Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls Have I Got a Story For You!

In a word: No. I have not got a story for you.

And so in an act of desperation, I will resort to the age old comic style of self-deprecation. Yes readers, this method has been used by writers, comedians and television personalities for decades as a way of making the listener pity them and look at them like a small puppy with no home. You don't leave a small puppy with no home on it's own do you?

Well if you do, you're a sick human being.

Over the past couple of days I've done, seen, read and imagined things that left me giggling. Things that a regular human being wouldn't find funny. Because I'm a BIT of a freak.

For example, outside the petrol station next to my school there is a cage filled with turf or coal bags. The cage door was open and I found myself thinking that I should step inside, close the door and speak to passers by, saying things like:

Please, please let me out. They feed me nothing but egg cartons!

Or

Hello there sir. This fine establishment has realised that there is a fantastic market for selling human toes. They locked me in here to prevent me running off with the merchandise (i.e. the toes) and rightly so. First chance I get I'm taking my toes. So, want to let me out?

OK so upon writing this I realise, It MIGHT have only been funny to me.

Next up is something I promised someone I would write about and so I'm obligated to say:

Don't close your browser Stephen!

He told me he would if I talked about this. Didn't give a reason. Just threats.

So during the week it got quite sunny, and for some reason we decided it would be fun to build a human pyramid.

The Pyramid - Mid-Collapse

It went...sort of well? Maybe? Anyway this one went much better than the second attempt. I was part of this one. And the a-holes put me on the bottom tier! But I suppose that's fair enough seeing as I was probably one of the heaviest there.

Have you ever heard of Banksy? Of course you have. He's famous. OK for those who don't know him, Banksy is a famous graffiti artist and has managed to keep his identity a secret from the world. I picked up a book that had lots of his pieces in and and small bits of writing in them. He's surprisingly funny.

He has many amazing pieces, most are hilarious, but my favourites are definitely these:

The man's a genius to say the least. Especially since he gets away with it.

Another day, another post. Well not so much another day as another week. Another week another post.....and now I've forgotten what I was going to say. Thanks guys!

Stuff I'm Going to do During the Summer

So instead of doing work like I know myself I should be doing, I'm going to waste some time dreaming about free time. I feel as if I should point out the idiocy of this. But, let's face it, you probably already guessed it was idiotic.

Anyway, in my head it is a place where I have skipped past exams and results and any outstanding work I may or may not have, and go straight to the free time. It's a simpler, happier place. For one thing, Bugs Bunny is president of the universe and everybody speaks like Elmer Fudd. I'm getting off topic.

Top of my list of things to do during the summer is to completely mess up my sleeping pattern. Oh yeah! Stay up until 2/3 in the morning and get up at 2/3 in the afternoon. Of course this is all provided I don't get a job *shiver* Working during the summer? What kind of sick weirdo does that?

Next is watch a lot of DVD box sets. Like How I Met Your Mother, Sherlock, Supernatural, Gavin and Stacey and of course, the ever popular, Doctor Who. No I'm not sad and spend all my time watching TV, but it's the summer. Lots of free time *super happy smiley face*

Learn to drive! That's a big one. It's getting too close to exams for me to actually want to start now but all I have to do is find a decent driving instructor and get my theory test over and done with. To be honest, I'm not overly fussed about driving. I mean, I happily walk everywhere anyway. Buuuut I suppose it's something I should learn how to do anyway.

I am going to raid the Classics section in Waterstones this summer and go mental. I took a BBC list of books challenge thing on Facebook and I had only read 11 of 100 books it said I should definitely read. But if I want to do journalism, It would probably look good if I read these.

Learn to talk to animals. It's something i have always wanted to do but I never got round to doing it. That and learning to fly. Lots of planning involved. Friggen logistics.

Really it doesn't matter what I'm going to do during the summer, only what I'm going to do if I don't get out of school quickly. I'm serious! People will get hurt. At least one will die and there will be several counts of collateral damage to my name. Oh yes children, the urge to throw a chair through a window grows stronger by the day. One day I'm just going to snap and start throwing stuff everywhere. And in the years to come I'll have my own room which they will constantly restock with chairs for me to throw. I could be the main attraction of the school. I could retire early with the money I would be making even though my school is badly in debt right now and isn't about to pay someone enough to retire. But hey at least we still have our file paper...oh what's that? We don't?....oh my... Maybe I could buy a house. With steel reinforced glass windows. I would never break a thing in my house. And I would live happily ever after with my schizophrenia and lack of chairs

....My, that got out of hand

Spitting?!?! Really?!

So I'm walking home from school on Monday when your typical chavy ballymena "lad" strolls past me, getting his strut on, you know, as they do. I'm listening to my iPod silently judging, as I do, and the guy just spits to his side. This left me wondering:

WHY??

Do you have a medical problem, I thought to myself, where your saliva accumulates far too quickly and it must be expelled from the mouth? Are you really hungry and are currently thinking of bacon sandwiches?

Or (more likely) are you just in fact a GIANT douche?

I think we all know the answer.

I mean what is the appeal? I'm genuinely curious. I can't even think of excuses that are even vaguely plausible. I mean every thirty steps this guy would evacuate his mouth of it's gooey inhabitants. It was a nauseating, sordid experience.

It's nice to see I'm such a well adjusted person, you know, not letting the little things bother me.

Devastation strikes Japan

Often you will hear things, "Acts of God" as they are called. Storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. They always happen in some country far away. They never make an impact on you.

Yesterday, March 11th, Japan was hit with an earthquake that reached 8.9 on the Richter scale. The Richter scale only has categories that go up to 10. Beyond that they have no classification and so as you can imagine, this one was huge.

This earthquake was almost in the 2nd highest class of earthquake. For five minutes yesterday, it was hell on earth for the Japanese people caught up in the middle of something that even the greatest mind's of this earth cannot predict, something that is naturally destructive and cannot be prevented or circumvented.

Since the year 684 AD there have been 34 earthquakes with a Richter scale rating of 6.5 or higher. This was the largest of them all. It is also the 3rd, 4th or 5th largest earthquake since seismological records began.

An earthquake of this magnitude doesn't come alone. Due the the epicenter of the earthquake, which was near the east coast of Honshu, Japan, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo there was a massive Tsunami.
The Tsunami that ensued caused as much, if not more, damage than the earthquake itself.

Courtesy of the ITN website

Houses were washed away in seconds, probably with people - families - inside of them.

The Tsunami now threatens places all over the Pacific Ocean, including North and South America all the way from Alaska to Chile, traveling at 500 mph across the ocean at an estimated 33ft (10 metres) high.

As of yet there is no official death toll with reports varying from 1,300 to 1,600 with many more expected to be found. Alongside those horrific statistics there are hundreds missing and whole towns with which there have been 10,000 feared missing or dead in a port town in North Japan.

The Tsunami brings devastation of it's own with massive whirlpools collecting around the coast of Japan.

Numerous vessels at sea have been dragged into these whirlpool's, trapped for the time being. Some of the whirlpool's aren't too deep and so the boats aren't being dragged under but there may still be boats being easily pulled underwater by the pools.

There are also very serious dangers relating to the Nuclear Power station in Fukushima Daiichi. Due to the Tsunami, the electricity has been cut from a lot of the country and, as such, the Power station does not have the power to keep the cooling systems going that regulate water in and out of the core.

The water began to boil and turn to steam. This increased the pressure in the reactor which was released with the smoke into the air above Fukushima. Some of the water was converted to Hydrogen which exploded. There has been a 20 km evacuation of the area surrounding the plant.

All of this seems more than one country could handle. Many are likening it to the 2012 predicitions. It is a disgrace that this fairytale-esque story is being compared to the real pain and suffering felt by thousands, millions of people living in Japan.

What strikes me the most about this tragedy is that most other massive world changing incidents happen in less developed countries like the Tsunami in Thailand, the earthquake in Chile, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, the earthquake in Haiti.

But then you get places like Christchurch in New Zealand getting hit with a 6.3 magnitude earthquake just last month, and the technological tycoon, Japan, who prided themselves in being better prepared for earthquakes than anywhere else in the world, being struck by this insane act of nature, obliterating their defences and preparations like they were nothing.

What strikes me most about this is that I had never associated Japan with natural disasters. But now, seeing these reports, all I can think about is the very real people caught up in the middle. People who had lives, families, jobs, aspirations, pet-peevs, friends. All of these people are in danger. A lot of these people are already dead. And one recurring thought rolls around my brain:

How will they recover from this?

And I know it's a cliché and you have probably heard it from a million different sources but keep all of the people suffering in Japan in your thoughts and donate whatever you can to help.
The Red Cross is the only place I know that you can send money to:
http://www.redcross.org.uk/

Please, give whatever you can. I know a lot of you won't or can't donate money but at least, by doing this, I can say that I tried to help these people rebuild their lives.



The Ridiculousness that is Charlie Sheen

There are many things that annoy me. I never expected a show on Comedy Central that wasn't Everybody Loves Raymond to be one of those things.
Charlie Sheen, a long time drug addict not to mention wife beater, has caused the cancellation of the hit show that made him $1.8 million per episode, Two and a Half Men. This was due to an argument he had with his bosses at CBS which he has blown out of proportion to a $320 million law suit against them. It's funny because the man seems oblivious that to the fact that the world is most definitely NOT on his side.

When asked what he felt about claims that he was bi-polar, Sheen responded with:

I'm bi-winning, you know? I win here and I win there

Tool.

Sheen's quotable mess of the English language has been spread about the Internet like an inebriated party girl with an STD, with phrases such as:

I'm on something right now, it's called Charlie Sheen

and

I had a disease? Bullshit. I cured it with my brain

being the most popular. But my favourite has to be:

I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' Rock Star from Mars

The dude obviously has serious issues. He actually said:

Touch my children and I will eat your hands of your arms

But he gets away with it because hes rich and famous. As you would expect, talented auto tune artists have turned these into songs. However this video is my favourite. It isn't him auto tuned, but it is a video where a guy has taken the words he said and made them into a song of his own. Its really good and definitely worth watching:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boF3x7RBJOk

 To be honest, I was never really a fan of the show anyway and it makes me visit naughty giggle town to hear that it has been cancelled because of this guy who believes himself to be better than people when he is the laughing stock of the world. This is further reinforced in my mind after I watched his interview. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5aSa4tmVNM&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Every sentence of his makes me cringe. For his sake I hope he stays off the drugs. Not because I care for the idiot, but because the world will not let him forget about that interview if even one thing he said doesn't hold true.

But then again he is bi-winning so who am I to criticise...