Muswell Hill

• The Odeon, despite its limited size and costliness.
• Parkland Walk, for views over London.
• St Pancras Cemetary, for being eerily beautiful in the rain.
• Fortis Green, for its small tea-rooms.
• The Bookshop, for helping me with presents.
• Martin's, for the smell of freshly ground coffee.
• The Yellow Shop, for always being open.
• Chorak, for photography exhibitions.
• Toff's, for being an awesome chippy.
• Coldfall Woods, for being unknown to all but people who walk dogs (me included).
• Ali Pali, for being perennially deserted and having an ice-rink.
• The 134,43,234,102,299,144,W7 and 603 buses
• The Chewing Gum guy, for doing his thing.
• Colney Hatch Lane, for being the end of the Earth.
• Lover's Glade, for being cool.
• Aquarius, for teaching me I'm bad at archery.
• All the people who live there, for being awesome and appreciating this list.

Random

Ian tripped along brightly. He was on his way to meet his lover, Selene, for Valentine's Day. He smiled to see a tamandua hopping along, carrying a gherkin in its mouth.

Ian was almost with a sock when he came across a freakish cake, lying alone on a humorous plate. "That must be a treat from my mutual bear," he said to himself, and tripped over to it. The cake looked clandestine, so he ate it.

It gave him the most chronic tingling sensation in his chuckle. "How unusual!" he said and continued tripping to see Selene.

When Selene came out to meet him, she took one look and fell over.

"What is it?" Ian cried disgustingly.

"Your ankle! And your wrist!" Selene said. "They're silver! Can't you feel it?"

Ian felt his ankle and his wrist. They were indeed quite silver. "Oh, no!" Ian said. "I'm a woman!" He, or rather, she started to cry. "It must have been that freakish cake you left for me. Did you know what it would do?"

"I didn't leave you any cake," Selene said. "I got you a gum. It must have been that challenging man who lives nearby. He acts a little poltergeistly, ever since he sexted a computer."

"But how can you ever love me, now that I'm a woman?" Ian sobbed.

"Well, I never knew how to tell you this," Selene said extremely, "but I actually prefer women. And I think your ankle is really powerful like that."

"Really?" Ian dried her tears. Ian kissed Selene and it was an entirely teal sensation, like one hundred dazzling white racists.

They spent the night having entirely teal sex, until the cake wore off suddenly.

Everything was rather awkward after that.

My Attempt At Being Smart #1

I decided to write this post for 3 reasons. 1) I haven't done one in quite a while. 2) Some philosophical thingies have been weighing on my mind. 3) I wanted to stop that last stupid post from being the one people see when they look at my blog homepage; I seriously had no idea what i was thinking!

I've been thinking quite a lot about morality recently. I don't really want to analyse it too much but some ideas just came to me that weighed on my mind somewhat and i thought i could write something about them. I don't do philosophy or know many terms or anything so all of what i'm going to say will probably be easily and succinctly explained away with either references or jargon as i'm sure it will be. Some people like doing that and i don't hold it against them (you know who you are;)

My first point was the line of morality. In my personal belief, nothing is fundamentally right or wrong. This is easy to accept. It is all relative. In the universal context, there is nothing that says that an act, i.e. murder, is "wrong". Only in the human context, with the human emotional, social, cultural, natural, historical and ideological condition can acts like murder be considered to be classed into one of the two categories of morality.

I take the example of Minority Report because i watched it last week and it has "future stuff" in it. The whole premise is based around the fact; and i quote, that "There's nothing more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us than the untimely murder of one human being by another". Of course, this makes the entire plot of the film completely irrelevant which i found out to my dismay after preaching its message avidly for a time. Does anyone really think that a physic shock wave of energy explodes out from someone as they die? In the same vein; does anyone believe that a mother can feel the death of her child a thousand miles away? There is nothing extra-natural about human existence! We are simply individual consciousnesses, desperately trying to do anything to avoid thinking about the fact that we live unbelievably short existences, in addition to convincing ourselves that these short existences must have a meaning. We imprint morality on ourselves so as to bring definition to this world of infintely high-functioning chaos. I kinda feel all depressing talking about this stuff, but it's genuinely what i think and i'm in the mood to talk about it so whatever.

My second point is hopefully less depressing. Understanding the human context is just as important as understanding the universal one, and in my opinion much more difficult. Humanity is driven by definites. What is. What isn't. We shut ourselves away from the indefinites because they "aren't real". Any man or woman who makes a judgement on humanity is doomed to be condemned as a member of humanity. In other words, we cannot impartially evaluate our existence without eliminating our humanity, This leads me on to BSG, which is extremely thought provoking as well as being an awesome TV show (I should be getting paid for this). The Cylons at first appear to provide this impartiality, questioning whether or humanity ever asked itself why it deserved to be saved. However, toward the end they basically become human, coming full circle from single-minded automatons to imperfect human beings. The point is that the humans and the Cylons were one and the same the whole time. Trying to convince ourselves we have no meaning is a waste of time, we just end up at the same null conclusions every time. 

(Sidenote: The problem with philosophy; that it enables someone to continue round and round in circles forever whilst letting them believe they're thinking something new all the time. It will take a paradigm shift to get us out of this infinite loop)

                                                          

When people ask if i believe in a God I say no. This was apparent in Syria when i had a long conversation in the van with the van driver (I know it sounds improbable but I may mention that i was sitting in the front seat next to him and he was a talker, I did not initiate anything) who was devoutly muslim. He went on a pseudo-rant about immorality and lack of faith and stuff; not in a jihadist kill all the Europeans kind of way but in the normal way..,i hope? Anywho, i said that i didn't believe in a God and i said that i believe in Humanity as an abstract. I realise this metaphysical(ises?) the human race and goes contrary to what I said before but it's what i believe; that humanity has the capacity to do everything, go everywhere, see everything. Then he said something profound, that i didn't expect at all. He said that I should think about life, and how the culmination of billions of years of chance heaped upon chance heaped upon more chance had lead to that moment in a minivan in the desert between Bosra and Aleppo and how perfect everything worked from our cells to the stars and how if that wasn't the work of God what was it. I couldn't answer him. In the end I returned to the conclusion that there isn't and there never will be a conclusion, bringing me full circle. Also there is absolutely no difference between enormous coincidence and "fate".

(Sidenote: The man's english wasn't THAT great, so i paraphrased for the purpose of clarity)


That's pretty much it...hope you enjoyed.


(P.S. For those of you versed in BSG folklore, i'm inclined to believe the view that everything has happened before and will happen again; cycles of destruction etc, Also, I really wanted the end to be that the fleet finds Earth, and then nukes come up from the surface and destroys it. Then there's a transition to the oval office and you hear someone say "You did it Mr President; you saved the human race" Then it pans around to reveal that voice was a Cylon's)
(P.P.S I'm posting this late at night/early in the morning so i'm not going to check it for errors. Tough.)

The Cat And The Candy Floss

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers"


(My eyes hurt from all the princelings)


There was once a cat, that liked to eat candy floss. Unfortunately there was not an abundant supply in his ghetto neighbourhood, being far from any carnival or rotisserie. This cat longed for candy floss more than anything in the world! More than mice! More than string! More than even LOVE! His heart yearned for it more than anything in the world. He spent hours of the day, pitifully staring out of the window of his residence; hoping that one day someone would walk by eating some of that precious substance he so coveted. He was consumed by it. He took to google imaging and attempting to eat the subsequent images. Anything pink was instantly destroyed by his anger. Too many a time had he found the candy-floss maker in the Argos catalogue and showed it meaningfully to his owners, only for them to push him away before resuming their heroin fuelled s&m. He shut himself off from the outside world. He no longer went to visit his girlfriend 3 doors down, or his best friends over on Winchester Lane. He hadn't called his mum in 7 cat-weeks!.He was an addict. Completely and utterly beyond hope. It was killing him. His fur had grown mangy and discoloured. He was ghostly thin, and he could barely stand upright for any period of time. It was pitiful. It was disgusting. He couldn't take it anymore.


Then he shot himself.


THE END!

LOTR and other things

'Wit is educated insolence'


(The leftover bits of crisps in one's teeth can amuse one for many hours)


So I'm reading this book. You may have heard of it. It's called 'Nothing happens for ages except for something precious, a midget and an old guy succeeding in preventing things from passing'. If you guessed classic Disney animated feature 'UP!' then you were partially INCORRECT! I am of course rambling about 'The Lord Of The Rings; The Fellowship Of The Ring'. This engagement/wedding comedy turned fantasy epic is probably one of the greatest works of high fantasy ever written. It makes me cry when i talk to people who've only seen the films; mainly because they were SO AWESOME but also because it reminds me of the painstaking hours i spent reading this slightly difficult trilogy. I've just got to Rivendell and it's been 200 pages of Shire-centric shenanigans (promised myself i'd get that word in ^^), which suffice it to say get only a little wearisome after a while.



Unfortunately this is why i love the books. The precise detail and reality of such a different world to our own is astounding and i can understand why Tolkien was considered pioneering. However; my other gripes include the songs; which are hardly relevant or interesting; and the senseless need to name every single person in The Shire! I DON'T CARE! Gee-zus!


In other news, i need to think up suitably apt expressions to use for my end of school yearbook. Also need to think about what to write on the whiteboard i'll be holding up in one of them...Also need to finish the blurbs of my friends that I'm writing, decide on my French oral topic, do my english coursework and not eat way too many Walkers Sensations. I need to do exercise. I think i may take up running; outdoors obvs i don't own a gym membership. I'm gonna go do an essay before reading more of my book then going to bed. ADIOS!


p.s. Someone else had better write a new blog post soon because I'm expecting a certain level of commitment from whatever this is!
p.p.s BOOP! 

Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space. I Liek!

(If you don't like reviews you can go away)


I just finished re-reading Revelation Space; re-affirming its place as probably my favourite from the contemporary sci-fi/space opera genre. I specify this because it can in no way be compared to the philosophical and psychological impacts of the big three: 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. It would be like comparing Dan Brown (first writer that popped into my head don't shoot me!) with Shakespeare: I love them both but for different reasons. In a nutshell; RS is the first and best imo from a trilogy of 3 which, together with some other prequels and novellas make up the Revelation Space universe. It's a multi-narrative dramatic novel centred around human colonising nearby space and mysterious extinction of an ancient species on a different planet millions of years ago.


There are many reasons i like Reynolds's works, though i was mainly drawn to his scientific precision. All the futuristic technology he posits is entirely feasible even today, allowing the reader to be more accepting of them as plot devices. One good example is his use of slower than light-speed travel and the effects of time dilation; evidenced in the novella Dilation Sleep which portrays the emotional aspects of two lovers being separated by dozens of light-years of space. Some believe that the cost of this is low character development. In some of his later novels i think this does apply (most notably Redemption Ark (2/3)), although i think he gets it just right in RS. I found myself loving and hating each character, a test of good characterisation; they are very realistic, despite their worlds being far different to our own. From Khouri's bitchy manipulation to Volyova's bad-assness to Calvin and Dan's witty banter; i  loved it all! It also didn't suffer the pacing issues that Absolution Gap (3/3) suffered, with the action being nicely spread out. The differences between the different human factions are huge, and i particularly like the space-faring Ultras and hive mind Conjoiners. The enormity of the universe they inhabit is reflected in their psyche's, another area where Reynolds hits the nail on the head (lol).The multi-narrative works very well; because the ways in which the stories converge is less obvious than one might imagine.


Though i think, and having read all his other RS universe material subsequently before re-reading the novel, the one reason i like this book more than the others is because it stands alone. Sure, the expansion of the universe through sequels is great, but RS is great in that it doesn't need the other books. One gripe i do have though is that minor characters tend to die pointlessly and often...but i can forgive that :D


I've been told i should be reading Hamilton, whose style is apparently similar to Reynolds's. I also plan to read more Banks. You shall be kept informed...

2012 : What We Learned

"I'm not cynical. Just experienced"


(Just walked around central London listening to Blame It on the Boogie by the Jacksons. That is a TUNE!)


This isn't specifically geographic but i just wanted to make a short list of some things we've learned from Roland Emmerich's doomsday epic 2012:


#1 - Destruction always chases you linearly at a speed relative to the means you're trying to escape from it (on foot, by car, or plane), instead of surrounding you all at once.
#2 - If everything around you is imploding and you're the only one with any flight experience, spend as much time as you can arguing about your pilot qualifications - and then navigate a plane sideways through two crumbling buildings.
#3 - "Fancy machines" are no match for the Mayan's thousands of years of foresight.
#4 - You can walk around the Himalayan Mountains in the winter while waiting to be rescued in your LA summer clothes without even shivering.
#5 - If you think your plane is going to fall of a cliff and it doesn't, don't breath a sigh of relief until you're safely out of said plane
#6 - The Universe stops having its shit fest after 26-27 days.
#7 - If the South Pole is now where Wisconsin was, nobody seems to worry about the new meteorological conditions in South Africa and its new position.
#8 - In the brave new world, the exchange rate between young scientists and old politicians is 20 to 1.
#9 - The size of a city is directly proportional to the probability of said city to be hit by a major catastrophe.
#10 - If you need to pick something up, a super-volcanic explosion will wait for you to get it and will not harm you after it goes off.
#11 - Scientists are unable to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse but are absolutely certain that a massive tsunami will reach the Chinese mountains from a precise direction.
#12 - In any foreign country, it is possible to see the national landmark from any window from any building, as characters have decided to buy an apartment opposite to the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben.
#13 - Move to the horn of Africa.
#14 - Caravans can outrun 900mph Pyroclastic flows.
#15 - Mother Nature is allowed to destroy The Vatican, Christ the Redeemer and the Dalai Lama's residence but if she destroyed Mecca she'd be politically incorrect and suicide bombed.


That is all...

Drunken Fails - Ben Style

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech"

(I need a new prescription in my left contact lens. I'm pretty much Gordon Brown right now.)

It started with an extremely enjoyable party at the Gaardster's where lots of fun(ny) stuff happened (and as usual, mostly not to me; apart from a really long hug with Aryan, long chats with new people and the occasional block (i prefer my girls not drooling/chundering from bingeing)), I went home early (a mistake having heard about all the stuff that happened after) to make sure my bitch hadn't died. Walked home to the comforting sound of Fortismere drunks crying in gutters and made record time! I got in around 12.30. My bitch wasn't dead. All was good in the world once more.


This was when I realised that i wasn't tired at all. I also realised that my room was disgusting. So I went on an alcohol-induced cleaning rampage, which i'm prone to do if you didn't know. First of all i alphabetised my main bookcase. Then my auxiliary bookcase and my secondary bookcase. Then i started the task of sorting through the ridiculously large amount of crap (miscellaneous items, not excrement!) that has been accumulating in my room for the past, i dunno, 2 years maybe? Nearly half of it was doodles and half of the rest was last years work. Anywho, it was around 4am when i got tired and promptly fell asleep into the 8 neatly stacked piles of work/books on my bed (in addition to the 28 covering my floor and desk). I awoke at 8am with my The Duchess of Malfi Act 1 Scene 2 notes uncomfortably stuck to my cheek. Probably the most uncomfortable sleep i've ever had in my life. I could barely move for an hour because my EngLit ring binder was protruding into my back the whole night. My shoulder is also in huge amounts of pain. To make matters worse, as i got up i knocked 50% of my previously neatly stacked work onto 50% of the neatly stacked work on the floor! I also realised that in my drunken haze my bookcases hadn't been "alphabetised", but merely had had all books removed then replaced at odd angles! Spent the whole morning clearing it up.


I think the lesson i've learnt from this experience is to not go home drunk and still have energy. Go home when i'm extremely tired and have expended all energy, to prevent future room-organisation fail. Reasonable huh?


I was thinking for a future post to do something about 2012 and how ridiculously absurd that film is from a geographical perspective.


Anywho...


(p.s. For the purposes of continuity; "my bitch" is my dog Katie. She's awesome :))

Lighter Torches

"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his"


(Pondering...)


Blogs are harder to write than I thought. I thought that i'd be able to rant for hours about trivial and often uninteresting topics; such as the most interesting national flag or the best value blu-tack brand. More effort goes into writing one of these things than i gave credit for. I'm by no means fazed by the challenge though. I have an aim of at least one blog per week. At least for the time being...
I have a cigarette lighter that looks like a fire extinguisher. I don't smoke, mainly because i know i'd get addicted if i started, but i still buy lighters just for the sake of having them (On a side note I saw a king-size lighter in my nearby mini-mart on the way home, will have to buy to show to friends). I bought this one during my trip to Japan last summer, which was one of my favourite holidays EVER btw. Back to the story, this is an awesome lighter, and i'd put a link to a picture if I wasn't so lazy and ignorant as to how to do so. Recently a friend of mine came over and he was looking at it. Then he realised, to my amazement, that the lighter had a torch on it, at the end of what i thought to be a decorative hosepipe connector thingy (you know what i mean!). Feeling a little embarrassed because i hadn't noticed it prior, i proceeded to spend any time i had in front of my computer, which is quite a bit, playing with this torch. 


(I've just realised that this is a stupid/childish story, but I'm so far into writing that i can't be bothered to turn around and change it now)
(I've also realised that because i didn't know how to set font/colour/text size in the first post i'm going to have to make all future posts conform by having them really small in teal and arial bold...melodramatic FML)


Anyhow, I came to the realisation that the colour of your fingers as the light moves under your fingertips is pretty sweet. I thought it'd be a cool art project for someone who did Art or something. I wanted to take a picture of it but the ends of my fingers are fucked up thanks to my nail biting.


In other news...sellotape seraphims
:)

4 Cubes

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"

(If I was writing a novel this would be psychoanalytical auto-biographical teen non-fiction...reference)

I started this first blog post with a goal: To make something worth reading. I didn't want for some random(er), stumbling across this pitiful entry due to a co-incidence of Google-search mishap and blind luck to believe he/she had wasted his/her time in reading what i have to say.

So far this has not happened. I went through several topics; normality and individuality, existence, politics, television, wind-up rats, obesity in Nauru. Do i want to write about those things? Yes! Can I write about them? No! I can think about them though. The discussions themselves are impossible, and i thought it would be pretentious to assume otherwise! And so I've comfortably lead you, my weary traveller, into the light of today's true topic. Argument.

I despise and yet love arguments. Arguing makes me feel ill, like poking myself in the face repeatedly with a wind-up rat until i can't see properly because of the swelling. I don't like having to come up with reasons for my beliefs, whatever they may be. Why should i have to justify why my favourite colour is teal, or that Orwell's 1984 is my favourite book, or that arranging the 4 illusion cubes (Xmas present) on my desk in weird shapes makes me smile? By contrast, arguments fascinate me as they do everyone. Opinion breeds conflict and conflict breeds argument. I admire the ability to argue, and in some ways i wished i'd learnt rhetorical skills from the Greek masters. To argue and persuade is to have power after all, that is the politician's way. It is because of this association of power and argument that i find it annoying. In a world where expression is power, i am at odds. I can't argue to save my life! I prefer to shout something funny/random to change the subject or leave mid conversation. I'll never have the power to do something until i have the means/capacity to express my opinions. This is what i hope to achieve from this blog i s'pose.... I have a feeling I'm not really saying anything...Fuck it I'm off to bed!