Is the world crazy or am I?

It’s the end of 2009 and what a year it has been. On a personal level I finished university, put one foot into the real world and planned a trip round to the Far East and Australia, which is now scarcely 18 days away. Chances are this will be my last real post before I leave and dedicate this blog to documenting my travels, so I decided to do a review of Avatar, A) as it is very much hyped at this point in time, B) I watched it the other day so it felt like a relevant topic. I felt some trepidation before watching this film, as I am always very wary of films with a lot of hype behind them and also that this was touted to be the film that would make 3D big. I have to admit I’m no real lover of 3D films. All the films I’ve seen in 3D have left me questioning its point, unless the director purposely exploited the medium by repeatedly sticking objects in the face of the viewer. This was the reason I didn’t see Up in 3D as I felt it was good enough in 2D, but anyway I’m getting away from th...

Lock your doors! Get the Kids inside! Horde enough food to last for next two weeks! IT’S COMING! Or more to the point it’s here! I am of course talking about the sudden and ‘terrifying’ onset of snow that has hit our country. Given the way that our country reacts to snow you’d think that something cataclysmic had happened, as much of our transport network shuts down, people in isolated communities become stranded and/or their power goes out. And if I look carefully out my window I think I see the four horsemen of the apocalypse, riding atop a particularly full looking snow cloud. Yes, we go absolutely bananas when it snows, as we seem to have forgotten that our country is in the northern hemisphere and is kind of prone to this kind of weather. Instead it seems, we cower at our windows, pointing and screaming: “WHAT IS IT!!” before passing out from the stress. True, getting snow these days is rarer than it used to be and is nothing like the type seen by our parents, when it used to lite...

Lawyers. They’re a funny old group of people aren’t they. They are the people who spend years trying to understand the many confusing and befuddling laws of the land, and apply it on our behalf. It’s like hiring a translator really, if you consider law a language unto itself. I suppose in that way lawyers collectively are like a high school clique, with their own created slang to confuse and keep out the ‘un-cool kids’ outside their circle, and in that way it is hard to trust them. Especially as their only apparent criterion for defending a criminal, no matter how immoral they may be, is whether they can pay or not. All in all, what I’m saying is that I don’t trust lawyers. The main reason I’ve decided to bring this up now is because of a number of libel cases that I’ve noticed recently, gagging people from making comment which is considered slanderous. Now don’t get me wrong I have no problem with protecting people from unnecessary slander, these laws do have their time and place. H...

I made my first cautious outing to my local town centre during the run-up to Christmas today. Having increasingly relied on the internet for nearly all my shopping of late, Christmas or otherwise, it made the experience feel a little alien. I know I’ve faced it before in the past, but it’s like I’d forgotten about all the perils, and general bewilderment that comes with facing a local shopping centre on a Saturday in December. Here are a few observations: • Women, when Christmas shopping, have no space perception whatsoever. • Young children can and will cry, and really test your patience as you wait in a queue of what seems like thousands. Whilst it is annoying, you can’t help but feel sorry for the parents accompanying them, as they are stuck in a bit of an impossible situation. Then again you have to draw the line at parents who seem to just leave the children to cry. I don’t know if they’re trying to wean a child off dependency, or if they’re just rubbish parents. • Most teenagers...

They say that evil can only succeed when good people do nothing. Well I have been motivated to act against an evil in our world. The evil in question is Windows 7, or more to the point the people used in commercials for Windows 7 (in the British ones at least). I want to say I am a PC and I am outraged - outraged at the pretension and the idiocy of these ads; not to mention the smug self-congratulatorary wind that these adverts launch into your face. I’m sure that this is justified by the fact that the makers, and stars, of these ads enjoy the smell of their own twattish flatulence so much they want to fill the room with it, so everyone can ‘enjoy it’. Well bad call Microsoft, it’s about as welcome as someone really coming into your house and conspicuously breaking wind in front of you, and then leaving. Only you and the smug cretins you have employed for these ads get a kick out of this idiocy, as – fart metaphors aside – not everyone does like your sense of self-satisfaction being st...