OK, be ready for some intense world shaking here. You aren't free. No-one participating in life within a structured, first world country is free. Freedom, my friends, is an abstract thought never truly reachable in a civil society. Here is why. To live outside of prison walls, you must abide by the Law.
I know that to at least most of the people who will ever read this that is no real surprise (Except for you, Gary), but even though largely the law is necessary to raise the standard of living within a country, it invariably puts a strain on that ideal that most democratic countries seem to hold up as a totem to unite all those people within: Freedom. However, in many democratic countries freedom is encouraged within bounds set by the law. I feel a need to put a disclaimer in here, I'm not a dirty anarchist. I think laws and rules are needed for a community to work. However, many first world countries say that their country is "free"; I'm just pointing out a certain irony in that.
The real version of freedom provided to us is freedom with a condition. You're free to do as you please as long as it doesn't negatively effect others. This is practicable, and largely leads to a lot of very happy people leading happy lives, in theory. It does put a lid on the amount of things you can do, for example you can't murder, pillage, steal or rape, but honestly if you're not a pirate then you are probably pretty cool with that. However, this basic, non-judgemental and what I personally find to be a pure rule to live by has been tainted over the years. Religion, past events, future predictions and Scientific knowledge have led to laws being past that limit our freedoms even more, social norms and graces limiting our actions to so few it often feels like I'm playing a Role-Playing Game where all the dialogue contains about three different phrases ("Hi, how are you?", "I'm Good" and "Yeah, man". Oh, and the occasional "What date is it? THERE'S STILL TIME!" - just for shits and giggles). And I talk to a LOT of people.
Think about it. Religion in politics has limited the freedom of homosexuals, who are now not free to marry and, if Robert Clark (MP for Box Hill) had his way, soon could not be able to adopt. How does a homosexual wedding degrade the community, who would this event of jolly frivolity impact negatively? How is the raising of an orphan by a homosexual couple who want children going to affect the community? Surely not as much as a couple on the dole who didn't want a child but couldn't afford an abortion? If we're going to limit freedoms at least be logical about it. (A book called freakonomics has my back on that one, give it a read if you want.)
Their are other ways in which our freedom is being hindered unnecessarily. In many councils, when you own land you are not allowed to build on more than 51% of the land. Now, excuse me, but if I ruddy spend 200 grand on a small patch of grass in the eastern suburbs, I want to be able to fit my chocolate slide right next to my cheese fondue jacuzzi AND keep my structurally unsound star-shaped house built on rock n' roll. I don't want to have some council critic come over and say "well that's not safe, and that goes against all these rules." It's my land, I'm not imposing it on anyone but myself, LET ME BE UNSAFE AND KEEP MY SEMBLANCE OF FREEDOM. Council inspectors are really just people there to protect us from ourselves, and personally that's a bit 1984 to me. If people don't adhere to safety guidelines just let them suffer the consequences, they should be free to do so. It is a choice only one person can make for themselves. This is also how I feel about the Peter Garrett debacle at the moment. Those people died because they didn't adhere to safety precautions and training offered by the government, ergo they are free to kill themselves. Same goes for the house fires around the state attributed to the insulation. Those people didn't research the flammability, or if they did, they saw the rebate money as a just trade up. This is one area of freedom in which capitalist democracies excel: Commercial Freedom.
Oh, yeah. I also think suicide should not be illegal because people should be free to deal with their own lives and bodies how they wish. I realise that suicide is more often than not going to impact on at least one person negatively, but i feel we should have a sense of ownership over our bodies. It's like if I went inside and through down my PS2 (No, I haven't upgraded yet, laugh as you will) on the ground smashing it into a million pieces, my brother would be pretty annoyed cause he uses it, but because I own it that is perfectly legal. Suicide is more serious, I obviously admit, but the principles stay the same.
My musings on freedom will continue over the next coming days, but for now i will leave those few of you bothering to read this to stew and comment as you will. Lookin forward to discussions on this one!
Thank you, this has been Shady.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Honesty Policy
Hello shoppers, once again I'm here to deal with an oft thought through and rather done topic, but hey, give me a break. I'm new at this whole thinking thing. But seriously, recently I've been a pondering and I've realised, sadly, that honesty is not practicable in today's society. This leads on almost directly from my last post, because just as it's impossible to completely shun social trends (The whole "No-Man-Is-An Island" thing, you know), it's also impossible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
I mean, when you stop telling white lies, you get slapped. When I was in one of my more adventurous and curious moods (Possibly with my stomach plastered in a layer of chardonnay and bourbon) I decided to stop telling people what they wanted to hear. This, my friends, was quite difficult, because I'm a natural born "agree-er". Even if what you say is completely against my morals, rubbing against every grain of self-respect I hold, I'll probably say one phrase which every social survivalist lives by: "yeah man." Why do we say this!? Seriously, it would be so much easier if we just told a self-serving creep to shove a lemon up his bottom to sweeten his bullshit, and if we did so there would invariably be LESS assholes in the world today because they didn't get away with it. However, humanity lives on sociability, which lives on the concept of the "white lie". When you stop dispensing the white lies and bring in "The Honesty Policy", things get ugly. One night I said everything I thought. For instance: a man was wearing a "God Loves Everyone" badge, and against my better judgment, I made a comment. All I said was, "Well...not really, otherwise, you know, hell wouldn't exist or at least no-one would be down there." Bad plan. VERY bad plan.
But why is this bad? I was being honest, I didn't say anything hurtful or personal, I was just pointing out a flaw I saw in the badge. However, other people view this as an attack because that kind of blunt honesty is not really used except by the pariahs of the community. Everything holds a lie in society now, or at the very least an untruth. When you return faulty equipment to a store, they say "We're so sorry" and "Thank you for bring this to our attention" when really all they want is their paycheck and to get out of there, and probably to scowl at you when you're not looking. When you get a bag of assorted fast food and they say "Enjoy your meal" they honestly couldn't care less. When you ask your friend what they think of that shirt and they say "...Yeah it's kinda cool, but this would be better " they're just avoiding saying "Man that's shit, go for other stuff...now!"
Niceties in culture today are reaching extremities I feel, because, even when we know someone is being insincere in their apologies, greetings, advice, thanking and wishes we still view it on a similar level to those who are sincere. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Someone who honestly wishes that you have a good day and one who says they wish you a good day but actually wants to see your eyes extracted via corkscrews and your testes removed on hooks should NOT be viewed on equal level. It's honestly (hehe) just a tad wrong!
So, to end another short burst of consciousness with no real substance nor structured thoughts, I'll end with a slogan for you: "Tell the Truth on an Occasional Basis when you think it will end in a Funny or Deciding Nature".
Thanks, This has been Shady.
I mean, when you stop telling white lies, you get slapped. When I was in one of my more adventurous and curious moods (Possibly with my stomach plastered in a layer of chardonnay and bourbon) I decided to stop telling people what they wanted to hear. This, my friends, was quite difficult, because I'm a natural born "agree-er". Even if what you say is completely against my morals, rubbing against every grain of self-respect I hold, I'll probably say one phrase which every social survivalist lives by: "yeah man." Why do we say this!? Seriously, it would be so much easier if we just told a self-serving creep to shove a lemon up his bottom to sweeten his bullshit, and if we did so there would invariably be LESS assholes in the world today because they didn't get away with it. However, humanity lives on sociability, which lives on the concept of the "white lie". When you stop dispensing the white lies and bring in "The Honesty Policy", things get ugly. One night I said everything I thought. For instance: a man was wearing a "God Loves Everyone" badge, and against my better judgment, I made a comment. All I said was, "Well...not really, otherwise, you know, hell wouldn't exist or at least no-one would be down there." Bad plan. VERY bad plan.
But why is this bad? I was being honest, I didn't say anything hurtful or personal, I was just pointing out a flaw I saw in the badge. However, other people view this as an attack because that kind of blunt honesty is not really used except by the pariahs of the community. Everything holds a lie in society now, or at the very least an untruth. When you return faulty equipment to a store, they say "We're so sorry" and "Thank you for bring this to our attention" when really all they want is their paycheck and to get out of there, and probably to scowl at you when you're not looking. When you get a bag of assorted fast food and they say "Enjoy your meal" they honestly couldn't care less. When you ask your friend what they think of that shirt and they say "...Yeah it's kinda cool, but this would be better " they're just avoiding saying "Man that's shit, go for other stuff...now!"
Niceties in culture today are reaching extremities I feel, because, even when we know someone is being insincere in their apologies, greetings, advice, thanking and wishes we still view it on a similar level to those who are sincere. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Someone who honestly wishes that you have a good day and one who says they wish you a good day but actually wants to see your eyes extracted via corkscrews and your testes removed on hooks should NOT be viewed on equal level. It's honestly (hehe) just a tad wrong!
So, to end another short burst of consciousness with no real substance nor structured thoughts, I'll end with a slogan for you: "Tell the Truth on an Occasional Basis when you think it will end in a Funny or Deciding Nature".
Thanks, This has been Shady.
A Tough Competitor
My family is very critical of little things. We make sarcastic remarks to each other about almost everything that we see and laugh at things that most people wouldn't find even remotely funny. Our specialties include garage sale sign evaluations, commercial insults, bad accents, and utterly abhorrent dancing.
The sub-par accents and terrible 'dancing' is, I'm sure, something that we share with so many other families, but I feel that my family is particularly embarrassing. Last night I was speaking to my Sodoku book in an accent that sounded like a cross between Russian and Italian. Yesterday my dad was talking to himself in what I thought was a funny accent, but it turned out to be just babble. He came into the lounge room not only speaking in a German sounding accent, but using Spanish sounding gibberish; definitely not to be found in any dictionary. Sadly, I found this absoultely hilarious and seeing my stitches of laughter, he continued to mumble on accompanied by ridiculous hand gestures and changing tones so even though he was not using words, I knew the general message that was trying to be conveyed. It vaguely resembled the scene in Family Guy in which Peter grows a mostache and thinks that he can speak Italian. My cousins have created voices for their dogs and my dog; they use it all the time. The main perpetrator of the dancing, however, is me. Any advertisement with bad music calls for terrible dancing from me in front of my mother, who laughs and tells me that I am an idiot; it is the same with my mother's awful ringtone that just screams "DO A FUNNY DANCE" whenever it plays.
Why do we do this? Is it because we are so bored that we must entertain ourselves with barely funny antics? Perhaps we need to distract ourselves from whatever horrid thing that is stuck in our brains, or maybe we just feel great entertaining someone else for even a short while. I can only hope that many other families do the same and that my family is not somehow damaged.
Advertising is one of my favourite things to talk about, so you will no doubt later on be getting a detailed description of how companies think we are stupid and that there are very few ads as clever or as entertaining as the Libra Invisible commercial in which the guy puts the pads all over himself and pretends to be a superhero; genius. Anyway, poor quality of most ads is not the point of this post; the point is that my family, especially mum and me, love to insult ads. Picking the faults in simple things is how we get our kicks and so anytime a commercial is plain wanky, absolute bullshit, not funny at all, unrealistic without attempting to be so, or simply an insult to all human intelligence, we must point it out so that we know we are not being fooled but the pure idiocy. We want to prove that we are smarter than those creative people in the advertising business, because we are rarely smarter than other people.
When I was much younger, my family had a huge garage sale, with huge garage sale signs to match. They had everything: clear message, large writing, good directive arrows, date, time, and address; the epitime of perfect garage sale signage. Since then, every time we drive past a garage sale sign, we feel the need to compare it to our own flawless one. "They didn't even write the date on there; that could be ANY Saturday from 10am!" dad would yell. "They should have written that a bit thicker... I'm not sure if that says number 5 or number 6 from this far away" my sister often pointed out. "That's just on a bit of paper; it wraps around the pole! They should have made it out of cardboard like we did" I would confidently state. It not only makes us laugh at ourselves for being so stupid, but I know it always makes me feel excellent about our efforts of doing a better job with a Sharpie and a white bit of board than everybody else.
I hope my family is just like any other in our need to feel great about ourselves, but is the only way to do so to feel better than others? Can we not feel as good as others and yet still be good? Why do we feel the need to be better than other people? Would it not be better if everyone was equally fantastic and the world would benefit? Watching the Olympic Winter Games makes me think about why we compete. We want to be the best at whatever it is that we do and we want to show everyone that we are the best, but most of us will never be the best at anything. The vast majority of those competing will be disappointed because they did not win a gold medal; there's no second place, only first loser as someone pointed out to me recently. Almost everyone who competes for anything will be upset with the result so why do we do it? Some people may do it for fun, knowing that they have other talents to show off later, others may just think they are the best and that they will not be disappointed; I don't know as I try not to compete since I hate disappointment.
It may seem like this post moved from my family to the need to be the best, but that was my plan all along... or was it?... Yes it was. But was it really? You will never find out (insert evil laugh here). The point is: more often than not, a competetor will be defeated and therefore, disappointed, so why do we bother? Perhaps we just want to prove ourselves as the best even if we aren't. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
The sub-par accents and terrible 'dancing' is, I'm sure, something that we share with so many other families, but I feel that my family is particularly embarrassing. Last night I was speaking to my Sodoku book in an accent that sounded like a cross between Russian and Italian. Yesterday my dad was talking to himself in what I thought was a funny accent, but it turned out to be just babble. He came into the lounge room not only speaking in a German sounding accent, but using Spanish sounding gibberish; definitely not to be found in any dictionary. Sadly, I found this absoultely hilarious and seeing my stitches of laughter, he continued to mumble on accompanied by ridiculous hand gestures and changing tones so even though he was not using words, I knew the general message that was trying to be conveyed. It vaguely resembled the scene in Family Guy in which Peter grows a mostache and thinks that he can speak Italian. My cousins have created voices for their dogs and my dog; they use it all the time. The main perpetrator of the dancing, however, is me. Any advertisement with bad music calls for terrible dancing from me in front of my mother, who laughs and tells me that I am an idiot; it is the same with my mother's awful ringtone that just screams "DO A FUNNY DANCE" whenever it plays.
Why do we do this? Is it because we are so bored that we must entertain ourselves with barely funny antics? Perhaps we need to distract ourselves from whatever horrid thing that is stuck in our brains, or maybe we just feel great entertaining someone else for even a short while. I can only hope that many other families do the same and that my family is not somehow damaged.
Advertising is one of my favourite things to talk about, so you will no doubt later on be getting a detailed description of how companies think we are stupid and that there are very few ads as clever or as entertaining as the Libra Invisible commercial in which the guy puts the pads all over himself and pretends to be a superhero; genius. Anyway, poor quality of most ads is not the point of this post; the point is that my family, especially mum and me, love to insult ads. Picking the faults in simple things is how we get our kicks and so anytime a commercial is plain wanky, absolute bullshit, not funny at all, unrealistic without attempting to be so, or simply an insult to all human intelligence, we must point it out so that we know we are not being fooled but the pure idiocy. We want to prove that we are smarter than those creative people in the advertising business, because we are rarely smarter than other people.
When I was much younger, my family had a huge garage sale, with huge garage sale signs to match. They had everything: clear message, large writing, good directive arrows, date, time, and address; the epitime of perfect garage sale signage. Since then, every time we drive past a garage sale sign, we feel the need to compare it to our own flawless one. "They didn't even write the date on there; that could be ANY Saturday from 10am!" dad would yell. "They should have written that a bit thicker... I'm not sure if that says number 5 or number 6 from this far away" my sister often pointed out. "That's just on a bit of paper; it wraps around the pole! They should have made it out of cardboard like we did" I would confidently state. It not only makes us laugh at ourselves for being so stupid, but I know it always makes me feel excellent about our efforts of doing a better job with a Sharpie and a white bit of board than everybody else.
I hope my family is just like any other in our need to feel great about ourselves, but is the only way to do so to feel better than others? Can we not feel as good as others and yet still be good? Why do we feel the need to be better than other people? Would it not be better if everyone was equally fantastic and the world would benefit? Watching the Olympic Winter Games makes me think about why we compete. We want to be the best at whatever it is that we do and we want to show everyone that we are the best, but most of us will never be the best at anything. The vast majority of those competing will be disappointed because they did not win a gold medal; there's no second place, only first loser as someone pointed out to me recently. Almost everyone who competes for anything will be upset with the result so why do we do it? Some people may do it for fun, knowing that they have other talents to show off later, others may just think they are the best and that they will not be disappointed; I don't know as I try not to compete since I hate disappointment.
It may seem like this post moved from my family to the need to be the best, but that was my plan all along... or was it?... Yes it was. But was it really? You will never find out (insert evil laugh here). The point is: more often than not, a competetor will be defeated and therefore, disappointed, so why do we bother? Perhaps we just want to prove ourselves as the best even if we aren't. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sheep-ish and Koi
It is timidly that I emerge from my ghastly, dim cave of musings into the shining realm of the blogosphere, dipping my paws into the pool of self-indulgent ranting free of all feedback and debate, which means it is with no ground breaking surprise that the first juicy topic I pulled from the pool of ideas swimming in my head is one that has been done before many a time; the 'sheep' mentality. Ironic I know.
But it just gets you thinking. Why do trends exist? Why does fashion change so constantly? What makes something 'Cool'? Why oh why do people continue to simply take what their given and decide to look like everyone else despite their own feelings and personality? I think it's because it is easy and it paves the way for conversation with a large group of others, but it goes deeper than that.
For instance, i have a friend who HATES Ke$ha with wild abandon. However, he keeps these facts between his close friends, has her entire album on his iPod and I know that a playlist he has made in the past involves AT LEAST 2 of her songs. If he hates her, why does he go ahead and keep metaphorically bashing his own head in with an auto-tuned brick?
The answer my friends, lies in sociability. Ke$ha has been chosen by those industry gods above as 'the next big thing'. There have been lots of 'big things' in the past. Mullets, Hawaiian shirts, fluro track-suit pants, Nickelback, centre-parts, Toto, Low Budget Sci-Fi Films, ALL of which are now treated like cultural lepers (actually, i still like Toto, but that's my burden to bear), were once very popular. I'm almost completely sure everyone KNOWS we'll look back at Ke$ha and think "what on earth were we sniffing" but they still bludgeon themselves with the dance beats and slutty lyrics until all types of self-respect and interest are gone. People seem to treat themselves like Personality Pinata's. Sure, it's fun to beat yourself with a bit of Kanye or Lady Gaga (the last one akin to a wooden post with a nail in it being thrust into ones' eardrum) for some socialising points, but soon all the goodies fall out and you're left feeling a bit empty.
Personally I TRY not to simply go with what's cool. You might have caught on to the fact
that I hate that kind of thing. But recently i realised that i try very hard to look good, I have a 'trendy' haircut (yes i realise only your mothers use that word but it seemed to fit), I listen to music which is oft in the Hottest 100 and i drive a car many people would be quite OK with driving. The problem is, even though it seems from the above musings that I am a conformist in the extreme, others view me as 'alternative' or 'indie'. Really, all I've done is follow a different life-by-numbers approach that all the trendies, wogs, sluts, clubbers and mods do. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that this blog has pretty much become void of any meaning because, yes, i am a hypocrite.
Unfortunately in today's day and age it is nigh impossible not to be a billboard for commercialism and trends. Every piece of clothing you buy has been approved by industry fat cats, every musician fabricated and marketed to a specific audience, every bit of media moulded and manipulated to arouse the senses and get you to spend and conform.
SO, how do we win? In all honesty, unless you make your own clothes, listen to your own music and craft your own living without electricity, gas or retail food, you can't. Not to be defeatist, nor pessimistic, because, lets be honest, we still enjoy life. But still, we are capitalism's bitch. All I'm saying is maybe you can temper it. All you really need to do to prove your still your own person is, in my view, quite simple. When large groups of people start sporting haircuts you don't like, listen to music you can't stand and start wearing shoes on their heads, tell them to quite politely shove it up their bottoms and stick to your guns.
Woo, my first of hopefully many amateurish blogs is over. I hope it left you warm and fuzzy inside, like when you hug a violent bear.
Thank you, this has been Shady.
But it just gets you thinking. Why do trends exist? Why does fashion change so constantly? What makes something 'Cool'? Why oh why do people continue to simply take what their given and decide to look like everyone else despite their own feelings and personality? I think it's because it is easy and it paves the way for conversation with a large group of others, but it goes deeper than that.
For instance, i have a friend who HATES Ke$ha with wild abandon. However, he keeps these facts between his close friends, has her entire album on his iPod and I know that a playlist he has made in the past involves AT LEAST 2 of her songs. If he hates her, why does he go ahead and keep metaphorically bashing his own head in with an auto-tuned brick?
The answer my friends, lies in sociability. Ke$ha has been chosen by those industry gods above as 'the next big thing'. There have been lots of 'big things' in the past. Mullets, Hawaiian shirts, fluro track-suit pants, Nickelback, centre-parts, Toto, Low Budget Sci-Fi Films, ALL of which are now treated like cultural lepers (actually, i still like Toto, but that's my burden to bear), were once very popular. I'm almost completely sure everyone KNOWS we'll look back at Ke$ha and think "what on earth were we sniffing" but they still bludgeon themselves with the dance beats and slutty lyrics until all types of self-respect and interest are gone. People seem to treat themselves like Personality Pinata's. Sure, it's fun to beat yourself with a bit of Kanye or Lady Gaga (the last one akin to a wooden post with a nail in it being thrust into ones' eardrum) for some socialising points, but soon all the goodies fall out and you're left feeling a bit empty.
Personally I TRY not to simply go with what's cool. You might have caught on to the fact
that I hate that kind of thing. But recently i realised that i try very hard to look good, I have a 'trendy' haircut (yes i realise only your mothers use that word but it seemed to fit), I listen to music which is oft in the Hottest 100 and i drive a car many people would be quite OK with driving. The problem is, even though it seems from the above musings that I am a conformist in the extreme, others view me as 'alternative' or 'indie'. Really, all I've done is follow a different life-by-numbers approach that all the trendies, wogs, sluts, clubbers and mods do. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that this blog has pretty much become void of any meaning because, yes, i am a hypocrite.
Unfortunately in today's day and age it is nigh impossible not to be a billboard for commercialism and trends. Every piece of clothing you buy has been approved by industry fat cats, every musician fabricated and marketed to a specific audience, every bit of media moulded and manipulated to arouse the senses and get you to spend and conform.
SO, how do we win? In all honesty, unless you make your own clothes, listen to your own music and craft your own living without electricity, gas or retail food, you can't. Not to be defeatist, nor pessimistic, because, lets be honest, we still enjoy life. But still, we are capitalism's bitch. All I'm saying is maybe you can temper it. All you really need to do to prove your still your own person is, in my view, quite simple. When large groups of people start sporting haircuts you don't like, listen to music you can't stand and start wearing shoes on their heads, tell them to quite politely shove it up their bottoms and stick to your guns.
Woo, my first of hopefully many amateurish blogs is over. I hope it left you warm and fuzzy inside, like when you hug a violent bear.
Thank you, this has been Shady.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Shady Lewis
I have finally given up on maintaining my genderless status. You probably have not noticed but I have tried extremely hard to not mention if I am a male or a female because I believe it adds to the mystery. This seems to work for the group blog that I am involved in because people that I do not know personally are readers and I like being gender anonymous, but as my friend Angus has so rightfully pointed out; my personal blog is only read by people that I actually know as it is not interesting enough to attract attention from the outside world. There could be the odd read from a follower of D.I.D A Mess who read one of my posts and linked to my own blog, but it would be rare and so I have decided to, on both blogs, give up on my efforts. It is a bit of a shame, really, because now my last post looks poorly written. I tried to avoid using the word 'he' so I had to reuse many words and phrases which lowered the quality of the writing; a waste of time now.
This post has no interesting topic, but was really only written to inform you of the above and also to welcome a good friend of mine to the blog. I was speaking to Shady Lewis this evening and I mentioned to him that I thought he would be a good writer for a blog. I then invited him to join here as I do not often post and I thought that he, also sparatically blogging, could fill in the gaps and it would result in a better variety of posts that are more frequent. I am sure that he has some interesting things to say that will no have crossed my mind so I hope everyone enjoys it.
This post is oddly short so I thought I should add an extra paragraph of something, though I am struggling to think of what that something should be. I am, at the moment, watching The Mentalist which is an excellent program. I enjoy the way that the protagonist analyses different aspects of a person to tell almost exactly how they feel. I am glad that I do not know the name of the main character because it gave me a chance to use the word 'protagonist'; one of my favourite words along with 'undulating'. In my opinion, every person should have at least a quick look at The Mentalist, but not now as it is almost over. Tune in next week; same bat-time, same bat-channel. That is all; thanks for reading.
-Renji
This post has no interesting topic, but was really only written to inform you of the above and also to welcome a good friend of mine to the blog. I was speaking to Shady Lewis this evening and I mentioned to him that I thought he would be a good writer for a blog. I then invited him to join here as I do not often post and I thought that he, also sparatically blogging, could fill in the gaps and it would result in a better variety of posts that are more frequent. I am sure that he has some interesting things to say that will no have crossed my mind so I hope everyone enjoys it.
This post is oddly short so I thought I should add an extra paragraph of something, though I am struggling to think of what that something should be. I am, at the moment, watching The Mentalist which is an excellent program. I enjoy the way that the protagonist analyses different aspects of a person to tell almost exactly how they feel. I am glad that I do not know the name of the main character because it gave me a chance to use the word 'protagonist'; one of my favourite words along with 'undulating'. In my opinion, every person should have at least a quick look at The Mentalist, but not now as it is almost over. Tune in next week; same bat-time, same bat-channel. That is all; thanks for reading.
-Renji
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
All together now...
For the past week or so I have been desperately trying to write a new post for this blog. I have started writing on many different topics and none of them have had enough content to be called a complete post and so were abandoned, left to die in the basement of sub-par texts where writings such as "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime", "Twilight", and anything by Andrew Bolt should also be lying. I did, however, like what I had written in the short posts and have decided to mould three of them together into one uber post which contains my favourite non-related ideas. Enjoy.
Case Of The Ex
Oh there is nothing like the title of a fairly average 90's song by Mya to set the mood and give a general idea of what this post will be about. Thank you Mya.
I have given up on feeling bad about little things in relationships. I used to feel guilty for even noticed that someone else was attractive, but recently I seem to think nothing of it; which I believe is completely fair. When I go out I feel withink my rights to notice someone attractive as long as I don't do anything about it; most people think this way as well I would assume as it is only human nature to notice. The issue that I have, however, is with noticing the ex; is it the same thing?
I have three exs to whom I talk to fairly often. One, who shall be referred to as 'N', is a complete shit who used to be a nice person, but all of a sudden became an arse to everyone, but N is in my larger group of high school friends so we see each other often. I will most likely be writing about N in future posts so it might be easy to understand if you remember the name. Another ex, who shall be reffered to as 'A', is one of the bets people you will ever meet. A and I were just simply not matched for each other but we are, at the moment, very close friends. A is not in my 'group' of high school friends but is still friends with many of my friends; in other words, at school you would not often find us together. A is a good friend of mine and the person I am currently going out with, who shall be referred to as 'M', has no issue with this which I am thankful for. There is a problem though; my most recent ex, 'J'. J is extremely attractive and is similar to me in so many ways. Although we are only friends, and I intend to keep it that way (I'm sure my ex agrees), I can't help but notice that J is attractive everytime we are together. Is it worse to notice the looks of an ex than it is to notice the looks of someone who you don't know? Will that bother your partner more because you have a history with the person?
Too Much Information
"GUESS WHAT! On the weekend, I was really embarrassed when I was dirty dancing with some random guy and I dropped my bag so I bent over to pick it up and farted! It was worse because I had my period so it was a gross period smelly fart. I don't think he knew it was me because it didn't make a noise but I ran away anyway."
Now that is too much information. I admit I added a little to that statement but I have been told some fairly similar things that I really don't want to know. I hear too much about other people wanking and girls during their time of the month. My personal favourite was from my auntie: "well I'm telling you know, it DOES make you gag." That is something that I definitely did not want to hear. I am fairly relaxed and don't mind hearing about some things, in fact I seem to give people a lot of unnecessary information about certain things, but the question is: what IS too much information?
I often find myself sharing my own disgusting stories about drunken nights and hilarious mistakes. Some of my friends seem to enjoy hearing all about the adventures of Renji because they provide some, albeit unintelligent and short lived, entertainment, but others seem to cringe and pucker their faces in disgust at my attention seeking anecdotes. Does it depend on who is telling the story? Is it relient on your mood at the time? What makes some stories appropriate while others provoke the 'eyebrow raise and scoff' reaction?
Just SMS 'Poke' To 191 559
Watching television at 12:14am is always a terrible mistake. As I sit here in my chair I stare blankly at the so-called 'selection' of programs on which I can set my tired eyes upon; even with Foxtel, the available entertainment is sub-par. To further push this desperate attempt to kill boredom into the sad memory of a few hours that you hope to erase before you arise in the morning, along comes the irritating array of advertisements for a number of useless goods and services. These include: fun games for your mobile phone (why would you ever need to play a game of South Park on your phone?); top of the charts ringtones (if you have a half decent phone and computer you can blutooth your own music between the two); skin creams and fat busters (I can get those at the supermarket or chemist); and porn (I can get that free on the internet). This led me to ask the questions: "does anyone actually call and buy this shit?" and if so, "who is that stupid?"
The answer to the first one came to me quickly; obviously there must be people out there who purchase each of these products or the companies would not be wasting their money on commercials. It shocks me that enough people fork out the money for this that it is actually a profitable business.
The answer to the second quesion is one of many possibilities. It could be, that at this time of night there are many drunk idiots flicking through channels and mindlessly typing on their phones as they laugh hysterically with their friends about how they can 'fool their friends' with the fake x-ray scanner. Another group who even exceeds the label of being 'that stupid' is the group of spoilt tweens. These young people who have no jobs know little about money; they have no jobs and either only have phones for communicating with parents or they whined until their parents, as usual, gave in to their bitchy children. The bills are paid by their parents who do not check where the money is going, and the children support this useless industry. The last possible answer that I need to mention is that people who are stupid enough to be awake at this hour of the night, depriving themselves of much needed sleep, are probably stupid enough (or tired enough) to sms 'poke' to 191 559.
Bold Text To Indicate The End Of The Last Post And Beginning Of The Conclusion
These have nothing to do with each other but I did not want to post them individually as they would not be accepted into the world of unecessarily long posts. The impressive rant-ish posts would make fun of them. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Case Of The Ex
Oh there is nothing like the title of a fairly average 90's song by Mya to set the mood and give a general idea of what this post will be about. Thank you Mya.
I have given up on feeling bad about little things in relationships. I used to feel guilty for even noticed that someone else was attractive, but recently I seem to think nothing of it; which I believe is completely fair. When I go out I feel withink my rights to notice someone attractive as long as I don't do anything about it; most people think this way as well I would assume as it is only human nature to notice. The issue that I have, however, is with noticing the ex; is it the same thing?
I have three exs to whom I talk to fairly often. One, who shall be referred to as 'N', is a complete shit who used to be a nice person, but all of a sudden became an arse to everyone, but N is in my larger group of high school friends so we see each other often. I will most likely be writing about N in future posts so it might be easy to understand if you remember the name. Another ex, who shall be reffered to as 'A', is one of the bets people you will ever meet. A and I were just simply not matched for each other but we are, at the moment, very close friends. A is not in my 'group' of high school friends but is still friends with many of my friends; in other words, at school you would not often find us together. A is a good friend of mine and the person I am currently going out with, who shall be referred to as 'M', has no issue with this which I am thankful for. There is a problem though; my most recent ex, 'J'. J is extremely attractive and is similar to me in so many ways. Although we are only friends, and I intend to keep it that way (I'm sure my ex agrees), I can't help but notice that J is attractive everytime we are together. Is it worse to notice the looks of an ex than it is to notice the looks of someone who you don't know? Will that bother your partner more because you have a history with the person?
Too Much Information
"GUESS WHAT! On the weekend, I was really embarrassed when I was dirty dancing with some random guy and I dropped my bag so I bent over to pick it up and farted! It was worse because I had my period so it was a gross period smelly fart. I don't think he knew it was me because it didn't make a noise but I ran away anyway."
Now that is too much information. I admit I added a little to that statement but I have been told some fairly similar things that I really don't want to know. I hear too much about other people wanking and girls during their time of the month. My personal favourite was from my auntie: "well I'm telling you know, it DOES make you gag." That is something that I definitely did not want to hear. I am fairly relaxed and don't mind hearing about some things, in fact I seem to give people a lot of unnecessary information about certain things, but the question is: what IS too much information?
I often find myself sharing my own disgusting stories about drunken nights and hilarious mistakes. Some of my friends seem to enjoy hearing all about the adventures of Renji because they provide some, albeit unintelligent and short lived, entertainment, but others seem to cringe and pucker their faces in disgust at my attention seeking anecdotes. Does it depend on who is telling the story? Is it relient on your mood at the time? What makes some stories appropriate while others provoke the 'eyebrow raise and scoff' reaction?
Just SMS 'Poke' To 191 559
Watching television at 12:14am is always a terrible mistake. As I sit here in my chair I stare blankly at the so-called 'selection' of programs on which I can set my tired eyes upon; even with Foxtel, the available entertainment is sub-par. To further push this desperate attempt to kill boredom into the sad memory of a few hours that you hope to erase before you arise in the morning, along comes the irritating array of advertisements for a number of useless goods and services. These include: fun games for your mobile phone (why would you ever need to play a game of South Park on your phone?); top of the charts ringtones (if you have a half decent phone and computer you can blutooth your own music between the two); skin creams and fat busters (I can get those at the supermarket or chemist); and porn (I can get that free on the internet). This led me to ask the questions: "does anyone actually call and buy this shit?" and if so, "who is that stupid?"
The answer to the first one came to me quickly; obviously there must be people out there who purchase each of these products or the companies would not be wasting their money on commercials. It shocks me that enough people fork out the money for this that it is actually a profitable business.
The answer to the second quesion is one of many possibilities. It could be, that at this time of night there are many drunk idiots flicking through channels and mindlessly typing on their phones as they laugh hysterically with their friends about how they can 'fool their friends' with the fake x-ray scanner. Another group who even exceeds the label of being 'that stupid' is the group of spoilt tweens. These young people who have no jobs know little about money; they have no jobs and either only have phones for communicating with parents or they whined until their parents, as usual, gave in to their bitchy children. The bills are paid by their parents who do not check where the money is going, and the children support this useless industry. The last possible answer that I need to mention is that people who are stupid enough to be awake at this hour of the night, depriving themselves of much needed sleep, are probably stupid enough (or tired enough) to sms 'poke' to 191 559.
Bold Text To Indicate The End Of The Last Post And Beginning Of The Conclusion
These have nothing to do with each other but I did not want to post them individually as they would not be accepted into the world of unecessarily long posts. The impressive rant-ish posts would make fun of them. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Need
Today is yet another day of nothingness, looking after the dog and watching The Mighty Boosh as recomended by a friend of mine. The show is not as great as I was told, but it isn't terrible, so my bored self continues to watch it as a break from the repeats on Foxtel. The dog is sitting behind the couch to avoid the scorching heat outside the nearby door.
Although today has not been productive or interesting in the slightest, I have quite enjoyed myself. With almost one month left until I start classes at university, I was planning to do something interesting and fun every single day so that I could make the most of my extended holidays, but it seems that I am too lazy to leave the house on most days. This dilemma has both good and bad aspects. On the good side, it allows me to relax and watch television or read, and it keeps me out of the burning sun that awaits me outside the safety of my living rooom; all are things which would please me. On the bad side, an entire day of anything can get really boring, hence the desperate attempt to think of something to post about on this blog.
At the moment I am talking to someone whose girlfriend is in England. This boy has, in the past, shown interest in one of my friends, who has knowingly returned all the flirting and text messages without any intention of taking it further. They are still good friends and, as far as I know, neither of them has ever mentioned to the other that either of them was interested in the past. They talk less now that he is in a relationship, but ever since his girlfriend has been out of the country, he has started to talk and flirt with her more often; she wont admit it, but I can see it as it happens. This sparked two thoughts in my mind. Firstly; my friend should stop flirting with this guy because she is what another friend and I have called 'the backup conversation'. Secondly; I am also someones 'backup conversation', but I also have a few for myself.
In recent weeks I have found that I have been the backup for somebody; something that I have never experienced before. I was quite goo friends with a certain person until we both found ourselves in different relationships. We were basically out of contact until their relationship ended and they began talking to me more and more. I didn't mind this at all because I enjoy being friens with them, but I find myself reverting back to the flirty ways of the past with someone who only wants to speak to me when their love life is in the slow lane. The first time I have ever been angry about someone flirting with me.
Of course, feeling like this made me think about how many 'backups' that I have had over the past few years, and as annoying as it is, it made me feel bad; damn concsious. Through many relationships I have had that one person who is willing to sit back and wait eagerly for me to once again seek out the sweet, nicotine-like source of flirting that I need replaced. Do these people also just need to feel like they are wanted, or is it specific to the person from which they are receiving it? My need to be desired by at least one person at any given time hopes that it is the second one, but the small part of me that could be considered to have the qualities of a good person hopes that it is the first.
So I have simply been thinking about the desire to flirt and feel wanted, and this again leads to another thought of similar nature. In the past two and a half years I have been in four relationships, which doesn't sound like much, but two of them lasted six months, and one of them was three days short of a year; the longest break between any two of these relationships was about one month. Is this just because of the timing of perfect partners that I jumped into all these relationships, or was it irrelevant who each person was, just wanting to have someone to myself?
We all have this need to feel like we are wanted, a member of the blog team for which I occasionally write was discussing his wishes to have any girl want him, but does this result in relationships that were never meant to be? I like to think that all of my relationships were because of the right person turning up at the right time, but I can't know for sure because I know from experience that I often flirt with people that I have no interest in because I like it whent hey flirt back. I guess the times that I ended up in relationships were the times that flirting 'innocently' (when I know that it isn't innocent) ended up with me actually being interested, so without this need for flirty fun, I may not realised who I am interested in.
So I might forever be trapped by my need to talk to the opposite sex, but I will simply enjoy it until I finally get shut down and my confidence crushed. I look forward to it. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Although today has not been productive or interesting in the slightest, I have quite enjoyed myself. With almost one month left until I start classes at university, I was planning to do something interesting and fun every single day so that I could make the most of my extended holidays, but it seems that I am too lazy to leave the house on most days. This dilemma has both good and bad aspects. On the good side, it allows me to relax and watch television or read, and it keeps me out of the burning sun that awaits me outside the safety of my living rooom; all are things which would please me. On the bad side, an entire day of anything can get really boring, hence the desperate attempt to think of something to post about on this blog.
At the moment I am talking to someone whose girlfriend is in England. This boy has, in the past, shown interest in one of my friends, who has knowingly returned all the flirting and text messages without any intention of taking it further. They are still good friends and, as far as I know, neither of them has ever mentioned to the other that either of them was interested in the past. They talk less now that he is in a relationship, but ever since his girlfriend has been out of the country, he has started to talk and flirt with her more often; she wont admit it, but I can see it as it happens. This sparked two thoughts in my mind. Firstly; my friend should stop flirting with this guy because she is what another friend and I have called 'the backup conversation'. Secondly; I am also someones 'backup conversation', but I also have a few for myself.
In recent weeks I have found that I have been the backup for somebody; something that I have never experienced before. I was quite goo friends with a certain person until we both found ourselves in different relationships. We were basically out of contact until their relationship ended and they began talking to me more and more. I didn't mind this at all because I enjoy being friens with them, but I find myself reverting back to the flirty ways of the past with someone who only wants to speak to me when their love life is in the slow lane. The first time I have ever been angry about someone flirting with me.
Of course, feeling like this made me think about how many 'backups' that I have had over the past few years, and as annoying as it is, it made me feel bad; damn concsious. Through many relationships I have had that one person who is willing to sit back and wait eagerly for me to once again seek out the sweet, nicotine-like source of flirting that I need replaced. Do these people also just need to feel like they are wanted, or is it specific to the person from which they are receiving it? My need to be desired by at least one person at any given time hopes that it is the second one, but the small part of me that could be considered to have the qualities of a good person hopes that it is the first.
So I have simply been thinking about the desire to flirt and feel wanted, and this again leads to another thought of similar nature. In the past two and a half years I have been in four relationships, which doesn't sound like much, but two of them lasted six months, and one of them was three days short of a year; the longest break between any two of these relationships was about one month. Is this just because of the timing of perfect partners that I jumped into all these relationships, or was it irrelevant who each person was, just wanting to have someone to myself?
We all have this need to feel like we are wanted, a member of the blog team for which I occasionally write was discussing his wishes to have any girl want him, but does this result in relationships that were never meant to be? I like to think that all of my relationships were because of the right person turning up at the right time, but I can't know for sure because I know from experience that I often flirt with people that I have no interest in because I like it whent hey flirt back. I guess the times that I ended up in relationships were the times that flirting 'innocently' (when I know that it isn't innocent) ended up with me actually being interested, so without this need for flirty fun, I may not realised who I am interested in.
So I might forever be trapped by my need to talk to the opposite sex, but I will simply enjoy it until I finally get shut down and my confidence crushed. I look forward to it. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
so sad
The first thing that I would describe as 'sad' is the fact that I could not think of a better title for this post, and the second thing that I would describe as 'sad' is simply the idea or creating a new blog because I did not want to post too many times on the multi-writer blog that I am involved in. It sickens me that I have so much time on my hands that I actually want to bore the internet world with my horrific rambling in more than one blog. So without further time-wasting with the introduction to the first post of my blog, I may as well get straight into it; dive into the deep waters of useless words that keep me busy.
I was talking to one of my close friends about his girlfriend and how much he loves her; what a fun conversation. Although this topic is not my idea of fun, an interesting idea came up; he thinks they are having too much sex. Personally I don't understand how this is a problem, but he has an odd view on the subject. He enjoys having all this couple sex and would have more if he could, but thinks he is having it too often. I know, it doesn't make much sense but he insists that it could be an issue. His issue is that every time he sees her, they have sex.
It seems to me that they aren't really in a relationship if they can't spend time with each other without jumping into bed. She says she loves him and he says the same, but from where I stand it looks like they have absolutely nothing in common; so what do they talk about? They obviously don't talk about much if all they do is have sex, but what do they do when people are home? Sitting in the lounge room with family in front of the television, do they just sit in silence and watch or do they have something to talk about? Do they talk about how much they hate something that the other likes? Do they really love eachother or are they just attracted to eachother because of the fantastic sex, or in my friends case, the only sex he has ever had.
I am also friends with the girlfriend, but she has never once mentioned to me that they have sex too often. She has also never even hinted it to her boyfriend. Is this because, like him, she thinks it might translate into "I don't want to have sex with you anymore because its not that great", or "I am planning to break up with you but I am cutting you off gently"?
Since they have little in common, why are they even together? They weren't really friends before getting together and they had sex fairly early in the relationship; was it ever a real relationship? From what I can tell there are no signs of them breaking up and neither of them seem unhappy, but how long can they last without anything interesting between them? Must they continue to find different things to do in the bedroom just to maintain interest? If there actually is love, how long will it last?
So before this post gets too long, I should stop and eat food so I don't pass out like those WOW kids. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
I was talking to one of my close friends about his girlfriend and how much he loves her; what a fun conversation. Although this topic is not my idea of fun, an interesting idea came up; he thinks they are having too much sex. Personally I don't understand how this is a problem, but he has an odd view on the subject. He enjoys having all this couple sex and would have more if he could, but thinks he is having it too often. I know, it doesn't make much sense but he insists that it could be an issue. His issue is that every time he sees her, they have sex.
It seems to me that they aren't really in a relationship if they can't spend time with each other without jumping into bed. She says she loves him and he says the same, but from where I stand it looks like they have absolutely nothing in common; so what do they talk about? They obviously don't talk about much if all they do is have sex, but what do they do when people are home? Sitting in the lounge room with family in front of the television, do they just sit in silence and watch or do they have something to talk about? Do they talk about how much they hate something that the other likes? Do they really love eachother or are they just attracted to eachother because of the fantastic sex, or in my friends case, the only sex he has ever had.
I am also friends with the girlfriend, but she has never once mentioned to me that they have sex too often. She has also never even hinted it to her boyfriend. Is this because, like him, she thinks it might translate into "I don't want to have sex with you anymore because its not that great", or "I am planning to break up with you but I am cutting you off gently"?
Since they have little in common, why are they even together? They weren't really friends before getting together and they had sex fairly early in the relationship; was it ever a real relationship? From what I can tell there are no signs of them breaking up and neither of them seem unhappy, but how long can they last without anything interesting between them? Must they continue to find different things to do in the bedroom just to maintain interest? If there actually is love, how long will it last?
So before this post gets too long, I should stop and eat food so I don't pass out like those WOW kids. Thanks for reading.
-Renji
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