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(no subject) [Sep. 30th, 2008|01:30 am]
I.

Why do we need a Watchmen movie? I really enjoyed The Incredibles.
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(no subject) [Jul. 8th, 2008|04:05 am]
<b>I.</b>

Yes yes, I know I've been neglecting you.

But I've been a very busy man.
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(no subject) [Jun. 22nd, 2008|09:03 pm]
I.

I'm free!

{Well, besides the imminent theory test...}
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(no subject) [Jun. 17th, 2008|04:58 pm]
I.

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(no subject) [Jun. 17th, 2008|02:10 pm]
I.

I think that I shall read V for Vendetta today.

It's been a while and perhaps I should be focusing entirely on work in the few hours I have left {especially considering how utterly my past last few days have been squandered} but given that it is filled with references to obscure anarchist philosophy that don't even turn up in my textbook {or perhaps instead of filled I should say centred around} it seems apt and appropriate.

The marvel of that work is that the more it is considered, regardless of how much you have done so previously, the more it reveals. Every time. Without fail.

Today for instance I considered V's victims, or rather the targets of his vengeance. He kills a nurse, a priest, a policeman. In the narrative of course his reasons are personal but an ideological explanation is also implicit: unlike the Marxists anarchists, especially Bakunin, have always identified oppressors as not solely those being in possession of wealth. Instead they see any sort of authority as corruptive and thus anyone who holds it as a potential {or, more commonly, certain} source of oppression. This is a more rich, sophisticated approach, which allows for far more nuance. The Pope's words can reach even more than those of Rupert Murdoch.

So V does not stroll around killing purely the rich. No, he slays a policeman who used state provided power to become a tyrant thug, a woman who used her position as a trained medical professional to inflict state-backed carnage and {most interesting of all} a man of the cloth who allowed people to soothe their consciousness with twisted theology.

Furthermore he targets, but does not leave dead physically, a broadcaster. A single man placed into a place of power through being the only one allowed to contact the entire nation in an authoritative and definitive format. The Voice of Fate works as a representative for all establishment media through effectively being the epitome: he is briefed on what the people are to be told to think, rehearses and performs without challenge or hesitation. The stumbling supplanters brought into replace him falter and thus the system he supports does to.

This is the sort of stuff that Marxism misses. Money isn't everything.

Anarchism is the only philosophy that has deeply thrilled me during my studies of politics this year for tomorrow's exam. I do not consider myself an anarchist and have ruled out any such possibility since my family's immediate reaction to the house being broken into last year was to phone the police, an action I realised I approved of and would have performed myself had I been awake. However it is a far superior philosophy to that which I imagined it to be, as well as unquestionably the one with the most interesting set of writers and thinkers to have engaged in promoting it {quite an achievement, given that liberalism had Bentham}.
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(no subject) [Jun. 6th, 2008|10:15 am]
I.

Another exam today, this time it's R.S. and I have 2/3 of the exams, both the Ethics and etc topic {which I'm gonna nail</b> and John's Gospel {which I'm gonna fail}.

I had imagined I was going to be late on the way in, and indeed I would have been had I not forgotten that this exam was in the afternoon instead of morning, making me four and a half hours early instead of a few minutes late. This would have been great if I hadn't of gotten to sleep so late last night {this morning} and had found out a little sooner than when walking into the exam hall.

At least it gave me a few hours more to revise, but for St. John that simply isn't enough. For example none of the scholars know quite what to make of the Holy Spirit's nature in the fourth gospel and no one can explain why Jesus goes around sprouting contradictory nonsense like him being here to save not to judge one minute and here sent from the father to judge the next. No one at all. So what chance do I stand?

I doubt any of you will read this before I take the things but if so, you know what to do. I need it now more than ever: Paraclete? Wtf?

II.

Oh yeah, and the school network updates to IE 8 {in all its tabby glory} right after I leave the school forever.

Typical.
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(no subject) [Jun. 3rd, 2008|11:26 pm]
I.

History tomorrow and I'm actually going to fail. The time I had has been frivelled away into nothing.

Wish me luck, faggots.
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(no subject) [May. 20th, 2008|01:03 am]
I.

Exams, exams, exams, exams...

II.

Four of the fuckers today, four!

First up sociology, the last two of them. I managed to turn up just in time for these, although it was quite a nail-biting ride as I set out a lot later than planned. So I ended up running to the exam, leaving my laptop for the time being with the office staff.

The first was on the family and caught me rather unawares on a question concerning the social position on children. The second was about education and had a mean question concerning functionalism as the last 20 marker.

Just FYI the format tends to roll:

2
4
6
8
20
20

So these two I nailed so far as I could tell but when I read through some notes somebody abandoned before crithink I noticed that I'd missed a lot of names, most notably Althusser, the neo-Marxist. Hopefully that didn't affect my mark too negatively, I managed 6 pages in 12 font Garamond in the hour and thirty five for the second exam and perhaps more for the first.

The first critical thinking I would be lucky to scrape a U, and the second one I have some hopes of securing an A.

Basically for the former I was constantly made uncertain by references to criteria of credibility, which I knew not the meaning of. This was largely because the Critical Thinking lessons were a mess:

Teacher had operations at two points and wasn't there, they were after school on Fridays {I could have left at 3 if not for fucking...had a free period...grr...*grumble*} and were with upper fifths who ended up not even taking the fucking thing on account of having exam double-bookings all around with their GCSEs that the exam board neglected to tell anyone about...

...but also because I didn't try at all, focusing on the Sociology, which actually matters in that in to get my place I have to get an A in it while the Critical Thinking nobody really cares about.

So the one which I had to know anything for was fail but thankfully the second needed just a general logic puzzles and the multiple choice section was surprisingly taxing but basically required no in-knowledge except for the meaning of an "Underlying assumption" in terms of critical thought. Which is pretty much identical to the usual understanding.

Not certain if they will balance out. I can hope.

III.

In slightly worse news my laptop is all over the place, with some severely fukt internet previously and the battery having decided to break itself again. Pretty agitating, not to mention concerning. A laptop you have to leave plugged in is basically a lighter desktop that takes up a little less room.

IV.

Anyway.

Four less exams still to be done.
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(no subject) [May. 14th, 2008|09:13 pm]
I.

First off, apologies to Ben for the blanking on MSN after quite an important question. I was off having dinner before filing stuff and when I returned you were gone.

II.

As it happens that question is one I am now going to answer for you all: the Sociology went well but I suspect that I fouled up the last question at least a little. As far as I could tell about the time it was asking about how theory might influence sociologist's methods, but according to the post-analysis performed in promptu by the class {they're a fun bunch, for the most part, perhaps the best class I have, from the year below} I should have been talking about ethics and logistics as well.

Which I did, but perhaps not as much as I could have.

There is moar on Monday, which is rather shocking given that I, with my astoundingly poor maths, thought that the 19th was somehow 8 days after the 13th instead of six. So much more work to be done!!
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(no subject) [May. 2nd, 2008|07:27 pm]
I.

Ah, May 2nd. For some reason I deem this a glorious day.

Not the day itself, mind, I've been pretty tired. But the name. May 2nd. It feels good.

I just hope that it isn't sullied forever by being the day that I discovered Boris Johnson was the new Mayor of London. I really have no idea if I could stand four years of Tory rule. I hope that I don't have to find out.

II.

My mouse is broken. Sort of.

Even as I type it drifts across the screen, where it lingers and grows beyond my control. The weird blue dot thing has come in useful but that's pretty irritating to use as well. What's additionally annoying is how sporadic it seems to be, occasionally working fine and at other times being a right cunt and requiring a stand by or screen closure in order to return to working state.

III.

Having banned one of my accounts and then left my second active but deleting all posts I made on it, then banning that one as well and IP blocking me, Spirit Quest showed mercy by removing the "Board Message" block, only to return it on all three accounts I'd tried to access it on. I did enjoy posting there, so it's a pity, but as always it's worth recalling my e-motto: "There's a whole internet out there."

If not the same people anywhere else. *sigh*

IV.

Also a source of mild irritation {I don't know if there's quite a word for the sensation, suggestions appreciated but prepare for brusque dismissal if you get it incorrect} is the piece of Satyr sci-fan fiction that I've had in mind for a little while but never quite gotten around to pulling off. I have the second part done already, in fact, but it's no opener. For some reason I'm struggling a little with the mid-way point of a technique I'm not sure exactly sure of the name of. In film it would be a distant shot gradually zooming in but I have no idea what you refer to that as in literature. The idea is definitely that you begin distant and then advance to personal intimacy, however.

Again, suggestions much appreciated.

V.

I voted yesterday.

First time ever and all that, in the school one I had attempted to make something called "The Left Alliance" that eventually settled on the tactic of trying to get the LibDems through to the last round and then to victory via Tory 2nd prefs. I made four posters featuring Soviet propaganda {although one of them was not a Bolshevik original it was sexy enough to warrant inclusion} and created the motto "Socialism in One School!" as a nod to Stalin. That this was all in aid of the distinctly bourgeois Liberal Democrats made my efforts especially amusing, or at least as far as I was concerned.

The humour was lost on some people.

As it happened the Liberals got to the 2nd round but still lost by a good hundred votes. I suspect that the entirely futile presence of the Greens {who's leader was not even in the country, having attended a Rugby tour in Japan instead} no doubt contributed but my school is so right-wing that is most likely would have been a Tory win anyway.

Actually getting in to vote was a struggle as it was in morning registration, which I can honestly not recall the last occasion I attended prior to yesterday. Somehow I got there, making it up for missing an entire period and a half this morning.

VI.

The real vote was back in Shepherds Bush, since the electoral register hadn't updated our location.

I managed to get the wrong bus and thus was forced to leg my way through very heavy rain that left me thoroughly sodden but thankfully inspired my swift rush towards the station in narrow time to catch a bus. As I hurtled through the rain I decided that this was what democracy was all about, making the worst of a poor situation. In hindsight I am thankful that I didn't have to go through worse to register my view, as is untrue of many nations.

The only problem which presented me was uncertainty over whether in the London region I was in Labour or the Liberal Democrats were more likely to win against the Tories. Given that the region of West Central includes Kensington and Chelsea I feared that it might have been something of a moot point but given that Shepherds Bush {a polar opposite to their excessive affluence} and Hammersmith {less so, but still a worthwhile counter-weight} were there perhaps things would become balanced.

For those of you interested I eventually opted for Labour and GLA vote went to the Greens, with my Mayoral preferences going 1st to Sian {pronounced "Shan" I learnt today, much to my surprise, from someone who's name is spelt Sinead but said very differently and thus would know about such matters} and 2nd to Ken.

For those of you who don't know the system a 2nd is worth just as much to anyone who get's into the last round of voting, as Ken did. Whether he actually got enough to win remains to be seen but I truly hope so, his vision of what the city needs is perhaps the finest around and his knowledge of our happy capital is second to none, besides perhaps the taxi drivers who loathe him so. From the tax upon 4X4s to his plans to increase the quantity of affordable housing in London his ideas have been strong and sound and would clearly be to the benefit of the place, while matched with rich-friendly right-wingery from his rival.

He's made errors, but he's the man for the job. Boris has just made errors.
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(no subject) [May. 1st, 2008|11:34 pm]
I.

April was a bad month for this thing, I really should have gotten around to updating a bit more but I've struggled to find the time what with all the procrastination I've been involved in to avoid working for the forthcoming exams. Hopefully May will be better but given that Sociology, my first exam, is coming in 12 times and that's the one I know fuck all of perhaps not.

Regardless, I like this month and I'll do my best to be happy.

II.

Unfortunately my efforts got off to rather a bad start today what with the sinking realisation that Boris really could win this one. I'm trying to achieve acceptance before it even happens since that's the only way I'll be able to cope. I had a passing by of a leftist and stopped to talk, the account of which can be read here.

The consequence of this was me being more enlightened but also missing the 607. This is the express bus that gets me back quickly, as opposed to the 207 which is a bendy bus and takes a fucking age thanks to stopping at ever stop going instead of gliding serenely and more than a little smugly past. The other notable trait of the 207, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before if not the express stuff, is that it is full of fucking lunatics.

Today I was sat opposite this woman who seemed to become increasingly pregnant even as the journey progressed and thus, as far as I'm concerned, increasingly alluring. Immediately opposite to me was her son, who can't have been much older than a toddler. I'm terrible with telling ages, by the way. Everythings a slur. Behind them sat a pair of men, one of whom was Somalian {I'm no racist but you really can tell by the heads} and the other one I couldn't quite place. He was either afro-Caribbean or a Somalian lacking the distinctive forehead structure, whatever. I'm an assimilationist miscegregationist, what do I care? The point is that the one I was uncertain of the ethnic origins of met my eyes and I couldn't quite tell whether he intended to stab me or was checking me out. My reflexive assumption was the former but that was almost certainly racism, pure and simple. After so many horror stories about Jamaican Dancehall artists advocating brutal death its easy enough to make the absurd assumption that no black man you'll meet will be a homosexual, as ridiculous as that sounds.

The journey proceeded in silence, with Dubstep having strangely killed off my mood not only to listen to it but anything {which, very oddly, it seems to do whenever I listen to it for extended periods of time} and the child was playing with something that on closer inspection seemed to be an Iron Man figurine, with very weird arms that sort of ended in rocket shapes, that I imagine he found in a happy meal. Suddenly his mother snapped and lashed out at him viciously and verbally, insisting he stop slotting the aforementioned toy into some hollow piece of grey plastic shaped to look like bricks, telling him “There's a man in front of you.”

Invoking me.

Usually I'd have been quite flattered to be called a man, tall as I am it hasn't really happened a lot yet. But in this instance I felt disgusted & repulsed. Being used as some cultural chip to shame her son was not something I wanted to be party to and I felt like speaking up but doubted it would get me very far. I don't really have any conceptual objection to correcting people when they make fucking stupid parenting errors, if they're doing it wrong it's being done wrong and since there is the still forming personality of another human being in play objecting to being corrected is nonsensical. I feel especially unconcerned for such self-righteousness when I'm being used to justify a puritanical attempt to stamp down on and crush completely innocent fun. “You don't play on buses” she told him, but frankly a child playing happily is far preferable company to one staring out blankly as the wasteland of Acton rolls pointlessly by.

III.

To exacerbate the pathetic nature of my April slump it seems that that month, and even the last! Has been an extraordinarily active one for Riverside. I really should read my Friends Page more as this had totally past me by and now I have a back-list of posts the size of a slender novella to scroll through. Still, I'm hardly complaining.

IV.

She later told her child “I'll punch you in the face if you don't shut the fuck up. As always is true of these situations the boy seemed quiet and polite enough, certainly not enough of a twat to warrant the abuse being hurled at him. The thought of her birthing new life while incapable of treating that she had {presumably} already created disconcerted me slightly. For some reason I didn't seem to mind much that she barely seemed much older than me.

As it happens my stance on that stuff is far from typical: if you want to birth young then feel free, it's been done throughout history and frankly I find it preferable to abortions. The optimum is awaiting readiness by using contraceptives, obviously, but if it's either or then that's my call. But for fuck's sake don't be an arse to your children. That goes for all people of all ages. Perhaps it was merely her hormones playing riot with her mood.

V.

I tried to drag my attention from her orbular belly and glance around over the unfortunately treated child's head. Unfortunately this brought my eyes back into contact again with the aforementioned man who tolerated it for a second but then, when I returned snapped and started to snarl. “Stop looking at me” he demanded before a sprawl of various non-eloquent ramblings flowed from his mouth to follow, all variations on the same theme {that I was “Watching” him} before he brought in an extra edge: “I'm not into that fucking faggot shit”. He continued in a similar fashion while I responded that I wasn't watching him and that I was hardly going to look in a direction other than straight ahead. He kept muttering in that intendedly threatening and harsh tone that seems an unfortunate linguistic meme amongst those of limited education and false cause for agitation. If you don't know this the best way I can explain it is presenting a cause for complaint in a fashion which makes you suspect that the form of protest against it adopted will be a sharp object becoming forcibly lodged in your neck. It begins as a whiny grumble and then ends in a louder and elongated slang-word such as “Bruv”.

To be fair to him with my top two buttons undone and my increasingly lengthy hair I probably did look pretty gay. To be unfair to him I felt like standing up and yelling at him that he was fucking flattering himself and that he was decent enough looking but certainly nowhere near as tantalising a prospect as the rude wench sitting opposite right to me, who had the advantage of triggering on of my paraphilias that is a lot stranger than the whole bisexual thing, indeed of my staggeringly diverse and eclectic array of esoteric kinks the fact that I liked cock was perhaps highly prominent but far from the most interesting entry. I decided against this though as I realised it might be a tad inflammatory to more than one person present.

Eventually he fell silent and glared, before seeming to relax and talking to his friend. The words ceased but the vibes emanating from him were intense and malevolent so I did my best to look elsewhere.

I couldn't help but notice that he had a pink mobile phone, though.
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(no subject) [Apr. 16th, 2008|07:47 pm]
I.

http://www.bamkapow.com/bk-feature-why-superman-will-always-suck-1189-p.html

Fuck yeah.
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(no subject) [Mar. 30th, 2008|12:30 am]
I.

What's that, bitches?

Well of course I've got shit to show you. S'why I'm here.

Firstly this: http://www.youtube.com/user/darkprincess133 How did I find it? From this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfQxDGKSU4Y&feature=related the most extreme video that is on YouTube without a flag. Please don't fuck that up. What is it and why is it remarkable? Because it starts of interesting: "'i love you' is eight letters long... then again so is 'bullshit'" then goes shit: "my broken heart just wont mend..." and then she breaks out the hard-core copypasta.

For instance: "Every word Gerard sings. Every beat Bob plays. Every solo Ray has put his heart into. Every note Mikey hit. Every rhythm that has ever come out of Frank's guitar. Saved the lives of thousands who didn't think they could make it." I know that this might sound harsh but frankly I find that anyone who was inspired to remain alive purely because of My Chemical Romance were unlikely to bring much of value to this world. So it's splendid for them and frankly slit-scars are ugly as fuck so the less of them around the better {my apologies, ex-cutters, I still love you dearly} but I don't think that I'll benefit for it except for in forearm aesthetics.

Some of the C&P {not to be confused with CP, but about as immoral} is half-decent like:

"92% of the teen population would be dead if Abercrombie and Fitch decided that breathing wasnt cool!!put this in your profile if u would be one of the 8% laughing histerically in the background"

but some is shit, such as:
"92% of the teen population turned to rap music. If you're one of the 8% that still listens to REAL music, put this on your page!"
Which would be fine and mildly amusing if it wasn't emanating from an emo.

So why am I showing you this? Because I wanted to. It's a great profile, I love it muchly. I think she's a real heroine and I hope that one day we can all be stars shimmering with varying but equal brightness from the blank black tapestry of the sky. Really, I do.

II.

Now for something real to show you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8V6NaLp6OM

Basically this is GothTrad, who is a one-man Japanese outfit making DubStep. I had no idea that the seed of English weirdness had been so far sewn but it seems so. For those who don't know what DubStep is, well...I can't really tell you. I have only a vague idea of what counts and to be honest at the moment the genre is so loosely defined you just keep it dark and heavy with lots of bass and keep the sound sort of sparse and set to a certain sort of sync and it counts. This broad net means that those creating it feel free to pull off all sorts of things and GothTrad is one of the best I've heard.

But it's a bit of a mindfuck really...That video-maker, check out the entire channel it's all great, just ripped that audio from the Radio 1 show {most likely from one of the websites offering it for download, see here: http://www.getdarker.com/?id=2&aid=84 } and shoved it over some awesome video of tribal nonsense and suddenly I'm accessing it over YouTube. And because I'm not really keen on YouTube and using "favorites" {fucking lack of "u"} or anything I'll just use unplug: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2254 to yank it off and store it on my laptop.

I mean...Fucking...Technology. It's all...Yeah. Ahead of itself. Well, us, anyway.

III.

We live in exciting times.

Yeah, Eastern insult isn't it? So I hear, anyway. But there we are. So far this year there's been a group of internet kids trying to take down a cult with a PR shit-storm and memetic warfare and a black man looks set to become America's own Soft Power Saviour. The most diverse city in the world {besides perhaps those Dutch blending pots} is going to be run by some floppy haired idiot who is about as good at arranging and organising things as I am. We'll see whether our diverse leviathan can withstand blustering incompetence and wariness to the outright socialism that has benefited its people so greatly so far.

We'll end it all shook up and it's shaping up to be the sort of year this decade was meant to have.

It's always better when there's even numbers. They're neater.

IV.

Rock Band.

Ben has it, Ben pretended he didn't.

It's amazing, really. Just a superb piece of awesome. There are gripes: the vocal seems to demand you make massive amounts of noise where entirely inappropriate for points but besides this failing the game is basically flawless. You get to pretend to be a rock star for a little while and have great fun with friends being band mates. It's like the escapist music take on soma, fer suuure.

V.

This songs are sound like lasers.

http://www.getdarker.com/?id=5&auid=357

VI.

So yes.

Censorship is loathed because people wish to express themselves which they wish to do because we are all in possession of urges to communicate, as a consequence of our inherently gregarious nature. That's the idea.

Right?

VII.

Roman numerals not work that way!

VIII.

Working on something.

Involves many things.

IX.

It's 2.48 right now and I'm confronting a major problem of mine, which is my tendency too my very best to evade getting enough sleep. I woke up at 6.14PM today and thus was late to my own birthday celebration at Ben's, though not by too much. This was because I'd gotten to sleep some time a bit after noon and stayed up since 5 the morning before the morning before that previously.

As you can probably tell it's all getting a bit fucked and as you can probably guess there is not a lot of work getting done. It needs to be. I know that it's unlikely I'll get poor enough grades to fail to secure an A but it's exactly that sort of thinking that will make it happen.

Get the fuck on with it, then...

X.

Still with me? No, can't blame you.

Oh well, here goes:

http://www.softcoregirl.com/naked-watermelon/
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(no subject) [Mar. 19th, 2008|06:29 pm]
[music |Juno OST]

I.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khuu-RhOBDU
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(no subject) [Mar. 8th, 2008|12:02 am]
I.

Did I make it?

I honestly don't know, the clocks in my room are faster than the real time, I believe, but I am uncertain as to whether I struck "Post" prior to the true transition. How apt.

Regardless, I'm eighteen now.
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(no subject) [Mar. 7th, 2008|11:59 pm]
I.

Listen.

I've enjoyed it, as years go. In terms of my life its something...I don't keep charts or spreadsheets or suchlike. But it feels like I've changed a lot and a lot's happened, which is why it feels like such a while.

Not just moving house twice, not just anything. But all of it, it's all been a lot of events and a copious amount of development. It's a fucking strange thing, this entire phase. Worse earlier, I know, when "You're fourteen now" or "Fifteen" could be flung but none of the advantages could be plucked, but still. It serves as a gift for those wishing you to display maturity yet also a hindrance, I thought that that would end but, of course, it didn't.

It is the case that much of this is a matter of perception. It has to be. I can think of the only difference being that suddenly it will no longer be so striking, it will not be "He's seventeen and..." but simply that. Anything impressive will be impressive, with no quantifier to amplify. Any failing will be devoid of mitigation.

And this matters. Of course it matters.

Because how we are seen and who we are is almost a dichotomy devoid of worth. Almost, so nearly. It leads back to the inevitable: our nature.

Socialism holds that humans are gregarious creatures, this is amongst its most difficult claims to dispute. This basic truth is one of its greatest strengths and something that will invariably give it an edge over liberalism in terms of understanding humanity, to my mind. Or rather, to every mind that will consider this:

The reason that "Free Expression" is valued and cherished as much as "Solitary Confinement" is feared and despised is that they are the same instinct in different manifestation, the censor is as cruel as the jailor in his own fashion. They both deny that most central and crucial ability of humans, that which has reached such depths and heights of sophistication so as to make absurdly advanced wonders a matter of everyday reality, they both refuse to permit the most pulsating, dominating will that has lead us to everything that we have thus far reached, that talent which enables the collective and makes within our reach the impossible: to communicate.
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(no subject) [Mar. 7th, 2008|11:18 pm]
I.

This will be my last chance to post as a seventeen year old.

I must admit that that's a strange thought, it feels like a lot longer than a year {even a Leap Year} since I turned this age and for it to be finally at an end is rather disconcerting. Not entirely unwelcome, of course, there are things which are pleasing about it, but still somewhat unsettling.

The legal system is a funny thing over here and, as ever, its impact upon cultural matters is considerable. You are allowed to have sex at sixteen but not rent out videos of doing so until eighteen. I've often remarked upon how odd this is, not as odd as the Americans letting you serve and die in combat at sixteen yet not have a drink until twenty-one {which is positively unjust} but still downright odd.

But now that's all becoming academic, as if it wasn't anyway, and tomorrow {only thirty three minute away now} I'll be able to drink and vote and fill in the gaps of my official adolescence. I'll be a "Proper adult", in the eyes of the law a man.

Really though, that's all a load of bullshit anyway and the idea of a transition of moments bearing such a great amount of meaning utter and absolute nonsense based around the necessity of any so arbitrary a system but...Still. Only a fool disregards symbols, for they are "Only" powerful within the human mind but that is the only place that ever matters. At the risk of descending into the very dregs of pretentiousness the fact that everything is nothing except that which is relative to the observer makes the mind all that matters. Without it there would be no scale, no perception at all. If it is perceived it is of importance, at least to some degree.

II.

Manhood.

It strikes me that we are a rare culture in our seeming lack of any ceremony, any ritual or rite, that distinguished the y-

Oh fuck it.

This is all nonsense anyway, I'm not going to talk anthropology here. Not now. It probably is notable, and so on. It does distinguish us. Perhaps it is something which we lack rather than that which others could do without. But it's not interesting.

I don't really care.

III.

It seems like the overwhelming deluge has diminished to a scanty trickle.

I had expected as many as seven to attend my party but it seems that instead the figure shall amount to two. As such my concern has shifted from how to entertain the throng and reconcile so large and diverse a crowd, how best to divide my attention, to how to evade the pair that are still arriving detecting just how sparse my arrangements are.

My mother, of course, has arranged a vast feast's worth of food, now all seeming sadly excessive, somehow forlorn. I, however, have prepared nothing. Perhaps my being ill the past two days has not assisted this but if I'm honest that is a poor excuse and nothing more. I would never have orchestrated anything as I have no inspiration. I have no clue what to do under such conditions and now that they have shifted I remain devoid of any ideas as to how to entertain.

The two who I am left with differ greatly. Perhaps of all my friends the contrast could not be grander. This I will not speak of explicitly here but it suffices to say that the one of my close friends who is most unforgiving and firm shall be coupled with the weakest and least appropriate that could be confined in that narrow bracket of "guest".

I am weary of the prospect already. We have nothing to do.

IV.

My sickness seems to have eased, today.

I suspect that I shall be well for my birthday tomorrow, or at least I have hopes. I was fairly well for most of today but the coarse throat that I enjoyed yesterday {as if crushed glass had lined the air I breathed while I slept} had returned, albeit with reduced force.

Yesterday, though, was worse. In addition to feeling weak and aching over my entire body {around the testicles especially} I spent an hour or so in a delirium, writhing and chanting to myself, before conducting a song entitled "Use your lungs" where I implored a love, quite possibly dead, to start breathing after all the struggles we had been through together. After this I returned to reciting mangled mantras over and over, none of which I can remember.

Today though, there was none of that.

I seem to have little or no appetite. Most likely as a consequence of being bedbound. I have gotten more sleep in these past two days than I have done in the rest of this month, but then it's early days. Perhaps this shall form a pattern, I hope not.

It seems that Douglas and Ben are similarly afflicted. The latter is being prevented from attendance, it would seem, but even if the former recovered there would be a cancellation of some prior engagement required before he could attend. Another, the wench met at Wireless, has a vast amount of English Coursework I encouraged her to do earlier to finish for Monday while Oli has been proscribed by his parents from leaving the house after some "Bad" mock results. I find this curious but it seems to be the way with his household. Understandable but still a pity.

Perhaps, it occurs to me, James is truly all I need. After all, it is impossible to lure him from his abode for any other cause. He is bound to his residence in a fashion that defies both my efforts to extricate him and his former school's. Our former school's.

Perhaps I should not speak of him here. But I know that I shall be glad to have him as a guest, for once, even if I can not entertain.

V.

There could be more, if I conjured it, but now I must bathe. It would not do to enter adulthood filthy, as although you should enter things as you intend to continue them there is also much to be said for leaving room for degeneration.
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(no subject) [Mar. 4th, 2008|10:34 pm]
I.

Allow me to break my brief blog silence to declare:

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/03/miniature_pigs_pets_of_the_fut.php

I want!!
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(no subject) [Feb. 24th, 2008|12:31 am]
I.

Yeah, it's been a while.

II.

This week was one of mental carnage, a constant deluge of tests with little respite. Its strange to think that only five days really passed since my holidays, so tightly packed was the week with the endless torrent of mocks.

Actually, they weren't so bad. But there were a lot.

I got a D in my history, precisely 50%. My teacher said that he was impressed I had managed to write such a large quantity of text without actually saying anything at all. Apparently the examiners might fall for it but I shouldn't count on it. Turns out that for the real thing I am actually going to have to work. Rather a horrible surprise, but I shall see what I can do.

Meanwhile R.S. and Sociology prove eerily easy. I suspect that this is simply a vast exercise in lulling me into a state of total complacency before I fail miserably and utterly at the real things when they come around. Ah well, such is life.

II.

I went out to some awful folk/"alternative" gig today with my sister and her boyfriend and some other vague friends of hers, but not theirs. The music was truly terrible, devoid of any real passion, let alone tunes, and we left pretty much as soon as we were able, if not before the sister's boyfriend tried to make me chat up people and I bashfully refused.

We moved on to Covent Garden {having been in Nothing Hill} and there watched some rugby and other such nonsense while in front of me a pair of whores worked a small group of middle aged rich men, as such types tend to. They took photos, leaving me to wonder if that set of poor sods were about to walk into some brutal blackmail.

We moved on to some club but I was hungry and a mixture of that and the fact that the band inside were playing an Oasis cover led me to flee from that place, with the boyfriend {who I do my best to hate but find less and less material for} actually giving me a tenner to buy food.

I found some Italian place still open at such hours and got from them garlic bread and pizza. I had wanted cheesecake as well but became rather uncertain while ordering {as I tend to} and refrained from asking for it. The garlic bread was passable but the pizza too much and I found myself rather longing for the sweetness provided by the New York style confectionery that I desired but had denied myself. I was now too nervous to order it, though.

As I sat there alone in the night I suspected that I was getting some early preview of what elderly, isolated life would be like for me. Seated on my own and without any company. Hopefully I will clog up my arteries with grease and fat to the extent that I'll never see that proper, though. It'll be a struggle to get all of that junk devoured, but well worth the sacrifice.

Best to go while there are still people to mourn, selfish though that may seen. The last one left has to turn out the lights when they leave.
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(no subject) [Feb. 13th, 2008|08:33 pm]
I.

http://nymag.com/news/features/16529/

This article ends with some question over the ultimate fate of the "Gurps", with nobody seeming to know where they would be in ten years.

I'll tell you:

They'll all kill themselves.

Those useless bastards will finally run out of trends to drain of all exotic freshness when somebody devises something that they can not possibly stand, let alone co-opt and since they have been spending their years attempting to invade any vague semblance of depth or intellect they will gaze around the gaping gap torn into their being by their failure to attach onto the latest craze, like a leech latching onto the flesh of a newborn, and eagerly quaff all of the worthwhile content by smearing it over their wretched form like a hunter slaying a tiger before smearing its vitæ over their form in order to attempt to claim it as they whimper and squirm upon their fleshy bellies to try and follow after those that loath them, that wriggle and writhe to try and tear away but are held in the endless embrace and within it are constricted in trapped in a prison of the rigid familiarity which they can never hope to escape and as they finally slip free their former captors stare around them with empty eyes and are struck by the crippling realisation that they continue to have nothing of vague value dominant within their lives and instead consist of nothing more than what pop culture has offered up to them, the fragments and shards of dervish that they attempted to stitch together into an impenetrable and ever-shifting {thus ever-lasting, thus eternal} shroud of murk which would hide their forms behind the shabby jeans they paid those upon minimum wage to rip in order for them to pay hundreds of dollars or pounds for and obscure their eyes from their surroundings and prevent them from any vision of the reality, of all of true worth save that recommended, save that roared at from the hills and from those around them, from the wise and the artful that move around them and from the young that shift and change to attempt evasion yet find themselves perpetually pursued, as Pan gave chase to Syrinx, and then caught and devoured as the internet, as NME, as all that is updated brings them word of the location and activities of their young and they incessantly, incestuously insist upon involvement and immersion in what was intended as a world for the young, a world away from their influence and eyes and they thrust and thrust and thrust themselves into these hidden places, these sacred realms and are stunned as they watch them dissolve around their own eyes, having expected a reference the The Arctic Monkeys in a Times opinion piece to exalt them and plunge their popularity to the skies {as it did, but the long term lingers once the short has burnt out} and are accepted only because the young can envision themselves in the same place and are all aware that they will act exactly the same and will never settle or rest as other generations have done and thus accept these foul interlopers as they know that they themselves will one day join them but once they have expunged this tolerant tendency and their acceptance draws to a close they shall move on and the aforementioned adults shall be left stranded and devoid of any hope or point to attach themselves to save that which has already passed, occurred and lost all influence and as they cling to these remnants, these relics, as others have done they shall feel them sicken, smell the staleness grow and suddenly realise that their time has passed and there is no one else's to steal and finally, finally they will be deprived of the fresh, of the new and of the young and this fate shall be worse for them than the pæderast and having no means of coping when thus stripped of all the now-putrid trends that they ruined and cherish their exclusion shall gnaw at them as rot to a cadaver and thus consumed by the woe that others before them faced, confronted and were able to crush with conformity to something other than the latest they shall realise, they shall finally realise that their time is through and in bleak, blank horror they shall raise the pistol and press it to their forehead and bring about the only means of clarity left on offer to them, the only exit available now that their longing, raging, devouring want for the perpetual change yet pleasing familiarity that once lapped at them effortlessly and they wish never, ever to end and then this dissimilar but more decisive end, the only which is suitable for them, all left that is apt, will be brought to them, by their own hand.

And the true generation gap shall emerge.

That of the living and the ended.
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