Writing July 16, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Ramble,Rants,Scraps , add a commentIt seems like every time I have the urge to write something, a blog post or whatever, there are always so many hurdles to overcome to actually get to the writing.
Today is the perfect example and indeed typical of what happens when I visit my blog. First I start by having an idea for some writing, or indeed just a strong urge to do some writing. So I fire up the blog and always the first thing I am met with is the news that wordpress has been updated. So, of course, I must update.
Now I’m very easily distracted, meaning that while an update in itself wouldn’t take that long, it takes a long time for me to actually complete the update. FTP clients take a little while to do all the deleting and uploading that comes with an update (unfortunately my webhost doesn’t let me update automatically due to the security settings) and by the time I’ve done that I’ve found myself pouring through my last.fm reccomendations, fishing out more stuff to listen to.
Once I get back to wordpress I find that every single plugin I use is also out of date and must all be manually updated. Again, this wouldn’t take so long if I didn’t figuratively look away whenever it does something any longer than 5 seconds. And so, the process stretches out longer and longer until finally the blog is ready to use again! Hooray! Now I can finally make that post I wanted to make.
Oh wait, no, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to write about. I guess I’ll just have to wait till I get another idea and go through this whole thing again…
Perspective March 24, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Essay,Politics,Rants,Society , add a commentThere’s been a lot in the British media lately about the fairly new legal drug mephedrone. Charlie Brooker did a humourous piece on the fuss being made in his Guardian colomn and his points very accurately demonstrate why making it illegal will do nothing to help. However, under our current classification of drugs in this country it should be illegal, the effects are similar to those of a couple of class As and Bs.
The recent furor has come about after the deaths of two young men. Naturally when people’s kids start dying you get sobbing parents explaining how their kids didn’t think it was a risk and about how lovely their children were which throws anyone middle aged, middle class, or both into something of a rage against the drug. What people seem to completely wash over is rather an important point: they didn’t just take mephedrone on it’s own, they took as part of a cocktail with the opium substitute methadone, which was also combined with alcohol.
So a couple of idiots take a load of drugs at the same time, and of course it’s not the legal high alcohol that is targeted, woah no, it’s the legal high mephedrone. There has been so much in the media lately about “legal highs” as this scarey word. Oh my god, people are getting high and it’s not illegal! We must put a stop to this! No one should be allowed to get high! Not ever! It’s morally wrong!
Not once have I ever seen mention in a news article of the most highly consumed legal highs in the world: Alcohol and Tobacco. Or for that matter caffeine, which many people in the western world rely on to get them through the day. If people were relying on mephedrone or even something like cannabis to get them through the day it would be calls for a intervention. But not goood ol caffeine. When it comes down to deaths, mephedrone can be associated (but not even be declared as the main cause) for no more than a handful of deaths in the short time it’s been available. Tobacco on the other hand is responsible for the deaths of one jumbo jet full of people every hour, every day, 365 days a year. 5.4 million people.
Alcohol doesn’t look much better in this standing, claiming 1.9 million lives every year. As a direct result of it’s use. Not combined with other things. We’re talking over 7 million lives claimed every year from legal highs. And you know why that doesn’t get on the news? Because there aren’t sobbing parents. Because it’s not new and it’s not scary. But it should be scary. 7 million deaths is scary. The fact that our drug classification is based not on science, not on health risks, not on dependence. Not on anything other than supersition. That’s scary. That is petrfying.
The trouble with radio February 8, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Essay,Music,Rants,Society , add a commentI’ve avoided music radio for a long time. From when I was young I knew how important music was to me but I found it nearly impossible to find stuff that I liked and listening to the radio never helped. I did for quite a while, as you do when you don’t own any music or have any other channels to hear it. It left me entirely disatisfied and I stewed in some kind of musical no mans land for a long time.
Recently however, I’ve found myself listening to rather a lot of radio (for me, anyway), not through choice but because it’s on where I work. Now, it’s not local or national radio like you’d typically listen to, but actually it’s very similar in style, it just has adverts for products from the store rather than from other companies.
Listening to it more and more has really brought me to realise just why DJs let down their audience time and time again. Indeed, it’s such a deep betrayal that no one even knows it’s happening. Every day I find myself hearing the same songs. The same bland, un-musical pieces of factory made pop music.
I’m not about to suggest that DJs not play chart music, as much as I would like that. No, instead all I ask is that DJs do what I percieve their job to be. Not everyone has time to seek out music, to dig and listen and cast away and listen and love and seek and find and pour themselves into. It’s their job to not just play what people already know they like, but to play them stuff that they may find they like. To open new doors, to new and interesting places. To introduce people to worlds they never thought existed.
Music has incredible power. You ask almost anyone and they’re likely to say they like music. As a species, we are built to enjoy music. But some of us more than like music. Taking my average tracks per day (from my pretty damn accurate last.fm profile) and the median (since the mean would take a ridiculous amount of time to find) length of songs in my music library we can calculate that on average I spend 4.725 hours a day listening to music. Ish. Of course, that’s not exclusive (and doesn’t include when I’m at work, or when someone else is playing the music). Doesn’t sound like the hugest portion, but bare in mind that’s over 4 years that average, and includes times when I’ve been working or at school full time. It’s been slowly rising over the past year as well.
Now I’m sure there are plenty of people more obsessed with music than I am but I’m pretty deep in at this point. Most of me is focused around it. And it’s damn important to me. Because of the effect it’s had on me, I want to share that effect. I want others to feel it and to know it. That’s why it annoys me so much that DJs are always playing the same songs, they never give your average every day music liker to become a full blown music lover because they limit them to the top 40, or even smaller groups of songs.
I think that’s fundamentally wrong, and something of a moral injustice. There’s a further element that I’ve become more and more receptive to further reaches of music and I want to have another source to say “Hey, listen to this, see what you think”. I want to be able to trust that DJs are playing music because they think it’s interesting and good, not because it’s what’s been handed to them by their major record label funded bosses, not because it’s what we’re being told to like.
I do have a big problem with pop music, I hate about 99% of it. Mainly because it’s pretty much all the same. Doesn’t matter what genre it claims to be. If you think of all music as coming from a centre and spreading out in different directions all around as different genres then what’s played on the radio accounts for the tiniest spec in the middle. Yes, some of those bits are on the bit that starts to be come Electronic, or Blues, or Rock or Punk but ultimately it’s so close to the middle that it shares almost nothing in common with the further reaches of the genre.
And that’s my problem. A lack of variety. Currently all we get is a tiny spec of all the music out there and that’s not fair on anyone. Not fair on the listeners who never have the chance to discover music that could change the way they see the world. Not fair on the artists that work so hard to produce original and interesting and likable music that goes entirely ignored by the mainstream population. And more importantly, not fair on me for having to listen to all the shit they do play.
The Minestrone Mystery February 2, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Ramble,Rants,Scraps,Thoughts , add a commentThere is a great mystery that currently confuses countless in this country. How many times have you reached for your variety pack of Cup-a-Soup (or generic brand Cup Soup) only to find unwanted packets of minestrone? Like a plague that haunts our cupboard, minestrone is rife among these variety packs and is almost guaranteed to sit for years at a time, fermenting and stagnating.
No one likes minestrone (Source: me and 4 of my friends). Or at the very least, everyone likes all the rest of the better. So why do they keep appearing? Surely there isn’t a big difference in cup soup production costs, I can’t imagine that chicken and vegetable, mushroom or tomato are more expensive to produce than minestrone.
I’m not asking for much here, just some variety packs that don’t include minestrone, cause I’ve got about 5 packets still left to get through, and they’ve been there for as long as I can remember. Many people are left enraged and frustrated by looking to a relaxing cup a soup after a long day at work and only finding minestrone. This plague upon our land must stop, for the sake of all our sanity.
Chavtastic July 15, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Essay,Rants,Society , add a commentI was just reading this article and it kinda gave me a good talking point for something I’ve wanted to write about for a while because I had heard it elsewhere and really wanted to take issue with it.
Here’s my problem, the authors of this article basically make the point that the word Chav is about class hatred, from the middle (and possibly higher I suppose) to the working class. But the thing is, I’ve grown up as the whole concept of a Chav has been born, I’ve gone to school with them, I have been friends with them. Don’t try to tell me that some middle aged journalist has any kind of clue about what a Chav really is. I’m making a few assumptions here (I don’t know how old the writers are, or that they are necessarily journalists) but actually you can’t get that much closer to the experience than people my age so either way I’m more qualified.
A Chav is not, as this article seems to be saying, a derogatory term for the lower classes. No, it’s a social stereotype.
Now, the thing about a social stereotype is that it involves choice. Chavs choose to wear track suits and strangely angled baseball caps, ultimately they choose to do the things they are often criticized for (vandalism, teenage drinking etc), even though I know most of them have plenty of fucked up behind their actions.
Admittedly, the working class and chavness is far from mutually exclusive but it is not the same thing. So really I’m just sick of people who clearly have no clue what they are talking about putting forth their opinions to the world, trying to convince the politically correct that chav is some kind of no no. Discriminating against someone for something that is neither a fault nor within their control (eg Skin colour, social class) is completely wrong, there are no two ways about it. The examples in the article include Faggot, Pikey and Nigger. These are all words based around insulting someone based on something that is not only unchangeable but also is not wrong in any way. But a chav puts themselves into a stereotype, they weren’t born that way, they don’t have no choice and yes, there are a lot of negative connotations to the chav image, connotations that you have to accept when you take on that image.
As someone who is into metal, I wear darker clothes and band t shirts to indicate an allegiance, I buy into a stereotype in order to tell those around me something about myself. Usually it’s that I don’t like the same shit they listen to (which does include probably the majority of the general public’s view of metal but I deal with that). But I’m perfectly aware of the downsides of stereotyping myself, I choose to do it though, anyone who buys into any stereotype chooses to do it and if that choice results in criticism then you just have to deal with it.
No one should need political correctness to back up their choices, you can either try and explain to others your choice or ignore what you know is their ignorance. In this case, it would seem like the ignorance is coming from those that claim to be politically correct, which, isn’t very surprising to be honest. Personally, if I felt that I were lower class (I’m not rich but come from a reasonably middle class background so I’m not really one or the other) I would be offended by the fact that this article makes the assumption that Working Class = Chav, when in fact that’s just not the way things work.
The what? June 28, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Rants , add a commentThe Happening has to be one of the lamest serious movie titles I’ve ever laid eyes upon. It’s possibly the exact opposite in movie titling mistake to Snakes on a Plane.
In the first, you’ve got the most general title for a film/book/play ever conceived. I mean seriously, how many of these things are there were there is no happenings, no events? I can’t think of anything where something doesn’t happen, where there is no happening. Things must happen in order to create something interesting, it’s just the way these things work!
On the other hand, you’ve got Snakes on a Plane, which essentially sums up the entire movie before you’ve even planned out your weekend. I’ve not seen it, so I can’t be sure but I must assume that there is a plane, which through some kind of event (happening if you will) has been filled with, presumably, many snakes. Samuel L Jackson, being the bad ass that he is, will somehow save the day and get rid of said snakes, probably with some tasty phrases thrown into the mix. I don’t really think I need to see the movie.
Back to The Happening – you may aswell have just called it “Event” or perhaps even “Title” or “Movie”. Seriously guys, lets sort this out, maybe it was just an attempt to make the title so vague people would go and see it just to find out what it’s about, on a whim perhaps, I can’t imagine that anyone is going to assume some kind of original and mind bending cinematic experience with a name like that.
