Damn, I don't half talk some bollocks, don't I?

Good evening dear reader, it would seem that although I am finally at liberty post without the nagging of a guilty conscience to abate my progress, I have been struck dumb by the deft blow of a sudden wave of tiredness and as such, am not really in the mood to post at all. When I say guilty conscience, I’m actually referring to the constant nagging of various teachers and tutors for not finishing work. If there’s one thing I hate more than work, it’s the insufferable whinging of fools. Therefore, I rushed a rough version of my university statement to a level that, I’m told, is worthy of a final draft last night. Proceeded to finish an entire half season of Torchwood in a few hours, in order to negate the spoilers of a friend’s future theories on Dr Who. Meanwhile, I learned a whole load of bollocks about David Hume for philosophy, benzene rings for chemistry and photosynthesis for biology, all in the last few days. There are group-of-30-somethings based sit-com plots less tired than I am.

Hence, instead of the usual half-hearted attempt at a semi-informative-but-ultimately-pointless piece with a hefty dose of sarcasm, I will be nailing down a few choice pieces of advice/clichés that I most often dish out. If half as many people listened to my advice as the amount of people I complain to about the fact that people rarely listen to my advice, I would have an incalculable number. Not because it would be particularly large or anything, I’m just rather shit at maths.

McGee’s words o’ wisdom

1)   If you are reading this, you have no reason to be bored. Only boring people and those at work are bored. You have the internet, learn to use it.

2)   You are not depressed; if you were you wouldn’t be whining about it in a desperate attempt for attention.

3)   Knowledge is power. One misplaced fact can lead to a person’s downfall. Only reveal to those you trust and even then, only what is absolutely necessary.

4)   Pain is temporary; emotions fade over time. Never act out of emotion as rarely goes well.

5)  Every cliché has a nugget of truth, otherwise they would never have been repeated so often as to be classed as clichés.

6)   A well placed joke can diffuse any tense situation.

7)   Stop worrying so much. Unless your actions can have a direct effect upon an outcome, its fate should be of no consequence to you until you know it in certainty.

8)   Always try to understand your enemies. To understand your foe is to understand with absolute certainty whether your disagreement is one of principle or misunderstanding.

9)   Life is absurd. Do not assume it owes you anything, or you, it.

10)   Morality and terms such as “good” or “bad” are ones that are banded about by imbeciles and used by the ignorant. They are completely subjective and have no actual use, other than dividing groups arbitrarily via social constructs.

11)   A person is smart, understanding and open to reason. People are stupid, prone to conclusions and have a tendency for tribe mentality.

12)   Learn a person’s habits and you will know the person.

13)   Many of society’s most upheld and orthodox laws/views are based on the mythos of a bygone age. Do not hold what is widely thought to be sacrosanct to be the absolute truth.

14)   The key to persuading another is to make them believe that your views are their own. Plant the seeds of doubt within their mind, watch them blossom as they realise your point of view was the correct one all along.

15)   The key to winning an argument is not to persuade the opponent that you hold a truer opinion but to persuade them that you are right; do not argue that strawberry is better than chocolate, argue instead that we should all be able to choose which flavour we please.

16)   Do not plan. Ever. Set goals and constantly work towards them by whichever means are the most successful at the moment. A plan is made to be foiled.

17)   There is no such thing as failure, only a lesson yet to be learnt. You learn much more from failing than you do through being successful.

18)   Read up on philosophy if you can. The world would be a much more understanding, albeit, confused place for it if more people did.

19)   You are no better than any other human on earth. No matter how good you may be at pissing into the wind, it does not make you a better person as a whole than anyone else. Someone will always be better than you at whatever it is you think you are good at.

20)   Choose your words wisely. Your words are the shades of your vocabulary that will allow you to paint either the most beautiful picture or the crudest scrawling upon the mind of another. 

Joke because I’ve been told it should be shared with the world. Received it off of my philosophy teacher:

You know Greece is having its economic troubles at the moment; the sales of taramasalata and humus are way down.

They are afraid of a double dip recession.

Words, words, words

After giving myself a self indulgent pat on the back for working in a few rather hard to use words into every day conversation, albeit to the dismay of the recipient, I thought it about time to flex my logophillic side and write down a few of my favourite words at this current time. Thinking back on it, maybe using “excommunicate” at about 1 in the morning was a bit too much, even for me.

Little bit of narcissistic trivia before I jump into the main meat of the post; as the evening wears on and I grow increasingly weary, I seem to become more verbose. It really doesn’t help when you are in the midst of the early hours of the morn and you are trying to communicate with someone who is rather inebriated, I can tell you that much.

Without further ado, here are 10 of my choicest words:

1) Excommunicate –

 - To deprive of the right of church membership by ecclesiastical authority.

 - To exclude by or as if by decree from membership or participation in a group.

2) Zeitgeist –

- The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation.

3) Platitude –

- A trite or banal remark or statement, especially one expressed as if it were original or significant.

- Lack of originality; triteness.

4) Verbose (As if you hadn’t already noticed) –

- Using or containing a great and usually an excessive number of words; wordy.

5) Dendroid –

- Shaped like a tree.

6) Supercilious –

- Behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others.

7) Perspicuous (Something I sorely lack in my writing)–

- Clearly expressed; easy to understand.

8) Squamous (Favourite word to say aloud; pronounced [skwey-muhs]) –

- Covered with or formed of squamae or scales.

- Scalelike

9) Schadenfreude –

- Satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

10) Eloquent (An adjective I aspire to)–

- Having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, and appropriate speech: an eloquent orator.

Read this on the back of a cereal box, it had to be shared

Q:  What do you call a polar bear caught in the rain?
A:  A drizzly bear.

You just can't please some people

I’m either a glutton for punishment, the biggest moaner alive or just a massive malcontent. It seems that in my search for happiness, I’ve yet again, landed myself in another regrettable situation. You may recall that in an earlier post I was, as usual, bemoaning the lamentable situation that my work life was currently in. You’d think that if I were to somehow become lucky enough to change that annoying limbo I had landed in that I’d finally find a little joy. You’d think.

I’ve recently found myself in the employ of the company I previously mentioned, the oh so wonderful Squidlypib (name changed for "This could get me fired" reasons). I’ll take this chance to rescind my prior accusations as to the nature of said company’s labour record. This is because I have had a chance to read the various literatures they’ve stationed at key strategic locations (Toilet door, above the toilet, on every available counter surface) and totally not because it is stated in my employee hand book that it is against my contract to speak ill of them on the interwebs.

I do have one thing to be thankful for, the hours are pretty damn excellent. Four hour blocks in the middle of the day during the weekends. Sadly this also means that I am forced to work bank holidays which includes BLOODY CHRISTMAS FUCKING DAY but I’m not bitter. The work itself isn’t exactly tasking, that’s probably the problem I have with it. I mostly wander around for the first two hours returning the various ghastly dresses some women supposedly wear. Believe me when I say I have handled more women’s clothing than most women would likely wear throughout their lifetime.  Surprisingly, this can be quite enjoyable, compared to the other tasks I am often set, that is. There’s nothing quite like memorising the exact location of various blouses, dresses and knitwear to get the ol’ neurons a’ firing. The part that makes suicide look like a valid and all together, more appealing option is the dreaded pick up of the sales section.

Imagine, if you will, a 16’ by 16’ square. Now fill this square with the cheapest bits of tat you can think of. Throw in a few tables with denim bits and bobs and you have the basic layout.  You are tasked with picking up the clothes and putting them back onto whichever rail they fell off of. That is all. Now picture a continuous stream of the most idiotic and downright stupid dullards you can. They are thwarting your every effort to keep some semblance of order in a pretty damn chaotic store. Every time you go to the other side of the square, someone will knock off what you just done on the previous side, forcing you to return to it, only for the same thing to happen on the other side you just went to. Now do this for 3 hours. At least Sisyphus got to watch a cool boulder roll down the other side of the hill.

This repetition of shear mind crushing, soul sucking monotony is now my world every Saturday and Sunday from about 11 am to 3 pm. Forgive me for thinking the minimum wage doesn’t quite seem like an adequate recompense. There is only so many times you can play the same song through your mind before you just want to find the nearest implement and scoop each word out from your own brain.

On the bright side, I have a job now.

Applicant joke because I’m too tired to find anything different

Employer to applicant: "In this job we need someone who is responsible."

Applicant: "I'm the one you want. On my last job, every time anything went wrong, they said I was responsible."

The life and trials of a rather inept man

Don’t look at me like that. You knew as well as I that it wouldn’t take me too long to find an excuse to skive off of work. I suppose I should explain myself shouldn’t I? Welp, it is a tale of chills, spills and dizzying thrills, one that I’m nearly 100% sure hasn’t been made up in order to abate the furious anger that my absence has surely roused within you, my dear reader.

First and foremost in this most recent foray into the bad joke that I like to call my life, has been a recent tendency to go to my friend James’ house for a drink. Just a small gathering or two with a lot of alcohol to while away the hours. The result of which has meant that the two Fridays prior to this day have been spent with a rather terrible hangover and as such, I haven’t  been in the mood to fulfil my dutiful role as the bringer of verbosity and inanity in equal measure. Worry not though, a lack of money combined with guilt for not writing for the loyal few who frequent the site, means that I should be resuming your regular dose of insanity inducing tl;dr content.

In continuation of this shameless attempt at seeking redemption from a bunch of people who don’t really care, is the fact that the most recent bout of drinking was, unlike the ridiculously many times before, meaningful in some small way. You see, I recently received the results from my AS levels, for those of you who are unaware, they are the 1^st year of the 2 year A level courses we take here in merry old England before we go off to get drunk at university.  The results, like the rest of my blasted life, were bittersweet. That is, I done relatively well, achieving ABBD is a feat to be proud of. Unfortunately, the D was in chemistry, the one subject I needed to be strong the most. Funny thing about it all was the B I achieved in the dullest of dull subjects that is English Literature and Language. Now, I know that from my apparent grandiloquent manner, I should be the perfect candidate for some silly English degree but in a bout of floccinaucinihilipilification unseen before to most, I have deemed the pursuit of it all as a rather pointless effort.

It is at this point that I must give myself kudos for actually working floccinaucinihilipilification into the post, it was a challenge I set myself midway through. Not quite sure whether I used it right though. Oh well.

Back to what I was saying before I digressed, I’m currently pursuing a career in science, biology to be slightly more specific. Therein lies my problem; I’m terrible at chemistry; it’s the subject I got the D in. It has not deterred me though. I will continue an uphill battle to follow a route into an area I’m not particularly suited to be, rather than go to where my talents would most likely be suited. That’s just the kind of stubborn bastard that I am.

A joke about test results of a sort, the best I could do was not good enough

Doctor: I've got the results of your test; you have gonorrhoea, chlamydia and onomatopoeia.

Me: What's onomatopoeia?

Doctor: It's exactly what it sounds like.

Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly.

There are only two things in life are certain, death and taxes or so the saying goes. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I spent ages thinking up an almost cheery way to start up a post about death and as with so much of life, I have failed miserably. Can you really blame me though? Death is a topic that most seem to avoid like the plague. Dare to bring it up in a social situation and you will be given pariah status faster than the average teen drops their ability to write coherently before a facebook post. Now, I’m not saying that death should be the go to topic upon meeting the average blithering idiot, unless it is your wish to make that weirdness you are hiding so deep to become apparent to said idiot. All I’m looking for is a state in which we are comfortable discussing the inevitable fate of each and every one of us unlucky sacks of consciousness. Is that too much to ask for?

As with every post, I have had recent experiences with the topic at hand. Thankfully it has all been theoretical discussion rather than actual firsthand experience. I doubt a blog that gets fewer hits than a no-armed cricketer would be the best place to announce it in all honesty.  No, instead my curiosity was piqued by the often odd reactions I would have upon venturing a discourse with another concerning the subject. The reactions have ranged from people quickly changing the subject, to point-blank refusal to continue the discussion, all the way to a very interesting American stranger who discussed it with me in length into the early hours of the morn. It seems that the reactions are polarised to a great degree depending on the person in question, however there is one common theme that can be seen; they all seem to fear it, as some form of imminent spectre.

The great distinction between us and the animal kingdom is that we are afforded the knowledge of our own mortality; no other creature is blessed, or cursed depending on your view, with this time limit. All others are allowed to continue in a state of blissful ignorance, whereas we are forced to come to terms with our inevitable failure at the great game of life. Yet, unlike what many would have you believe, we aren’t more capable than a beaver or a whale at dealing with said information; it terrifies us. Therefore great deals of us are prone to wild theories, in the form of religions and life philosophies, which are supposed to help us cope. It is quite amazing just how imaginative the average shmoe can be in their attempts to rationalise such an immense concept.

I won’t sit here and claim to know what happens after death, I am not as simple minded as to try and baby you in a similar way to a religious leader. Instead I shall tell you my own personal view on the matter, one that is undoubtedly shared by a vast many of others; this is all there is, nothing more. The idea of ceasing to exist may scare some but it doesn’t fear me in the slightest. Why? You ask, it’s simple; even if there is an afterlife, by the time I reach death, I will either have bigger problems to deal with in said afterlife or I will no longer have the capacity to be fearful as I will cease to be. It’s as simple as that.

Without the ever presence of death, you could not contrast the life and beauty of the world around you, therefore it should be embraced. Be thankful that you and your loved ones will someday leave this godforsaken rock in search of pastures new or at the very least, they will be blissfully non-existent.

Death joke because nothing says funny like the death sentence

A murderer, sitting in the electric chair, was about to be executed.

"Have you any last requests? asked the chaplain.

"Yes," replied the murderer. "Will you hold my hand?"

Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings

Ah, friendship. A word loaded with a multitude of different meanings and connotations, so much so that were you to ask 60 different people as to what the word means to them, you would likely find yourself with 60 completely different answers. At this point you are probably already questioning whether this is just another one of my emotion-induced, sloppily written rants with no actual relation to the real world... and you are probably right to some degree but indulge me as you would a senile relative, beset by age but still eager to pass on the war stories. Could you actively explain to someone who had never heard the term just exactly what friendship is? More to the point, the time at which a person jumps the bridge from an acquaintance to that oh so elusive title, the one you have most likely given to a multitude of people throughout the short space of time in which we have to do so; when they become your friend?

There is some degree of method to the madness that is my choice of topic; I had made a promise to two of the lucky people who have been deemed worthy by my particular set of warped standards and thus, earned their place amongst my friends. Therefore, I think it prudent of me to dedicate this particular post to Erik and Niall, the two that without which, our three musketeers status would be in serious jeopardy.  

Without going into too much detail (for fear of irreparably damaging our reputations and future jobs prospects in any credible company), I will say that we have gone through a lot of crazy shit together, for lack of a better phrase. So much so that if any member of our odd trio were to be in a particularly vindictive mood, they could easily screw over the other two, yet that would never happen. I don’t know whether it is the history or the understanding or just plain ol’ trust, but there is an indescribable bond, one that seems unbreakable to these naive pair of eyes. At the end of the day, I suppose that is all you can really look for in your companions, that understanding where you know you could gladly give your all to someone who will not take it for granted. At least, that’s what I must be looking for; complete subjectivity in an idea makes it rather hard to generalise.

Now I’m not saying that is all I, or anyone else for that matter is looking for in a friend because as with notions as complex as this, an intricate series of much simpler ideas form the foundation of whatever twisted metaphorical yard stick it is that you, I or anybody else uses to make the all important decision on friend eligibility. It is here that you will find the greatest degree of variation, where the opinions and the bias really come into their own. As where I may be looking for someone who has a stock of jokes just as terrible as my own, you may want someone who is reliable in a crisis or just fun to be around. Just don’t get too bogged down in trying to figure out the qualities that you most desire, it can all get terribly confusing when you delve too deep into your own rationale. Keep doing as you have done so up until now, keep on following that gut instinct you get when you meet a person or that tried and tested method you have for picking the inner circle. Do whatever works for you and make sure you have fun whilst doing it.

Remember this though; life is a solo journey at the end of the day. People come and go, some stay for a mere moment, others will be there until the day you die. Make sure you hang onto the important ones, the ones that make you happy or sad or excited, whatever quality you believe is most important. Keep them close and enjoy the ride.

Joke that I have inherited from my dear mother (who you can also thank for my disastrous sense of humour)

Q. What do you call a three-legged donkey?
A. A Wonkey

Opiates and opera

Howdy once again, I must begin by apologising for yet another unexplained absence of the quality  writing you have come to expect from this establishment, not that the explanation is of any real  interest anyway, let’s just say it was a drug addled few weeks in which I was continuously partying and having oodles of fun... You didn’t buy that? I wouldn’t either. Any period of time that someone attempts to explain in a sentence was either partly fictional or just an out and out lie. Life’s rich tapestry rarely affords a simple explanation.

In my case, the explanation above did have some base in truth; due to reasons that are both highly embarrassing and pretty painful, I’ve been on a happy mix of codeine and paracetamol, also known as co-codamol. Now, not only is this particular mix an effective painkiller, the codeine component is also of the opiate family (the likes of which include morphine and heroin) and as a result, I have been in a blissful stupor for near on 2 weeks. I won’t bore you with the particulars but one occasion stood out amongst them all, the night when I had rather vivid dreams about flying through caves filled with electrified cows whilst explaining the correct flight paths over some form of intercom. The worst part is that wasn’t even the strangest of the bunch.

Apart from flittering with an addiction, I’ve also experienced a menagerie of new, mainly unwanted experiences these past few weeks. The main contributor to this could be seen in a recent trip to an outdoor showing of an opera live on screen. The opera itself was so-so, it was the original story of Cinderella in French and as it was my first ever opera, I was quite intrigued to see how the whole thing would work; my inexperienced curiosity was short lived. Whilst the show continued onwards through its 4 hour long story, the cluster of acquaintances around me quickly finished their supplies of alcohol and unfortunately for me, I was unable to drink anything myself due to the medicine, leaving me surrounded by a bunch of rowdy drunks, in the throes of full on sobriety . New experiences 1 and 2 weren’t completely bad; I was pretty ambivalent to the whole situation, the problems aroused with problem 3; it seems I had piqued the interests of a rather over-friendly bi fellow. I can’t exactly remember how frequently I was asked amazingly awkward questions, all I know is it was about as many times as I politely declined his advances. Good thing I had a few tablets handy to keep me nice and indifferent to the situation. On the bright side, I think he gave up around the end of the 3 hour mark. Oh and I also found out I have comfortable knees. Never know when you’re going to need that kind of knowledge.

Philosophy joke because I have reached that special philosophical state of tiredness upon completion of this post

Rene Descartes walks into a bar and ordered a brandy, which he tossed down immediately. The barman asked him "Would you like another?" and Rene answered "I think not", and promptly disappeared