Waiting for Doomsday

It's the fortnightly round-up!
- A woman goes missing with her son because apparently the possibility of a few lost IQ points is worse than the possibility of him dying in the next few months.
- Shitstorm at the BBC enters it's next month
- Shitstorm at the Met Police
- Britain floods.
- Typhoon in Philippines
- Guns and primary schools do not mix
- The world almost ends
- I drown in christmas quizzes
- I win money for no real reason

This post has to be about the end of the world. Anything else would just look weird.

It's always curious, the end of the world. Just think, an entire planet just disappearing.
It's much like the notion of death. Just... ending in such a way.

I heard quite a few theories about what would happen. Zombie apocalypse sounds like good fun in theory, but I don't you'll be saying that when night falls and you're curled up in an abandoned house, freezing cold and hungry, hiding from your dear beloved Nan. Also, it's bloody difficult to get a good swing on a blunt weapon to ward the zombies off.
Epic flooding of lands? Yes, you'd probably look awesome stood on a raft with your face to the wind, but your socks would be wet. All the time. You would be cold from the fact your clothes are wet. All the time. Your hair would be full of salt. All the time.
Insane inferno? Efficient. We'd all die from smoke inhalation very quickly.
Yellowstone? Too slow.
Asteriod? Again, fairly efficient. Especially since a scientist would wise on very quickly, the media would find out and people who begin to pack up their things and try and get out of their town as soon as possible. Not sure why, we'd all be dead anyway.
Time repeats and we just relive the 21st over and over? Well, surely someone would con on at last and we'd just start recounting time again. Which as I understand it, is roughly how the Mayans worked.

Of course, the end of the world could have already happened, and we could have died on the stroke of midnight. The afterlife may just be us assuming a continuation of our life, and everything supposedly continues as normal.

I'll leave that for you to ponder.
See you in a fortnight.

Kew Gardens

Fortnight at a glance:
- The Autumn Statement was announced and basically everybody's fucked
- Something really unimportant happens re the Royal Family
- The Leveson Inquiry result was announced and Cameron has decided to ignore... all of it
- Looks like the entire BBC should have been renamed "House of Peodophiles" in the 70's according to the tabloids
- No-one communicates in my potential sixth form and so I have to endure weeks of stress.


Today, I traveled to Kew Gardens as part of my Art BTEC. My sub-topic was Buildings and Structures, and so I visited the Treetop Walkway, the Pagoda, the Palm House, the Princess of Wales Conservatory and the Alpine House. We didn't have much time, so I saw (but didn't enter) the Temperate House.



See you in a fortnight.

Alpine House





Treetop Walkway

Temperate House

The Pagoda

Palm House



Princess of Wales Conservatory



Rules of the Television

Fortnightly round-up:
- Gaza and Israel have serious shit to sort out
- Newsnight have a complete balls-up
- Lord McAlpine plans to sue the world
- George Entwistle loses it and still gets away with £450,000
- Abu Qatada sticks two fingers up at Britain, yet again

This time, I shall talk about rules of the television. Things that shall happen, no question.
Trust me on this.

-- Before the Credits rule (Or the "first-60-seconds" rule)
With the exception of pilots, any new character introduced either before the credits or in the first 60 seconds of a tv show will be murdered.
Sometimes they're already dead, proving that writers know that we're not stupid.

-- Anybody Can Handle a Firearm rule
Unless convenient to the plot, anybody (from small children to near-death elderly) can shoot any kind of gun at anyone and not miss. Ever.

-- No Inter-gender Friendships rule
If a male and female appear with one another on screen, they will fall in love. And sleep together. And then have a big argument. And then it's awkward until they die.

-- Death is Never Permanent rule
Found in sci-fi and fantasy shows, anyone who dies too easily (or are in the named cast) will never stay dead. A thousand and one things, varying from vaguely sane to seriously out there will bring them back to life. See: Supernatural

-- Cast are Never in Danger rule
Mostly relating to LOST, in which "48" people survive, although for some reason only about twelve seem to be around. This does mean, of course, when the health of the survivors is threatened, no-one interesting will die. Until 36 of the uninteresting characters die, then we're in trouble.

-- Home Alone rule
If a person is alone in the house, a strange noise will happen at night. The person will go investigate it. They will probably end up dead.

-- Let's Split Up! rule
A noise sounds late at night in a forest/haunted house/large establishment. An initially large group decide to split up. The least interesting of the group will die. They will generally be a woman. (more common in films)

The Strange Thing about History

Dear lord, I am tired.
So, as a result I've googled one of my favourite things to eat and I'm pasting a recipe for it (link below).

See you in a fortnight, when maybe I will bring you what was actually meant to go below this title.


Swedish Meatballs with Ligonberry/Cranberry Sauce
Lingonberry or Cranberry Sauce

500 g lingonberries or 500 g cranberries
1 lemons, juice and zest of, finely grated
150 g caster sugar

Swedish Meatballs

50 g butter
1 onions, peeled and very finely diced
2 teaspoons allspice
100 g fresh brown breadcrumbs
150 ml milk
1/2 kg fresh minced beef
1/2 kg fresh ground pork
1 eggs, beaten
salt
pepper
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 tablespoons flour
400 ml beef stock
200 g sour cream or 200 g creme fraiche
4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
Directions
To make the sauce, put the lingonberries or cranberries into a heavy bottomed saucepan with about 100 to 120 mls of water, the lemon juice and zest & bring to the boil.

Then turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 to 15 minutes. As soon as the berries have started to burst - add the caster sugar and cook until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Take off the heat and allow to cool. Check for sweetness, if it is too sour, add more sugar to taste and cook until dissolved. To make the meatballs, first melt a little of the butter in a frying pan and add the finely chopped onion - sauté until soft & then add the allspice.

Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk - until the milk has been absorbed, about 30 to 45 minutes. Mix the fried onion in with the soaked bread and then add the meat and beaten egg, season and mix well.

Dampen your hands and form the mixture into balls about the size of large walnuts.

Heat half of the remaining butter with half of the oil and fry the meatballs in batches - until they are golden brown in colour and hold their shape.

Allow to meatballs to cool slightly.

Heat up the remaining butter and oil in the pan and add the flour - cooking over a low heat until the flour is golden and sandy in appearance (like a roux base).

Take the pan off the heat and gradually add the beef stock, stirring and blending well after each addition. Put the pan back on the heat and bring to the boil - then add the sour cream (creme fraiche). Turn the heat down and add the meatballs - cover and cook over a low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes, until the sauce has thickened.

Check and adjust the seasoning before adding the chopped dill to the meatball and sauce mixture.

Serve with the Lingonberry or Cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes or broad ribbon noodles

http://www.food.com/recipe/swedish-meatballs-with-lingonberry-or-cranberry-sauce-235024

Your Opinion is Irrelevant

In the news this fortnight:
- A crazy Austrian does crazy Austrian things
- One million people tuned in to see Felix Baumgar-whatsit go splat on his landing to Earth (seriously - when his parachute opened safely, one million people stopped watching)
- A man goes and hits multiple people in an area of Cardiff I used to live near.
- A car bomb goes off in Syria, and people in Lebanon worry that the war could spill over to their country.
- Flooding happens on flood planes
- Half of the BBC may be taken out by Jimmy Savile alone
- Syria begin a ceasefire
- Berlusconi is sentenced to four years for tax fraud
- Complaints continue about GCSEs
- I finally choose my A-levels
- I have roughly a term to get my Maths grade up otherwise they may not let me into Physics and Maths A-level

Today, I'm talking about the vote at 16.

As Scotland want to do the independence referendum including 16-year olds, re-igniting the debate over whether or not the vote should be lowered to 16-year olds. As I will be just under 18 when the next general election rolls around, I'm naturally a big supporter of this.

I hear one argument that nobody under 18 would vote, yet a quick scan of two polls* indicate that turnout among the 18-24's is actually increasing from 2001 (31% turnout in 2001, 44% in 2010). Admittedly, this is still older than their elder counterparts, but looking at the trend it could be that the 16-18 year-olds would have a roughly 40% turnout. And I don't have a confirmation on this, but there's every possibility that the first time around could garner an interest in some 16/17 year-olds as wanting to vote in the "first one".

Another argument is "16-year olds are too immature". I remember one anecdote saying that a "19-year old said to me that she'd vote for Boris Johnson because she finds him funny". The thing is, these aren't the people who will actually bother to vote in the long run. Or, they'll turn up to the polling station, see the long queues, and bugger off again. The people who would vote, however, are people like my friend and I. While in Switzerland, we ended up discussing the merits of the Eurozone (I'm anti, she's pro). It's alright for her, she'll be old enough to vote when the time comes around.

There's also the fact that 16-year olds pay taxes to consider. Sometimes, the government's one-sided thinking amuses me. They believe that we're mature enough to pay taxes, to make a contribution to society. But we're not mature enough to have a say in who we think should run the country, who should represent our beliefs, who should speak for us.

Like everything, it's ultimately politics. No government wants to be the government who lost power because they gave the 16 year olds the vote. And keeping them quiet is ultimately the only way they can continue.
 
*Sources:
http://www.idea.int/vt/by_age.cfm (26 Oct '12)
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2613&view=wide (26 Oct '12)

O television, O television, wherefore doth thou break my heart into a million little pieces whilst cackling?

Fortnightly round-up:
- Exam boards allow students whose dreams were crushed to retake English exams.
- A little girl goes missing in mid-Wales, and a man is charged with her murder.
- They finally manage to get the runaway maths teacher home
- Tensions in Syria/Turkey grow
- Spain are splitting apart at the seams
- And again with Greece
- Jimmy Saville is apparently not a tv legend but a rapist.
- The Conservatives say something unimportant
- They want to build another airport in the South East, thus possibly increasing my choice of airports within two hours to six.
- I go to CERN and begin to seriously doubt my potential A-level choices
- I check out a sixth form's prospectus and seriously doubt my potential sixth form
- I gain my very first A*
- I go to Switzerland (hence, CERN) and discover my slight fear of plane landings.

Although today, my topic of conversation today is television. See, I do have fun alongside all my complaining!

Well, no. I'm going to complain really.

Currently, I'm "watching" Firefly, which was cancelled after fourteen episodes. I put 'watching' in inverted commas because I'm avoiding the last episode. After watching the first thirteen episodes, I have grown so attached to the show that I cannot bear to watch the final episode and say goodbye to it. It shall, in short, break my heart.
Not that Firefly hasn't already done so. While watching Out of Gas (episode eight), I sobbed to the point of hyperventilating*. I have also been known to require a good half-hour to calm down after certain scenes.

Maybe I'm just susceptible to sobbing, but this isn't the first time I've sobbed uncontrollably at a TV show. I'll make a list (I like lists).
-- Chuck (season 1, episode 8)
-- Scrubs (more than I should for a comedy)
-- Doctor Who (like, every episode)
-- Supernatural
-- The Hour

I've also gone incredibly weak at the knees for both Lilyhammer and Borgen.

Do show writers enjoy watching our down-hearted tweets, generally in block capitals and saying "MY HEART </3 D:"?
Certainly, it does make for a better show.

I suppose it is my fault, really. It is a habit of mine, as is most people when they love a show, to get very included in the world. Hell, there are fanfictions that are many hundreds of thousands words long. And then the show will end, or be cancelled, or be forced into a very abrupt demise, leading to the destruction of any happy emotion I may feel for the next few days.

I'll watch Firefly tonight, I promise.

Education, Education and God knows what else

Fortnight round-up:
- A thousand parents make a thousand unfunny jokes about teachers
- The unfunny jokes relate to a child who ran away with her teacher
- They were both from a town covered by the same local news as the town I am in, hence knowing every single detail of the story
- Gove stops the GCSEs
- Canadian cheese smuggling rings are broken
- *Topless* photos of Kate where published everywhere
- Apple are useless
- My school promptly ban the ability to use time wisely, to the downfall of my BTEC

Today I talk of Gove.
No wait, I don't talk of him, I will talk about him and his hair-brained ideas.

As I've been in a bad mood all day (Apparently, you can drop a GCSE at my school, but not the IT you must take with Triple Science. I digress), I'll start with his good ideas.
-
-
-

Okay, so that was mean. He does have one good point. The multiple exam boards. They were never going to work out, and it also makes it as hard as hell to buy second-hand revision guides (Oh brilliant! A cheap maths guide! Oh no wait, it's on AQA. Wait, which exam board am I on?*). However, the old system it does make quality control easier. If Edexcel reported an 80% pass rate in the English Language exam, whilst OCR only recorded a 30% pass, something is wrong. But of course, there would be no need for quality control with multiple exam boards, they would just do great exams. To attempt to conclude a minor-half argument so terrible it would reduce my Critical Thinking teacher to tears of pain, a rare glimmer of good idea sometimes crosses his mind.

I'm not denying that GCSE's have their faults. My Chemistry exam, taken in January of this year, was insane to learn. I was given four months to learn the first three units (Of which there seven, one is the equivalent of three units), which wasn't enough so it was all crammed in at once. I didn't revise, so on the day I was bullshitting it. Chemistry is not my strongest science, and yet I managed to get 86/100 UMS points, or an A. Yet in Physics, I had a year before taking the equivalent exam. I got a B. Admittedly, I'm even worse at Physics than I am Chemistry, but had the exams be switched around I'm fairly sure that the grades would too. Whilst I don't agree with the all-exams-at-the-end idea**, I do think they shouldn't be taken in the first January of the course.

And as far as I can see, there are academic-only subjects in the Ebacc. Yes, there may be an idea to introduce more "creative" subjects later (music/art/drama/dance), but I see nothing of vocational subjects. Gove forgets that not everybody is destined for Oxford. There are students, and I do know a couple of them, who will never get a decent GCSE. Instead, they take a vocational course in health and social care, or hair and beauty. Admittedly, they're not as great as 5 A*'s, but it'll get them a job. The English Baccalaureate will run their abilities into the ground, passing them through with bad qualifications and no life skills.

The GCSEs/BTECs have faults, no doubt. But they did encompass the range of students, and that's all that really matters.

*Edexcel
**Over the two years, I have to take more than 17 exams. Imagine having them all in one month. And all the revision.

Atos

Fortnight round up:
- Wales want the whole English GCSE saga cleaned up, while Michael Gove is being a stubborn little shit by not asking for a nationwide review.
- Topless photos of Kate Middleton are posted by a *regulated* French magazine
- "Sam" gets the US into a shitload of trouble
- Middle-eastern countries may *possibly* be using the dodgy US video as a front for a backlash against the US presence in their countries
- Brits are murdered in France
- My first week at school is full of homework and catch-up
- I start fencing and manage to injure myself before we even start fencing

Today, I shall talk about Atos.

For those unaware, Atos is a company hired by the government to sort everybody claiming incapacity benefit (and DLA - disability living allowance) into three groups: Those who can work, those who can't work, and those who can do a "work related activity" (working with extra support etc). The general idea is to stop people claiming the benefit when they can work.

However, there are questions surrounding the contract between the government and Atos. Some people believe that they are paid more to declare people fit to work - thus causing the government to have to pay out less.

Now, when the complaints first started (on shows like Saints & Scroungers, Rip Off Britain etc), I just thought it was one of those few that slip through the net, as always happens. A few stories of someone with severe asthma, someone with trouble walking, ones like that. These people had either worked for most of their life and then had to stop, or attempted to work but physically couldn't. They also have multiple health records from their GPs and doctors in hospital proving they are ill. Yet their assessors would look at them on one day, ask them a few questions and decide their capacity to work based on that short time. As one arthritis sufferer said, "I have good days and bad days. You can't judge based on a single day."

It caught my attention when these little stories popped up repeatedly did I think something was up. Looking into it, it seems that Atos have declared that nobody is disabled and everybody is fine. Woo! Good thing they've sponsored the Paralympics.

Wait, what?

Yes, amid all their controversies, they thought it was suitable.

But that is not a point I shall explore.

I find myself much without an ending, as anything I say can be said better in an old article by Mark Steel. See you in a fortnight.
http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/views/mark-steel-odd-choice-for-a-paralympics-sponsor-8091782.html

I dislike making excuses.

But since Kingsoft Office:
- Threw away my work
- Refuses to now open

I cannot post until tomorrow (I type all of my posts into a word processor for spelling, grammar and formatting purposes)

Hate that this is the second time in a row that I've done this, argh! Might have to change posting day to Saturday at this rate.

Competition

A fortnight round-up:
- Apparently, the state of our country is so dull the BBC decide that both the state of American politics and weather are more important than something Nick Clegg said, and so in the morning I had to wait until the third news story before I actually heard about something that happened in Britain.
- Nick Clegg said something unimportant about tax, which doesn't affect me as I don't earn anything.
- Burma took loads of people off their blacklist
- Mitt Romney says so many stupid things I'm happy he's not running for PM in the UK
- Exam boards ruin children's future
- Lack of communication with my school means I don't know my results until the beginning of term
- Everybody buys Paralympic tickets before me :(

But today, I shall talk about statistics, sports and schools.

After the Olympics, in which Team GB won more or less everything when it came to cycling (the general consensus is that Rio shouldn't bother building a velodrome and just give us all the golds for cycling instead), the government needed to think how to build a legacy after hosting the Games, a promise which awarded the city the Games in the first place. And so, discussion of sport provisions in schools was brought up.

This is where Gove and I differ (as is the case on many education issues). He believes that, in order to get kids into sport, the minimum amount required is an hour per day. Per day! I agree that's good for personal fitness, but it has no place in schools. The average (state) secondary school has a six hour day. Five one-hour lessons and an hour of break (although I do know one school in the South East that does two three-hour lessons a day instead). Within a week, currently, two hours of sport are squeezed in. And in the GCSE years, few people ever participate in these two hours anyway, at least that's what the situation is for the two lower-set groups in my year. I'm a lower set, and whilst I don't fake notes, I haven't done full-blown participation all year either (I missed about a week of lessons to paint a flag, of all things). We're a sports college (apparently one of the first sixteen in the country), and so you'd expect the school to do something to tackle the fact that very little participation happens in the upper years both in general PE and on the sports day. But no, they cease to care past your third year. What they do care about, however, is the few groups that go to other schools and play. It makes them look good on paper, to the cost of most of the students.

What we need is a better variety of sport. If you're bad at a sport, you'll dislike it. If you dislike it, you're disinclined to play it. In my last school, I had to play rounders (Google it if you don't know. It's a little bit like softball) all day, every day for quite a few weeks during my final term. Of course, now I know how to play rounders, and so do many of my old schoolmates, but it doesn't mean we like it. We still groan and put little effort into each game. More hours of sport won't change that. The sports I choose to do are fencing, kayaking and snowboarding. I'm not a fast runner, particularly good field athelete nor can I swim very well. According to my school, I'm not a very sporty person. The only reason I ever managed to access those sports was due to enough personal drive to actually want to do something. I'll be honest, I'm not the greatest at any of the three, but I enjoy them enough to search out for clubs and opportunities to play them. If a student looks to be failing or disinclined to play in the sports the school has on offer, then maybe they'd enjoy an alternative sports. That way, everyone gets a chance to find something they like. And obviously, every school in the country won't have the opportunity to ferry multiple children here, there and everywhere weekly to do each and every sport that they excel it, but there can be compromises. If someone shows they participate in a club outside of school, and it's not a sport the school offers, then why not allow a child out of one lesson a week, or allow them to practise that sport within the lesson (if possible). There, you've got everybody involved in sport for two hours a week.

Making someone do something they dislike over and over won't make them enjoy it, however letting them do something they enjoy once will make them do it over and over.

Trains

So, I postponed a day, which gives me fifteen days to summarise (this may become a regular thing):
- Assange hides in a building and more or less messes everybody up
- The Olympics end and everybody cries
- Cameron/Clegg say something idiotic
- Milliband replies with something equally idiotic
- America messes in affairs it probably doesn't need to mess in
- Richard Branson stopped being smug about everything.
- I have a birthday
- I gain an addiction to iced gems
- I buy lots of books and am very happy.

But today, I was going to do something about YA novels but instead, I shall rate the state of our trains. For those not in the know, the trains (and possibly stations, but that would need checking) are controlled by private companies, with the rail lines themselves belonging to National Rail. On my way from one parent to another, I can travel on up to three companies (four types of train).

-- The Southern Service

I have always found their seats to be a bit worn, but at least they always have enough. I've never had to stand on a Southern train, and I have taken some pretty high-demand trains before. The train sometimes rocks a tiny bit, but it's barely noticable. They are also always quiet, and as they have few windows they have a good air-conditioning service, so yesterday I was quite cold despite it being horribly muggy outside. Unfortunately, there's no designated luggage holder other than above the seats, which I can't lift my suitcase up to. 8/10

-- First Great Western (Short-haul)

These trains are deployed when the journey is max an hour and a half. There are always newspapers on the seats, and there are either too many seats and I feel like we're being packed in like cattle, or there are not enough seats and I stand for an hour. They also rock a lot and I feel quite unsafe. In lieu of air-conditioning a few windows open by a fraction. As a result yesterday I was boiling hot and was actually tempted to add another change to my journey in order to get on a Southern train faster. However no matter how small the train there is always a luggage holder about mid-carriage. 5/10

-- First Great Western (Long-haul)

These trains are in service for journeys over about an hour/hour and a half. I've used this type of train about seven times, however only once have I found a train that gives you the four/six seat with a table set up, and even then it was only in one carriage. The taps in the toilets never work, and again it packs everybody in like cattle. I don't remember seeing many windows, so there was possibly air-conditioning. The train rocks and is so loud that I feel like I'm travelling in a tin can at times. There is a buffet car, although I've only ever bought water on them. As they generally get holidaying passengers, their luggage holds are very generous. My main gripe is the fact their is no "Open Door" button on the inside of the train, and to open the door you must pull the door window down, reach out the train and push the handle down. 7/10

-- Arriva Trains Wales

I have never wanted to travel on a train service less. The carriages are too thin to hold four seats and a decent walkway across, and so everybody is SQUISHED in. There are also never enough carriages and I rarely get a seat. Unlike FGW, they don't bother with a buffet car and instead try a trolley service. Of course, the carriages only fit the trolley if nobody else is on the train, so I spend most of the journey with overpriced sandwiches shoved in my face. The toilets are blocked and never work, let alone the taps. The tin-can feel is worse in these trains than in FGW ones. 4/10

Postponed.

I've been with sparse internet all week, and I've been travelling all today.
 
As a result, I shall postpone today's post until tomorrow.

The Book Thief

Okay, I'm going to be a little lazy because it's the summer holidays and my brain has gone to mush. This'll probably be short and it's a glorified review. Basically, a friend of mine would like to sell some things on Etsy (if it ever gets done I'll let you know) and so we've been racking our brains for quotes etc. One line in question is a line from The Book Thief - "I am haunted by humans". It gave me a chance to revisit this book, and I'll talk about it a little bit this week.

If you exist you've probably heard of this book, The Book Theif by Markus Zusak. It follows a little girl, named Liesel Meminger, who is growing up during WWII in Germany. She was "given up" by her mother as a little girl and lives with a loving, if poor, family on Himmel Street. On the train to meet this new family, her brother dies. It is then that Liesel steals The Gravedigger's Handbook. This is the first of many books she shall eventually steal.

What makes this book different is the fact it's narrated by Death. It's a piece of experimental literature, obviously. The chapters are littered with sub-titles and pictures, at one point the pages are taken up by a story that one character writes to Liesel with. Death comes across as a strange character. He often distances himself from the fact he has to collect the dead souls, talking of it as if it is nothing but a job. Yet other times he focuses on nothing but the fact he has to collect the dead souls, and will spend many pages talking about it. Death, in a way, acts exactly as you would expect him to.

The Book Thief is a rich book, one that I read like fluid yet took in every word. It's a beautiful one, a book that some might find to gimmicky and difficult to read. If you ever get the chance to read it, I'd advise it without a pause. See you in a fortnight.

Paralympics

If you're a person with a basic grasp of maths, you've probably gathered by now that the Olympic Games are this year. And, if you've got an even better grasp of current affairs, you'll know they're happening in London. And if you've been gifted with knowledge of geography and my life, you'll know that I happen to reside in the same country as the Olympics.

I've put up with the hoohah. Read the newspaper every night as yet another scandal of minor proportions breaks out. Laughed at the sheer accuracy of Twenty Twelve. Watched with interest at the multiple documentaries. Clapped with a small amount of interest as the Olympic Torch was run around my school's astro turf. Done my bit, basically.

But today, I'm not going to talk about the Olympics. I'm going to talk about the Paralympics.

It's a little like women's football, isn't it? We say we should care more about it, that you can get all the same enjoyment from a women's football game than a men's, yet as I sit here watching the GB/Sweden game, I can do little but feel a little downtrodden at the fact the stadium is near-empty.

Recently, I watched a documentary called Murderball. It's the story about the US wheelchair rugby team and their intense rivalries between the Canadian team. It was very good and I'd advise that you all try to watch it at some point. So when the Paralympic tickets were released, I looked into getting tickets to watch wheelchair rugby.

I expected them to be around £60/£70 each, and was fairly shocked to find they were only £15. Although they're sold out, I looked up the Men's Final (and award ceremony) tickets prices. Some tickets were £30, but the rest all £15. I looked also for Wheelchair Fencing, which has the similar prices. All the tickets on sale for Wheelchair Fencing, including the finals and awards ceremonies, are £15 a pop.

Lies, I cried to myself. I knew some tickets were cheap, but surely the award ceremonies are not that cheap! Maybe it's a system glitch? Should I check back later?

I wondered if this pattern continued in the Olympics. I checked Fencing. Not a single ticket cost as low as £15. Yes, one or two could be found for £20, but on the whole they'd cost between £30-£60. The only difference I can see is the Paralympics are a few weeks later and the players aren't standing. They've still worked for this for years. They're still elites.

This also occurs in the Opening/Closing Ceremonies. Olympics: Opening - £20.12-£2,012 Closing - £20.12-£1,500. Paralympics: Opening - £20.12-£500 Closing - £20.12-£350.

So in a week's time, when the Olympics open, I won't be cheering on our athletes. They've got enough support already. I'll hold on until the 29th August, when the Paralympics open. Because they'll probably be forgotten about.

This is you. This is you on Art.

A small roundup of things that have irritated me over the past fortnight, as I can't be bothered to do a full blog post on them:
- House of Lords reforms
- Benefits reforms
- NHS reforms (I don't care which ones, but they're bound to annoy me)
- The pointing out of the bleedin' bloody obvious (50% of youth crimes happen by just 5% of youth! Oh, really?)
- The difficulty in reading The Colour of Magic
- The fact CERN found the Higgs' boson before I had a chance to visit.
- Coursework
- My school's concern with the colour of the bins versus disrespectful and rude supply teachers.
- My school's concern with litter versus the leaks, cracks and general disrepair of the school itself.

Well, Coursework is something I'm going to talk about, but I needed to put it on that list.
I'm coming to the end of my first year of GCSE now, and now is the time for coursework. Now, I've been doing BTEC in Art all year, so I'm conditioned to coursework. But what's taken me by surprise is the sheer amount of coursework. Once I spent a good three weeks staying after school in catch-up in order to finish one piece of bloody work. I took Art as my relaxing subject, and it's taking the bulk of my time! To add to that, I've lost many weekends catching up with acrylic painting.

This week, I've had to do four catch-ups in a row (Tuesday - Friday). French coursework, followed by IT and double English, all in the name of coursework. To add to that, I've had to go to many coursework-y lessons which generally incurs lots of homework.

It's a sludge that never ends. This English coursework is my seventh (and eighth) piece this year alone. One piece would end, another would begin. Actually, having two teachers means I'm doing two pieces at a time. It's just so much work.

And so this brings me to the title. Take a look at yourself. Hopefully, you'll look clean, awake and happy. Now remove most of your sleep time, cover yourself in paint (and/or Indian Ink) and replace that smile with a worn-down look of frustration. This is you on Art.

A Tory Government

If you'd like a bit of trivia that I'm likely to bring up time and time again, it's that the constituency I live in and the surrounding ones (mostly ones heading North into Kent) are the most comfortable Tory seats in the country. I hate the Conservatives. I'm a middle class white British citizen living in Sussex with siblings in private schools, and I hate the Conservatives. With fear of parroting every journalist in the world at the moment, I've always felt that the Conservatives only have interests with making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Of course, being neither, it would be safe to assume that I would remain unaffected by either of these polar ends. Sadly not.

One of the great joys of teenage life is the GCSE/A level/Early Uni years time. This is mostly what this fortnight's post is about. I had to take my Physics GCSE exam a few hours ago, and the exam barrage will get worse next year. I don't really care about taking all these exams. They're what, 50/60% of my exam? The rest is taken with coursework ('cept for my BTEC, which is of course all coursework).

But it sounds like this is going to not happen as much. Mike Gove (Gotta love that man*) is planning to change both the GCSE and A level courses. For those not in the know, he wants to lesson the pressure of coursework and rely more on the end-of-year exams. He also wants to rely more on the end of two-years for A levels, meaning fewer or even no more AS Levels. Finally, he wants to abolish the seperate exam boards and have one per subject.

What he wants is harder exams that "really challenge bright pupils" or something to that effect. This is twinned with the removal of many practical subjects, known by their BTEC Level 1/2/3 tag. A small problem with that is, walk into an average secondary school and you have pupils who are disruptive. They often aren't the "bright pupils" that Gove wants to "really challenge". Often they can't sit still through a one hour lesson, let alone a three hour exam. These are the pupils that the practical subjects were made for. If they do manage to sit through their GCSE's, they're probably going to be D's or lower. Chances are they'll wind up jobless and be a strain on the benefit system. At least with the practical subjects they can prove they have skills in something like plumbing and get work. Yes, they're not about to be accepted into Oxford with these qualifications, but it's better than nothing.

However, as a "bright pupil" (I've had my time on a Gifted + Talented register before now), I'm not mad about the removal of practical subjects. I'm angrier about the possible demise of AS levels. When I go to my sixth form, I want to take a French AS. I'm not great at French, but I want more than a GCSE in it. So many people choose to do this, in fact, that my intended sixth form rarely run the full French A level. The AS is a great way to just get a little extra in the way of languages while not over-stretching yourself. My life is roughly planned around this AS level. I wouldn't be surprised if this format copied itself around the country. The Government are forever complaining about the lack of take-up of languages by students. Are they seriously so stupid as to not realise that the loss of AS levels could mean the demise of good French, German and Spanish speakers among Brits?

Alas, when I finally calm myself down about my future, the Tories find another way to fuck it up again. Way to go, Mike. Way to go, Dave.
And Nick, don't think the £9k limit has been forgotten about.

*that was sarcasm, by the way.

Fanfiction

Recently, I started playing Final Fantasy (FF XIII, if you must know). And this morning, I was debating painting a scene from it. Fanart in it's purest form. I always paint things I like.

I also debated writing some fanfiction of it. People who know me well know I'm not a fanfiction kind of person. I wrote one or two pieces a couple of years ago, and I read a piece or so when specifically asked to. So I think the desire to write fanfiction surprised me.

It's funny how these kind of things pan out. Until about eighteen months ago, I wasn't aware any browser but Internet Explorer existed (still use IE), while many other people stopped using IE the second they were able to. While some write nothing but fanfiction and that's all they've done for ages, I just can't write it at times. Like, I sit down and I'm just embarrased to write.

Fanfiction is something I've only recently heard of, so I probably just need more footing in it. Yet it seems to be gaining more ground, but I don't know whether that's always been the case. By "more ground" I mean the Fifty Shades series being a Twilight fanfiction, and major similarities (bordering on plagarism, I'd say) between Carrier of the Mark (Leigh Farron) and Twilight.

I asked, is fanfiction going to become popular enough for it to be published in the mainstream? I already know of a Panic! At the Disco fanfiction (The Heart Rate of a Mouse) that's over 300,000 words, I think as far as twice that length. You can actually buy copies of it off the internet. Of course, it's self-published. But if you think through fandoms, if you belong to one, there's always "that fanfic". Sometimes it's just a one-shot, or it's very short, and others it's as long as THRoaM. How many of them could be available to get online in time?

Fanfiction is the way into writing for some writers. All I'm thinking is, it could be a way into reading for some readers.

And as for that fanart, I decided with a scene from Palumpolum.

8 - 12 Age Range

This was going to be another angry week. But then I had ice cream and I started hallucinating about unicorns or something so I'm going to talk about my History GCSE.

Well, not specifically my History GCSE, but that topic shall come up. Right now, in fact. In the GCSE course my school runs (and so, I take) a topic about Medicine through Time. For the past year, I have had to suffer my mixed-ability class ("Miss, I know you've been teaching us this for the past six weeks, but can you repeat everything because I have the memory of a goldfish?" ¬_¬), as we learnt about Galen etc.

I have also started watching Horrible Histories, because at heart I am five years old. Recently, I've discovered as I plough through the series, it is pretty much teaching me my course. Yes, I am only scraping by in History because I watch a show for eight to twelve-year olds.

It's shown on the CBBC channel, which was roughly my life until I was about... eleven. I would spend hours watching The Story of Tracy Beaker, Young Dracula and Blue Peter, to the point where I was banned from watching TSoTB because "my attitude was suffering". Now, they show CBBC on BBC One until 5;15, but back when I was younger and had only four channels on my telly it wasn't, and I watched The Weakest Link instead.

What brought on my little trip into my past? Recently, in the paper, they announced the removal of various programmes from CBBC while it aired on the BBC One channel. This includes Blue Peter.

Not Blue Peter! The glorious show that most people under the age of fifty have spent a childhood watching Blue Peter. And I'm fairly sure that because it's on BBC One many adults still watch it too. By moving it solely to CBBC, the chance is it'll lose many of it's viewers. Why? I'm going to answer this in the form of something I once yelled at one of their continuity presenters.

"Why are you here, and not on the CBBC channel?!"
"BECAUSE I AM NOT BETWEEN THE RECOMMENDED EIGHT TO TWELVE AGE RANGE!"

Community

I was going to talk about something or other that came under the title "Advertising". However something happened recently that made me so bloody angry that I'm going to leave that for another time, and talk of this instead.

There are many things that annoy me about my town, the lack of rail links, lack of decent shops, lack of any form of life. I can't change these, and don't particularly care enough about my town to try. Despite this, I am on my school's council, so we can raise important issues for them to politely ignore.

Now, in one part of the school there is a gate and a path, next to a couple-of-tennis-courts size space of grass, which was next to two tennis courts. The majority of students who attend my school go through this side path (there are only three other ways into the school). This gate looks onto a main road, ten minutes one way and you're through the town centre, half an hour the other and you're at the train station. So you can imagine at school run time, with kids for my school and two close by, the road gets pretty busy. Past the area my school grounds cover and past the adjoining school, is a set of traffic lights. I use these traffic lights every day to get home.

In the morning, the road is blocked up with cars dropping children off to school. Yet this does not mean that the cars go slowly. Kids being kids, they'll happily run straight across the road without looking. I can't move for times I've seen near-misses and skids of cars as they struggle to brake. This happens to the ones who are too lazy to walk to the traffic lights and cross there. It's worse after school, when parents have queued up outside for half an hour or so (my step dad once needed to pick me up, he got there half an hour early and it was already full with waiting parents). The same children who go to run across the road in the morning do the same in the afternoon, only this time from behind parked cars. The braking and such gets much, much worse.

Bear with me, I'm getting to the point. So I went to a school council meeting yesterday, where we began discussing a new hydrotherapy pool that's been built on the grounds (my school grounds are actually two schools, one is for special needs children. As a result, we have strange doors in walls that lead to the second school. Think Coraline). This pool sits on this couple-of-tennis-courts size space of grass. In this conversation, the leader of this meeting admitted that this space was actually going to become a roundabout, so we didn't get the backlog of cars in the afternoon. What happened? The local residents, the people who live across the road, refused to allow it.

And now I'm at the point. Surely it would not be better to allow the roundabout and stop the traffic? Stop the children running out from between parked cars? Quite a few of the local residents would have bought their house knowing there was three school in a very close-knit block. They would have known things like this would prop up. Why would they be so selfish as to prevent the building of something that would help hundreds of people, every day, to the possible minor inconvenience of themselves? The same argument goes to the proposed creation of a zebra crossing just outside this gate.

I may not be an active member of community, but if I needed, I would take a small amount of time from my day to help the greater good. These people would only have to bear with -shock horror- a slightly different method of traffic for about an hour five days a week. They need to stop being so bloody selfish, grow up and help many schoolchildren get home slightly safer every day.

Save the Papers!

The other day, I went to read an article written by a journalist working for The Sunday Times on their website (I hadn't bought the paper as The Independent on Sunday is my Sunday paper of choice). I was slightly dismayed to discover that if I wanted to read any of their articles it would cost me between £1-£6 per week. But then, when I thought of it, the cost was justified. By going on the internet to read the news, I was adding to the slow but inevitable death of the newspaper.

Funny thing for me to talk about, don't you think? A teenager growing up in the age of the internet, practically born with a phone in one hand. Yet for a few years now, I've read the paper every night before going to sleep. At first The Sun, before moving on to The Independent, and now the i (since day two!). It's something I don't even register nowadays, just a force of habit, a daily occurrence, like eating breakfast or making tea as soon as I get home.

As the internet has become more widespread, and the idea of instant news has become more commonplace. Why buy a newspaper for £1 when you've read everything on Twitter? Why read all the news that's broken late night yesterday when you can read news that's broken five minutes ago? Newspapers are becoming worryingly redundant as more people turn to the internet.

So why do people still bother? A main problem with this internet is that with so many sources, it's hard to know who to trust. Who's reliable, who's biased, who's parroting rumours, etc. Reporting the facts has been done in so many ways it's dissolved into slush. We need newspapers (and their articles posted online) to give us quality reporting. Our lives would be dominated by pathetic gossip that's difficult to trust and impossible to regulate.

An industry like newspapers has been around for many, many years. Measures like paying to read stories on the internet are just a response to change, a method of keeping their heads above water. Annoying, yes. Necessary, yes.

Lego

Yesterday, my mum bought me some lego. No occasion, just some lego. Apparently, I can make it into three different shapes! Planes, boats, cars! A world of imagination, for under £4!

When I was younger, I won a competition. I had to build an object out of lego, so I built a spaceship. As a prize, I won "Clickits" (A whole week before they came out nationwide!), and a big tub of lego. Sadly, I don't have the tub anymore, but I do have memories of endless days of lego building.

Lego is great fun, at any age. It's one you can never resist playing, no matter who you are and who you're playing with. It's also bloody expensive, when you get the branded stuff. Lego Star Wars a key example (You can get anything in Star Wars brand these days). For a kit building the Millennium Falcon, they want over £100 for it! No thanks, I'd rather spend my money on books.

But no-one really cares whether or not it costs extortionate amounts, because when the plastic is torn off the packet, and the little pieces are strewn across the carpet, nothing really matters except the lego. All the pieces of an impossible puzzle, with a terrible instruction guide that you wouldn't understand even if you were paid.

At the end of the day, no-one cares about the lego. They don't care about the hours of fun that ensue. But they bloody well care about the pain that shoots through a bare foot in the middle of the night.

Laziness

A quick introduction before I start the main post. Yes, I forgot to post last week and I'm sorry. Two hours of French fits badly with having to write afterwards. Also, this post is a tad lazy as it's a speech I'm forced to write for English. The topic's Things I would put in Room 101. Enjoy, see you in a fortnight.

---

"Above all, I wouldn't hesitate to put paranormal romance novels in Room 101. There are very few things I hate more.

Do I really care about some unconnected, 2D characters fall in love with a pale, muscle-y bloke who reinforces a bad image of masculinity? I wouldn't mind if I didn't have to wade through a pathetic slush pile to get to any kind of quality.

It's getting too popular for its own good. Some nearly-author sends off their paranormal romance manuscript and of course it's going to get published. An agent receives a half-legible story and they just know they'll be bathing in money by the end of the week.

Paranormal romance falls, sadly, under the umbrella of sci-fi/fantasy. I search for fantasy novels and young adult romance novels always come up. I see a book about the Devil. Brilliant! Always wanted to know to what Lucifer gets up to on a day-to-day basis. Yet no. It's a bleeding love story. I don't care about his love life, I care about his general evilness. He is Devil, after all.
One thing that gets me, though, is the readers of it. The fangirls, and I can assure you that 90% of them shall be female, are possibly the second most abhorrent type of fangirl. They shall squeal and scream, metaphorically, at every twist of the book. Boring, lifeless character A snogs boring, lifeless character B. Big deal!

It's not how they read, and subsequently share on the internet, the books. It's how they buy them. Fellow sf/f fans shall agree that being an sf/f fan is like being in Fight Club. You don't talk about it. The idea is you walk into the bookshop, hunched over and silent. You paw through a few books, although it's more likely you'll know what you're looking for, find one that looks nice and buy it, then go home. I find para-romance readers go to the section with an entourage of friends. They giggle loudly as they talk about dud pararomance book number eight and how it's just come out, smugly hinting to the world they've read the whole series. Congratulations, you can read!

Once they've finally bought it, after half an hour of talking about who has decided to play hard to get more or which character had his shirt off the most in the last book, their pompousness doesn't stop. They decide to continue to talk about every minor detail to all their friends as they walk out of the store. Who is going to sleep with who, how great it would be as a movie (tip: it wouldn't) and how many more books they can buy. Must I refer back to my Fight Club analogy? You can talk about the book in a highly detailed and legible review, and that's it. Discussing out of the house, and out of sci-fi conventions, is a major no-no.

So, as a message to every reader of Meyer, Clare and whoever else you care to name. Think about what you're about to read, think really hard. And then go read something better."

Personal Injury Claims

This morning, I discovered that I would be allowed to go on a school trip. Nothing much interesting in itself, although it's actually intended for students about a year older than me. A main concern was that because all the health and safety forms had been filled in for "older" students, the insurance wouldn't cover GCSE-age ones. And there's my buzzword. Health and Safety.
 
After the recent cold snap, half my school was cornered off with "exposed electrical wire" tape (well, it was bright yellow...), so nobody would slip on the ice. This meant that anyone who would have normally gone around there was forced to go through the corridors. And trying to get over one thousand students through the tiniest piece of corridor in a five minute time frame... let's just say it isn't pretty. Here's a better idea: Salt the heck out of the "dangerous" areas, instead of throwing kids in isolation set them to digging up the ice, and get the whole thing clear within a day or so. However, you should never apply logic when it comes to my school.
 
Years ago, many, many years ago, I was wearing Heeleys (wheels in heels, heels with wheels). Being about nine years old, I was wheeling along, clinging onto my mother's arm when we got stopped by a bloke. Apparently, I wasn't allowed to wheel along because of "health and safety reasons". Of course, my mother ignored him and we carried on as normal.
 
My mother then recently was involved in a minor car accident. And by minor I mean minor - her car was shunted from behind hard enough to leave a scuff. The offending car's owner immediately ran out of his car, scared to death of having a personal injury claim placed against him.
Why? She didn't have whiplash, why should she claim on it?
 
Adverts all the time say that we should claim on the broken arm we recieved last week and so on. Sure, you may get a payout now for the whiplash you don't really suffer from, but it'll only cause a letter to come through your door announcing a rise in car insurance. Risk assessments and "health and safety reasons" are becoming more about eliminating risks than managing it. If this continues on in this fashion, it may become harder for students to cheekily go on trips that are offered to older years. But then, do I really care about younger years?

Help

Last week, I decided to try 3D art. I do lots and lots of 2D traditional work, but none of 3D. After multiple failed attempts at mini wire people, I thought about trying clay models. However, then is a moment when you realise how much you know about other medians in comparison to clay. So, to be lovely and helpful to people wanting to start out in 2D media, I'm going to write a little help guide that shall hopefully be picked up on google.
 
Basic Drawing
Drawing with pencils is something everybody does. First off, I'll recommend looking at Andrew Loomis books (found here: http://alexhays.com/loomis/). Second, basic printer paper and your average HB pencil will do fine for the most part. If you want something more, there are different pencils and papers and such.
Paper. On the front of sketchpad there'll be the gsm/cm number. If you're thinking of bog-standard drawing with a pencil, then anything will work (however it's cheaper and easier to get something below 100gsm/cm). However, if you're thinking of expanding to watercolour pencils, watercolour, ink or anything of the sort, it's best to stay in the 150-200gsm/cm range.
Pencils. For large, smudgy work (by large and smudgy, I mean A5-A4 face/body shots), then look to the "B" range. Your average pencil shall be a HB, or possibly 2B. The further you go down "B" (2B, 4B, 6B, 8B are common), the pencils get darker, but smudge easier. If you actually intend to smudge the pencil work, go for 4B. Better yet, buy a set. However, for graphics work (smaller, more precise work. Most designs like paisley patterns are graphics), you want to go down the "H" range. See why the HB pencil is called that now? The "H" pencils get lighter and harder as you go up the range (H, 2H, 4H, 6H are common). You can buy sets that go from 6H - 8B for about a fiver.
 
Watercolour
Watercolour can be pretty expensive very easily, unless you buy a cheap Reeves set and stick to that. Other "compact" sets, such as Aquafine by Daler Rowney, can be slightly more expensive, but still good value for money. I personally avoid the small tubes of paint, but it's a matter of personal opinion.
There are two styles of watercolour - graphic style, quite detailed and bold. Graphic styles are mostly either facial shots or fantasy works. The other is what I call "vague" styles. These are mostly landscapes, and are fairly washed out and have little detail by comparison.
You can get three types of watercolour paint - full pans, half pans and tubes. A cheap Reeves set shall have full pans, Aquafine by Daler Rowney normally has half pans (it's a range, but their most popular one has half pans), and tubes don't come in boxes. Although half pan sets are the most expensive originally, replacement colours are normally the cheapest and easiest to find. A word of warning however - half pans sets rarely come with white (or "Chinese White"), so I advise buying a tube of it to go with your set.
Paintbrushes come in all sizes, but the ones you want to look for in a shop are blue-handled ones. I don't really see much difference and get along fine with a multipack of 20 for a pound, but if you have the cash it's best to invest in a £5+ watercolour brush. There are a few different shapes of brush, some are flat, some round and some that look a tad like a fan. When you're a complete newbie to watercolour and just want practise, a round brush that looks reasonably sized is good. Then, before buying many shapes of expensive brushes, try a multipack of cheap brushes to see what shape works for you.
Paper. If it's above 150gsm/cm, watercolour paintings shouldn't sink through to the next page. 150gsm/cm paper is ideal if you're looking to do drawings with small amounts of watercolour (or watercolour paper). 250-300gsm/cm paper is expensive, but great for solely watercolour pieces.
 
Acrylic
I love acrylic. It's almost like cheap oil paints, but a lot easier to use. Because it's such a thick paint, unlike watercolour, a mistake can easily be rectified by another layer of paint.
You can work on both canvas and paper for this. If I've got a brand new canvas (board), I might do a test run on paper first.
If using paper, stick to over the golden 150gsm/cm mark. 200-250gsm/cm is pretty good for acrylic. Then there's canvas on a wooden frame, canvas boards and canvas by the metre. Canvas by the metre is fairly advanced and I'd wait until you don't need a random guide on the internet before using it. Canvas boards are cheaper, but can be harder to find in a size you want, I personally prefer canvas boards. Canvas on a wooden frame are the most common, but also pretty expensive.
Paintbrushes are most recognisable by their long handles, and are what make up the majority of cheap multipacks. My art teacher said in passing that expensive ones are made from sable hair, I think it was. A flat brush of a smallish size is good for A5 size painting, and a flat brush of middling size (nearly the width of two fingers) is good for A4 size painting.
The paint looks confusing, although if you can get your hands on a multipack that's ideal. I recommend Daler Rowney's Simply... Acrylic range (I use Daler Rowney for nearly everything). It's pretty cheap, but it's thinner than other, more expensive types. I've never found it as a problem though. Things such as System 3 are almost twice the price, but are a lot thicker and can last longer. Whatever brand you choose, make sure to stick to the same one for your painting. Buying two brands and mixing them together can sometimes cause lumpy paint, and in some cases one colour is completely swallowed by the other no matter how much paint you add.
Once finished with the acrylics, all paint needs to be washed out of the brush asap otherwise the brush shall be ruined. It can be washed out with water, unlike oil paints. It also washes out of clothing.
 
Pen and Ink
Before you start - ink shall stain everything it comes into contact with, including skin (however ink shall wash out of skin evantually). It's best to wear old clothes when finding your feet with it.
Drawing Ink is it's proper name. The most common colour is black, but many colours are available to buy if you're willing to look hard enough. A fair price for a 15ml bottle is £5. Water can be added to it to wash it down.
All paper above the 150gsm/cm mark is fine. Think, will the paper take a Sharpie? Will the paper take a really skinny Sharpie? If the answer is yes, it'll take ink.
Watercolour brushes can be used, but the most generally accepted form is pen. They can be hard to find, but if the packet says "calligraphy pen" it should be fine. The pen nibs can be bought seperately, but they're mostly found in independent art shops. You can put the pen nibs in dedicated pens, but you can also stick them to the end of pencils, which is what I do.
 
 
Hope you find that helpful, see you in a fortnight.

YouTube

Now, I was going to talk about the snow, and having lots of it. Talk about Britain, and it's reliably bad coping of the weather. And also talk about living in the South East, and bearing the original large batch of snow. But I won't, because that's boring. Google "Britain snow blog" and you'll inevitably come up with some complaint or another. So I'll mention vlogging instead.
 
Vlogging is a strange thing. I've found it's more a teenager/uni student phenomenon, and if you allow ads before your video, it makes sense. Sure, you won't make thousands unless you go viral, but a couple of hundred views on three videos might get you a few pounds (don't ask me for exact figures). If I allowed ads on my blog and I had certain keywords, I could make a living off of this. Of course, that'd probably mean daily posts.
 
So back to vlogging. For those out of the loop, vlogging is video blogging. You sit in front of a camera and talk, or complain. Mostly the latter. Occasionally they'll talk about the world around them, but it's mostly about them. Blogging in any format generally doesn't include "the world" but instead "_____'s world" and the world begins to revolve around them. Hey, I'm not sitting in a large chair on a high mountain laughing at these people. I'm fairly sure I'm like that too.
 
I said vlogging is a strange thing, and it expands out to the entire internet. My Chemistry class, for example. I wouldn't dream of telling them that I have such an addiction to tea that I don't feel I can go abroad. However, I told you this last December. In vlogging, blogging, internetting (Is that a word? It is now.), we all share things, sometimes deeply personal things, that we'd never think of telling a stranger in person.
 
It's easy to forget that we're talking to strangers. In vlogging, when people film a video they're talking for 6-7 minutes, sometimes longer, about their lives. You, as a viewer, are actually sitting there and listening to these people witter on about their financial lives, or their sex lives, or their social lives or just lives in general. In your local pub, how many times have you sat next to someone and willingly listened to them talking about them having a cold for over five minutes? Probably none (And if you have then you must have incredibly social skills and I would like advice within the next thirty seconds cheers). How many times have you watched this on YouTube? I have. Twice.
 
A friend of mine tried vlogging and found it so strange she never did it again. Another does it regularly. And a third has created a joint YouTube account with me and we're going to make this work. We've already posted a video, not a vlog, mind. But we will, eventually.
And yes, we are both teenagers. Predictably.

 I know it isn't Friday, or two weeks since my last post. But it snowed overnight, and I thought it'd be a shame to miss the photo opportunity!

Familiarity

Last Sunday, I was woken late at night by the sound of my mother breaking her ashtray. I was distraught. I don't smoke, although I was rather fond of that ashtray. She bought it when I was about four, when we went to Ibiza. It was a simple ashtray, a little piece of pottery painted with an old style of flowers. I have no idea what exactly possessed her to buy such a thing, it's horribly ugly and in a place like Ibiza, it couldn't have been incredibly cheap either.
 
So, it's ugly, possibly expensive and abnormally large. But now it's broken, and we feel like a great loss has befallen us. It was such a minor thing in our life, mine particularly. Every afternoon I would come home and it'd be there, in the kitchen next to the sink. I'd wake up on Saturday morning and there was the ashtray on the coffee table. The ashtray was a reliable staple in the home, like our microwave (which sadly had to be replaced recently, to the discovery that it was actually filled with water and at risk of exploding at any point).
 
My mum has recently ordered a like replacement off Amazon, but it just won't be the same. It won't have been bought in Ibiza, with euros (I think). It also won't have "Portugal '98" etched in the underside of the pot. In short, it would be a dull mass-market ashtray, rather than a mass-market ashtray bought in a tourist trap of a shop.
 
It's strange, how the smallest of things can be so greatly missed. I don't want to go all wax-lyrical about it, it was just an ashtray. But it was a nice ashtray, one that's been around longer than our residence of the flat in which we inhabit. It's outlived my mum's surname, the television, the sofa and the boiler (twice). As I said, I was quite fond of the ashtray.
I like familiarity. Before now, I've spend hours stitching up the end of the legs of jeans because I didn't want to let them go. Recently I allowed my school shoes to be so ill-fitting they gave me multiple blisters, and were pretty much shredding my feet. Yet I kept them for nearly half a year because they were familiar. Something dependable.
 
Actually, when this ashtray was broken, I offered to glue it back together. It had shattered into a thousand pieces, and yet I still offered to glue it back together. I'm going to miss that ashtray.

Movies

On New Year's Day, Sherlock came back for its second series. It was shown in the UK at 8;10pm, fifty minutes before the official watershed. Naturally, the Daily Mail complained about this show because it existed. Before the 9pm watershed, Lara Pulver (who I know more from Spooks) played Irene Adler... and not much else. She was stark naked, although you couldn't see that. Of the ten million people who watched it, one hundred people complained. Save you doing the maths, that's 0.001% of viewers who had a problem with it.
I personally loved it. Having read the books (well, two), I found the show quite interesting, and subplots were tied into it to keep it interesting. Not only this, the way it was filmed was incredible, especially the texts sent. I also believed it to be cast well, written well and just generally be good.
 
However, not all book-to-movie/tv shows are not this brilliant. I personally thought the Harry Potter movies were badly done. Although the acting was good in places, written well in places, it could have been done better.
Eragon. I watched the last half or so, and it was awful. Yes, the book wasn't incredible, but the ending was just... incorrect.
 
And then there are the successes
A Clockwork Orange. Haven't watched the movie, but it was banned for years, so they must be doing something right.
Stardust. I thought the book and movie was very similar (although Neil Gaiman did help with the screenplay, I've heard)
 
When you watch a book-to-screen conversion, there's always that gamble. One choice, of course, is to never watch the movie (I refused to watch The Spiderwick Chronicles because of how much I love the books), or to never read the book (...yep, I don't have an example to give you). But you always find a sense of emptiness, not being able to enjoy a book on every platform.
This all leads to the release of The Hunger Games in March. I haven't read the book, and don't really intend to (my understanding is that it's a romance novel), however the concept of the movie sounds interesting, and one that I shall most likely see.