A lesson in stupid

This, gentlemen and ladies, is the Earth.

It's big, it's covered in people and water, and it's about 5 billion years old... ish.

These are some facts which are more or less indisputable. Here's another one:

The earth's crust is made up of plates. These smack together and make earthquakes, volcanoes etc.

Now a geologist or a geophysicist could do a more thorough job of describing geothermal activity but none of them could do it quite so controversially as proponents of the "Expanding Earth Theory".

If you've not heard of this before, don't be surprised. There's a lot of blurb on the wiki page. The biggest modern day supporter of this.... 'theory' is some yank called Neal Adams who, despite being a comic book artist, has decided he's more knowledgeable than every notable physicist, geologist, geographer, and sane-person in the history of everything ever.

The idea is that Earth has been, and is still, expanding outwards due to some... bizarre and inexplicable process of matter creation happening inside its juicy innards. Now... I won't go into the physics here but suffice to say the theory is (what's technically called) "crap". Anyway, this expansion explains everything that plate tectonics already explains fine, but in a more roundabout and convoluted way. Hooray! And clearly, this is all a big conspiracy that all the world's governments are in involved in because.... they make a lot of money from this sort of thing?

I'm sure there are plenty of scientific and psychological reasons why people feel it necessary to hold totally unreasonable, unsupported and plainly idiotic opinions when there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This goes out to all you "the moon landing is fake" people; or all you 9/11 conspiracy theorists- WHY do you feel it necessary to hold desperately onto your inadequately supported ideals in the face of people that actually know what they're talking about?

*Sigh*

I've spent too long on conspiracy theorist articles and websites to hold too much anger anymore. I've moved on to despair and pity.

A letter

Dear Woman whom I today saw walking along the Winterfold road at the top of the hill,

Guess who's a useless, arse faced waste of oxygen, you pathetic, moronic slab of filth??

Next time a car is coming get your fat behind and your CHILD out of the road. This has been proven to avoid DEATH.

Yours faithfully,

Neo

I promised!

In between making websites, ripping out great swathes of garden, having increasingly surreal conversations with University mates, and moping about doing nothing (very time consuming I assure you), I've finally found a suitable moment to sit down and vent my rising hatred of everything to you, the avid and inconceivably tolerant reader base.

The object of my animosity today can begin with our home grown British media giant, the BBC.

I'd like to start by making it clear that in general, I like the BBC. They make Top Gear (inarguably the best program on TV- excuse my shallow nature), and Radio 4 comedies like The Now Show (inarguably, the best program on the radio). I don't even mind the idea of a license fee. In general the program quality is pretty decent, especially when compared to the festering affront to human decency that is the likes of Channel 4's Big Brother, or similar "here's some twats being twats: let's watch them and waste valuable brain power" dross that so often excretes its way onto our screens.

What I do have against the BBC is something very specific. It's their news reporting.

Actually, it's a certain aspect of this reporting, one which for the most part could be extended to newspapers and other TV news slots: I'm simply lugging this onto one broadcaster as they happen to be my foremost source of the news.

What I'm driving at is the kind of news reporting that makes no mention of the shocking and frankly disgusting incident in London where a taxi driver committed suicide by beheading himself; and yet has a news article listed on their front page as "Brown knackered says Downing street". I should bloody hope he's "knackered". He's getting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers pounds to sit on his fat Scottish arse and stick his oversize, flabby fist into every aspect of society in a vain attempt to fix the catastrophic damage his useless, thick headed party has caused over the past decade. If he gets anything less than a stress induced stomach ulcer he should be immediately fired and subject to the despicably inadequate state pension he's responsible for.

This is the kind of news reporting that favours the death of a deluded, faintly paedophilic, plastic pop star over human rights atrocities in Africa. That runs week after endless week of stories on how his doctor is clearly a murderer, how he may or may not have killed himself after all, and how two weeks later, he is in fact still dead. Obviously the public are as much to blame as the company here- by caring more about the death of a celebrity than of mass tortures, rapes, murders and all manner of inexcusable human atrocities in other parts of the world.

This is also, the BBC that yesterday ran a decent sized television slot about two people who've died of E-Coli in Wales, and ignored the plight of thousands of Burundians who may now face prison for homosexuality.

This is the BBC who (thanks to Marcus Brigstocke for this one) ran articles on how the weather was not quite as sunny as we'd like, and has NOTHING on their website or on their shows about the woman in Sudan facing 40 lashes for wearing trousers. Even the GUARDIAN managed to write about this one. 

Four people died in the Rhine yesterday because of flooding. Did anybody here even know Germany was flooded?

I think my point's hopefully been made here. This is a broadcaster who badly needs to re-examine what it considers to be a worthwhile news article. This is a broadcaster who needs to learn to prioritise. And sadly, this is a public who needs to get it into their collectively ignorant skulls that there is a wider world out there where people are suffering badly; that things CAN be done about it by everybody; and that Jade Goody was a fat, stupid, bigoted racist and socially useless pustule who didn't in any way deserve the vast media coverage she garnered by doing us the favour of dying.

Incidentally, if in any way this has made any minute impact on you as a reader, I'd ask that you have a look at this.

!!!

New Blog imminent! Don't fret. I've been away on holiday but I promise that once again your screens will be filled with my barely-coherent ramblings.

WOW

End of year already... that's really scary.

I won't go on a long emotional rant- I'm sure everybody's feeling the same way I am about going home.

Anyway, I would like to say a massive thanks to everyone who helped make this an absolutely superb first year at uni, and to wish everyone a wicked summer. See you next term!

N-xx

Ps: I'll update this over summer with the odd post- but will generally try and avoid the internet in favour of gorgeous weather!

Not sure where this one will go

I think a combination of constant revision and occasional indulgence has somewhat hindered my blogging abilities as of late. There's only so much you can write on the joys of Thermodynamics... as I'm sure my physics comrades will agree.

Now that exams are over and freedom is (relatively) within my grasp, I'm once again free to revel in the simple pleasures of the web, laser tag, climbing trees, getting lashed, and general socialising.

Leaving school for the summer signified a well earned break in an otherwise tedious slog through the school term. This is something slightly different. Not only will I severely miss Southampton over the next months, it also won't be complete freeloading over summer. Jobs and house-moving are going to be the next big items of concentration. I also feel a strange compulsion to learn something new. I think I have overactive brain syndrome. The big gap created by the lack of physics to come will have to be filled with some new and (probably) less useful knowledge lest I regress to a state of slobbering idiocy over summer and (god forbid) end up playing WoW or D&D.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned for those poor folk out there who are aware of their nerdiness and wish to reform: pick a skill, say, poker, and learn it like hell. It'll be more fulfilling, more beneficial in the long run (head to Las Vegas) and ultimately something you can hold a conversation about without your listeners attempting to flee through open windows. 

I think music is always something worth getting into as well. Too often has it been said that one "would love too play [enter instrument here]". Like all things, if you really, REALLY, would "love" too, then get off your arse, sign off of Facebook, turn off the TV, and bloody well learn it. There's no excuse really.

No-one's perfect in this respect. Everyone has things they want to do that really aren't practical or possible in certain circumstances, but if you use the L word, you should be prepared to work for it. Nothing's impossible to get into if you don't want to. Especially if you're at Uni. 

I for example, would like to learn Japanese. Not for any particular purpose, just coz. Fact is though, I don't want to badly enough that I'd give up say, playing guitar, magic, climbing, etc etc. to make room for it.

Hmm... I'm getting bored of this thought thread. Lets try something else.

*Flexes thought muscles*

Nope. Nothing meaningful. In that case, let's drop this in for random value:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI

This is a pretty appalling video- and I won't grant it the pleasure of a long rant. What I will provide is the following response from a number of famous faces:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6eddb255b2/a-gaythering-storm

Which is most definitely oscar worthy.... that's probably true. If Slumdog can win EIGHT. EIGHT. Did they actually WATCH it? Did they not realise the lead character was as likeable as an Amish Labour politician? I spent the whole film wanting to slap his face just to try and elicit some kind of actual emotional response instead of bland indifference. Clearly he graduated from the Keanu Reeves school of acting....

Words Not In T9- Or, A deep psychological journey into my brain....

What was going to be a relatively concise rant about how stupid T9 is, has changed into something altogether more sinister.

First of all, just quickly, I'd like to express my infuriation at the particular brand of predictive text in my SGH J700. Don't get me wrong- predictive text is a great concept and saves time. But why, was this brilliant concept tarnished so shamelessly with the brush of idiocy?

Why does my phone give me "nun" before "mum"? Why doesn't it remember that I NEVER use the word 'nun' in text conversation? Why do I have to spell expletives? (Particularly hate that one. By virtue of the fact that you're swearing, in a text, you must be pretty annoyed. Having to manually write the word serves to further exasperate the typee.) Words that I DO type out seem to be forgotten within 5 or 10 texts anyway....

Now that I've got that off my chest, here's the main point of this post.

I've compiled over the last few weeks, a list of (what I consider) obvious words not contained within my phone's T9. I THOUGHT I could use this as a further ranting-implement. Actually, I've ended up with a very weird look at my own personality. Some of the following are completely understandable. Some, I'm struggling to remember why I ever thought of sending them in a text message....

Words not in T9:

Grandad

Trampoline

Claire

nano

cretin

tinned

georgie

aubergine <---(came out as "cubeshines")

emotionless

fuck

Kiwi

Hamster

bruno

firefly

candelabra

magyar

rastafarian

I mean.... Kiwi?

Tinned??

What was I thinking?

There's a challenge.

Best implementation of the weirder words in a possible text wins. Entries below please. Bonus for using every word in the list in one vaguely comprehensible example.