"Good" and the wisdom of Marge Simpson.

I wish I could hate people, but I think it's completely beyond me. And it's not a good thing.
I even find "disliking" pretty difficult.
At heart I think I am far too concerned with coming across as a decent person to ever come to a point where I can hold a grudge properly, or get angry with individuals.

I mean, I don't think anyone has ever given me a proper reason to hate them as such, but people who I dislike in private I am often kind to in person, no matter my negative feelings. If I can't even do something as simple as dislike, I don't have a hope of hating.

If there is anything I have learned consistantly, through personal experience, and watching the people are me, it's that being an allround good, decent person is exactly what people want from you, right up until the point that it becomes important.

As such, it is not worth trying to be nice. Just be horrible to people. At least you'll be interesting.
The nice people around you will probably hate you, but then be nice to you in person, because they're nice.
And the people who hate you, well, don't worry about them, they were never nice in the first place, and therefore not worth listening to.
You see how the circle revolve.

It doesn't remotely surprise me that all the rich, succesful people on TV, you know, the Dragon's Den lot, and Alan Sugar, and all those types of people, all come across as bastards.
It's because they are. Super-rich bastards.

Girls like badboys too, right?
So lets tally this up.
Respect. Nasty 1, Nice 0.
Wealth. Nasty 2, Nice 0.
Love. Nasty 3, Nice 0.

It's always the nice kids that get picked on in school. It's the nice people that look out for other people. Who donate to charities. But still "nice guys (and girls) finish last".

I know a lot of good people. Universally, the close friends I have are nice people. And I'm glad they are, because we nice people wouldn't be much without each other to all smile and do kind things for.

And, on a slightly related note, I found a quote that I've been looking for for ages. (I know "for" and "for" technically shouldn't go after each other, but I couldn't actually find a way to structure the sentence any better).
It is the single best advice you can ever recieve, and was told by Marge Simpson.

"I was wrong to have a dream, wrong as usual. If you're nothing special, why kid yourself? Aim low. Aim so low no-one will even notice if you succeed".

Hmm.
I think I'd better do something else.

Home.

Back in Brighton now, properly, and for good. I love Brighton. Partly for the sea. Partly for the bohemian attitude, you don't find elsewhere. But mainly because of the people here.
Went to the debut Verses homeshow at the Engine Rooms and then out to the PavTav for the first time in (what felt like) ages. It would have been good no matter what, I'm sure, but the company made it awesome.

Verses, by the way, are really really really good. And you should definitely check them out.
http://www.myspace.com/thisisverses

Proceed and The Fusion, the 2 other bands, are great too. But I wont go to the bother of linking them to you.

Something about last night reminded me that I shouldn't take everything so seriously. I shouldn't worry so much. Just smile, and enjoy things happening as they happen.
I'm bordering quite close to pretencious advice now, so I think I'll keep quiet.

Since we're on the subject...

Beauty.

The concept of a model is an interesting one for me.

We are to assume that models are beautiful, they must be, they are what we are supposed to be "modelling" ourselves on. This is what we would look like if we could.



To me, however, models aren't that attractive. I don't know if you agree with me, but female models tend to be too skinny, too tall (to the point where "lanky" is the correct adjective), and too gaunt at the face.

Maybe facially they could come close to what we would describe as beautiful, but, they have so little in terms of fat, I don't think it looks attracive.

Certainly that is not what I am attracted to, and taking it even further, I would not even describe that kind of look as attractive.



Real girls are much more attractive; perfection, in my opinion, is something that dictates there must be flaws. To me anyway. Girls seem to worry all the time about their hair being wrong, or needing more makeup, or anything along those lines.



I stumbled across (as you do) an article in an online magazine that "uncovered" celebrities not wearing make up. And I look through some of the pictures, and to me a lot of the time you could definitely see their natural good looks coming through much nicer when they werent wearing a tonne of makeup.



Maybe its just me, but I don't know, I don't think that in the real world I have ever heard a girl being critisized by guys for not wearing enough make up, I've definitely heard it about girls wearing too much though.

Aesthetics.

As a follow up for my point regarding looks not meaning everything, I have found this delightful image, which almost entirely sums up my argument.

Now we can all be unique. Just like everyone else.

Are all the modern indie bands having a who-can-look-the-most-pretencions competition? Well congratulations, you all win.
The prize is the adoration of hundreds of thousands of "unique individuals" who all wear the in-season clothes from Topman and River Island, and appear to have an allergy to smiling.

Saying that, not that all indie music is bad, nor indeed are all fans of indie music just twats, but there is definitely a majority. It seems sad to me though, that whole idea of being "unique" has been horribly commercialised. Looking different has become what everybody wants, and for some reason, to everybody, there appears to be a dictated definition of "different".

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of it too. Most of my clothes come from places like River Island etc, but one thing I don't do, is change my "style" (I genuinely cringe at that word) depending on what celebrities look like. Why are people so obsessed with looking like someone else, looking like a prescribed image? Why is homogenising a good thing?

Nevermind, eh? :)

Disney and expectations.

Re-reading Ben's blog, a cure for having nothing at all to do, I came across a point he made about a group on Facebook. It's called something the lines of "Disney gave me unrealistic expectations of men", aluding to the fact that the female characters in Disney movies always end up with handsome, charming, heroic, perfect toothed, charmasmatic men.

Now I bring this up for the point of arguing, admitedly, I know it's only a bit of fun, and is just a dig at men being, in general, a bit rubbish. Nevertheless, I'm sure there are some women out there who see some truth behind the statement.
Invariably, however, female characters in these Disney films are something special. Snow White, for example, is described as "the fairest of them all", so she is the most beautiful woman in the land! The girl in Aladin, I forget her name, I want to say Jasmine? That might be wrong, anyway, the girl in Aladin is an Arabian princess or something to that effect, and she's beautiful too.
Briefly, this brings me to another point I wanted to make. People often say "looks aren't everything", except that they definitely are. There was a test where people were given 40 photographs of wedding days, 20 men and 20 women, all seperated. Nothing about their personalities or wealthyness, just pictures of 20 grooms and 20 brides. And they were told to guess which couples were together.
Altogether they were correct about 80% of the time. 80%! Just on 1 photo.
The moral of the story is, you will end with someone roughly about as attractive as you are.

Now this clearly goes along with my Disney theory. The beautiful(1) women in Disney films end up with highly attractive men. And we can account for those other attrubites that the men have i.e charming, heroic, etc. from the fact that these women tend to come from privaliged backgrounds, i.e. princesses, something about them makes them not run of the mill.

I'm not for one second suggesting that anyone I know who are in these groups are not beautiful, or are run-of-the-mill (maybe thats an unfair phrase), but the point is that the Disney women are already in a position to find themselves meeting dashing, attractive, charming men.

It wasn't Disney that gave them unrealistic expectations, it was their lack of perspective about the situation.

Now, you could take this argument at face value. Or you could take it that I'm just unbelieveably bitter than I'm not handsome, charming, heroic, perfect-toothed and charasmatic like all the men in the Disney films, and have to make up for it by making snide comments about how that fact that I'm not attractive is all women's fault. I'll leave that up to you to decide.

(1) Isn't it interesting that we have the word "beautiful" that is applied to women (you can apply it to men but it usually means good looking in a feminine sort of way), but there is no word that can only be applied to be very attractive men.
"Handsome" and "pretty" seem to suggest about the same level of attractiveness, so thats one for men, one for women. But when we go above that level of attractiveness, there is no word that is exclusively for men. "Gorgeous" and "stunning" can just about be applied to men without the feminine connotation, but they are much more commonly attributed to women. But there is no male equivalent to "beautiful".
Perhaps it is the final confirmation that we needed that women are just much more attractive than men. I think we can all agree, women just look nicer.

"Plaster Man" is a spoonerism.

So, I'm finished with university now, I handed in my last piece of work on Wednesday and my future is the least certain that it has ever been. Education has always been a bit of a grounding experience. It sets out your year for you, and you become used to having breaks at certain times and the whole structure of learning.
But that's gone now. I'm not gonna do a masters, I should get a good enough grade to qualify for one, but I'm not really sure I want to do another year of education. It's kind of a strange feeling, I'm not really worried by the concept of having to go and find a job; more that the decisions I make now will affect my future in a way that I don't know yet.

What I mean by that is, when I signed up for three years of Computer Game Design at University of Wolverhampton, I knew that three years later I would have a degree and would be ready to make the next decision. Admitedly, I changed degrees (or equally "came to my senses") in the process, and will leave with a degree in Creative and Professional Writing, I still now have that decision to make. The difference with this decision is that I wont know where it will take me, I could find myself in a job that lasts til retirement, or end up with something that I can't stand and quit in a month. I just don't know.

It frightening and exciting at the same time. My primary plan is to find a part time job, enjoy the summer, and then look for a proper job once I've got my degree. I love the summer in Brighton, so I'm not too worried for the moment. Whatever happens happens, this summer. The worrying is really about life post-summer, when the educational year begins and I don't have any learning left to do. And it's not just career-wise, it's everything. Living arrangements, plans with friends, everything.

I don't know whats gonna happen, but it'll be fun finding out.

Ready to be bored?

I have decided, I am a phenomenally jealous person.
Not in the sense that if I had a girlfriend I would be reaching for a chainsaw everytime another man put a hand on her shoudler. In that sense of "jealous" I am fairly similar to other people, I think, a bit of imaginery chainsaw, perhaps.

But there is another form of jealousy, a much more subtle form, and one I do very well, quietly seething with rage.

Firstly before I get onto the jealousy thing you should know, I hate being wrong. I hate that feeling of saying something or doing something and it being wrong or inappropriate. Becuase it's no-ones fault but my own, there literally nothing/no-one I can blame it on, and I react pretty badly to it.
Maybe it could even be a phobia. I am afraid of being wrong. It's probably why I keep quiet a lot of the time unless I'm around people that I can sort of play off being wrong. Being wrong in front of strangers is the worst, because that's all they have to judge you on.

I think this had affected my view of things, and can be attributed to why I am as jealous as I am. I am fairly convinced that there are some bands that I dislike purely on the basis that someone else liked them first. I know this is an absurd idea, and when looked at practically falls down almost immediately, and certainly it doesn't happen all the time, but it definitely has happened. It's like a jealousy that someone got there before me.

I don't tend to get jealous of things that people that I can do that I cant, but I definitely get jealous of people who can do the things that I feel I'm best at better than I can. I'd imagine that is a fairly common jealously, I mean no-one likes realising that their not as good at something as someone else. You get drawn into a sea of endless comparison, and comparisons don't tend to end well for me.

In the same way, I don't mind people being more intelligent than I am, or funnier, or wittier. But it returns back to the "being wrong" dilemma. People can be as clever as like, as long as they leave a bit of room for me to be cleverer than them regarding *something*. Unfortunately I have a sort of "Wikipedia-first-paragraph" level of knowledge, about a lot of things, and I like to pretend I know more than that.
Well I used to pretend! That's kind of the point of this blog. I don't want to be that jealous/insecure, I make efforts not to be, I bring it up here to show you and to me that I am fully aware of its existance, and I'm doing my best to do something about it.

As a last point, that's one of the worst possible ways of being wrong.
Being wrong, and not realising you're being wrong. That's slightly a paradox, I'll admit. But the point is, I don't mind if someone calls me pretencious, 'cos I'm sort of aware that it's a fault in my personality (again, something I am consciously not particularly happen with), it's much worse if someone calls me something that I didn't realise I was, and then when I look back it, I kinda realise, that's exactly what I was.

In closing. This blog has become a sounding board for my insecurity, nothing else.

I've changed my mind.

In the walk back and forth from university, I changed my mind. I am at liberty to do so, it's a free country. Etc.

Ironically, I was thinking about what my last post said about "over thinking". I have decided that in my opinion, the whole idea of "thinking too much" is flawed. Certainly from my perspective.

If I think about something enough then I'll have to act on it. If I think for two or three days about what it would be like to get a job working for the police then I start looking up the kind of jobs available, and there are plenty of examples, that I wont bring up now.

The point is, if I think about something enough it doesn't stop me from doing it, in effect it means I have to do something about it. So yeah, over thinking is brilliant.

We need vices!

Being alone in Wolverhampton is useful for a number of reasons.
At the moment, I have absolute freedom. I'm not saying that when I go back to Brighton I will spend my hours in a prison cell, but it's just that living with anyone means some preconceptions of what you have to do.
At home, for example, they probably wouldnt like it if I sat around in boxers and a t-shirt most of the day because I can't be bothered to put on some jeans.

It also gives me licence to eat whatever I want. Social parameters define that I am not allowed to, for example, have a dinner that is combined entirely of suasage and green pesto. I'd look stupid. More stupid than usual.

I'd also imagine that if I wanted to blast Four Year Strong at midnight as loud as my computer speakers will get, my parents would take offence to that too.

However, being on your own, especially in the scenario where I have had to limit my social contact fairly violently in order to give myself enough time to get all my work done, comes with some less fun attributes.
Thinking too much, a condition we all suffer from, manifests itself quite badly. My thoughts tend to lock themselves attempting to balance optimism and realism. But then, just when you start to actually start confronting the problem of over-thinking it becomes even worse, because you start worrying that thinking too much is starting to affect your attitude towards things, except now you have nothing left to do but think.

Hence I have filled my truly free time filling up Grooveshark with songs that are as loud, up-tempo, or heavy as my fragile music taste will allow. Aggressive music tends to put me in a better mood at the moment, I don't remotely have the time to be introspective.

Here's hoping.

The election didn't go the way I wanted, and I'll admit I am disappointed by it.

What I hoped would happen is Labour would get a mild majority over the Tories, maybe 250 seats to Tories 230, and Lib Dems would get 120ish.

What I thought would happen was Conservatives might get 270 ish, Labour around 250 and Lib Dems might get around 80.

What has happened is not as bad as it could have been. Tories could have got an outright majority. The BNP or UKIP could have gotten seats. These things haven't happened. And it's not altogether that bad. Even if Tories do manage to forge a majority it will be very weak and hopefully most of their ridiculous ideas will be shot down.

However, I was hoping for a lot more from this election.

My political sympathies appear to be very liberal. But I dont really like the term "liberal" because it seems to me that the media has made this effort to suggest that what "liberal" really means is wacky, or even stupid. To me, liberal means something very different. It means being progressive, and looking past what has happened before. It also, and perhaps most fundamentally, means helping people, looking after people, and my really big worry is that is what England has voted against.

To be honest, I dont think the Tories being in government really affects me that much, not at the moment anyway. I've just finished university so they cant push up fees and make me quit. I dont have children that the Tories could mess up the school system for. I'm not in, or anywhere close to poverty. I'm pretty sure almost whatever the government tries to do, I will more or less live a fairly comfortable during their stint in government.

But I'm not really worried about me. It seems to me, fairly obvious that the Conservatives are the party of the rich. I dont think we can deny it. They have a big tax cut planned for the richest people. Essentially they very much like the idea of the rich getting richer. What seems to me is that the Tories don't really have very much interest in the poor getting richer.

See if I set you out two choices, one in which you would make £100,000 a year, and 4 other people would be in poverty. And another were all five would make £20,000 a year, I would certainly take the latter.

I know that's an extreme example, and suggests I'm a communist (I'm not), but the point is I would rather everyone had something, than a minority had everything. I'd imagine most people are the same.

I'm not trying to suggest I have a holier-than-thou attitude about the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, I want to have more money just like everyone else, and I would love to be rich. But I just think that by looking out for people, and seeing that more people are able to support themselves would be a much better thing.

The foundation of our society, surely, is about helping people, about making sure that the system is fair. I cant help but feel that England has voted for the opposite.


P.s.

Now that my rant is out of the way, I just wanted to look at some of the numbers involved in this election, just to prove one last final point, and also to give you some more lashings of my unabridged opinion, which I know you all crave.

10.7 million people voted Conservative, and that equaled 306 seats.
8.6 million people voted Labour, and that equaled 258 seats.
6.8 million people voted Lib Dem, and that equaled 57 seats.

Now I am not very good at maths, I fully admit, but something is deeply wrong there. That is why we need proportional representation. Then everyone's vote counts, not just the vote of the majority of people in that particular area.

I would also note that, simply put:
10.7 million voted for centre-right parties.
15.4 million voted for centre-left parties.

And yet the centre-right will almost certainly have a majority. I think Labour and Lib Dems need to set aside their differences here, and form a government, because the majority of people want a centre-left government.

Finally:

563,743 people voted for the BNP. Please make them leave Britain, they don't deserve to be here.

Thinking: am I doing it wrong?

Not so long ago somebody (I forget exactly who) asked me the quasi-philosophical question: what language do deaf people think in? I remember having a discussion about the idea, and it being quite perplexing to think about. However, looking back, it leaves me with a worry that is more fundamental.

Movies present the thoughts of characters to us as a narrated stream of concious dialogue. If someone sees a girl that he finds attactive his internal thoughts might say something like "wow, she's hot!" But this is not remotely the way I think. My head doesnt sound a little voice that tells me what I'm thinking, I just think it, I become aware of my thoughts towards it. If I have a cup of tea round someone's house and it's really nice, nothing tells me so, I just know that it's really nice.

Sometimes I do create that little voice and say things to myself. I dont know why, I think it's probably just to appease that part of me that thinks that is what I should be doing. But, I think that probably most people have the same experience as me, except that movies and television have tricked us into thinking that everyone else thinks with an internal monologue.