I've Gone And Done It Now....

I have the tools to bore you once again. Sorry folks but I've just bought myself a DSLR so you can now expect this blog to be splattered with even more images in the coming weeks and months. I have to admit it wasn't the camera I was expecting to buy. After much agonising over the decision I had decided I wanted a Fuji S5, Mainly because I've had a Fuji camera before and was impressed with the colour that it produced and the S5 had a far superior dynamic range to the other cameras out there at the moment. With its ability to take Nikon lenses it meant that there wouldn't be a shortage of upgrade problems if I had decided not to continue buying Fuji cameras in the future. However at £850 it's not exactly a cheap camera and at this moment in time when my career direction currently uncertain I couldn't exactly justify that cost.
I probably wouldn't have bought a camera at all at this stage had there not been a special offer. I managed to get a Sigma Sd14 for £499 plus £200 cashback. Not bad considering it was less than 10 months ago that it hit the market at £1099. Personally I would never have paid that kind of money for it. Its a good camera that is capable of great images but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of cameras in that price range. That in itself doesn't bother me, I quite like the freaks of nature. Maybe because I'm an oddball myself.
It will however mean a whole lot of learning until I get used to the damn thing but at £299, with a free lens to boot, I think I can put up with that. Then I'm afraid you can expect images to accompany my posts which as usual will have nothing to do with the subject matter. Sorry about that! Tis the price you pay for coming here, well that and my long winded rambling.

Bullied At Breakfast

Today did not start well. First of all I woke up with a migraine, which I've had for two days now. It refuses to show me mercy by leaving me alone, even though I have pleaded with it to do so on many separate occasions where I have felt that - "I can't take much more of this!"

After getting out of bed this morning when I convinced myself that the migraine was going to continue with the torture I decided to have some breakfast - which is unusual for me, I'm usually the rise, shower, get-dressed, run-out-of-the-door type of guy.

So having decided I had time for breakfast it was thought simplicity was best because at this point my concentration wasn't exactly at its best, so my hand went into the cereal cupboard. I wasn't much caring what I pulled out, my eyes were firmly focused on that point inside my forehead where the pain was emitting from. I picked up a box and shook it to make sure that there was something in it, poured some of the contents into a bowl before adding some milk.

It was then I realised my mistake. I should have taken more care. As soon as the milk hit the contents of the bowl I heard Snap, Crackle & Pop fight it out over who could be the loudest and be the first to make me throw the bowl to a nearby wall.

You know its not going to be a good day when even your breakfast takes a great deal of pleasure in bullying you. Have a nice day!

#### Off!

I should have chosen the Special K. Which brings me to another point - what does the K stand for? It's probably something stupid that I should know but in all honesty I haven't given it much thought. And why is it so special, it can't be due to its amazing properties of being able to allow you to wear red swimsuits after consumption of a few bowls because if I'm honest, and I usually am, I don't think that would be a good look for me.

.....

Whoops! Almost forgot. Happy New Year!

I know I'm late, but tis my way.

2008 is coming isn't it time for a change of direction.

Were you surprised when you first heard Benazir Bhutto was dead? I wasn't. The last time I was surprised by anything I saw in television was 1984, I was getting a major telling off for refusing to eat the food on my plate when the News at 6 came on and those first pictures of the famine in Ethiopia were seen. Talk about a sense of guilt.

I might also have been surprised at the living conditions of some of the orphans of Romania after the fall of the Chauchescus', but probably not to the same extent as I was when I saw those first images of bloated malnurished young children . I'm not surprised when I hear of some nutter with a gun going on a rampage in a US university. A society that believes in the right to bear arms to that degree you have to expect the odd nutter or three. To the same extent I'm not surprised by anything that humans do, and I certainly don't fear it either. I don't fear the extremists in this world no matter how much the governments and the news reels would like to project a feeling that we live in dangerous times.

As for the death of Ms Bhutto, I saw it coming. I'm not saying I'm psychic or had a premonition. If I were the type to be so blessed I might do the lottery from time to time, but I'm not so I don't. But the day Ms Bhutto said she was running for election and crowds were seen celebrating I knew that region was so fucked up that someone was going to want her dead just because of her popularity, and the chances were that they were going to be successful at doing it. She knew it too.

I don't know much about her other than that she was a very intelligent human being and had run her country on two previous occasions. For better or worse I don't know. I don't care either. I do care about democracy, as did she hence the reason she put herself in that situation. This world at this time needs more people with her bravery. The world is fucked up at the moment. Fear is rife. We need more people to stand up and say yes we should be scared but we should be more scared of not standing up to the fear and those who aim to spread it.

Fear is driving the world at the moment. What has been proven is that human beings will do anything. Anything. That's why when all those beheadings started in Iraq it didn't bother me. A lot of people were horrified, "Whaaaa, beheadings!" What, are you surprised? Just one more form of extreme human behaviour.

You strap on a gun and go strutting around some other man's country you better be ready for some action. People are touchy about that sort of thing. And let me ask you this... this is a moral question, not rhetorical, I am looking for the answer: what is the moral difference between cutting off one guys head, or two, or three, or five or ten - and dropping a big bomb on a hospital and killing a whole bunch of sick kids? Has anyone of our so called leaders given you an explanation of the difference? When you get right down to it human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts. Savages. No different from the people who lived twenty five thousand years ago. No different. Our DNA hasn't changed substantially in a hundred thousand years. We're still operating out of the lower brain. The brain that first crawled out of the jungle and before that the sea. Kill or be killed. We like to think we've evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an aeroplane, write a sonnet, paint, compose an opera. But you know something? We're barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the sea. What we are, is semi-civilised beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.

But despite that as things stand I am probably in less danger now than when the IRA were blowing up buildings in the UK mainland in the 80s. Why? Well the Irish Republican Army had only one target and that was that was anything that could be seen as representing British rule. Whereas the muslim extremists hate everybody that doesn't think like them. Their way of thinking goes much like this:

Do you believe in God?

No.

Bang!

Do you believe in God?

Yes.

Do you believe in my God?

No.

Bang!

Do you believe in God?

Yes.

Do you believe in my God?

Yes.

Do you believe in my God and interpret the teachings in the same as I do?

No.

Bang!

Just about everyone can be a target but generally speaking the chances of any one of us getting killed is slim to non existent. Their hatred is so widespread that short of an extreme case of bad luck and being in the wrong place at the wrong time we aren't in any real danger at all. Living in fear or finger pointing is playing into the hands of the extremists. Yet our governments today are probably spending more time and energy thinking up draconian laws, and spending stupid amounts of money on securing our building framework than they are on finding ways to deal with cancer. And for what? Some people want to kill us, big deal. There are always, and have always been nutters who will have an excuse of some kind to hate. At the end of the day cancer is a bigger killer and is a much more unpleasant way to die.

I've never been scared of a Muslim and probably never will be until the day I see one waving a burning Scottish flag and he/she is spitting in my face. Then I might think twice about speaking in my fast unintelligible accent of mine. I might want to stay quiet, not draw attention to myself.

I'm more scared of the Japanese than I am a extremist Muslim. Why? A few reasons really. Generally speaking its easier to tell when a Muslim doesn't like you. The flag burning thing is a bit of a give away. A Japanese man with a grudge would be somewhat harder to judge. They tend to be respectful people. They may think I want to slice off your head with my great, great, great grandfathers sword but because they speak a different language and, generally speaking, have too much respect to burn flags you might never know until your head is rolling on the floor by which time they will be on their knees praying for your soul. Which is nice.

I like the Japanese. I like a society that is respectful but if I were Japanese myself I would be ever so slightly pissed off at the world. I would be pissed off at the thought of all the rogue states that this world has ever had, and there has been a few, only one has suffered the effects of an atomic bomb, and not just once but twice. I might be tempted to plan my revenge but I'd be sneaky about it. I wouldn't burn flags. I wouldn't hide in a cave and spread hateful messages via old taped over 70s porn videos. I wouldn't have the worlds best equipped army with the biggest weapons that scare cockroaches. I would be really sneaky. I mean really sneaky. I would build trusting relationships with business by building the dinkiest coolest must have gadgets and just when everybody has got their eyes off the ball and listening to say Norwegian Wood by The Beatles a preprogrammed malfunction could blow up the ear drums of the listener. Or I might spread the delicacy of Sushi knowing full well that western society doesn't value apprenticeships to the same extent as Japanese society. In Japan it literally takes years for someone to learn the skills involved in cutting a fish or removing the poison of a puffer fish. In the West you'd most likely get minimum wage for such work, whilst a degree in Media Studies is valued far higher even though the number of people studying Media Studies by far outnumbers the jobs available in that field. By some miracle the number of deaths from raw fish consumption is fairly small in the West but it surely cannot be long before the Sushi bars of the world unite in the message that puffer fish is good and then that minimum wage mentality might bite us in the ass. Of course I'm being silly here.

What was my point? I can't bloody remember. Something about fear and the stupidity of it why we need people in charge that think a different way. I think. This is why I never got the good grades at school. The Japanese aren't scary. It was all a big exaggeration on my part. The Chinese on the other hand.....

My End Of Year A To Z Music List

Ok I realise that last year I tried this that I was somewhat over ambitious in that I didn’t really have a lot of time at this time of year and probably I won’t have much going spare again this year either. So I will name one artist only for each letter, and will do it back to front.

Not everyone is going to enjoy this type of post so what I will do instead of having 26 posts and boring everyone in the process I will edit this 1 post as and when I can so, so come back and check when you have the time.

X

And So we reach X & Y, which for some reason sounds like a Coldplay album. The problem with choosing a list of bands and artists by letter is its a totally illogical way of doing things. Some letters have way too many choices that make it almost impossible to narrow it down to just one, and other letters, like x and y, are a real struggle to even think of just one. But I've always had an illogical way of doing things and some sick twisted part of me must enjoy making life difficult for myself because I do it often enough. Anyway making a list this way is my way of making sure I don't just rehash the same old names that will make it on to other such lists.

So X, I'll choose X Press 2. Don't though rush out the album counter, I would only choose for two songs myself. Lazy would be my theme song if not for the fact that for a lazy ass I seem to be a contradictory stupid sod in that i'm also a workaholic that has this habit of unable to be able to say the word know. Despite that though i'm sure given the right circumstances I could be quite happy doing nothing for hours on end with Lazy playing somewhere in background. I could also spend too much time listening to Give It too.

Y

Again not much springs to mind here, so my choice would be the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. For some reason they remind me of the 4 non blondes from the early 90s, and yet they don't really sound anything alike - my mind works in mysterious ways.

Z

Last year, or maybe it was the year before I forget but it doesn’t matter much, I discovered the music of Camille Dalmais. She is somewhat serious looking in her album cover but her music is fun and experimental and I played both her albums way too much last year. Due to the discovery of Camille I wondered what else France had to offer and so this year I came across Zazie. I loved her new album Totem and so I instantly tried to buy up all the rest of her back catalogue, with little success I may add.

Her voice is quite simply gorgeous, and the beauty of it is you don’t even need to know French to enjoy it. I urge you to check it out on youtube or myspace, I don’t really use either of them myself but I’m sure it must be out there somewhere. If after listening you don’t like her too I can only assume you are a French hater, or have absolutely no taste whatsoever, or both. Not for me sitting on the fence.

A Wee Challenge For You - Yes YOU!

My posts are like buses, you don't see anything for a while and then two come along at once. I was planning on doing this one anyway, but the one before it was a random, last minute act of a desperate man. Lets just say you don't want upset a Canadian, sure they might act all polite but underneath they are a most impatient race.

But never mind that, let's get back to the purpose of this post. A week from now is St Andrew's Day, a day to celebrate Scottishness or all things Scotland related. We aren't very good at that in this country. The Irish have the leprechaun hat, tin whistle and top-of-the-mornin' chirpiness all sown up and they do it very well by all accounts. Everyone knows St Patrick's day. By contrast we in Scotland haven't really done a good job of selling St Andrew's Day. We could I suppose encourage people to wear blue, eat lots of shortbread, play the bagpipes badly and our drinks industry could follow the example of Guinness by selling barrel loads of drams but that wouldn't go down well with a lot of Scots. It's seen as cliché by too many people and so the day goes by with little in the way of celebration. That's a shame. It's time that changed. And that's where YOU come in.

We are all bloggers here, its probably fair to say that we enjoy that wonderful thing called language.

My challenge to you is to a write a blog post of 5 paragraphs (or more) in Scots. Why? Just because it will be fun and interesting.

You can write about whatever you like - social issues, injustice, humanity, politics, or something funny that you saw during the day. I don't much care what, as long as it is 5 paragraphs long and with every line written (to the best of your abilities) in Scots. And 5 full paragraphs at that, no cheating. None of the single sentence paragraph crap.

I know for most people outside of Scotland this might sound like an impossible challenge but I'm not seeking perfection. I'm not very good at speaking Scots myself, whenever I dared to as a child I got a skelp in the lug for my troubles for fear that I was going to turn into a ned. Looking at some of the kids around today I can see the wisdom behind that method of parenting, still I harbour some disappointment. Scots when used correctly can be quite a beautiful language. Some even consider it exotic. But that's going a wee bit far, that's just weird. However I will admit to it being entertaining.

So reader, care to celebrate St Andrew's Day? Are you up for the challenge? One post in your blog on the 30th of November, written in Scots? If you do decide to join in, whether you be from Rio De Janeiro, Papua New Guinea, Dunedin, Nova Scotia or wherever leave a comment here, so I can go have a nosey. And if you want to see my piss poor attempt from another time and place go here.

Remember perfection is not required, use the power of the internet and just have a good go at it. Have fun! Oh and I almost forgot - Spread the word - that way you can see you favourite bloggers' attempts too.

Tennis Is A Game For Cheats

At an early age I decided that tennis was a sport that was full of cheats. Like most sports that I hadn't played before I didn't really know the rules so when the ball went up in the air, racket made contact with the ball, ball went over the net, bounced on the surface and my flailing arms missed the return and was followed by the words

15, Love!

I wanted to shout out

15? Get real! 1! And don't call me love! Only old ladies call me love and they only get away with it because of their age. 15? Fuck off!

Of course being 9 years old at the time I didn't say it. Partly because I was a quiet and reserved kid but mostly because if I swore and my mother found out I would have been very, very dead but only after I had suffered greatly. So I kept my own count.

One - nil.

When the ball then went up in the air, hit the racket, went over the net, bounced on the surface and my flailing arms missed once again and I heard the words

30, Love!

I was beyond swearing, I wanted to deck him.

30? Fuck off! 2 - nil! And what's with the cheating and calling me love? Is that a distraction tactic? I can count you know!

When the ball went up in the air for a third time, hit the racket, went over the net, and bounced on the surface and my flailing arms were no where close to getting the return I at least knew what to expect. The cheating up until this point wasn't exactly subtle, it was taking a familiar pattern.

40, Love!

Now I was confused, completely thrown off track.

40? Who taught you maths? Surely you mean 45, and by the way its still only 3 - nil.

I quickly decided the game of tennis wasn't the sport for me, mostly because I wasn't very good. Despite that first game where I ran around like a headless chicken to no avail I was actually very good at getting points off my opponents serve but it was all pointless when I couldn't get any points on my own serve. Which was down to not knowing how to serve. The ball would go up in the air, hit the racket, go over the net and then hit anywhere on the surface that wasn't legal. This I could probably have persevered with if it wasn't for the cheating thing. When the people you are playing with can't keep count there just doesn't seem to be any point.

Years have since passed and over that time I've largely associated tennis with cheating & Cliff Richard, neither of which I have a lot of time for, so now that tennis is embroiled in the middle of a match fixing scandal I have to wonder why no-one in the game saw it coming.