through the laws of physics and converting it to muscle and whitening your teeth in the process.

So there I was, Facebooking, and my eye lazily drifted to the adbar on the side. I guess whosever page it was I was on had just got a little bit yawn-worthy. My eye settled upon this advert and I was rudely jolted awake.

Thing Number One Which Felt Like A Cyber Slap To The Face:
My graduate-pride kicked in – the kind of pride which makes you feel that little bit loftier than the other members of society who don’t have letters after their name and especially envious of people who have jobs if you don’t have a job (boo-hoo me). So that was quickly quenched as a rather snotty emotion if ever there was one but then came…

Thing Number Two Which Felt Like A Cyber Poke In The Eye:
It’s a kid. A kid who is earning money. More money than I will earn in the next few years put together I’ll bet. And that smarts a little. I have a bit of a complex about kids being better than me. So much so that when I saw this story on the BBC a few weeks back of an 8 year old who passed his grade 8 on piano, I went off in a huff. But I got over this feeling pretty swiftly as well since I’m a big believer in being good at things and doing them so go you! little Johnny or whatever your name is. And then came…

Thing Number The Next One Which Felt Like A Cyber Roundhouse Kick:
The phrasing. Ok so it’s a kid who’s better and richer than me but so what. There are plenty of those. Plenty of richer, more skilled people than little me and I am fine with this because it means that I can sit back and relax while they run the world. Or something.
But it’s the way the ad is phrased: “why can’t you?” I’ll tell you why oh most sanctimonious of all the sanctimonious ads. Because I’m not a genius. If you’d said ‘why don’t you’ then I’d be fine. But why can’t you sounds rather accusatory. It sounds like mummy and daddy Facebook asking why you can’t be nice like so-and-so.

Hey Facebook, you’re my lazy place of laziness. Stop trying to guilt me into learning how to design apps that will make my coffee while playing Billy Joel’s greatest hits and driving my car or whatever it is apps do these days. I came here to relax and stalk, not to be scolded on my lack of contribution to humanity’s struggle against manual labour.

So in my previous post I spoke about resolutions and all that jazz. And now I’ve gone and set myself a challenge: Watch 366 films in 2012.

You may think this a foolhardy idea and you’d be correct.

But no matter what you think of it, take a look at it and listen to my explanation of what I’m doing and my chronicle of my endeavours. It’s going to be fun. I promise!

Yes, this is a HUGE task but I’m sure(ish) that I can manage it. I think.

366filmsin2012.wordpress.com

2012 is here. And apparently we’re all going to die in a burning ball of sulphur, brimstone and perhaps the odd zombie. Or maybe we’ll be raptured. Or was that last year? I blame the Spanish anyhow, because if they hadn’t gone around killing just about everybody then perhaps the Mayans would have had more time to finish their calendar.

Regardless of whether or not we’ll see Christmas this year, the fact remains that we are now in January and certain things have to happen. Or so they tell me. Though I do find that half of what ‘they’ say to be utter garbage.

Besides removing the tree, the cards, and all hope of being your target weight again before April, January is the time for resolutions. Now you may recall that I spoke of the need to have an incentive to follow your new year’s resolution in last year’s January blog and this need still stands.

But what to resolve to do? The yeard? I think not. But thanks Emily for introducing me to the concept.

Really, any more food related resolutions seem rather obsolete as I just eat what I want when I want anyway so promising to never pass up a meringue is a little unnecessary when I will take one whether I am resolute or not.

And then we have people virtually screaming at us that a resolution will make you a better person or somesuch. No, really – did you see the guy on the new year countdown in London thingy? He spouted some filth about those who make new year’s resolutions being ten times more likely to achieve their life goals than those who don’t make them. Though to my mind, this is only true because many of those who don’t make new year’s resolutions don’t feel the need to split their life into goals and are in fact too busy living to sit down and write a list of how they wish to live. So of course they don’t achieve their life goals – they don’t have any.

I digress.

Returning to me however, I do actually want to have a resolution but to be honest, I don’t really think that there’s any part of me I wish to change which would be aided by a resolution. I’m happy with myself. I mean, I’m not the finished article by any standard and I’m not claiming perfection here, but what I am saying that I feel no burning desire or necessity to change anything. Or at least, the things I wish to change are outside of my control at this present moment and so I could resolve all I wanted and still have changed nothing.

But here’s a thought – to resolve to remain happy with myself. Easier said than done I’ll admit but at the end of it all, the goal is happiness and surely that’s the ultimate goal of all new year’s resolutions? So let’s just skip the middle step and get straight to the joy shall we? Sorted.

Rather Unrelated Video Of The Day:
In a year which saw the death of Gaddaffi, Kim Jong Il, Voldemort and Osama Bin Laden, the White House is sad to see the back of 2011 or, as they like to call it: "THE BEST YEAR EVER AND WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO DO MUCH!". In the review of 2011′s news stories, The Onion News Network had a look back at Bin Laden’s death and whether or not it had an important impact upon the world:

It’s Christmastime. A time for smiles all round, general goodwill, frivolity of all kinds and for all kinds. “Joy to the world!” we sing; “merry Christmas!” we wish to strangers; the possible happiness in a new year awaits, maybe, and all seems well.

But we all know that this “joy” is flawed, broken, not up to scratch. It’s as if somebody has engraved the word JOY onto a cliff face – shouting joy out to all the globe but then this only raises the question of why the world needs to be told to be joyful. For we know that it is not.

The angels brought “glad tidings to all mankind” because man was not glad. They announced that “a Saviour is born” because the earth is in dire need of salvation from itself if from nothing else.

In fact, we all know of this defective joy, the dishonesty of the happy holidays, and the grieving of the season because we are always reminded of it. We are taught from the youngest age possible that although Christmas is fun and good, there is another side. The phrase “the real meaning” is volleyed about by all sides for all causes and for even more reasons.

For some this will be the first Christmas of real sadness, for some the last. For some there will be new and difficult challenges, not because of the time of year but just because there are things that are difficult which have happened now, now of all times.

And there we have it – “of all times” – the belief that at this time we have the right not to be disturbed by the messiness of living. Go away, leave your heartless hardship till later, if at all. Thus the joy of the season not only reminds but actively points us towards grief. The joy is spoiled.

But this is not as it should be.

The grief of the earth should be lifted by the joy to the world because that was its very purpose. Glad tidings of great joy were brought not to remind us of loss but to announce to us gifts. Or better, the gift.

When a Saviour was announced, it was not to rub in the painful truth of his necessity but rather to lift the weighty burden of the wait for his coming.

So it is that joy should not lead to grief as a logical progression, but that grief should lead to joy. When we feel loss, it then points to the Giver who holds the taken in the palm of his hand. When we experience pain, it shows us the Healer who promises an end to each of our tears. When we feel a wanting, a longing, a deep seated sense of something which is lacking, it leads us to the Provider who stepped down, stepped in, stepped out, and stepped up to the task and handed us joy when all we had was sadness.

I frequently utilise unnecessarily enormous words (see what I mean?). And I quite often talk about rather random and not very well known stuff. So it rather stands to reason that people don’t always know what I’m talking about. The fact that I mumble and deliver my words at breakneck speed also doesn’t aid my understandability factor either but that’s neither here nor there because you’re reading this and not having me read it out to you. Though if you sincerely feel the need to hear my voice, I am currently available to do a bedside reading of all my blogs and any bedtime story you want.

I believe we’re getting rather off topic here.

Yeah so not everybody knows what I’m nattering on about half the time. Fair play, I can understand this. What I can’t understand is when people don’t know how to use Google. Not that I demand that everybody have a complete understanding of all the useless drivel I spew out, you’re probably better off not knowing most of the utter banal trivia and geekology which thrills me so. But what I do take exception to is when people read something on the internet, be it on the news or on Facebook or whatever and when they don’t fully comprehend what they’ve just glanced over they don’t go to Google (or any other search engine of their choice) and FIND OUT.

Ok so I’m not asking everybody to totally grasp the inner workings and subtle nuances of world politics or have a complex knowledge of how just exactly what they’re looking for at CERN and be able to fire off facts about what Confucius thought on everything. It’s ok to not be interested in stuff – I detest football to the extreme and make it my business not to know anything or understand anything about it.

But what really fries my noodle is how people can genuinely want to know something and then not go and find out, like whether or not that was Ryan Phillippe I saw run past the screen behind Denzel Washington in Crimson Tide (it was), and whose voice that is dueting with Kate Rusby in High On A Hill (it was Chris Thile’s from Punch Brothers), what the deal is with Taiwan and China (in short: China’s a petulant child).

Sometimes finding out can be fun you know. Ok so whether or not it’s so-and-so in that film and which other films they’ve been in is a simple IMDb job (who knew – Crimson Tide was Ryan Phillippe’s first big film), and the whole China/Taiwan situation is handily run through on Wikipedia for you if you want to spend about 20 minutes browsing through a few pages, but working out who was singing with Kate Rusby was immensely satisfying.

I knew I recognised the voice. I was pretty sure it was the lead singer from Punch Brothers but I didn’t know any of the band members’ names. Step 1: open two Wikipedia tabs, one for Kate Rusby and one for Punch Brothers. Step 2: search Kate Rusby’s page for the lead singer of Punch Brothers. Step 3: when step 2 fails, open Google and ask it the question “who sings with Kate Rusby in High On A Hill” and then scroll down. Step 4: read a BBC review of Rusby’s album Awkward Annie in which it says that Chris Thile of Punch Brothers sings with Rusby. Job done. Step 5: Celebrate with some Earth, Wind And Fire.

There is absolutely no excuse why somebody who wants to know something can’t find out if they’re anywhere near a computer or a smart phone. I honestly don’t know how people can actually watch films without getting really frustrated about where they know that actor or actress from. As soon as films start, I’m on IMDb working out who’s who, what else they’ve been in and whether or not I like their back catalogue of films. The internet. Serious business.

For those of you who didn’t have a clue what I was going on about with Kate Rusby, here’s the song:

“I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist.” How many times have you heard that one? Far too many time I’ll guess. Often spouted by the most negative and cynical of people, this sentence is seen as a blanket licence to be as pessimistic as humanly possible and for you to expect people to nod along with you because, as you so eloquently put it, you’re a “realist”. Baloney.

I mean, I could natter on for hours about glasses, water levels, is it full, is it empty, and who’s been nabbing my drink but it really makes little difference. Some people are pessimists and some are optimists. It’s just that nobody is a realist.

Let’s face it people, we seem to have lost the actual meanings of the words optimist and pessimist. Realist really isn’t an option unless you’re God or Chuck Norris. Both an optimist and a pessimist will look at the facts and interpret them in a positive or a negative light respectively. For some reason, we’ve come to think that if you’re an optimist you just think that everything’s going to turn out fine with sunshine, roses and fairytale love; and if you’re a pessimist you think that we’re all going to die. Slowly.

Reluctant to appear as if we ignore the cold hard facts, we claim to be realists: people who sagely weigh up the pros and cons and come to a real decision based upon empirical truth.

The problem is, we’re dealing with hypotheticals here. Situations where it could conceivably go either way. Nobody actually knows what’s going to happen you know. A realist cannot exist because you cannot know what the outcome is going to be in every situation.

Pessimist is not a dirty word – they’re just people who analyse facts as much as the next person but who generally come to more negative conclusions than optimists. Optimist also isn’t a synonym for idiot. They don’t all wear rose tinted 3D glasses and ignore past experiences. Pessimists can come to positive conclusions and optimists can come to negative conclusions as well – it’s more of a scale than a binary on/off happy/suicidal thing.

If you sincerely hold to the idea that you’re a realist, I put it to you that you’re a delusional pessimist who is ashamed to admit that you have a rather gloomy and cynical outlook on the world.

Myself? I’m not sure which I am. I’d like to be an optimist but judging by the way I rant about things which annoy me, I’d hazard a guess that I’m a pessimist with a penchant for cynicism, sarcasm and rage. Ah well. Just stay away from my sodding glass and let me drink it all myself.

Irrelevant Video Of The Day