I don't believe in anything.

Last few posts have been relatively factual.
Time to buck the trend.
Here are some things that I think, seperated generally by a full-stop:

If people are anything like me then I must be ruining their oppurtunity to enjoy Brand New; I'm always going on about how amazing they are, and when people do that about other bands I tend to be put off. I hate one sided conversations. Someone should have invented a better way to get contact lenses in by now. The new BBC Sherlock Holmes is really good. Just because I don't have faith in a God doesn't mean I don't have faith in the human race. People should read more, including me. The world should have superheroes by now, proper ones, not just Dark Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7pB2gLZtlY . I could probably prove you wrong if I could be bothered. The older I get the more I like everything, and the more I dislike most people, maybe I'll grow out of it. We make too many life changing choices too early on in our lives; decisions I made when I was 15 and even before have affected my life inexorably. I love olives.

-Ghrrrr.

This blog is quick becoming simply an aggressive attack on the English language. I don't mind though, English definitely deserves it.

English is ridiculous. A good example of this is words that end with -gh.
There seems to be literally no rule for what the -gh actually sounds like. Contrasting examples are numerous to say the least:

Laugh is an "f" sound.
Hiccough (so often misspelled "hiccup" that the word has entered the language) is a "p" sound.

Then you have:
Sigh is an "i" sound.
Bough is a "w" sound.
(The difference here is that the -gh is basically silent, or at the very least there is a slightly implied "h" or "y" sound at the end.)

So, we have established that rule is:
-gh is an almost silent ending, with an implied "h"y sort of sound, but can also be an "f" or a "p".

Genius? I think not.

EDIT:
I made a point about "hiccough" being misspelled as "hiccup", but it seems I have made a mistake, or at least wandered into a bit of a grey area. I am fascinated by etymology, and I wanted to make sure that what I thought I knew about hiccough/hiccups was correct. I'm sure I had read it somewhere online, but as it turns out this is a good reason not to trust someone because they sound like they know what they are talking about.

In "The concise dictionary of English etymology" (1993) Walter W. Skeat argues that "the spelling hiccough seems to be due to a popular etymology of from cough, certainly wrong; no one ever pronounces the word. Properlly hiccup, or, in old books hicket or hickcock which are still better forms."

So there you go. "Hiccup" is correct.

Disappearing dyslexics.

Just a short one today. (Please let us refrain from any "that's what she said!!!!!"'s)

So, you've heard the words dysfunctional and discontinue, right?
Now, as is often the case with the stupidity of the English language, the dys- and dis- have two entirely different meanings, despite being said exactly the same way. I swear our ancestors did it just to confuse us.

Dys- usually means "bad" or "wrong" or "impaired".
Dis- usually means to "stop" or an "absense" or "not".

So now you know, and anytime you hear someone using a dys-/dis- word you will be able to establish which vowel is at the center.

Paul Hucker and the Free Publicity.

In 2006 Paul Hucker took out a £1m insurance policy to protect himself from "trauma" should England be knocked out early in the competition.
You can find the news report here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/4968092.stm

Now that is a nice, light-hearted jovial story. Wacky world cup fan takes out an insurance policy because he'll get depressed and be traumatised if England go out.
But let's look a little deeper, because what is actually going on here is a bit more sinister than just a throwaway piece of nothing-news.

A quick (it literally took me 20 seconds) Google search of Paul Hucker reveals that he is a public relations man. Delve a little deeper and you find that Paul Hucker took out an identical policy which also made the newspapers in 2002. You can also find Mr. Hucker's name attached to a testimonial about how the insurance was so good for him on the company's website.

The reality, of course, is that there is no "£1m trauma insurance" provided by British Insurance. It was just a PR stunt, and the journalists lapped it up.

Paul Hucker's PR company mailed out a press release to the news teams telling them how a man had taken out a bizarre insurance policy against England being knocked out early in the World Cup. They proceeded to run the story, believing it to be a piece of human interest news. Clearly they didn't bother to check, because if they had, and were able to put 2 and 2 together, they would be quickly have worked out that this was simply a stunt to get British Insurance some free publicity.

British Insurance had clearly employed Mr Hucker's PR firm, and instead of running some advertisements (that cost money) or lower some prices (which loses you money), the firm came up with something a bit more novel. Because of this silly, and not even true piece of news, British Insurance is mentioned in the article on the BBC. I'm confident that British Insurance is probably named in pretty much every article you could find on the story. Now that is the kind of publicity you can't buy, but oddly enough you can get for free.

Don't believe everything you read in the papers, or on the BBC news.

Keeping up appearances.

Patrick Stump is going bald.
If you don't know who Patrick Stump is, I bet you do.
He was the lead singer in Fall Out Boy, the chubby one who was always wearing a hat. He isn't chubby anymore, by the way, and nor does he wear a hat.

Fall Out Boy, comically Fell Out with each other and to all intents and purposes, broke up. They call it an indefinite hiatus these days to postpone the mass suicide of teenage fangirls until the record label can find a new prettyboy pop-rock band to make them forget all about how much they loved FOB.

Interestingly, throughout his Fall Out Boy career, Patrick Stump, the lead singer and guitarist, was never seen without a hat. This is because he is balding, and Pete Wentz, the bassist/lyricist/PR man/prettyboy/gets-his-dick-out-on-webcam/hinted at bi-curiosity/frontman-who-doesn't-sing banned him from being photographed/seen without a hat.

Aesthetics, clearly, were more important to Pete than reality. For some reason, his lead singer going bald meant that he thought Fall Out Boy's "fans" would be longer appreciate their music.
I'm not sure if that would be true. Either way it reflects pretty badly on Wentz's opinions of his fans and indeed the fans themselves. Were Fall Out Boy's fans really that shallow?
We will never know.

But don't worry Pete, you're in good company. Hitler did something similar. He was long-sighted, you see, and had great difficulty reading his speeches without glasses. However, Hitler believed that being seen in public wearing glasses would be a sign of weakness, so instead of doing so, he has all of his speeches printed in enourmous writing so he could see the words.

And that my friends is how Pete Wentz = Hitler.

B-e-a-utiful.

In honour of my sixth follower (never mind that two of them are the same person [and most of the "followers" probably do not "follow"]) I have decided to re-design my blog.
I hope you all love it.

The difficulty of post-modern self expression.

It's difficult, actually, to rationalise a lot of the things I think about blogging.
I am tempted, at times, to post everything I think.

I mean, we censor ourselves, don't we. Sometimes we think one thing, and for the better of humanity, and ourselves too, we don't say it aloud. A lot of the time that is because we are thinking is just a product of feeling really angry, or really happy, or really generous at that point in time.

There's been times when I've thought to myself, "wow, PersonX is amazing, and I should really tell her", and other times I'd think "PersonX is really really stupid and annoying".
PersonX, by the way, is not referring to anyone in particular, and those are just examples, I can't remember if I've ever thought that kinda thing exactly, but definitely similiar things about a whole number of people.

The point is, my opinions of people depend incredably on the context.
I know some amazing people. I know some who are not so amazing. But different things make them amazing or not amazing at different times.

Grrrr.
See.
This is the problem.
I try to explain it. But I can't find the words. I know what I mean, but it doens't come out right when I try to write it down.

Bloody foreigners.

I have a lot of anti-American feelings at the moment, you may have noticed from my Love Actually speech.

They come primarily as a result of the BP stuff, in which every US senator seems to be quite willing to acuse BP of corruption, and having commercial interest in the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Probably they did, but don't try to pretend that America isn't infinity billion times more corrupt and hasn't done much much worse things.

Gigs, and why I hate them.

Music is a pretty defining quality in friendship.
Almost all of the close friends I have like the same music (more or less) as I do. Some are a bit more indie than others, some are a bit more metal, but basically we are all "rock" type people.

Even at uni, most of the friends I made (and there were some exceptions) were rock people.

I wonder if this is a common experience?
My friends and I tend to have many different interests outide of music. Some love football, some couldn't care less. Some are great photographers and artists, and others like dinosaurs and rocks.

And I'm not saying that we all like the exactly the same music. Some of my friends like dubstep, some like jazz, some like chart stuff, but we find common ground at rock music.
Put it this way; we are all more Reading Festival than Creamfields. We are more likely to pay attention to Kerrang Awards than MOBOs or BRITs.

Last night Funeral for a Friend played at o2 Shepherds Bush Empire in London.
I am a big FFAF fan, and perhaps unsurprisingly, so are most of my friends. They all went, and I didn't.
And I didn't go because I do not like gigs. I especially don't like gigs where I have to struggle to get home afterwards. It just stresses me out and I hate it.

I love listening to live music, don't get me wrong, but being a fan of rock music, mean it's always likely that at any given gig I am likely to find myself standing next to some 6'6'' 30 stone tank who heightens his enjoyment of the music by flailing his arms around and smashing into people.
Unfortunately, whilst his enjoyment is heightened, mine is vastly diminished. Not because I'm worried about getting hit or anything, but because instead of enjoying the band my mind is constantly thinking about whether I need to move out of the way of the behemoth in the XXXXL t-shirt.
I quite like a mosh pit if I don't give a crap about the band and I'm not wearing glasses. Unfortunately because of my dislike of gigs, this is a rare occasion.

I don't like the standing around before the gig starts with a bunch of dickheads trying to barge through me and get three inches closer to the stage. I don't like the crowd squeezing together so that you're basically standing on one leg. That isn't how I like to listen to music.

A pleasant paradox.

A few days back I wrote a humble piece on oxymorons.
Today I return to you with two genuine oxymoronic fallacies for your consideration.

It was a couple years back that I stumbled across the fallacy of the "true story".
"Story", surely, is at worst fictional, and at best purely from the subjective of an individual. This dictates that fundamentally, a story can never be true.
An oxymoron then?

It my suggestion, then, that we replace the phrase "a true story" with "a factual re-telling of events".
Questions? Anyone? No?
Then it is settled.

The second fallacy I bring to your attention is phrase, perhaps not so often used these days, but the meaning still resonates.
The "Gospel truth" is something we take to mean "unquestionably true". To me, however, the "gospel" would be hard pressed to find itself any further from the truth.
This won't do.

I propose that this phrase be changed to a "gospel lie". A gospel lie is something that idiots believe is true, but those of us with functioning brains can see is rubbish.
Let me give you an example:
"Gillian McKeith gives sound practical advice about nutrition"
"That is what we call a gospel lie, Timmy, now, back to your crayons"

One of those awkward questions that you don't know the answer.

Now, being older than 4, I know the difference between "there", "their", and "they're".
However, coming to write a previous blog I realised that I wasn't entirely sure whether the phrase was:
a) bear with me or
b) bare with me.

So I did some pretty exhaustive research and I have come back with this 100% correct answer.

Both are acceptable.

a) "Bear with me" means to have a bear, either brown, black or polar in your direct vicinity.

b) "Bare with me" is a sexually charged question inviting the closest person to strip naked in conjunction with your own nakedness.

I hope this helps.

You've set on me, but you are not the sun.

Despite my status as a heterosexual male, one of my favorite films is Love Actually.
Unlike with my music, I am a fan of fun-loving, feel good films and Love Actually bounds into that category like a company-deprived puppy who hears the front door opening.

It features one of my favourite speeches of all time, given by Hugh Grant as The Prime Minister.

"I love that word "relationship." Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship; a relationship based on the President taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm... Britain. We may be a small country, but we're a great one, too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that. And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that."

And for now, that about sums it up.

The whole "moron" oxymoron pun is just a bit too easy.

Some friends like to hang out together, get high and party. Some play salacious drinking games. Some like to hold upmarket dinner parties.
But not my friends.

We like to watch films about superheroes, play the odd LAN game of Age of Empires III, and have lengthy discussions on grammar.

The following text comes as a result of the latter.

Whoever invtented the word "oxymoron" is a...

I'm not going to bother finishing that sentence.

Dictionary.com defines an oxymoron as: a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”

Now here is the problem.
On closer inspection you will notice that both these examples are SHIT.
Okay, so maybe for a second I might be able to believe "cruel kindness" but we already have the phrase "sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind" making "cruel kindness" utterly useless.

But "To make haste slowly"
I'm sorry, what?
That just doesn't make any sense.

The best examples wikipedia can give as are, by it's own admission, either horrible cliche's or phrases designed specifically to be paradoxical:

Irregular Pattern
Deafening silence
Forward retreat
Friendly Fire
Jumbo Shrimp
Peaceful War
Quiet Riot
Serious Joke
Silent Scream
Sweet sorrow
Living dead

The reality is there are no good examples of oxymorons.

Almost all the "oxymoron example" lists you can find on Google contain examples that are simply words that are taken out of context, for exmaple:

Pretty ugly (here it is being implied that pretty is being used as a synonym for good looking, but it isn't in this context)

The best my A-level English teacher (a highly knowledgable lingistic) could come with were:

Bittersweet (which is just a word on it's own, and therefore inelligable for the title of oxymoron)

and

Icy heat (which suffers from the "err, what?" problem)

Oxymoron is a word that has been invented to describe something that virtually doesn't exist, and in fact the only use for it now is to make cynical post-modern jokes like:

Isn't "good Robbie Williams song" a bit of an oxymoron" [extended chortle].

Oxymoron, I officially hate you and everything you stand for.

Peugeot 30.

I can drive now. Not just in terms of owning a driving license, but in the sense that I could, 30 seconds from now, be sitting in my car about to pull away. I drive a 1.6 diesel Peugeot 306, with the silver 6 badge removed, making it aesthetically flawed.

I was kinda surprised how easily I slipped back into driving. I hadn't driven since August last year; almost a year. And I had never driven a) without dual-control and a driving instructor, and b) without someone else sitting in the car telling me where to go.

It was a little terrifying at first, especially because my first journey was to a garage that I have never driven to before, following my dad in his big Jag who seemed to take malicious pleasure in how fast he could pull away and leave me behind.

That's okay though. I don't profess to be a driver of any talent, but at least now I am prepared if I gain celebrity status and am invited to be the "Star-in-a-reasonably-priced-car".

I am aware the scenario is unlikely.

Learning.

Given that we all have a quota of one new thing to learn everyday I got mine in early.

Maybe I'm stupid, but maybe this is a common misconception.
You've heard the phrase "the exception that prooves the rule". I once read a review of Inglourious Basterds (sic) that said something along the lines of "every Tarintino film is excellent. IB is just the exception that prooves the rule".

Up until today I was unaware that anything is wrong with that statement, however, I have been corrected.
I was under the assumption that the phrase referred to the (sort of tongue-in-cheek) idea that if you have a general rule about something there is always going to be one exception that messes it up, and as such that one exception prooves that it is a good rule.

But it's not.
The phrase was originally used in Latin, a language notoriously much more able to avoid confusion regarding words. In English it is very easy to confuse words, because we have hundreds of homophones and alternative meanings for the same words. This makes English excellent for comedy, and awful for clarity.

When the phrase is translated from Latin it means something different than the idea that a rule can be asserted as correct inspite because of an exception to it. Instead we have to look at it a different way.
The best example I have found is:
"Over the holiday weekend, students do not need to be in the dorms by midnight".
The point is that this statement is "prooving" that students must be in their dorms by midnight most of the year round.

I didn't know that. But now I do.
One new thing learnt. Check.
Now I can live the rest of my day in blissful ignorant oblivion.

Maturity, and lack thereof.

I have noticed something about people. I don't spend an awful lot of time with people much younger than me. Three years is about the limit. So on the rare occasion that I do get to converse with people more than three years my junior, I notice incredable differences in maturity.

Seriously, the maturity difference between a 22 year old and an 18 year old is unbelievably wide. But I couldn't work out what it was, exactly. I remember being 18, and definitely feeling mature for my age.
But I think I was missing the point about that.

I felt mature for my age, but I wasn't sure what mature was. I've noticed that 18 year olds have a sense of themselves, they are pretty much aware of who they are, and the qualities that they possess. Much more so than you do at, say, 15.

But in making that connection, I think 18 year olds have a tendancy to assume that they are the only people in the world who feels the way they do. We have it drilled into us that "we're all different", and yes we are, but fundamentally a lot of what makes us up is exactly the same.
It's why it was the less mature of my friends who constantly joined groups on Facebook with things like "Sometimes I say that I'm okay, but inside I'm crying". That's an extreme example and I couldn't think of a better one.

The surprise of a shared identity is what drew those people to those kind of groups. I bet you most people have experienced that kind of thing before, maybe not in such a melodramatic way, but I bet everyone has been upset/annoyed by something and not let on.

I think that it's that kind of understanding you get as you grow older from 18. At 18 you realise how different you are from everyone else, at 21 you realise how alike you are to everyone else. I'm looking forward to what I'll find out when I'm 25. Probably that blogs are stupid.
I'll let you know.

The best thing since...

I mean is "sliced bread" really that good.
Is it worthy of being our benchmark for amazing?
We've cured diseases. We've split the atom. We've put people on the fucking moon.
But no, those achievements pale in comparison to creating a machine which to do what is, let's be honest, a task that most people could do if they wanted to.

A lot of the time this blog is based on how much I hate most people, but I'm just jealous most of the time, the human race can be pretty amazing sometimes. The human race has created the works of Shakespeare, and deciphered ancient, dead languages.
I think we all need to get together and agree upon a better thing than (the admittedly good, but not great) sliced bread to be seen as the pinnacle of our achievement.

All this being right is tiring.

Was it a surprise when the Tories increased VAT to 20%?
Fundamentally I don't have a problem with it. Everyone has to pay VAT right, so it affects the rich as much as it affects the poor. And given that "we're all in this together" it's only fair that we all have to pay a bit extra things.

Except it's not fair, and I wish the Conservatives would stop pretending it is. Labour too, infact. As much as Labour tried to be the proper left wing working-class party this election, their policies have just been Conservative-esque.
Lesser evil and all that though.

I was disappointed when Lib Dem's didn't do that well at this election. The most disappointing thing that clearly a large chunk of the lower-middle, middle and working classes managed to convince themselves that voting Tory was a good idea.
There was all this talk about the policies, but the policies were not really what interested me very much. Quite often the policies don't make it in as the government wants, they are heavily ammended to become what's best for people, because that's how a decent parliament works.
What interested me in the values behind the people we voted for.

Most of the new Tory ministers were the kind of people who JOINED the Tories during the Margeret Thatcher years. They thought that what Thatcher did was a good thing. People don't seem to understand that the Tories are about keeping the rich rich. Of course the fucking rich want to stay rich.
I'm certainly not poor, and I have 0% interest in getting any poorer. The difference is that if it's going to benefit a lot more people than just me, I'm perfectly happy to be a little bit poorer.
Genuinely. I'm pretty that's how most good people think.

I don't want to be poorer, but if its going to give people with nothing just something then I'll take it, because I can.
If I have to stop buying the occasional pair of jeans from Next, or if I have to maybe miss a night going out because my bank balance is getting a bit low, then fair enough.
If that's what it would take to stop someone who has lost their job from losing their house too, then that's fine.

Too many selfish people in England I'm afraid.

We need vices at 50,000 degrees.

So I had a job interview.
First ever interview for a "proper job". That's even how they phrased it in the interview. It went okay. I can't help looking back and thinking "why did I/did I not say that?", but I think that's probably pretty natural for interviews.

They were lovely people too, and everything they said was kinda what I wanted to hear. They talked about all the members of the team pitching in and finishing work to an excellent standard. They talked about wages being reviewed to reflect how much someone is actually worth. They talked about varied and interesting work.

I'm very sure they will interview people much more suited/qualified/experienced for the role than I am. I guess I just have to hope that everyone who applied for the job is a staunch animal rights enthusiast. (Their major client deals with clinical trials, and as such they couldn't employ people who had a history/planned future of anti-animal testing protesting.)

I live in hope.

Anyway.
I love the summer. I have mentioned this before, but I would like to reiterate. Family/friends, and bbq's, and tennis, and beaches, and reading in the sun, and (hopefully soon) basketball, pretty much establish everything I live for in the world.

I'm sick of making plans now. Plans can only go wrong. I'll just see what happens. That's all for now.

I'm a liar, and you're a thief.

For some reason, if you misspell the URL to my blog with .blogpsot instead of .blogspot you get a rather hyperactive bible-based site. It's extremely long, and appears to have been designed by a 7-year-old with a basic knowledge of html.

I don't know why it exists.
I don't get a lot of things these days.

Having reached the ripe old age of 22, I've had the pleasure (and rather reoccuring displeasure) of meeting lots of different people. The number of displeasurable experiences vastly outnumber the pleasurable. Whether I know/knew them for many years, or just gave me a dissaproving look on a bus because I had long hair, I don't particularly want to pigeonhole them, and suggest they are genuinely bad people.

Sometimes I'm sure I come across as a good person, and other times I'm sure people would label me a knob. I walked past a Big Issue seller today, I had some money in my wallet, but I didn't stop, I just lowered my head, did my best not to make eye contact and gave a faint smile trying to suggest I was actually poorer than he was.
I don't do that all the time. Occasionally I do buy Big Issues, but more often than not I don't. Hey, I can't be wonderful all the time.

Of course, we aren't one dimensional characters in a TV show, sometimes I do good things for no reason, sometimes I do good things because I want people to think I'm a good person. Sometimes I do not such good things too. I'm sure that we have a tendancy to remember when people have done nasty things to us. More likely to remember a random sneer than a random smile.

Maybe that's why I have such a low opinion of people.
Or maybe it's just because most people are dicks.

Mics are for singing, not swinging. You know who you are.

I don't know why anyone would watch ITV.
It has nothing.
There's no comedy shows, no decent daytime TV, none of the quality American TV shows, no documentaries, no panel shows, no debate. Just straight forward reality TV, talent shows and dramas about all the countless murders and crimes that terrorize middle England... ermm, right?

Seriously? That's what people like?
I don't know why I bother really.
I've decided there are far too many genuinely stupid people. None of them will ever read this, so I can say absolutely whatever I want to them.

I'm not that clever. I like knowing things, but I haven't done a particularly wonderful job. I don't have the faintest idea how most scientific things work. I don't really know what an atom is, or how a nuclear bomb kills people, or how a telephone can take my voice from one side of the world to the other. There are enormously mediocre things that I can't do.

But at least I try. I would love to know more than I do. Most people seem to be content with ignorance just as long as they can go on thinking Twilight is a cracking read. Twilight can fuck off, improve your life; read something that someone has put thought into.