Mummy, what's a Christmas?

Way back, in the olden days of, ooh, 2009 or so there was this thing called Christmas. Perhaps you've heard of it? Apparently we used to have it every year. Being an ancient, withered, old biddy I do actually have some vague memory of the thing. If memory serves, I believe Christmas was where your entire family was legally obliged to sit around your mum's television in order to hold some sort of drunken eating competition which was judged by the queen. The winner was then made to wear an unpleasant jumper knitted, or at the very least picked out, by an elderly relative with deep-seated, passive-aggression issues. Boxing day would, of course, be spent engaged in the traditional, spiritually uplifting, practice of shopping for half price sofas.

Unfortunately, you won't have any clue what I'm on about because this morally sanctified celebration of family bickering and cheap sweat-shop produced gifts, this clearly very pious religious festival has been slowly eroded over the last few years and is now, finally, about to become illegal because something something immigrants and something dum-di-dum bloody atheists and their bloody something and brigade of politically correct warriors using unmanned drones to bomb Christmas which has also caused Easter to catch on fire and Oh well done, you've gone and made baby Jesus cry. Nope. Instead we're all going to be made to spend 'Winterval Secular Inclusion Day' as christmas will probably be renamed, doing things that in no way include said baby Jesus. Things like watching the Eastenders and ignoring the walnuts your mum inexplicably persists in buying every year.

But don't worry and that. Do you know who's going to rescue Christmas from the evil christmas-strangling clutches of the muslims and DFS? Only the bloody pope! We'll be back to putting up our biblically mandated fir trees and decorating them with the holiest of christian symbols, the chocolate santa, without fear of death at the hands of the heavily armed militant atheist militia of militants in no time. No secular death squads will be able to stop us decking our halls with divinely inspired holly and tonguing one another in stock cupboards under wilting mistletoe at office parties so long as Pope Man and his Daily Mail wielding army are on the case. Because let's face it, christmas with the religious bits removed would look absolutely nothing...at all...like... Ah.

As you were.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

So.

This year, I ha' been mostly, eating taramasalata trying to sort myself out. And, let me tell you reader (ha ha, just my little joke) that is proving to be no mean feat. This is largely because I have spent the last 8 years living in a bubble of total loser oblivion. It's been sucky and has caused me and many, many others untold grief.

One day, however, out of sheer loserly clumsiness, I smacked myself in the face with a Henry Hoover and, as I sat there, cursing and kicking that red bastard in it's eyes, I realised that I Had To Do Something. I was suddenly sick to my very core with my life. Sick of being so pathetic that even electrical appliances felt obliged to give me a good beating. And so a sort of plan began to form. I was going to start putting right the things that once went wrong and hoping each time that the next leap... Nope, that's not it. I've really got to stop watching so much SyFy. The point is, I was left all aflame with purpose and, yes, even a little bit of hope for the future. For all I know that evil vacuuming git has left me with life altering brain damage, but if that's the case, I welcome my new ovanbfdjjjjjgf...

Thing one what I done was I went and got me a swanky haircut that costs a ridiculous amount of time, effort and money to maintain. Next, I lost approximately 75 stone in weight (please note that if anyone does find my lost weight someplace, it's yours to keep. I mean, you could take it down the scuffer shop, fill out the forms and wait two weeks for my weight to become yours legally, but I won't tell anyone if you don't. I would quite like you to waste the peelers time with handing it in though. That would amuse me.)
...Wandered off there...Oh look, a bee....

Right. Thing 3 is the part where I thought, on a whim, that I would apply for a position writing for a videogames website. Ah. I can see you're confused. Ah. I can see now that you're startled that I can see you. Ah. I can see now that you've closed the tab and gone off to the bright, reassuring lights of Boing Boing or Gawker, or some other well-populated area. Good for you.
Yes. The, and I'm being incredibly generous to myself here, 'writer' of this blog thought they had a shot at writing stuff that people might actually see for a website that people actually read.

I'll give you a moment to compose yourself.

Now, obviously, in real life, it takes more than an awesomely trendy haircut and some bingo wing reduction to land you your dream job.

Or does it?

Yes. Yes, it takes loads more than that. It takes stuff like, being bothered to maintain the blog you started, or at the very least being able to recall exactly what you named it without trawling through your unsorted bookmarks looking for something that seems vaguely familiar. It takes even more basic things such as, remembering to cobble together a CV out of the shambles that has been your employment history and sending that along with your cheery email.

And, of course, being real life, I didn't get the gig. The fine folks at Ready Up are obviously in possession of their full faculties and will plump for someone who at the very least knows how to strikethrough words in their blog post without having to google it first.
But you know what? They sent the nicest, most encouraging rejection email I have ever had in my life. And I have had well over 8 rejection emails (mostly, the companies I write to ignore me entirely. Or only contact me via restraining order.) It was so positive, that I organised my bookmarks, wrote down the name of my blog so's I'd remember it, and came back here to write this post.
It was so positive in fact, that I actually feel like making an effort to keep this blog going. Even if no one ever reads a single word of it.

OMG, hoo is in teh Ceiling...

Proof that the internet is truly a work of awesome genius, too complicated to have evolved by chance alone. It simply must have been designed. I'm not saying it was designed by Ceiling Cat, but, you know, just look at the evidence.

LOLCat Bible

It's made me a believer.

[Hat-Tip Bartholomew's Notes On Religion]

Visiting Other Worlds

Wow.


Who'd have thought that crossing Carl Sagan with Autotune could be so compelling? A strangely moving video.

(Via Carry You Away)

A Lighthouse On St. Kilda's

Fuck me, but do I hate people. All people. Especially you. You, you new next-door neighbour, with your be-spoilered twatmobile and your repossessed Sanyo stereo. And in particular, I despise your love of crappy-poppy-dancey wank which you must listen to cranked upto 11 whilst you unpack your glitter-encrusted photo-frames and pink flip-flops. You've made me detest you so much, I will now have to spend every night in the pub rather than sit in the thin-walled hell-shack I call home and listen to you have phone-sex with your married boyfriend.*

And when I die of liver failure and bankruptcy, on your head be it.


*Names, dates and facts may be inaccurate due to beer.

You Get's What You Pays For

When you have a popular press that publishes articles with screaming headlines like this;

EACH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TO COST US £1MILLION

or like this;

One in six rapes committed by foreign attackers, shock police figures reveal

and this;

Sharia law 'same' as Krays' rule, says Lord Tebbit

and this;

Scandal of DEAD Lithuanian rapist granted £20,000 in legal aid for breach of 'human rights'

and this one;

Just one in 10 British Muslims feel integrated into society, study claims

And that's without even repeating the bollocking bullshit, the doubtful statistics and conspiracy theories that the articles themselves contain, then is it really surprising that people end up voting for a bunch of carefully marketed racist ballsacks?

BNP secures two European seats

Listen to the BNP voter about 4 minutes in. All the bollocks you've read in your daily paper, used as justification for voting 'dick'.

If there's not an argument for better press regulation in there somewhere, then I don't know where the fuck we'll find one.

Compare And Contrast

In the UK, we send a lot of people to prison. And as a result in the UK we get stories like this

Titan prisons plans 'abandoned'...Instead, Justice Secretary Jack Straw is expected to reveal proposals for five 1,500-place jails, with two set to go ahead immediately...
Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said..."Jack Straw needs to urgently explain how he will address the current crisis in the prison population that has resulted in thousands of prisoners being released early".

I particularly like the use of scare quotes around the word abandoned there. Mostly because Titan prisons aren't really being 'abandoned', just scaled down slightly.

Meanwhile, over in The Netherlands;

Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals. The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
...The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.

It's being widely reported that Labour are anticipating a proper fucking up at the polls next week and again (oh please oh please) at the general election next year. That means a lot of Labour MPs are going to be at a loose end. And you know, it really would be a shame to see the Labour party's skill at making every fucking thing illegal go to waste. And I think it's pretty clear that Holland needs a hand filling up it's prisons (I mean, where on earth are the Dutch putting their mentally ill for bum's sake?). It could be a match made in heaven.