"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.