The awesome power of cheese

Isn’t it sad how work can drain you so much? I am so tired from working, that all I can think to talk about is some canned cheese. Now any normal person would decide to wait until there well rested when they can come up with a better idea, maybe the growing consumption of peanuts. I however, cannot claim to be normal, and have decided that if all I can think of to talk about is some canned cheese, then canned cheese it is. You see, not last Christmas but the Christmas before, my auntie who married a dairy farmer at almost 50, gave all of us expecting something a little cooler, a can. But not just any can! Oh no! this can contained Bega cheese, which is what the milk from their cows gets turned into. Now as we looked at each other with confused expressions, I looked at her, with an excited gleam in her eye as she waited for a reaction. We, of course, had no choice but to marvel at the wonderful can of bega cheese. Bega processed cheddar cheese. I have never taken mine out of my can, afraid of what I may find inside. I think that anything that’s been in a can for that long and is still edible can’t be good for me. However I also like the idea of having a can of cheese, sitting on my desk. People come over, look at it, and either go ‘wow! A can of cheese!’ and bask in its awesome glory, or stare at me like I’m some crazy person for keeping a can of processed cheese on my desk. I like the attention I get from the cheese. Good or bad, it almost always gets me some form of attention.
I’ve realised that people do that a lot. You know, try to get attention off other things. Say, someone wears a clown suit down the street. People stop and stare, because not many people who aren’t clowns will freely wear something like this down the street. The person immediately gets attention. Whether they wanted it or not is another matter. However if you were doing something like that; you would have to be aware of it.
We just rely on other things around us grabbing attention, that we don’t seem to think enough about what’s on the inside that we can grab attention with. Wow, that was mushy. I suppose that can be blamed on the state of my brain after too much old people contact. But anyway, we are becoming really materialistic. Whatever happened to personality? Oh yeah, that’s right, that went out the window when you could start buying personality in a bottle.
We really need to think more about what’s on the inside, and stop filling our lives with stuff because we want attention. Don’t just buy a Lamborghini because its an expensive car which will get you attention. Get it because you somehow can like the terrible angles of the car. Don’t know why you would like it for that, but some people must.
As for my awesome can of processed bega cheddar cheese, I don’t think I will ever open it. It only goes off in April this year, but I think I would much rather keep the attention I get from the famed can of processed cheese, rather than opening it up and not eating it, due to whatever horror awaits me inside. Shows what I’ve learnt from this rant.

the solar system?

Well I know I haven’t written for ages, but I finally decided that I should probably finally be bothered, and make you guys happy, well the crickets anyway. I have thought a little about what I’m to write about, and I have found something. I decided not to lie and say I thought long and hard, cause I didn’t really. In fact im pulling this out of my ass right as we speak. You see I already tried writing an article, but the problem was that it ended up fizzling into nothing. When that happened, I decided it was time to move on, and think of something else that might work better than my last idea.
I was packing magazines onto shelves just the other day (yesterday in fact), when I came across the new National Geographic magazine. Now it had a lovely digital picture of Saturn on the front, and a little blurb about that, but in the top corner something caught my eye. It said ‘Free poster of the new solar system’. This reminded me that in fact, There was a new solar system. Pluto is not a planet anymore. Now I know that’s a little bit of a delayed reaction, but I did know about it before, I only thought about it right now though, so you can’t blame me.
Now when I went through Primary school, they taught us all about the planets. We spent ages on it. Instead of blowing things up in science, we would learn about the planets and gravitational forces, and how the stars weren’t really fairies, contrary to popular belief. We also learnt how many planets there were, and all there names. We learnt almost everything there was to know that our young little minds could comprehend, meaning nothing too meaningful or scientific. When I went through primary school, when my mind was there to be moulded, we were taught that Pluto was a planet. The coldest planet because it was furthest from the sun. I also have a strange recollection of the colour purple. However when I was told the terrible news that my childhood friend was not being included anymore, I remember feeling like my whole mindset had been turned upside down. I mean, they changed this, what if suddenly everything I’ve been taught has been wrong? What if my whole life has been a lie. Pluto being excluded had a huge effect on me, as sad as it is, as I thought it would make a huge impact on my life.
However, looking at this magazine yesterday, I realised something. I didn’t even know how many planets there were in the solar system, even when Pluto was there. 7…8…9? I don’t remember. I can’t even remember the planets names in order. I know there’s Mars, Earth, Saturn, Pluto, oh and Uranus, but I can’t really remember the rest off the top of my head. That was when I realised that the whole solar system does not make a huge difference on my life, besides the fact that I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t there, of course. You see, my whole life does not revolve around the solar system, and I am not constantly thinking about space. What I care about more is my own life, and Earth, things that aren’t so large, vast and empty. Pluto being kicked out doesn’t change anything for me, its not like the world is going to blow up, or my life is over. I just thought it should make a big difference to my life, as it was a small change in the facts I thought I knew well. But really its simply a small change to what they teach children to come, and a small change to something that I haven’t really cared about until now.
If you think about it, our society, generation Y, doesn’t really care about space. When space travel was new, everyone cared. Everyone was touched my it. However in this world, what we care about is technology, robots and machines. Some of us care about feeding the world, others care about feeding themselves or global warming. The truth is that we care more about whats around us then the bigger picture. The whole universe. One day, were going to have to go out there. I plan to be dead before the sun crashes into Earth, however everyone who’s alive then are going to have to care about space and hopefully have figured out how to live on another planet, possibly bred in gills and webbed feet. The thing is that even though we don’t care now, our Earth is being destroyed, and were going to have to care some day.
I guess for now though, Pluto will sink into the darkness, as people forget about the once great, yet small, planet, and get on with their lives until it actually makes a difference on them.

television dilemma

Well I haven’t written in a while, been too busy living my life to sit at my computer and write something deep and meaningful about it. But I was finally blobbing today, and I was watching some of the music channels in my ‘I’m watching but not really watching’ kind of way. That’s what you really have to do with music videos, as there are so many and they have no story line to follow, so you can’t really watch them religiously. I thank foxtel for designing the fast forward button, it has saved my life. Anyway, that’s another story, I am here to express my confusion at how society has just changed in front of me, and I have not noticed up until now. Maybe more observant people have seen this change for a while, however it has only just dawned on me today, sitting on my couch, watching TV and sipping some coffee. I don’t know how long it has been like this, but I must say this change has left me alone and confused, not sure where my life is going, nor how I fit in to the new every day. I am talking, of course, about swearing on television. Now up until today there have been strict rules as to what can and can’t be said on television, or so I have believed. If there is a naughty word it is simply blanked out, things we’re not meant to see are censored, and we move on with our lives. Songwriters have even changed words in their songs, so that they will be played. I’m sure that it is a lot less strict than it was in the 1960’s where you couldn’t even say something like ‘underpants’ on television, nor show anything that did not cover up the bellybutton (I wouldn’t use this as fact, as I don’t know what TV’s where like back then, nor whether they even had them. I suppose if they had them though, this would be fact.) However most swear words are still blanked out and indecent exposure is kept to the minimum. With our society today though, indecent exposure only occurs when Britney Spears gets pissed and forgets to wear underpants. Shorts that could be classified as kinky underwear are acceptable in our society, as is wearing bikini tops that only cover a small portion of ones upper body.
Now I don’t know if I’m making a lot of sense here. The reason I decided to bring this up came to me while watching MTV. The video clip for ‘fergilicious’ came on, with Fergie wearing outfits that don’t leave much to the imagination. However this is not what I am here to complain about. I was surprised when I actually listened to the lyrics of the song, to a certain line where it stated: “And if you was suspicious, All that shit is fictitious.”. Now lets put a little emphasis on the word ‘shit’ here. Now I am sitting there, watching this filmclip very innocently, and suddenly I hear this word spurt out of her mouth, unchecked and uncensored. I was in a complete state of shock. Fergie just swore. On television. This was very big.
Now I don’t know, people have probably already noticed this, but this came as a big shock to me. I mean, just in her film clip for ‘london bridge’ The version for television had changed lyrics, where instead of saying ‘oh shit!’ at the beginning, it had been changed to ‘Oh snap!’. If you look at this in comparison to her later song, this is quite a shock, especially when you think that they were not released far off each other.
So what does it mean? I know some of you may shrug and move on with your lives. I, however, are deeply moved by this. All my life I have believed that swearing is a bad thing, and even though I swear on more than a regular basis, I keep it to a minimum when appropriate. This means that really all my life has been leading up to this one point where it has suddenly become ok to swear on TV. Shatter. There goes my morals. If TV can swear, why can’t I? Our society has changed without me realizing it, and now I’m left in the wilderness, stumbling around blindly, attempting to find some common ground.
Its amazing though, how something so small can have such a large effect. I mean, sure, the world isn’t about to end. The earth will still rotate, and everyone will get on with their lives. However, this may just be the beginning. At the risk of sounding like some crazy person on drugs, what if this is only the small shattering of rules that will lead to the complete change of our society. A society where even the youngest children will have there first word as ‘Shit’. This scares me. I thought society would change slowly, where I could see the patterns and know when the change was coming. But I don’t know when this changed, and I don’t think my life will ever be the same.
I may be overdramatising, however I’m just a little upset that everything I knew has been blindfolded, kicked off a bridge, fallen into the fast moving river and moved off into the horizon, where I will never hope to meet it again.
Who knows, maybe in a few years time, the sesame street characters will be swearing fluently instead of apologizing.

my inbox

Well, today I really had nothing to do when I got home. I signed onto msn, and then realised I had two emails. Now since I got the newest version of live, my mail hasn’t been sorting itself with the newest on top. Instead, its been sorting it in alphabetic order. Now, this would be ok. However, I am one of those people who does not delete emails unless I really want to. I therefore have accumulated around 738 messages. This does not make finding new emails easy.
I have such a collection of mail. I mean theres emails from friends about school work and just chatting. Then there are a lot of forwards, a lot of which are those annoying ones which tell me im going to die. There’s subscription emails ‘Welcome to (insert website here)”, and then theres weekly newsletters, ones which do not interest me in the slightest, and most of which have just randomly decided to subscribe me. Theres funny website links from my dad, which are always worthwhile. There’s notices from websites “you have 7 days to renew your subscription…or else…”, work rosters which have mysteriously stopped coming in, my space notices, and so on. I have so much junk in there, you could call it a trash yard.
But still for about half a year at least, I have kept these emails. Why? Well I suppose it’s a security thing. Having empty space when I open my inbox, I believe it would just freak me out. I spose I’ve just been putting off deleting my messages. Having so many messages really makes me feel loved, even when half of it is junk mail telling me I can ‘win big when you purchase $100 worth of chinese water buffalo meat!’ or something a little less extreme. Seeing that I have so many makes me realise, yeah, people do love me. And my money.
However, I have finally decided that yes, it has come time to delete my messages. I was getting so sick of sorting through the alphabetically listed emails to find my new ones. So, I decided it was time to let go. Yes, I finally went through and deleted all my useless emails. It was scary, and very hard, but I managed. And now, there is one lone message waiting in my inbox, letting me know that I have 7 days left to use up my subscription.

the ‘non conformists’

Alright so in my boredom I decided to write yet another blog, with the reassurance that one person is listening to me, and has written a comment. Even though she is my friend. Lets go past that and keep my self esteem up. Speaking of self esteem, I have decided to rant on about emo’s. I hate emo’s, well most of them. Hate them with a passion. No, I am not scared of them. They just annoy me to such an extent that that annoyance gets turned into hate, and therefore I give them no chances. Which is probably a bad thing since im sure some of them are nice people.
Emo’s. I’m pretty sure it stands for emotional. My mum said ‘back in her day’ they used to be emoh’s, which when I told her sounded quite strange, she replied “when you put it backwards it spells home”. Now in case anyone has been living under a rock, the past few years it has become cool to be emo. Emo’s pride themselves in being different, and being non conformists to the rest of society. However, to be different, there are some strict guidelines that you must go by to be accepted. I have taken the liberty of writing down some, well the characteristics that I know about, however I might miss some out.
1. Wear black. Something black. Then sometimes its stripes as well, sometimes geek tops. There is usually red involved, however I have seen pink.
2. Eyeliner. Loads of eyeliner. And not just girls, all the guys are doing it too.
3. Skinny jeans. Even if you don’t have your own, sisters or friends work well. And normally black.
4. Chunky shoes or converse. Given
5. Childrens backpacks. Bob the builder, my little pony, whatever you can steal off the little kid who is eating their lunch
6. Badly cut hair which usually involves a long fringe, which has to be flipped out of face. Hair usually has to be straightened and covering face in some way.
7. Hair is usually black or similar dark colour, with bright coloured streaks sometimes.
8. Piercings. It doesn’t matter where, or how many. The metal is good.
9. An ‘I don’t care what you think.’ Attitude.
10. A ‘screw the world’ attitude.
11. A ‘my life is over’ attitude.
12. A hate for conformists
13. Slitting your wrists to feel your pain, however this not a blanket thing
14. Playing a guitar, even if you have no musical ability.
15. Able to write terrible poetry to express your feelings
16. Able to put the guitar and poetry together to create a terrible song which you can sway along emoish to, as if your expressing your pain in your movement.
17. Hate of the parents
18. Possibly gay. If not bisexual, and if not, you have experimented at least once.
19. A love of hanging out in large groups in a public place, putting a black stain on society and scaring little children trying to feed the pigeons.
20. No school certificate is required; however you might have to get a job at Coles to pay for your eyeliner.
So there are all the things I can think of that it takes to become an emo. Now, I’m not saying that you have to do all these things to be emo, nor do you have to be emo to do some of these things. However the fact that they all have this in common says something about them being different. I mean sure, well done, your different from all those other people, who are going to have successful jobs, lots of money, and a family who loves them, while you attempt to make a record out of your sad excuse for a song about pain. But at the same time, they are all exactly the same as each other. You can walk down the street, and pick the emo’s from everyone else. They are different, but if they wanted to be completely non conformist, they would be different from each other. In south park once, one of the boys wanted to join the emos. The emos said sure, “You can be a non conformist as long as you dress like us and listen to the same music as us.” Or something along those lines. They are conforming non conformists, and that pisses me off. If your going to be different, don’t be the same as everyone else who’s different. And don’t slit your wrists to fit in. That is very very stupid. I know it’s a touchy subject, but geez, if you want to die, why are you slitting your wrists?
All I can guess is that its for the attention. That is another thing that pisses me off. They slit there wrists to ‘feel there pain’, and they hate their lives. They say they want to die. But when it comes down to it, if I gave one of them a gun to shoot themselves with, I don’t think they would really do it. But a week later, im sure they would be cutting once again. I have never cut myself, and am glad I haven’t. Sure, I’ve been depressed in my life, however I have been able to get through it without needing to do that. Why? Emo’s may say its cause I can cope. My life must have been so much better than theres, cause my parents get me. Wrong. The only reason they are really doing it is cause they love the limelight. Im guessing. Don’t hold me to it. But this whole dressing in black, its all for attention. That’s what annoys me. In the words of one of my favourite songs, the emo song;

“My life is spiralling downward. I couldn’t get enough money to go to the Blood Red Romance and Suffocate me dry concert. It sucks ’cause they play some of my favorite songs like ‘Stab My Heart Because I Love You’ and ‘Rip Apart My Soul’ and of course, ‘Stabby Rip Stab Stab’. And it doesn’t help that I couldn’t get my hair to do that flippy thingy. Like that guy from that band can do.”

So they are non conformists, who hate their lives, who feel like they are in so much pain that they must cut themselves. I have had a few really close friends who have, and I wouldn’t call most of them emo, although may have at some point haha. Don’t say I don’t know the first thing about it, cause I know somethings. One of them decided that it hurt too much to do, which I think was a very very smart thing.
Anyway, now you know why I hate them. I am not scared of them, no. I laugh at them. Mean, I know. But I just find the fact that the say they don’t conform, and call me a conformist, and hate my ‘conformist’ ways hilarious. You know I am different to the next conformist, and we are all different in one way or another. Emo’s, on the other hand, have a very strict protocol that they follow, making them all the same. It would seem to me like they were more conformist then they are, but, wouldn’t that make me a non conformist?

Note: if you are an emo or you were offended in any way by this blog entry, I am sorry; please don’t stop reading my blog! (any comments including those of anger are appreciated)

name change

just a quick blog to say i’ve changed my name. Im probably talking to myself, however that could be seen as healthy in my mind.
I thought band-aids for my rice bubbles was random enough for me, as i thought calling it heres my paper plane would lead people to believe that this is a blog about paper planes, which it is not. Although my new name may lead people to believe that this is a blog about putting band-aids on rice bubbles, which it is not at the moment, but may be in the near future.
So go ahead, comment. i will be your friend forever if you just comment on my blog, so i know im not going crazy.

The ‘free’ gift

An interesting thought came on me today when I was at work. A lady came and asked for the Leunig calendar which was free inside when you bought a paper, however she only wanted the calendar. I charged her the price of a full paper, as she had to buy the paper to get the calendar. When she figured out how expensive it was, she decided not to take it. This made me think about the value of the free gift, and what it does to people.
I myself have fallen for the free gift. I do not usually like coke, however when I went to a football game and they were giving it away, I grabbed one. My friend went on to say “I thought you didn’t like coke?” and I replied “it was free.”
Of course me drinking my mini can of ‘coke zero’ along with everyone else was advertising their product, and of course us tasting this so called fantastic drink is meant to make us want more, therefore bringing up their sales. But really all us, as the naïve consumers just looking for a bargain, only see them giving out free cans, and we rush to the stands, not thinking about the effects this is going to have on their sales.
The fact that something is free makes us want it. It’s as simple as that. The reason, I believe, is simply that we are scabs. We in this society love the idea of a bargain, of something that we don’t have to pay for. We are so driven by money that all we care about is keeping it, and using as least of it as possible in our day to day lives.
This attitude is a perfect thing for companies to play on. They send out free samples of their products in tiny jars. It may be shaving cream, but hey! Girls will still take it, because it’s free. It may be a beauty mask but the guys will still take it, because it’s not costing them anything. Even if we don’t like it, we still take it. Hate fishing? Well there’s a free fish hook with the paper today, better snap it up fast cause its free! It is just amazing what kind of junk we take when it has the word ‘free’ attached to it. And we end up with a cupboard full of free sample items that we never end up using, that slowly waste away past their free sample used by date, and melting into free sample non existence.
There aren’t many free samples that we use either. Sure, there will be the odd free necklace, valued at a whopping $7.95, or the free make up bag you get for spending over $200, however there are rarely free stuff that we actually use.
And yet, we still take them. Although its completely usless to us, we still take it. If it cost something, we would walk straight past it. The fact that’s its free just means that we look at it more closely, and might even consider buying the product.
But is it necessarily a bad thing? I mean the fact that we are a cheapskate society who lives for sales, bargains and pointless freebies can be seen as bad and good. The fact that we will more likely take something or buy something when its reduced or free means that it is quite easy to sell stuff to us, and also makes us a very cheap society. However I guess this is just our human instinct. Instead of spending $5.65 on a block of chocolate, we will get the one that is on sale for $5.60. Maybe we will use the 5 cents on something more worthwhile. It bascically means that though we are cheapskates, we are smart about our money, well in one way or another. It also means that companies can easily get us to snap up their free samples of things such as catnip, which we take even though we don’t own a cat.
I guess without the free samples, our lives would not be complete. Whatever would we do with that free cupboard that could no longer be filled up with free sample goodness?

The foward email

So I am finally on holidays now, and therefore will be writing more. Today I feel like express my thoughts on the forward email.
Anyone who has email (a lot of people I am guessing) would know about the annoying forward emails that are sent to us by our friends/acquaintances. Now I am yet to meet someone who adores forward emails, in fact, most people hate them and get quite annoyed when they are sent to them. So why do we still get them? Why has everyone not just stopped sending these around to each other, and saving us the inbox space? Well I have thought about this, and come to one conclusion; people are scared. Yes, we are all scared by the forward email. We are terrified by our superstitious beliefs and because of this we will do whatever the forward email tells us to do.
Heres an example of a forward email I found in my inbox.

……..because u opened this, u will get kissed on Friday by the
love of your life. Don’t break the chain your crush will ask u out. Tomorrow will b the best day of your life however, if u doesn’t send this to at least 10 people by at least 1:00 tonight u will have bad luck in your love life 4 the rest of your life. Just copy, and paste u will get kissed on Friday by the love of your life.

So now that I have opened the email, I am threatened that if I do not send this to 10 people, whoever created the forward by some magical mystical force will make my love life terrible, for the rest of my life. However if I do send it, its ok! Because the magical mystical force will make sure I will be kissed, my crush will ask me out, and tomorrow will be the best day. Wow! Isn’t that cool? Immediently we start thinking “Well it would be good to have a kiss on Friday, and my crush! He/she is going to ask me out! I better send this, cause if I don’t my life is going to be terrible!” The typical forward. They promise you something you want, then tell you if you don’t send it on, well there going to make life difficult. If they just promised us something, well maybe we would be able to leave it. However the fact they scare us, and play on our superstitions makes it hard to not send it, in fear that our life will become terrible.
Then of course theres those emails about hotmail closing down, which have been going around and frightening people. Here’s one I found.

We are Andy and John the directors of MSN, sorry for the
interruption but this is an email to inform you that MSN is closing down.
MSN
is closing
down because too many inconsiderate people are taking up all of the names
(eg.
making up lots of different accounts for just one person), we only have
578 names left. We will be closing down on Wednesday 1st December 2006.
If
you would like to close your account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you
would like to keep your account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON
YOUR
CONTACT LIST. This is not a joke, we
will be shutting down the servers. Please could you send this Email on,
Thank
You! WHO EVER DOES NOT SEND THIS
MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED
AND YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY 10.00 A MONTH TO USE IT. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE
ON
YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT ‘REPLY’ OR
‘FORWARD’ THIS EMAIL BUT INSTEAD ‘COPY’ THE WHOLE EMAIL, GO BACK TO YOUR
‘INBOX’,
CLICK ON ‘NEW’ AND ‘PASTE’ THE TEXT ONTO A COMPLETELY NEW EMAIL. THANK
YOU
FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

Might I remind everyone that they could not run out of names, as we set the names ourselfs. It has also passed December 1st, and msn is still running. I think we can safely say that this is just a joke used to make us waste time in sending it to others.
The fact that we are completely superstitious really helps. We may not think were going to die if we see a black cat, but this doesn’t mean were not superstitious. We worry about what may happen with things we don’t know. How do we know the forward isn’t going to come true? What if we have bad sex for the rest of our lives? This fear seems to govern us.
Then of course theres the ones that go around about hotmail closing down, which terrifies people, when the person who created it is having a gold old chuckle.
I remember one time that I opened an email, which I cannot find, which told me that if I did not send it on, a really scary ghost was going to come and kill me that night. I was so fed up with chain emails, that I decided not to send it to people in the 10 minute time frame I had between opening it, and the deadline. That night I remember lying in bed completely terrified that this ghost was going to come and kill me, because I didn’t send it. I didn’t die, and I didn’t see the ghost of Jimmy. I went to sleep eventually, and woke up in the morning completely alive, and realised that the forward email had not come true. From that day on I did not send forward emails, because I realised how stupid it was. Anybody can create a forward, send it to everyone, scare the shit out of them, causing them to send it along. Sure, it can be a cheap thrill, however the point is that anybody can create them, and when I say anybody, I mean anybody.Heres one I prepared earlier:

One day a boy asked a girl out who he had loved for a long time. She said no, and completely broke his heart. Frank was 16 and was so heartbroken that he hopped into his car and drove down the freeway. He was so depressed that he drove off a cliff, severing his arm, loosing his nose, and slowly suffocating to death. The police never found his body. If you don’t send this, Frank will come for you at midnight on Friday. If you do not send his story, then he will kill you. You will also have a terrible sex life for the next 20 years if you do not send this to 20 people in the next 1 minute and 32 seconds.

I do not know a boy called Frank who was killed like this, nor will I be able to moniter how long it takes for people to frantically find 20 contacts to send the email to. I also do not have powers to change peoples sex lives for the next 20 years, and even if I did it could get quite annoying doing so. My point is that you all know that that isn’t real, because I made it up. I am not going to ruin your sex life, or set Frank on you for not sending the forward around. I am just trying to make people realise that forward emails are not real. We need to stop worrying about dead people ruining our lives and seeking revenge because we didn’t press the forward button. We need to realise that although people say that something bad is going to happen, its not really. We all need a reality check. Maybe one day we will realise that forward emails are just a waste of time, and then once more our inboxes will be filled with interesting email, as opposed to empty threats from the grave.

Promises

Well I am back for my rambles. Today I will be discussing promises, as I can and it was the first thing that came to my head. As I think about it, I realise that the value of the promise is small in today’s society. I just find it amazing as something so powerful could be so underrated and overused today.

We look back on an example. Perhaps we should look upon Shakespeare. In Merchant of Venice, Antonio the merchant agrees to pay back the Jew Shylock 3000 ducats within three months, with a condition that if he cannot pay it back, Shylock will have a pound of Antonio’s flesh. When Antonio cannot pay up, Shylock is entitled for this, and if not for Portia’s quick thinking, he would have had it, as he was promised it. The value of a promise in this kind of society was very high, and if you were going to make a promise, you had to know you could keep it.

However we look at promises today. I could say “I promise to bring in the washing when its done.”. I may never actually bring in the washing. I usually just say this to make my parents happy. In fact, most people do use the promise to make people happy. By promising someone something, you are saying that it is important enough for you to do, even if you don’t do it. It is the thought left over from when promises were kept, that when a promise is made, it is obviously important enough to keep, that maintains a happy balance. People like to be promised things, as it makes them feel important.

This is all very well, however it seems that our society has lost the ability to keep promises, and see them as important. We say things because we do what we think will make it best for us. Sometimes that involves lying to keep people happy. We accept that, and we believe that the other person will be glad that at least they are being kept happy, and will be completely oblivious to the fact that the promise is rarely kept. In the case of the washing, when you tell your parents you will do it when you have time, in theory, they should be completely happy that you have agreed, and will leave you alone. This leaves you with them off your back, and allows you to continue on with a recreational activity of your choice, usually involving loud music and msn. This also leaves the washing on the line, meaning you do not have to do it straight away, which is good for you, however is not good for the washing. In fact leaving the washing on the line seems to upset the balance of the household, when people start aimlessly walking around, looking for their socks or their other lost item of clothing, which has not magically appeared in their respective closet as it usually does. The fact that you have promised to bring the washing in, and have not, upsets the whole household, and this is when you realise that it would have been much easier to bring in the washing in the first place, rather than have the full wrath of the un-clothed household upon you.

I really think that we must learn from this. We must learn that keeping promises really needs some form of value in our society. Promises used to be the only thing you could go by, and people stuck to it no matter what. Do we really need to be threatened with threats to take a pound of flesh to make us keep our promises? Besides the fact that it is illegal, I think that this should be unnecessary. We should really be truthful and reliable enough to keep the promises we make, and make a promise so much more valuable. This could help everyone, and would also solve the problems of the clothing scarce house. What a miracle.

the ‘normal’ party

Well you know as my second blog ever, I decided to launch into a completely random revelation about life, the universe, and everything. Well, stratch the last two.
You see the reason I had the idea for this blog is because, yes indeed, I am going to a 16th birthday party tonight. And unlike the rest of the teenagers out there, this party has no alcohol, no drugs, and more to the point, no boys.
Don’t get me wrong, the parties I go to are fun, however not up to the normal teenage standard. In fact, let me tell you about a conversation I had today with someone at work.

Me: I’m going to a 16th tonight.
Colleague: Really? Are the parents not home?
Me: …No. We don’t know enough people to have that kind of party.
Colleague: Oh, well I guess that’s…cool.

This is sadly, true. My close circle of friends and I, do not know enough people to have a wild party with gatecrashers, where we all get off our faces and get addicted to drugs. Well it doesn’t sound that appealing to me, however it seems to be the norm for every other teenager around my age group, who sit around at school gossiping about how much alcohol they drunk on the weekend.

It just seems that these days, we cannot simply have a party like we did when we were young. Whatever happened to fairy bread, pinyatas and birthday cakes? They have been replaced by vodka cruisers, hooking up with randoms and peer pressure. It is just not acceptable to have a party where there is no acholol, or boys. Especially boys. The fact that we do not know enough of them is really the problem. You see, most people have made enough contacts to be able to whip up a party. Us however, do not have the kind of parties people of our age besides ourselves would enjoy, and we do not know enough boys to have some form of ‘normal’ party.

Tonight were going to go to this party, and were going to have a really good time. Drink loads of soft drink, eat as many lollies as we can. We’ll take heaps of photos and make our own fun. At a ‘normal’ party, we would be drinking alcohol, eating some randoms face, and take photos of ourselves which we will wake up the next morning and not even remember taking. There is a difference between the two, and I know which one everyone else seems to prefer.

Part of me wishes we knew enough people to have this kind of party. It would be great to have contacts, and it would be fun to maybe try out the ‘normal’ party life. However, I find it sad that people do think that the only way they can have fun is getting drunk. Our group can easily make fun for ourselves without having alcohol (in the most unsuss way).

I myself have only ever once been to a party with boys, and it was during the day. I didn’t know them very well, and didn’t really get to know them (long story). I have never been to a party with alcohol, or drugs. Someday it would be fun to experience that kind of party, minus the drugs. Until then I think that I must get some contacts, and then perhaps I will be able to progress.

I will go have a good time tonight, without alcohol. Maybe people should try one day having a party without alcohol, or without drugs. Maybe even without the opposite sex. Wow. What a radical thought.