Spiel of sorts.

To lull myself into a false sense of productivity I have decided to post another little nugget of wisdom onto this here blog. Aren't you all lucky! Perhaps impending doom should be the theme of this particular addition.

Doom it is! ah yes doom. Doom awaits us all as "for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Doom, doom, doom. If you've not got a sense of impending doom you're either a child or a heathen! Both of which I have little time for.

Anyway less of this tyrannical biblical nonsense I want to talk about the 'real'!

For the majority of my short time on this spinning globe we have the pleasure to call 'earth'. I have been stressed very little, worried rarely and lived my life by the mantra of "que sera, sera". However for the majority of my life I've had few responsibilities and followed a natural progression of events that have lead me to where I am now. This will all change in the year 2014! Hence the doom!

 

I'm coming to the end of my undergraduate degree funded by our glorious motherland and am on the cusp of the 'real world', truly terrifying stuff! There is a growing sense within me that I should pull my finger out so to speak. I should put my nose to the grindstone and use a little elbow grease to ease the inevitable abrasion. In the words of the late Dr Thomspon "I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me." Intrinsically work shy I'd prefer a life of writing to a life of..... What ever it is that everyone else seems to be doing. Yet apparently there is no easy way out. In order to pursue a life of writing I'm required to put some real actual effort into it and probably other things.

At the moment I plan to continue my education, but my dear mother(land) isn't likely to fund this frankly absurd occupation. So for the first time in my life I'm going to have to abandon my life of vagrancy and actually make some cheddar. In order to maintain a lifestyle that's even vaguely similar to this one I'm going to have to make quite a bit of cheddar. Accommodation, education, nourishment, intoxicants it all adds up! I need the big cash money or alternatively a job! Until recently I did actually have a job, but I didn't much care for it and gradually abandoned it via osmosis.

The crux of the issue! I cannot commit to anything I dislike. It sounds rather pathetic and entitled I know. There are millions of people on this globe who put up with a job they despise for 14 hours a day every day so they can afford to live but for me this is not living! Life is too short to spend an extended amount of time doing something you hold with utter contempt. It's not that I have high standards though I'd happily work at some kind of shop. Preferably a book shop, music shop, art shop or booze shop AKA a bar. Somewhere where there is a chance to escape from the monotony of the work. Unfortunately there was no escaping from the monotonoy at my last job which is one of the reasons I had to go.

Yet all this future fear has got me thinking about life. Obviously this won't be the case for all students but for many graduation is the beginning of your life. Up until that point most students have been fed with a silver spoon. Most students are lazy, entitled and ignorant which is kind of ironic considering what a University is meant to embody. But times have changed It's not like the 'olden days' I've heard so much about, were you can find a job in the industry you studied for on the day you graduate. It's not like that anymore! Most people with undergrad degrees end up working in some shitty fast food franchise for the next few years. When my cousin was 16 working at a deli there was a PHD graduate working the same job! Qualifications give you little edge it seems. For many university is a last garrison to prolong the freedoms of youth! Things get rougher from here on in! Sure there are the occasional lucky breakers who get gnarly jobs in temperate climates after graduating but that's not plausible for everyone.

So here I am traveling at high speed towards an uncertain future that often seems dismal and harrowing. Though there is no use moping and feeling sorry for myself. I've got to accept it and somehow deal with it, yet I'm struggling to shrug this sense of doom. Maybe it's the weather but recently It's been on my back more and more often. I'm faced with these options for the future but I'm uncertain about what I really want. You don't want to make the wrong decision and end up being trapped somewhere awful.

I'm not really sure what the overriding message of this blog is, perhaps there isn't one. You're search for a golden nugget of wisdom was futile. This short piece of writing was little more than my procrastination from coursework that urgently needs doing and an eulogy for my youth!

How very dramatic and doom themed.

Fucking up tight fucking fucks.

Je-e-eeuss! I feel another rant coming along! This blog is probably going to end up deteriorating into angry, barely coherent, opinionated rage literature (much like my previous blog). However I felt compelled to write down what has been bothering me in the last 10 minutes for cathartic reasons only so hopefully this won't become a habit.

Around 10-15 minutes ago I was happily doing some coursework, specifically an essay on trauma. As you can imagine it isn't the most pleasant or socially endearing subject to write about. The module has introduced me to quite a lot of bleak and graphic texts as well as some historical atrocities I was previously unaware of. Whilst it's depressing I find it interesting and enjoy studying about it...
 

Anyway here I was minding my own business, completely oblivious to anything else going on in the world other than the Crosby, Stills and Nash soundtrack keeping me going when my good friend Thomas sends me this rather amusing link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO3SDlIivcQ. It depicts one of our national treasures Rowan Atkinson donning priest attire and pretending to be the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (all in the name of charity). I won't say anymore about it as you can just watch the link.

After watching it I decided to browse through the comments, and to my surprise (rolls eyes) I see a few unhappy youtubers comments. One man blaming the economic crisis in the UK on gay liberal elite elites... Not really sure how the two coincide but you never really find any arguments of worth on Youtube anyway. I then saw a link to the BBC news page disclosing the amount of complaints this particular segment from the Children in Need program received. Over 2,200! A quarter of which were from religious nuts and the rest seemed to be largely due to nasty language pre-watershed.

Now I don't know if it's because I was immersed within the world of trauma or whether it's just something that would bother me anyway but the article just made my blood boil!

First off. It was a joke! Secondly It was for Charity! How can you complain about someones attempt to make you laugh in an effort to raise money for children who are dying!

The most vulgar thing he said was 'shag' which your child will either understand perfectly or have no understanding of whatsoever. Either way who cares. It's a fucking word no one gets hurt no has had their legs blown off stepping on the word 'shag'. The kids and parents who need the money comic relief aims to get would actively embrace a barrage of swear words as an alternative to getting shot at and shelled all day. I'm sick of people protecting their little cherubs from 'nasty words' and 'scary films' like they're gods gift to earth. Most of those kids will grow up to be pricks anyway and it's the medias and the parents fault!

Those shits who complained should be more concerned with the Hollywood mentality that's being fed to their children teaching them to grow up with expectations of becoming super 'attractive', super wealthy, popular spoilt shits! Fuck I hate the world sometimes!

I'm not going to even bother having a rant about religion because it's not worth the fucking time. It's all bollocks though!

FUCK!

Digressing To The Depressing

I felt compelled to write something last night at 2am before I went to sleep but I couldn't really think of anything worth writing about. Today I'm in a similar mindset but now as sleep is out of the way I'm going to make myself write something.

Since waking up this morning I've done a bit of perusing on various social media sites and not much else, so that seems like a good a thing as any to write about. For reasons I shall go into shortly, I generally despair at social media sites, yet I use them daily. I believe this is due to a twisted dichotomy that rages between my subconscious and conscious mind, but that's enough of the pseudo-psychology.

Over the past few years I've recognised that I don't really like social media websites yet I have started using more of them. Which again seems counter intuitive but I'll ignore this. Like many of you out there the original social media site for myself was the iconic 'Myspace' a perfectly adequate arena for advertising yourself online to would be friends and to host lively discussions with current ones. Being around 14 when I used this these discussions were little more than an exchange of derogatory insults between my friends and I. I remember being amazed by how personal you could make your profile. It was very easy to become obsessed with perfecting your profile so it represented all the awesome aspects of yourself (whether fictional or not). I updated my profile song once a week and I'd always be sure to add new/alternative films to my favourites so as to seem cutting edge and cool. I was pretty lame in hindsight, but that was kind of the point. You used it to paint yourself in a good light so as to attract more friends. Essentially it turned people into a bunch of bean counters competing against each other to have the most online 'friends'... Pathetic. It was a fad, everything about it was. Which is the reason why myself and pretty much everyone I knew stopped using it as soon as the next social media site became popular.

Facebook! The now reigning king/queen/dictator of social media. Whether this is true for everyone or just the people within my online circle of 'friends', Facebook was treated in a fairly way similar at first. It was just a stripped back, neatly designed, appealing version of MySpace with the focus on accumulating friends rather than anything else. Of course it developed into the ultimate sociological infiltration experiment but I won't go into that as it's common knowledge. I went through the phases of 'liking' and 'joining' (essentially the same thing) all the mildly interesting pages that came my way, but eventually the whole concept became irritating so I tried to use it only as a means to communicate with my friends in the real world and no one else.

The next social site I began using was Tumblr. I've noticed that it gets a lot of criticism and condemnation by many but it's one of the few I actually like. After first setting it up I didn't really use it. The only reason I joined was because a friend of mine who owns a clothing brand wanted some more followers on his page. Then at university I met two people who used it to share their art work. I quite like looking at their work and stuff that influences them so I just started using it as a little lounge gallery. Which is essentially what I still do except I've started following more artists who I have discovered myself. 

After that, almost a year ago now, another friend of mine showed me Reddit. Now I really struggle with my emotions towards Reddit. Part of me really enjoys it and part of me wishes I never started using it in the first place. It's kind of like a highly addictive drug. Sometimes it's a hindrance due to being the ultimate procrastination tool but sometimes you can actually use it as a source of information for university work. It's so insanely vast that it's intellectually reducing to say you hate the website. It'd be like saying you hated Uganda. Fuck you! What do you know about Uganda? Have you seen and experienced all it has to offer? No!... Which isn't to say I like the website either but I'll come back to this.

And finally the latest social media site I have started using frequently is Twitter. I originally set up my account in 2009 but it confused and bored me so I left it alone until about a week ago when one of my university lecturers told me tutors and universities use it to advertise postgrad opportunities occasionally. I'm yet to see evidence of this but I've not done a proper search yet.

 

I probably use all these sites at least once a day. I rarely post anything to any of them though I prefer to scrutinize and observe what is going on. I prefer to lurk. It is this repeated observation, every single day that has caused me to not only hate social media sites but the majority of people who use them. If I had to pick the worst offenders it would be those who overuse Facebook and Twitter, the sites where you directly attempt to sell yourself. I constantly see the most futile and pointless arguments about mind numbingly infantile things, like why Miley Cyrus or some other shit has had a tantrum about another celebrity having more paparazzi following her, or something equally mundane and fatuous. Except it isn't some young teenagers obsessed with their idols it's two grown men in their late twenties obsessed with being 'hip'. Fuck, I feel like an old man because I have no interest in what the majority of young people today seem to be interested in. It's debilitating for society! So many of my 'friends' on Facebook have bought in to these meaningless trends, uploading ridiculous amounts of 'selfies' in an attempt to look and feel more like the celebrities, and to attain more likes in order to fuel their own pitiful self worth.
Whereas Reddit just seems to upset me. Whilst it's a good source of knowledge about the contemporary world most of it's depressing. Stories about how the rich can literally get away with murder when the poor get jailed for crimes they didn't commit. I think it's the highlighting of the injustice on reddit that makes the people on Facebook and Twitter seem more irritating. These spoilt, rich, morally sterile people are held as idols by the masses and I don't understand why.  Job titles and wealth have long been signification of success but now it seems like having your own online cult is the latest one.
Venerate, Imitate, Simulate, Desecrate all Intrastate.

Peace.

Fellaheen

I was hoping I could avoid writing about myself in this blog, instead trying to discuss topics objectively. Then it occurred to me that any attempt at a detached style of writing will inevitably result in a boring reportorial type of discourse that you'd expect to find in a newspaper. I'm not suggesting this is true for all non-objective writers but I feel it's true for me. Whenever I attempt to write something I cannot help but throw myself into the sentences. Honestly I think it's impossible not to. Even a journalist who's restricted to write only a 'factual' account of an incident, will personalise a story by using certain adjectives that jump to his/her mind but might not occur to another writer.

  As pretentious as it sounds I was hoping this space could be somewhere for me to establish some kind of intellectual standpoint that might inspire others to share their opinions or ideas. I didn't want to put too much of myself in my words so I wouldn't come across as adherently liberal and thus be of no interest to any Right wing readership that may stumble across this page.

I think I was being pretentious.

Instead I've decided to stick to what I know. Instead of restricting myself by trying to change how I write for the fear of it being 'shit', cheesey, embarrassing or indeed pretentious I'm just going to go ahead and write something. Fuck the haters.

To be honest I don't know what I know at the moment if I had to describe myself in terms of a political standpoint I'd say that I'm a disillusioned far left. From mid to late teens I spent quite a lot of my time complaining about the systems in place, complaining about the hypocrisy and the hate. I liked the ideologies of the hippies in the 1960s, of trying to opt out of the system entirely.  Though I still admire that movement to a certain extent I'm starting to see a lot of futility and disparity. For the most part the hippies were white youths from middle class backgrounds who decided that a future of capitalist ladder climbing was not for them. And to be honest I'm exactly the same. I thought doing nothing at the cost of the system was the best way to react to it. Fuck getting a job, fuck buying from conglomerates who essentially employ slave labor and fuck obeying all the laws put in place by a bunch of pensioners with antiquated bigoted opinions... Let's all spend the rest of our lives at a big loved up sit-in, in a field, with lots of flowers and joints to share whilst we do nothing.
A bit selfish don't you think... It's a lot easier for those who already have it. The hippies weren't exactly a mass working class movement.

I liked and still do like the idea of socialism it seems like the most equal way of ordering society but then when I think about it, properly functioning capitalism doesn't have to actively encourage exploitation and mass inequality. It comes down to one thing. People are corrupt! No matter what economic/political system gets put in place there will always be people out there to abuse/bend/manipulate/control the system for there own ends. To me people seem inherently greedy. It seems like the options are to try and claw your way to the top treading on every other motherfucker or if you are lucky(wealthy) enough you do what the hippies did and just opt out. For a long time these seemed like the only options and the latter always seemed the more appealing. I don't care about being vastly wealthy or having a whole business at my command I just want to be comfortable.

Maybe I just have to bite the bullet and work within this malicious system but maybe it's not only the rich and powerful who can bend and manipulate it. Maybe we need to adopt a little anarchy. I'm not saying I'm going to burn down the town but maybe we should stop caring about all of the bullshit. Maybe we stop accepting a fate prescribed to us by the state and start making our own opportunities and if that means breaking the law maybe we break the law. The multi-nationals use 'loop holes' all the time to dodge laws and protocol and even down-right break human rights laws behind smoke and mirrors. So I think we should start feeling comfortable breaking laws that harm these big brands.

I have an idea. We raid every single branch of Tescos at once! 300 masked marauders to each store. Someone creates a diversion and whilst the security are otherwise engaged the mob pillages the place taking as much as they can carry after which they disperse into the surrounding environs. The next day we hit Asda, then Sainsbury's, then M&S etc. People will get caught, people will go to jail but the movement will grow. Then on the 5th of November we blow up parliament!!... Ok I'm start to see my own hypocrisy here but it would be pretty cool.

Countless philosophers with far better minds than mine have tried to solve the age old 'how to manage society' argument but I don't think they're is an answer. I just want everyone to be able to live self sufficiency without encroaching on anyone elses happiness. But that seems like too much to ask.

Fuck it!

The whole time I spent writing this blog I was listening to this track on repeat. Partly because I thought the rhythm was keeping my brain active enough to write, partly because it's a nice song to listen to when considering the futility of existence but mostly because it reminded me of my girlfriend who I won't be seeing for a month and who I love very much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3AdabEnicE

Hadouken

 Well I suppose It's about time I actually post something other than an introduction to this blog. My original intention was to wield my intellectual prowess like a mighty brain sword by writing something literary or perhaps philosophical. From the offset I realised I was being ambitious so instead of actually writing anything I resolved to simply browse the internet.

   At first my goal was to source some sources for coursework and perhaps write about that, but I soon strayed far from the digital world of journals. My web ramblings eventually took me somewhere I'm almost too afraid to acknowledge due to possible copyright infringement. Fortunately for you I am feeling particularly brave tonight and shall disclose the website I am referring to. But first I would like to take you on a possibly nostalgic journey into the past to a simpler time known reticently as the 90s.

  Admittedly I might not be the most qualified to write about this enigmatic decade as I was born three years into it. In addition to this, for the majority of the 7 years I spent living in the 90s I was in fact, what many people refer to as a 'baby'. My memory was limited by my circumstance so I'm afraid there isn't much to say about my infant years. However I do have some fond memories of the late 90s, many of which revolve around video games.

   The first console I ever owned was a NES my babysitter donated to the family. This archaic piece of equipment was probably already 10 years old when I was born but that didn't stop it from showing me how to love! Damn it, I'm tearing up writing this but I shall continue for the sake of the children.

    Yes I have some memories of gathering round the NES at our caravan in the lake district, playing Mario Bros and other games....  Ok, I don't really remember any other games aside from this strange sports one we also had. It might have been in some way affiliated with the Olympics but to be honest I've probably just made that up. There was one game mode where you have to bash the buttons furiously in order to make some shape that vaguely resembles a human swim across what sort of looks like a pool and it was awesome!

     Nowadays the iconic games for the NES are rare artifacts that would cost you more than any reasonable person is willing to pay. I had long abandoned hope of playing a NES again but then today I came across this http://nesbox.com/! Hoorah for me and for this! Obviously not as good as the real thing due to the lack of controller and cartridges but this emulator has a shit ton of bodacious games that you should check out. These are essentially historical texts that future generations will look back on with reverence. Spending hours playing these games will one day be akin to reading Shakespeare's plays all day so I encourage you to feel no guilt for the next 2 hours whilst you try in vain to beat Streetfighter.

You are welcome!

New Beginnings

 Good morrow internet travelers, and welcome to my newly created blog 'The Mull-Bag'. A space I intend to use to discuss a little bit of this and a little bit of that. First of all I'm going to be honest because honesty is a virtue we must all adhere to if we hope to maintain any kind of self worth.
                                          
    I am an unreliable writer. I tried to post to my previous blog frequently but struggled to motivate myself to do so. It eventually got to a stage where once every few months I'd remember about it and promise my barely existent readership that I would stop being so lazy and start posting regularly. Looking back I appeared to be a liar the majority of the time, but as the bearded rapper/poet Scroobius Pip once prophesised "is a lie really a lie if you meant it at the time?". I digress.  One of the reasons I set up my previous blog was to encourage myself to write often and to generally improve my writing style. At the time I set up my previous blog I was applying to various Universities and perhaps foolishly thinking a blog would somehow improve my chances.
    
Now several years later I am approaching the end of my degree in English and am being forced by the pressures of society and others to decide what to do next. If I've learnt one thing at university it is that I enjoy the world of academia. The long lie-ins, the day time drinking, the strange and interesting company and perhaps most of all the development of my own understanding of myself and the world. For these reasons and more I've decided that I'd quite like to continue being a lazy smelly student who has no real worth in a capitalist society... Sorry budding industrialists. 

   So now it seems like that the next logical step is to pursue a post-graduate qualification of some kind. I quite like the idea of eventually earning a PHD and becoming a certified Doctor of books and words and such but that may be an unachievable goal for financial and motivational reasons. I do however believe that I have what it takes to achieve a masters, so I think that's what I shall do.

So for the second time in my life I have decided to start a blog to encourage myself to write more often and hopefully entertain a few people along the way.

Here it is.