I dislike being lied to. That is fundamental to my hates. However, to clarify that (so that the people who make Oasis ("New and Improved!") don't feel sad) I dislike being lied to badly. Sorry, Oasis people. In fact, so that there is absolutely no offence to people who have "morals" or "religion" or "honesty", I dislike being lied to badly, by stupid people. I am referring to P.E. teachers. I have been placed in what is called (rather cleverly, in my opinion) the "grey area". this "grey area" is also known as the hockey B team. UPDATE: 14.1.04. The Web Ellis (that’s the rugby world cup) was within my grasp, as I turned down a opportunity to have my photo taken with it. Close as I came to sabotaging the camera with sleeping gas, and buying a getaway car, I was stopped for using a mobile in my car.

There are 40 people in Game One hockey. And 32 people in both the A and the B team, combined, including subs, people carrying bags (subs), official "Come on, shoot!" shouters (Prepites) and people to say "bad luck" when we lose (a vital part of the team. Also called "the other side").  

I said P.E. teachers were stupid. Clearly they haven't done the maths class, and went to psychology directly. And they failed that. How they can think that we will be motivated to get rid of the other anomalies (all eight of them) and play better hockey, and so on, it a sign of their delinquency. Now for a list of slogans and maxims they expect us to believe, Animal Farm style. In addition, there are some motivational, and threatening remarks, and a optional comment. Although I haven't actually typed them yet, they might be some that I had to read between the lines to find out:

1) "We only let the good team members on the team!" No. They let the good hockey players in the team. Except they don’t; They let the rugby players on the team as well, to show how they think all sports are the same, after 10 mg of crack.

 2) "You had better to go to training. If an A team player didn't go to training they would be demoted to B team" Yes. IF (and lets face it, its a bad, bad lie) an A team player didn't turn up, then he would be put in the Bs. Bollocks for two reasons; because a loyal B team player who did turn up would get kicked out of the team (to make way) and because it makes it sounds as if being in the Bs is an insult. This is supposed to be a semi-passionate speech to the B team, for heavens sake!

3) "Every team member is just as important as the next" Then why covert the good?

4) "I am a very insecure bugger, my wife turned out to be a man, and dumped me. I am no good at hockey, and I am standing outside in the cold, trying to enjoy watching people run around pointlessly while I wear ski clothes, and maybe flirt with a gorilla" This one, admittedly, makes sense. You have to hand it to the P.E. teacher.

5) "Come on! The more you run now, the better condition your heart will be when you're fifty! Keep it up! Pointless deadlines such as "Run 6 times around the hockey field within 3 minutes" is in fact a good idea, its just we can't remember the reason! This'll improve your hockey no doubt! I can teach hockey! I can teach anything! I am qualified! I don't get kicks out of phoning people up, and pretending to be their mother! I am a man! (ad nauseam until 4.00 when I decide to keep everyone in, because I am ugly! And they are cleverer then me! And they have more success with women! And so I am being spiteful, because they don't look like a totem pole!) Well, as I am about to say, there are lies, damn lies, and idiots. Those were all lies (apart from the bracketed part, which is all true) told by an idiot. Heh, I like the totem pole analogy.

One might have thought that during the holidays, which it still (just) is, I could post daily. If I had something to write about, which from the Omnicult, I do. Lots. But I really can't be bothered to convert posts on a forum to posts on this website. Triangular (a project between Ollie, Dom and I to make a blog altogether. There were some minor disputes about how we were going to do it - more about it as it comes) is well under way, and Ollie has promised a blog formed on Blogger software. So, onto the topic;

I have had two drags on my time. Neither of them were homework.

The first is Omnicult. Also called http://www.omnicult.com/phpBB2/profile.php?mode=register&ruid=223,

if you want to join (I advise you to…). Although it is basically the normal forum format, it has the advantage of giving me points if you join. Yay. I am now a regular poster, writing about a variety of subjects. In fact, if you collect all of my posts, you will find that it is a longer, more detailed version of Opinions and Thoughts. Although it has a tendency to lean towards the occult and theology, it does cover every topic imaginable, and if it doesn’t, you can start your own topic. I write this having happily written about Leopard Geckos Blinking, Whether Ghosts Exist, How Religion Started, Voting At 16 and Pizza Scented Bubble Baths. Well, more then that, but those were the main topics. If you do join, I am known as Purple_Marrow.

The other is that Freewebs.com has been down for a while. Simple. To tell you the truth, its still down, and I am writing this in word.   

Many people have copied the idea of insulting someone (ergo, Dominic, and shortly, I) from Ollie. As you may have gathered, I am one of them.

Although I generally attempt to be a calm and placid person, the demons that shall be mentioned here are the ones who ruin my calm and large exterior, and reduce me for pleas to bring back the death penalty.

I spend most of my time, on the bus, composing letters to their parents - or who ever will take responsibility - and asking them to remove their child’s small intestines for their sakes, before I do it for them.

They are - as the slang goes - "prepites".

These small irritating children spend their time being happy (more about my own misery later). Not that I have anything wrong with happiness in general, but to do it in a high-pitched voice is frankly, inexcusable.

Take an example, look at Gabriel (what an absurd name - true of course - but why on earth would a parent name their child with the same name as a basically unpopular character in what is one of the oldest, and most dull works of literature in existence. Do you expect, in a few thousand years time, for children to be called Jordan or Ginny (if you are too old to understand ask a prepite about Harry Potter)? No, you wouldn't, and if they did you would be worried for them). Now Gabriel enjoys annoying Danny by playing his repetitive ring tones all the way to his chosen destination. I have no objection to mobile phones - not at all, I think they are one of the most useful inventions since the car - but why in gods name will a small 6 year old need a piece of plastic, and a small amount of metal? Are they going to need it? When are they going to use them - when they get mugged (and good riddance)?

No, what they use it for is for games. Ah yes, and for showing off. Games can be, as I am sure you are aware, played much better on a appropriate game boy, and the showing off is so utterly annoying and pointless that they may as well just take a few hundred pounds around with them every day in a wallet, in £20 notes.

This is hardly the only thing they do, to annoy me, as their constant fighting and bickering and lying and boasting...oh, how I loathe them.

You hear them confidently say, "I was born under the Chinese star sign Mongoose - yes, it’s a type of vegetable - and by big brother - yes, a green vegetable - who is nine hundred and ninety nine years old says so". Now is the cue for the next one to out-boast. It’s irritating, and gives me an urge to correct their small brains manually, with some scissors.

Now I think of it - the thing I hate most is stupidity.

I think that is a fair enough assessment of how I feel. It is, I assure you, written with emotion.

I have just, on Christmas Day itself, finished Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy on both the light and the dark side. Never mind how the actual game was this time, but let us focus on the violence.

Despite it being rated a 12+ by the kind, but clueless people at PEGI, and me being over the age of 12, I found it rather gratuitous. When people were stabbed by, admittedly, me you could see the orange-red stripes over their bodies make by my lightsabre/lightstaff (that’s a double lightsabre thing), and you could hear them cry "Eughhh!" once stabbed, and "I'll get you Jedi!" "The Force is Strong within me" once they recover. If they do not recover, they dissolve.

I appreciate that maybe I was not the recommended age for playing 12+ games, meaning, 8 or so, but I felt that it would have been better if little children, even the ones over the age of 12 (and would therefore not qualify as Prepites) were not subjected to "what happens when Cultist, or Dark Jedis or Reborn Jedis and so on, are attacked by you, welding a sword that can technically burn through everything". As they see this, they might think that it is all right to attack people, like me, or hopefully you, with whatever they can get their hands on as long as we are speaking clichés or are wearing a orange suit.

This may seem, of course, over the top, but that is because you lucky sods have never looked after an 8 yr old boy, with a tendency to lunge at you with a kitchen knife. I don't think the screams of the dying are needed for the full pleasure of lightsabre action to take place.

At any age people are corruptible. That is perhaps the slogan of this Blog. If I were to go up to you and tell you what I was thinking, you would be corrupted, even if you weren't listening, even if you were busy contemplating sticking a lightsabre into me. Corruption of your mind is taking place every time you see something, do something, and feel something. Even, and especially, as you sleep, your mind is turning from its pure innocent state into a twisted, perverted, corrupt, biased, prejudiced opinion. As you sleep, particularly in the first hour of light sleeping, you look over what has happened to you over the last day, and you bend reality to make it seem to yourself that you did win that argument, and that you had ALMOST dated that girl who slapped you. It was a misunderstanding, right? You saw reality, you didn't like it, and so you change it to suit you. 

Now, add to the equation, the prospect of computer violence. The pictures of running up and down corridors killing and massacring as you go, flit through your mind, and you then convert it into you real life; running around the high street, killing shoppers, using your special powers, throwing grenades...

Merry Christmas, and I hope you don't have children. To all of you Americans, watch out, as although firearms cannot be legally bought over here, for some absurd reason any person over 18 can own what is basically a killing machine.

Danny

UPDATE : I apoligise for this article completly - I reformed when I played it with the sound off.

For those who don't know, the Top Five winners of the BBC Big Read are

1) Lord of the Rings (oh, the controversy)
2) Pride And Prejudice
3) His Dark Materials
4) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
5) Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

The Big Read format is a way for the BBC for get a Big Viewing Public (alas, that’s what this humble website wants too), by getting them all to vote for their favourite book, and then, once that has happened, vote for them again to see where they come in the Top 100 category, and then vote for them yet again to see the order for the final 21. And then vote again for the Top Five, as seen above.

I have two problems with this; that this is clearly a waste of money, on the viewer’s side (15 p A CALL - they had thousands of them - and it doesn't even go to charity) as well as the BBC "counting expenses". This, in addition is not a fair way of seeing what is the "nations favourite book" as people were allowed to vote as many times as they wanted (in an extreme situation, it could just be "1000 peoples favourite book". In addition to that point, a VERY small percentage of the country voted for any of the books at all. I don't think the Big Read achieved its ultimate aim (that is, after making money) of getting viewers interested into books.

The two points are linked together, because if one were false (if it was a fair and reasonable assumption of our favourite book) then the other would be flawed (it would not be such a waste of money, as it would have educated people in the mean time). Both are critical flaws and are enough to make me think of the 30 hours (I did the maths myself) wasted on programs, not to mention countless hours spent advertising it.

750 000 votes were collected for the final stage of the voting; to see where the top five ranked against each other. Let us use the arguments above objectively, and apply them to this statistic. "That is more then £112 500!" I hear you cry. Actually, it is £112 500, you poor pathetic fool. This is over £100 000 sucked out of our precious pockets, and handed on a silver plate to the BBC. (I can see what you are thinking - Internet voting was not open for the final vote as it takes two days to process). The other argument - only 750 000 votes? There are 60 000 000 people living legally here - what happened to the other 59 250 000 people (that’s at the least!) who didn't vote? Its hardly a small figure, its 98.75% of our population. Is Lord of the Rings still the "Nations Favourite Book"!?. A million people watched the final. That may seem like a small figure, but its still only 1.67% of our population. 1.67%!!!!. 12 000 000 adults have access to the Internet. 1 000 000 voted. This hardly shows off the BBCs popularity with the masses, and if they aren't watching, they definitely aren't learning.

This article has not touched upon The Greatest Britain, who had a voting of about a quarter of that, in the final stages. 

I got a bit over excited last night (the 7th of December) while subscribing to webrings. Before I tell my sad tale, and explain the current situation, I shall show you the core reason behind such actions.

That is, "what is a webring"? Well, according to the English Language, and the American language (that is, the OED and the Dictionary.com, respectively) it doesn't make sense. However, a little matter like that does not stop me. A webring, in my opinion, is a chain of websites, all with a link with the next one in the chain. The idea is that if you go to one of the websites, you may want to see what else is on offer, and so click on the "next" button of the chain. This is fabled to increase your hit counter, which as a blogger, is a thing I worship.

In this space, I should make a kind of parody of a famous prayer "Our Blog, who art in Freewebs, hallowed be thy URL, and thy pages be good, thy hit counter showing what it should, on .uk as it is on .com" or some kind of alternative. I shall not, as they look tacky, and most of them are tasteless.

So, many of you may be asking what happened on that fateful day, and I shall proceed to tell you. I have recently joined .tk, and in doing so, I have the ability to check up how many unique hits I get, and where from. The results disturbed me; for the amount of time I wasted writing this, I only got one or two hits a day. One of them was, of course, me. This statistic scared me, as it would be perfect ammo for someone wanting to sell me a life, or just viagra. Recently, that is, over the last two days, I have had six hits a day, making my life so much more meaningful.

What is an Opinion? It is a thought of the blue, made by me, which will try to convince someone about something they either don't want to, or just don't care about. Although corrupting your mind would be an extra, I don't want to you commit suicide to make me shut up or to stop you from ever reading this again, as you must be a good reader, and therefore an adder to my counter, and my TK thing.  

This time I shall be talking about a pet subject - the Pointlessness of it All.

This has two parts to it; one of them is that what ever we do can be rivalled, and will amount to nothing. The other side is about the Meaningless of it All.

We have but a few years to live, in my opinion, and there is little point denying it. What ever we could do, in whatever scale, from doing homework to deciding to drink yourself into a deadly coma; the effects will wear off (like a rock eroding) into pretty much nothing. Think back, way back, to your time at a kindergarten/Wormwood Scrubs Young Offenders Prison. You probably thought yourself to be important, and that the work you were doing would in any way help you, in later life. I have a sister who is busy doing the same thing. She is learning non-verbal reasoning for exams that will get her into a "school" (as opposed to a mental institution). I learnt the same, probably, and as of yet, no one has come up to me with a sawed off shotgun and test papers. Hell - I'd have been better off learning how to deal with people with shotguns. And this is the essential part to my argument - what are you ever going to do with your life? Why are you going to bother to learn for a good percentage of your non-crippled life, learning "skills" which (aside from whatever you do being pointless) even in the short term is pointless? Lets say you wanted to be a lawyer, or a teacher, or a doctor, or a postman; how are you going to help? What are you going to help? Are people going to forever proclaim your name, and say, "There’s Bill Gates - he made billions of dollars. Good for him. Did he enjoy himself and live a happy material life?” Bill Gates is a name I pick as it could be used against me, by the uneducated that say "Danny, Danny! I have a counter-argument!” I would calmly raise an eyebrow (or I would, if I could). "Yes, look at Bill Gates! He helped millions, with his lovely MSN messenger, and Windows XP! He, and his company, shall be remembered". I hope they say this, as it nicely leads me to point two.

There is a system of thinking that considers everything to be coincidence. This is best seen in a historical context. They say that the Renaissance was bound to happen, you couldn’t pin it on anyone for it. And this can be extended to real life. "Meh" I boldly say, on a chat room "you know, the reason I am not rich is because I am the wrong person, in the wrong circumstances. If I had an idea that would make me millions of pounds, then I would be richer." Although people have tried, you cannot argue with this logic. Equally, the reason I am not an animal was due to circumstance. This is merely the base argument. There is deeper food for thought still: it was David Hume, a Scottish Bloke, who came up with the cynicism that is paranoia. He said that everything we see is just a freak system of coincidences. You haven't turned into a banana?! What a coincidence. You mean, the earth STILL goes round the sun? Check again. And again. Wait - maybe it changed when you weren't looking...This argument could go on for a while.