31 December 2016
Here we are at the end of another year. I’ve seen a lot. More than some, fewer than others. It qualifies me to say this: to the mountains it’s utterly meaningless, to the trees and the squirrels it’s irrelevant, and to humans though arbitrary it can be a time for regrouping.
I see people saying it’s silly that dates chosen by another age to signify year-end and year-beginning have such significance. But this regrouping I mentioned is important; maybe even necessary. Sanity helps.
Everything we do is governed by our impressions of the world around us; family, friends, acquaintances, social media buddies, and the rest of the world. Though nothing we experience is totally random, chaos is a necessary component of life, provided we can guess what’s coming up next.
And then 2016 arrived. I’m not going to meander through a year-end list of stuff that’s been important to me, no. Looking back through my previous posts, I’m confident another reader will get some inkling of what it is to be me.
It’s not one I’ll look back on fondly, not by a long way. Usually I’m close to trembling with optimism at this point, resolutions tripping over themselves but not voiced lest I break them in humiliating fashion. But today, though I’m no longer scared of the year ahead, I’m resigned to the fact I’m not going to enjoy it.
It’s not that I’m fully immersed in the depressing, doom-laden frame of mind I anticipated six months ago; surprisingly I’m simply resigned to the fact that circumstances outside my control will have an impact on me.
The need to know what’s going on remains as strong as it did a year ago, and though I know I won’t be prepared for it, I’ll be ready for it.
This may make sense to no-one but me: I used to the word ‘cathartic’ in a question yesterday. Blogging is that for me, gives me a perspective that talking about stuff with others can’t bring.
Talking helps. A lot.
Ah… peculiar paradoxes.
So, what will we be talking about throughout 2017? How 2016 was comparatively benign‽
30 December 2016
We have an Amazon Echo Dot. It’s touted as a voice-controlled electronic assistant. It’s more than that: can stream music, create todo and shopping lists, play rudimentary games, control heating, lights - and all at the sound of one’s voice. It’s, and I hesitated to use the word but shall anyway, a neat gadget, and one that works really really well.
I’ve already posted the following to Twitter and Facebook: with a parental advisory to not trust a small child with an Amazon Echo/Dot. Ever! Such is the ephemeral nature of social networks though that I thought it best to commit this particular memory to my blog. For posterity.
Here is the video. You’ll need the sound on. Funny, definitely and gloriously NSFW*:
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=qDMbXT8c6Q8
*Not Safe For Work. Trust me.
29 December 2016
If I were to die tomorrow I’m reasonably sure I’d be mourned, and remembered for being a reasonable facsimile of the best human being I can be.
But there’s no profit in that for the type of individual whose life depends, having no other publicly visible skills, on being a professional shit-stirrer. Paid obscene amounts of money for deliberately constructing antagonistic opinions of someone else’s misery, hurt, sorrow; opinions designed to inflame, incite and, most insidiously of all, to desensitise the reader to the kind of stimuli that would ordinarily bring to the fore empathy, understanding, and tolerance.
Employed and encouraged by a deeply broken media intent on retaining their services because readers equally bereft of common decency lap up this kind of commentary, and snapped up by the highest bidder because another company run by amoral businessmen would think it appropriate to make money using identical tactics…
Not exactly a golden age this, is it.
So, to all who feed the Hopkins woman and those like it, and to the nasty creature itself, this:
One day you too will die. You’ll be lucky if your family retains any respect for you by then for simply putting the bread on the table by any means necessary. Attempting to make it acceptable to publicly express hate in the world my children will grow up into by the constant drip-drip-drip of bitterness isn’t how I’d like to be remembered.
Rationalise it how you will, but headstone or not, your obituary won’t be kind to you.
27 December 2016
I made and uploaded a second video to YouTube! 20 seconds long, I guarantee it will not change your life.
A scroll down memory lane, it’s all the Twitter accounts I’ve blocked in the nearly 6 years I’ve had the account. I started to delete a few of the first, hit the Twitter rate limit, and then simply gave up.
There never was a plan to gain followers, prestige, influence. To anyone who knows me that should be obvious.
Here is the evidence, my video.
Incidentally, at first playback it started off as low-resolution (144p) on my phone. It goes all the way to 11 (720p) for the more curious.