No, you're an idiom!

I figure that the best way to deal with this is by simply writing it out...I really don't know what to, no, not what, how to, I really don't know how to write this blog I have to do for my university course. See, here, I can be free and easy, I can be cliché and cheesy, I can write ridiculous little poems mid paragraph in a manner most cheerful and breezy...heh...that was stupid...but see, I can do that here, I can be stupid and say stupid things because it doesn't really matter. It's a completely personal piece, a sounding board for my own opinions and thoughts, and whilst I know that technically it's all out there in the open, I guess it feels like it's really closed off because I don't get very many readers and even if I did get hundreds, thousands hell, even millions of them, it still wouldn't matter because at the end of the day it is just purely my opinions/thoughts and wouldn't really count for much outside of my own head or the entertainment of others....this blog for the university though...see, you'll have noticed if you read through this that I'm generally very lax regarding the actual application of correct grammar, correct syntax and such, it's very much a conversational, disjointed style of writing, full of idioms and nods to geek culture and I'll grant ye that at times that can be quite...annoying or difficult to read/follow, and I get that, I really do, these tend to be train of thought writings because that's my style of writing...it can be entertaining, and you know, great! I hope they are! But to submit it for critical assessment....I guess I'm just worried that because it's very scatter-gun approach, because the flow flips back and forth, that it'll be heavily marked down because it's technically not very good, the quality is quite low in those technical terms...ellipses! Look how many ellipses I use! It's bloody ridiculous! If I had dollar for every use of ellipses I've done in these things....I'd have a lot of money but it'd be the wrong currency and so utterly useless....so it wouldn't matter anyway...

I don't know what to put, I really don't. I've enjoyed the first couple of weeks. The timetable conflicts were annoying, having to wait three hours between lectures and yeah, that wasn't much fun, but the flip-side of it was that it forced people to interact. It's true that not every single person took to it, but even now it's still possible to see the groups of people who went off to explore Liverpool, or else found themselves sat in the coffee shop with each other. If it wasn't done on purpose I'd actually argue for it's inclusion as it got people chatting to one another, whereas if it had been lecture after lecture (or the horribly forced "ice-breaking" games) then I'd be willing to bet most people would have remained in isolation....

Okay! Went away there for a little bit, got the First blog entry thing for my course done....I've a feeling it's been done incorrectly, but whatever! The point is I dived balls first into the hornets nest and now the only thing to wait for is the sweet, sweet release of death....or the unexpected arousal of having done the right thing....mmm, oh sweet stings......I didn't write like that in the blog, do you think I should have? Oh gods, what if they think I'm some kind of anti-hornet protester because i didn't include that, hornetist! they'll call me and throw jars of hornet jelly at me (do hornets even make jelly? I know bees do...and hornets are basically like bees but on steroids right? right?!) until i fall over and die from my dreadful allergy to hornet jelly (am i really allergic? I don't know, do hornet's even make jelly? WHO CAN SAY?! Some things a man is just not meant to know!) but aside from that, I've nothing to do this weekend....Gods above that feels liberating. THe past two - three weeks it's just been like living life in AAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH HOLEE SHIT! mode, which is a mode I don't recommend. I mean, it's good and fun and all and yeah, but the thing is.....I'm naturally quite introverted, and these past few weeks have been really physically and mentally exhausting for me...I'm not saying they were bad, because they weren't, not at all, they were good, great even....but very tiring. I've probably met and talked to more people (like, properly met and talked) in the past fortnight than I have in a decade....it was definitely a good idea to have gone to college prior to University...if I hadn't been prepped? I guess, acclimated? Yeah, that's a better word, if I hadn't acclimated to people again through college, I'd have sunk here, so you guys and gals, thank you for that. That said, it is nice to going back to being introverted for a bit, just, build a nest or something, a burrow, and dive into that. Even if just for a weekend, just watch anime and movies, maybe tape hedgehogs to my palms and run around high-fiving people, maybe listen to some tunes...you know, just normal everyday shizz. Anywho, going to wrap it up there because there is a video game out there, somewhere, sad that I am not playing it...and I just hate it when people/animals/inanimate objects/abstract concepts get sad because I'm not there (it's more common than you'd think), so I'd better go remedy that.....adios for the now!  


  

Mistakes for all!

I love making mistakes...no, that's a bloody understatement, I really fucking love making mistakes. If mistakes were a person, (Miss Takes? Ho ho ho, we do have fun here with the puns and whatnot!...it's not a pun, it's a play on words! you fool!) I would obsessively stalk that person....it would not end well for either of us....but the point of this is, the takeaway from this is that I really do enjoy making mistakes. I hear you asking "But Terence, how do you tell the difference between store bought cola and brand cola when they're unlabelled?" and the answer is simple, I believe you learn better from your mistakes. It's like....remember when you were a child and you burnt your hand on the cooker? (If you don't, just imagine you do...basically all that memory is anyway) From then on you know to keep away from it. But it's basically guaranteed that your parent or carer or supernatural watcher told you first "don't put your hand on the cooker, it's hot!" and that's, well...great...but what is hot? How do you know what hot is if you've never experienced it? You pay attention to what they have told you, of course you do, they're your mum, your baby-sitter, your ephemeral ghost friend who is unable to move into the light and must forever remain on this planet warning little children such as yourself to not touch the hot things or else you'll end up dead and haunting the place like him...but you don't really take it in. So, you totter off to the cooker and as the little bad-ass punk that you think you are you put your hand on the stove, pfft, it ain't no big deal right? Could leave your hand there all d-Jesus Christ! that hurts! Then you wail and cry and run off to an adult and tell them all about how you didn't pay attention to their wise words....and they roll their eyes and do whatever it is that parents do to comfort a child (in my house, they believed wholeheartedly that laughter is the best medicine.....so they laughed at my injury....I'm just messing! I hope...I really can't remember....) and we learn and we never do it again....until the next time...

So why the subject of mistakes....well, basically....I made a mistake coming here, to the student halls....that's not to say there's anything wrong with either my flat, flatmates or the area, because there isn't. They're good buildings/people/locations, just...not entirely for me....I knew it was a mistake from the first moment I decided I was going to move into a shared flat, a halls of residence, but again, as I said at the start I love making mistakes. I had to do it, you know...oh Lord, that's basically a sign of masochism isn't it? Doing something you know will harm you regardless of that knowledge....But yeah, I had to do it because I knew I'd hate myself if I didn't go for it...My brain would be calling me a chicken and bawking all the damn time about it, and no! Just no! Bad brain! You don't get to dictate my life! (I don't get out of this phase until I go back to the future and see myself get fired for not backing down to a challenge after being called chicken like in that movie, though the lesson doesn't really settle in until I go back to the wild west and learn about my namesake who was very similar to me and died because of his inability to back down, basically my life is Back to the Future....I wish...)

It's not that I don't enjoy doing things right, because I do...it's just...I like being wrong sometimes, you know, there's a thrill in genuinely not knowing something, or being told not to do something and then doing it anyway, and just fucking up....I hate the bad reputation failure gets, people looking down on it and crap, there's a snide remark I often hear about Edison's (and I am loathe to credit Edison positively, but alas, these are strange times and here we are) quote of "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." that basically runs along the lines of "Well, I'd rather just do it right first time."....bravo to those people, they miss the point. If you got everything exactly right first time, then what? If you just sailed through life, getting everything right first time, never making any mistakes at all, excelling perfectly at any and everything you try, how boring would you be as a person? No, not even boring, just condescendingly inhuman. You couldn't debate with people, because you know, you'd just beat them, even if the subject was philosophy, because hey, you're always right. Always. Whatever the topic, whatever the subject....notice how no good ice-breaker starts with "So, guys, I am awesome in every way and have never done anything wrong ever", well, bully for you! There's no empathy to be had with that statement. We as a species relate to each other by our mistakes, by what has gone wrong (or what we perceive of having gone wrong), if everything always goes exactly the right way, if there's no set backs, we degrade as humans, we become less than what we should be because there is no challenge there, no need to adapt and overcome. Anyway, I've talked enough here, I'm going to go adapt and overcome a plate of curry (....that sounded way less gross in my head....I'm going to leave it in there though, because mistakes, yay!) or something...later days y'all! 

Take your pick

Howdy do! So, it's been a long time since my last blog and the reasons for that are as varied and many as they are boring and tedious but the short answer is that I didn't have much access to the internet...I mean, I had it on my phone, but my phone is an ancient piece of shit (well, no, that's not fair, it's a good little phone for, you know, actually phoning people...i.e. the actual reason for which it was created...) that hates these new-fangled, devil-ridden inventions such as the internet and Bluetooth and mp3s, sure, it can use them, sometimes, if I really force it to, but for the most part the thing just leers at me if I come at it with the request to check my email....

Anywho, that's by-the-by, so what will I be talking about today?! Well, it's me so you know that I'm going to be talking about one of three things, my love of video games, university/education in general or tales of my childhood with philosophical ramblings interjected haphazardly into the main narrative...so take a guess! Are you taking a guess? If you guess rightly you'll win a small pot of jam (you even get to pick which flavour!) and an all expenses paid trip to the Moon! (*winning participants must be able to supply their own pot for the jam to go in, their own spacesuit and breathing apparatus and there is no cash alternative available, entrants must be over 18 and have blue eyes (today) or brown eyes (tomorrow) to enter).

Did you guess rightly? Did you?! DID YOU?! Well, if you did, or didn't, or didn't even attempt to, here is the answer! All of the above! Hah, that wasn't even an option, no prizes for you! (Please don't report me to the games commission or whatever it's called, I can't go back to prison again for the first time! I am a sweet and delicate thing, I wouldn't last a day without snapping and burning the place down...)

See, it's very nearly here...today's date, if you are unaware (or are reading this in the future, or the past! Which I tell you would be some trick indeed!) is the third of September....which means that I move out of my house in four days time....my course induction is now under a week away...It's all getting rather real and that's making me quite nervous. It's very strange, because this has been my dream for, well... basically...ever...certainly as long as I can remember and I can remember very long into the past indeed (well, possibly, probably, hopefully...though how would I know if I'd forgotten things entirely....makes one think, certainly) and now that it's basically here...I'm quite...no...very...I'm very nervous about it all. I mean, because of one reason and the others I'm getting into this game quite late, and I'd like to blame other people for it, but really it's all been down to me. I think I've talked about it before, that a person can't choose what happens to them, but they can choose how they react and that I reacted poorly, and I did! There's a sense of relief that this point is finally here, it feels like I've finally clawed my way up to where I should have been six/seven years ago if I hadn't just let go of wanting, well, anything but drinking and playing video games really....and you know, that sounds fun as shit, and it is! Up to a point...It's depressing, just brutally mind numbing and when you get to that state because of depression in the first place, it is just a crushing existence. There's little point in getting out of bed, hell, there's little point in going to bed in the first place, so your sleeping pattern gets all out of whack, which just depresses you further! (Look it up, I think it's seratonin or something, lack of sleep causes lack of it, lack of it causes depression) It really is just this vicious cycle.

It's a really weird thing though, depression, because it is also a crutch, it's a reason to not try and improve, a sort of "oh, why bother" mentality and before you jump on my back and start screaming like some demented howler monkey that that's not true...it is. I'm not saying that everyone suffering from it is like that, because they're not, they genuinely do have chemical imbalances in their brain that stop them from being able to enjoy life or look forward with any kind of optimism, I've known and continue to know people who fall into that category...which makes me annoyed when people play off it. You know, the lazy bastards who just don't want to work so they pretend to be depressed to commit benefit fraud, who use it as an excuse to avoid looking for work, to get out of having responsibilities. But mostly, I hate it because it harms people who have the actual illness, who need the actual help. Think about it, if a hypothetical drug was developed that cured depression and was given to people who weren't depressed but who were fleecing the system for money, even if it makes them as happy as balls they would still report themselves as depressed even though the drugs ostensibly "worked" and the pharmaceutical companies go back to the drawing board...though they're not too arsed about it, because hey, more money for them in developing new treatments right? But yeah, it's not just drugs, it's care workers and social workers, the people who look after these "depressed" people, if their techniques don't "work" on them, they have to adapt them unnecessarily, time and again. It's not just depression that people do this on though, don't think I'm ragging just on them, it's everything where people aren't really a part of the thing but use it to further their own means to the detriment of the people who are really trying to deal with it. Like the looters who "join in" with the riots that happened all over the UK a couple of years ago after the Duggan shooting. The cause, the movement didn't matter to them, they weren't looking to improve the world, people weren't talking about the social change that should have happened after it thanks to them, they were talking about how it was terrible that these riots happened at all. People forget that the first "riot" was actually a peaceful protest wanting an explanation for the shooting. Like the depression thing, it becomes curing "symptoms" that don't exist in the actual condition.

I'm not sure how this became so serious so fast, and I feel kind of bad about that, so, some levity to finish for you all....a horse walks into a bar and the barman says "why the long face?" and the horse says "my wife just died in childbirth...the foal died as well"....waaaaait, that's not light hearted at all! Well, I tried! Lord help me but I tried! *puts jet pack on* now, goodbye! *jetpacks away*