Tuesday 31 January 2012

How Many Britons?

In case you don't follow the news, because you're an ignorant fuck-wit, recently a cruise-ship fell over. Now I'm not entirely sure how you do something like that but I'm guessing it has something to do with putting a moron in charge of the boat. Anyway the important thing here is that no-one from Britain was killed. That is the important thing isn't it? I mean if it wasn't important then it wouldn't merit a mention on the news... and it fucking does. Now I'm not levelling this criticism directly at the british media as I have it on good authority that this happens in every country. Weirdly they actually report on the number of dead from their own countries, the fools don't even seem to realise that the dead of their nations aren't as important as ours, well at least according to our papers. I don't know what kind of crap they're telling you in your country.

Anyone got a non-racist joke for this caption?

I'm certain that some of you may have managed to see through the obscuring fog of my sarcasm to those who haven't... SURPRISE! I WAS BEING SARCASTIC. Sorry to the intelligent among you but apparently some of you are to thick for subtlety. Anyway I know what you're thinking, don't ask how the less you know about my operation the less of a security risk you are, they report this because there is a higher chance of you knowing someone who's been horrifically mangled into tiny dead pieces if they live geographically close to you. BULLSHIT! Again I don't want to risk subtlety being wasted on the more slack-jawed of you. Have you ever picked up a newspaper read about a horrific natural disaster and quickly flipped through it to check that no-one you know is dead?

"My wife's dead? I had been wondering where she'd gone."

No of course not because you're a human being... probably. The newspapers don't even have access to the personal information of these dead country-man for the very sensible reason that no-one should learn about the death of a loved one from the Daily fuckin' Mail except, weirdly, people who read the Daily Mail. If someone you even vaguely know died during 9/11 you didn't find out from the news, you found out from someone else who knew them. This is by far the best system for spreading traumatic news, it allows the blow to be softened to the appropriate level. So all the news is reporting is that some people in the category of 'cunts that I've never met' have died but that some of them fall into the category of 'cunts from slightly nearer that I've never met'.

Only gave the slightest shit about this whilst worrying for Kate Winslet's well-being.

There are two rapidly opposing defaults that I have towards compassion for my fellow humans. Massively caring about everyone and hating everyone to an equal extent. You see the human race has a habit of fucking each other over and that makes me angry when I'm in the caring state and manifests as a deep-seated hatred. This all means that I naturally oscillate from being thoroughly amazed by the ongoing wonder that is humanity and being filled with vile rage that I have to share my planet with you cunts. I either want you all dead or I love you all equally, either way this news about the number of people within a certain radius of my abode who may or may not be alive is completely and totally irrelevant.

Never met him, don't care that he's gone.

However this rant is equally irrelevant as the papers will continue to report this twaddle as long as they believe that the human race is bigoted enough to buy it. Unfortunately there's no control being run on this experiment. If a horrible disaster happens somewhere in the world, all the papers report on it exactly the same way 'X Britons are believed to be among the dead'. If the earth was ever to be destroyed some papers would lead with the line 60 Million Britons are among the dead. It's horse-shit of the highest order and it's beneath us a species to do it. The way the world has changed and evolved over the last 10 years I'm as likely to know the Russians among the dead as the Brits. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong maybe it shouldn't be done away with maybe they should just change it a bit... A Volcano has Erupted in Peru, 20 Buffy Fans are believed to be among the dead.

eddie <I treat all creeds, nations and races with equal contempt>

Sunday 29 January 2012

Being Awesome; Part 5


Well given the short amount of time that's past between this and my last post on the subject of my continued quest towards awesomeness there is fairly little to report on the continued development front. I've kept up my attempts to grasp the fundamentals of basic physics over at khanacademy.org. I've had little free time to devote to the study of 'How To Be Awesome'. So that's been pushed to this week. I have managed to squeeze in a few awesome things. I attempted to bake a Victoria sponge cake. I say attempted as the result was sponge cake, whipped cream and jam all occupying the same plate but sadly not the same plate. Still it tasted good enough and that's what matters in the realm of cake construction as far as I'm concerned.

I've also maintained my fairly respectable work-rate with regards to my writing. If I can offer one piece of advice from my ongoing challenge it would be to find something you love and then do the shit out of it, I'm currently tracking well ahead of my update schedule when it comes to this blog, whilst also chucking a fair amount of creativity directly into short-stories and the like. Which is all for the good methinks. In addition I've been devouring the fantastic Skulduggery Pleasant books, which I highly recommend. I also watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back this week because I've not watched them in about a decade and fuck yeah! Actually Empire as it turns out is much slower than I recall. This brings me to my current plans in the direction of expanding my awesomeness.

Over the next few weeks I will be writing the most definitively definitive Oscar review available. I intend to watch every second of every film that is nominated for an Academy Award, I also intend to thoroughly enjoy every second of it. You see I've been kind of lapse on keeping up any films that don't have super-heroes, explosions and robots in them so I'm looking forward redressing this balance by watching a series of craftsmen ply their trade at the highest level. I'm watching War Hose as I write this and it's been bloody amazing. So look-out for that at some point in the next couple of weeks.

So more writing and more watching for the next week.

eddie <currently getting teary-eyed over horses>

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Churches

I've lived in the same town for most of my life, well... I spent four years at uni failing a degree and rocking at GTA, which is almost exactly as depressing as you imagine it to be. One of the things that means is that I've spent an unfair portion of my life standing on the exact same patch of lino reading the best before off of milk bottles. I'm not obsessed or anything but the multitude of brief glances over time has built up to a substantial amount. Fuck, now I come to think of it. I've probably spent more time considering milk purchases in that florescent hell than I've spent having sex... Excuse me while I cut myself to release the pain... ARGH!... OK I'm back now.

I wish I could say that was my first milk related self-harming incident...

Anyway it also means that I've walked past the same church literally thousands of times. Anyone reading this from the UK will be aware that the entire countryside is littered with churches. Sometimes it might seem that at some point in this great nations history we stole a whole bunch of churches and liberally scattered them around the place. That's not the case we only did that with Egyptian, Roman and Grecian Relics. No all these churches are here because we built them.

Interestingly there isn't a single recorded case of God pitching in on one of these

That is much more impressive than it sounds. In most english villages the church is the tallest building and most of these bastards were built a couple of centuries ago. Before we had access to any of the modern day building techniques before we had anything other than a crippling fear of being burnt to death for eternity to get stuff done. As an atheist I find churches magnificently pointless. The amount of effort, time and human life it cost to erect each of the vast buildings for absolutely no reason. 

We've wasted more time and effort on Churches than lolcats... and we've wasted far to much time on both.

If you are reading this and you are a believer then allow me to ask a question, do you really think God cares if you spend a portion of your week telling him how awesome he is? He's God. He knows literally everything up to and including his own level of awesomeness and where you rank him on the awesome scale. As such having a special building devoted to this activity seems about as useful as having a special building dedicated saying rocks are rocks.

I wish I could tell you I didn't just spend an hour looking for the perfect rock...

The point I'm slowly drilling towards here is simple. Imagine what we could've achieved without this bullshit. Let's create unit of measurement for community wide effort of one church (ch), I think it's safe to say that each church takes about as much effort to build as one another. Now let's look at the purpose of building a really nice church. Well it's a focal point for the community and a way to show off to the neighbouring villages.

“Oh that is a lovely church you've got, when will it be finished?”
“It is finished”
“Oh, Sorry... it's a bit, erm... cosy isn't it.”

To readers not based in the UK that exchange was the English equivalent of a drive-by shooting. Now imagine if we didn't have churches the urge to compete would still be there but now you've got 1ch to spend on whatever you want. Human beings prize individuality. If the next town over builds an open air theatre, well you can build a bigger theatre, but everyone will know you were just to lazy to come up with your own idea... So you build an observatory.

"I wonder where they got the idea to build an observatory... jackasses"

If religion hadn't existed every run down, stupid thermometer out the front, tea, biscuits and silly robes house of child molestation in the UK would instead be replaced by equally glorious monuments to the individual character of that town. Furthermore once you've built a massive astronomy tower you're town gets a reputation and anyone with those interests in the county moves to your town. Instead of living in a homogeneous sludge of identi-kit biscuit lid villages we'd live in a country where each town was unique and worth a visit. I've laid a lot of blame at the feet of the Catholic Church over the years but I think the fact that other than an interesting local legend, a handful of historical eccentrics and special type of cake every town in this country is the fucking same may be the worst of the lot.

OK, second worst. The above image obviously represents child molestation

Don't get me wrong the last one hundred and fifty years have seen massive improvements with the birth of tourism leading to an urge for towns to have a selling point meaning that some places really have developed there own character. However for the most part every village in this country is more-or-less the same and all because we let men in big hats convince us that 1,000,000ch should be converted into 1,000,000 churches.

eddie <dreaming of a better world, waking in this one>

Monday 23 January 2012

Being Awesome; Part 4


Well turns out the hangover I though I had was in fact a 48 hour virus, so slightly less than awesome. However the night that led me to believing I was in fact hungover was incredibly sweet featuring as it did al of the paint-ball episodes of Community and mass Nerf war. Nerf warfare is a reasonably common occurrence ever since my flatmate was bought a massive Nerf gun in his offices Secret Santa. It should tell you everything you need to know about my life that the first Nerf weapon was brought into my abode about a month ago there are now somewhere in the region of a dozen guns. As to the other activity I've spent the last week devouring Season 1 and 2 of Community and have to declare it one of the funniest things that has ever existed. It's clearly been heavily influenced by the cult classic sitcom Spaced and if you need me to explain why that's a good thing then you can play hide and go fuck yourself whilst remembering that having once been the fastest sperm isn't enough to consider your life valuable

As to my continued quest towards further awesomage, this has been a week focussed on the mind. I've been using the tools provided by the fantastic website khanacademy.org to learn basic physics whilst brushing up on my basic maths. In addition to this I ploughed the time I spent watching the BBC's fantastic Stargazing Live to assist in the ongoing hunt for exo-planets. Turns out that human beings are still much better than computers at spotting certain patterns. As such there are tons of online programs were you can help out with doing some of the raw computing behind scientific projects, why not head over to zooniverse.org and jump in.

I've also been trying to find non-chemical ways of unwinding, with the removal of my fragile psyche's normal scaffolding a new support system is key. As such focussing on relaxation has been incredibly important, unfortunately this has taken my Adele addiction to worrying new heights. However if you are looking to a way to unwind I heartily recommend rainymood.com. Other than that I've had a second meeting with my illustrator and the children's book project moves forward at pace. I've also received a book entitled 'How To Be Awesome' as a belated Christmas present so hopefully by using that I will be able to develop faster and further than originally hoped. So this week will be a combination of working through that and writing like some sort of typing based demon... maybe one who is to old to keep working in demoning proper and has been moved into more of a admin role.

eddie <already 37.82% more awesome than last year>

Sunday 22 January 2012

People I Love

<This should be a post entitled Being Awesome; Part 4 but I'm colossally hungover, due to awesomeness so here's the post I would have posted on Tuesday>

I few months back I wrote a list of people I hate. That was a lot of fun because frankly there are few things more cathartic than metaphorically throwing rocks at bastards, well other than actually throwing rocks at bastards but that’s not as consequence free. However I’ve always been against unnecessarily increasing the amount of bile in the world so I thought I’d redress the balance by running through a few of my heroes.

Neil Patrick Harris
Only image I could find
where he's not wearing
a suit.
I’m pretty sure that it’s illegal to write an internet article about awesome people without including NPH. This choice might seem like a tired cliché/meme to some of you, but hey the reason Starbucks is so successful is because they make good coffee, the reason NPH is so beloved is due to his consistently high levels of awesome. Now on this Sceptred Isle I call home Doogie Howser was never broadcast so I didn’t have a clue who NPH was when I first saw Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies, or Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle as it was called in the States… we don’t have White Castle here. As with most of the American “culture” that has passed me by I was of course aware of Doogie due to the multitude of references to it in the shows I do watch. Anyhow it was a while into the film before they referenced the show so for the first portion I was at a loss as to who this maniac was, other than he played the character of white guy in Undercover Brother… which I liked… really… yeah well fuck you to. So I was just enjoying the insanely accomplished performance of an out of control rockstar style minor celebrity, then I learnt he was a former child star and hadn’t overdosed yet and I was twice as impressed The reasons for thinking this man is awesome are numerous, he plays the best character in How I Met Your Mother, he was Doctor Horrible, he’s a committed family man dedicated to his two children in a way that’s just spiffy, he sings, he dances, he does magic and in every single interview I’ve seen him in he exudes an easy charm that puts him real high on my list of people I want to go drinking with.

Nathan Fillion
This is just how he dresses.
The Fillion played Captain Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly. I could in all honesty end this part of the article there because if you don’t think that’s a good enough reason for him to be on this list then I don’t want you here you’re banned. Get the fuck out. If you’re still here and you don’t agree with me you are currently stealing my words with your eyes, you thieving prick. In addition to being the leading man in the finest show ever cancelled, Fillion is also Rick Castle in Castle the finest addition to the detective show genre since Diagnosis Murder, and I don’t say that lightly. He was also Captain Hammer. Again however it’s not the roles he’s played that win this man my allegiance it’s the fact that he’s chosen to play roles that carry with them a certain amount of risk. It’s also the fact that in everyone of the varied roles I’ve seen him bring to life on the big and small screen it’s clear that this man is having a fucking blast in his chosen profession. He is living the dream and he is humble and grateful. For that I will always love him… and he was Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

Felicia Day
I'm not going to go into massive
detail about the exact way my
Felicia Day shrine is built... but
after I've kidnapped her I'm sure
it'll make her love me.
This is kind of turning into a love letter to the cast of Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog isn’t it. The reason that the lovely Miss Day makes this list is not due to any particularly notable performance, she’s been in Buffy and turned up in minor roles in a whole bunch of other bits and pieces. She’s a quintessential ‘that girl’ actress. You know the ones when your watching something and every second she’s on screen all you’re thinking is “What the cunting hell do I know her from?” until the finally it hits you remember she was the murderer in a episode of CSI or something. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a fine way to earn a crust, but there has to be something more to elevate her on to this list. There is. I’m a geek and Felicia Day is our queen. She has her own show it’s called The Guild, it’s not on TV it’s entirely broadcast online for free and it’s all about a group of online gamers. Felicia writes, stars and directs proving that she’s not just some poser trying to cash in on geek culture but someone who actually loves it and knows it. She’s turned what she’s passionate about into a marketable product. I think it’s also important to note at this point that The Guild is funny as balls. It’s made me shoot liquid out of my nose on three separate occasions… and on one of those I wasn’t even drinking anything. She’s a writer first and as such the best lines tend to go to other characters… namely Vork who is one of my favourite fictional characters of all time. Felicia makes this list because she’s managed to turn being a geek into a livelihood and she did it in an incredibly positive way. Anyway I promise that I’m done with the cast of the Doctor Horrible.

Joss Whedon
This man has made more people cry
than rape flashbacks... too much?
I didn’t say anything about the crew though. Joss Whedon is the creative genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and is at the helm of The Avengers movie being released later this year. That’s a resume that demands a little respect I think we can all agree. Buffy is one of the all time greatest TV shows ever, I seriously love Buffy… well I love Buffy’s friends Buffy’s a bit whiny really. Firefly is a show I love so hard it’s kind of painful, there were only fourteen episodes so I watch it as a set and every time I reach the final episode it cuts like a knife that I don’t have anymore to watch. What I love about Joss, other than his work, is that he’s a fighter. When he saw Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the film) for the first time he cried because they’d ruined his film. Did he lay down and take it, no he made a series. When Angel got cancelled did he lay down and take it no he kept it going as a comic book. When the writer’s strike was happening he made Doctor Horrible and put it online for free, just for something to fill the time. When they cancelled Firefly he got a film made of it. On a side note if I ever meet the guy from Fox who keeps cancelling Joss’s stuff I’m going to have invent new words for the pain I’ll inflict upon him, he is definitely a massive wanker. Now Joss is working with Marvel a group of people who appreciate his work, who like his comics and more importantly realise that their fan-base will turn on them if the decide to cancel on him.

Professor Brian Cox.
More successful, better looking,
smarter and probably richer than
you... he's also much nicer as well
Most well known for his role as a keyboard player for seminal nineties bad D-Ream, Brian Cox also dabbles in Science. For those who don’t know Brian Cox is the greatest scientist in the world when it comes to staring wistfully into the night sky. He also a real, proper scientist, he probably has his own lab-coat and everything. Unlike many Science presenters throughout the years Cox actually works at CERN, where they fiddle with the nature of reality to see what will happen, and is very much this generations Carl Sagan. What makes Cox so brilliant to me is what makes all the best science communicators good, he can take something you see every day be it the light of the sun, the sky at night or simply the matter that makes up our universe and make you see it anew. He sees the world, and encourages you to see it with him, with a wide-eyed wonder that rather than being born from child like naivety is born from a fantastic understanding of just how lucky we are to be part of such an extraordinary and fantastic cosmos. His ability to explain the world around us on a deeper and more meaningful level that in no way diminishes its beauty but in fact increases it is truly a wonder of the universe. He also managed to explain one of the things about physics that has baffled me for most of my life in A Night with the Stars, so that’s pretty awesome.

Lady Gaga.
Most normal image I could find
Yes, really. First of all I believe that the Gaga may be a musical genius, even if she’s not my particular genus of caffeine heavy plant life I can recognise what she does as the very heights of her chosen art. In addition to this her antics are funnier than watching Nick Clegg fall into a pit of rusty razor blades. First off she’s managed to become the biggest recording artist in the world right now and yet if she fancies it she can still pop to shops without being hassled by using the simple disguise of not dressing like a lunatic, seriously if I asked you to describe her you’d start with blonde and then have to focus on her clothing choices. Secondly there is the speech she gave at a rally to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Which you can watch here. Go and watch that. If she isn’t a hero of yours as well then you are probably a homophobe and therefore a faggot. In addition I’d like to say that her ladyship has used her position in the media spotlight to at least spread a positive message, while Beyonce is all “All men are tossers” and Britney is trying to show the world a new definition of “fucking mental”, the Gaga is all about being true to yourself and not worrying what others say about you even if you’ve got a lobster on your face.

John Cheese
This is his profile picture
over at cracked.com... not
sure if he's the clown or
the other person.
I know what you’re thinking, who the shit-balls is John Cheese? Well I shall tell you. John is one of the writers over at cracked.com. Cracked.com is just about the funniest thing on the entire internet and recovering alcoholic John Cheese is their funniest writer. Even if you don’t know of Cracked.com specifically you’ve probably read one of their articles at some point there the ones that run “9 Greatest Last Words”, “6 Animals That Are Smarter Than You” or “7 Most Inventive Uses of Racial Slurs In Children’s Fiction”. Now when I say that John’s a recovering alcoholic I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that in the he used to drink so much it’s a miracle he’s alive and that his children aren’t in federal custody. John’s written several humorous list style articles about addiction and his early life which is laughably miserable. I say laughable because I’ve never read a single thing he’s written that hasn’t made me laugh, a lot, his YouTube videos from when he was first getting sober are some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. What elevated him from the position of funniest man on the internet to godhood though was the hero move he pulled off when he proposed to his girlfriend, he’d spent years previously saying that marriage wasn’t for him then he wrote an article enumerating the signs that you should probably get married, at the end of it he proposed… in an article he was paid to write. The final line of the article in case you didn’t follow the link, either because you’re a hateful person, a dumbass or I dunno religious reasons, the final couple of lines read.

“… Oh. Well, I guess when I put it that way, I’m actually kind of surprised we aren’t already married by now. I can be kind of a dumbass from time to time.
Emily Clark, will you marry me?
Update:She said yes. Which is a relief because it means I don’t have to fist-fight her now.”

That right there is a series of sentences that prove this man is a legend.

Wil Wheaton
These image searches are kind of a
hit or miss thing, but I've genuinely
never found an image as rocking as
this
Think what you like of Wesley Crusher, because frankly that character was a fucking tool, but the actor who portrayed him is an awesome chap. Wil Wheaton has crept into the collective consciousness of the internet over the last few years through a series of incredibly smart choices. First off Wil Wheaton is a good friend of Gabe and Tycho over at Penny Arcade, who only didn’t make this list because gushing about them twice in such rapid succession is kind of sad, which would have been enough to get him on this list. However there is more. First of let’s address the Crusher issue. Yes the character sucked but when you were a kid would you have turned down a role on Star Trek? Of course not you can’t hold it against him anymore than you can hold Phantom Menace against Liam Neeson. Right so lets run through the stuff that makes this guy awesome, his performance as evil Wil Wheaton on The Big Bang Theory is fantastic and proves the man has a great sense of humour and his performance in The Guild is equally awesome, he brews his own beer, he allows the Bloggess to use an image of him collating paper to annoy those who try to get her to do their free advertising. Wheaton has spent the last few years, writing, blogging and championing a metric fuck-ton of good causes. I recommend adding him to your twitter feed... I mean after you add me to your twitter feed that is... @eddiezdi.

Simon Pegg
Comic book artist, zombie hunter,
action-hero, Star Fleet engineer
and friend of Steven Spielberg.
To say I've followed Simon Pegg's career with interest would be the understatement of the century, admittedly it's only just over eleven years into this century so it's not that major a claim. I remember seeing Pegg doing stand-up on TV during the first couple of years of his career as a professional mirth-maker. He then moved on to work on one of the greatest sketch-shows of all time, Big Train. After that though he made Spaced. Spaced was the first ever show that actually spoke to me, I first saw it while I was at University. At that point a comedy show about a group of young adults who clearly had no idea how the world worked was perfect for me. Throw in the exactly right combination of misadventure, geekiness and drugs and this shambolic tale of idiots building a slapdash family unit is easily my favourite show ever made. However I've singled out Pegg over all the others involved in this show because of three over things, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Paul. Those three films are all in my top twenty, one of them is in my top three. In addition to that Pegg has a habit of doing the jobs that you know he's wanted to do since childhood. If you believe that the first time he ever put on a Star Trek uniform was for the film then I don't think you know the man. I've also met him on two occasions and he was a thoroughly lovely man, he appreciates his fans in the way that only a geek can, he knows what's it like to queue up for six hours to meet your hero because he's done it himself and that's why I love the man.

Stephen Fry
Pictured: England.
If you're reading this and you are from the UK I don't really need to explain to you what it is about Stephen Fry that makes him a hero, a legend and a national treasure. I could write an entire article in praise of this man's wit, wisdom, near photographic memory or just the warmth he displays when communicating with those of lesser intelligence, i.e. everyone, but none of that is the reason why he's my personal hero. The reason for that is that Mr Fry suffers from depression and is open about the subject. He made a documentary about it a few years back and it helped drag the subject out into the light of day. You see depression is a filthy, horrible disease that thrives on darkness and every time someone is made even the tiny bit more willing to discuss it with anyone then it helps to fight it. Fry has been tireless in his support of various charities and groups that aim to help people to fight against mental illness. It is very difficult to talk about depression it takes a lot of strength to break through that wall but Fry realised that by doing so that he could help others and that why he made this list of awesome folk.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

One Small Blog


The other day I was looking at some pictures of the rock formation on our closest planetary neighbour sometimes known as the Face of Mars. Now the image below shows the first picture taken of this rocky outcrop.

Kind of looks like one of Chimps from Planet of The Apes

Looks a lot like a face doesn't it, I mean almost enough like a face that you could seriously believe that it was carved by someone at some point. That image was captured Viking 1 back in 1976, and led to all sorts of conspiracy theory nonsense. Let's have a look at a more recent image.

By the way this is where I plan to build the main building of my Mars estat

Now if you look below the 'nose' there you can see there's clearly a ridge joining the top and bottom 'lips'. While the rest of the face may have weathered away over time but that ridge, well erosion doesn't make things grow, and mouths don't have joins between the top and the bottom. For me it's fairly conclusive that this is not a face. It's a result of the brain's facial recognition software misfiring. This got me thinking about the most moronic conspiracy theory that exists. Namely that in 1969 the US Government engaged in a whopping fib as to events transpiring on the Moon.

Oliver Postgates original fake footage was rejected by NASA

So let's run through the obvious reasons why this is... sorry I was going to say retarded, but I once knew a kid with downs syndrome and he was obsessed with space and the idea that the Apollo 11 mission was faked would really upset him, so how about... moronic. Before I get on to the science related stuff I want to run through the stuff based on human nature.

Not all humans are a product of nature.

First of the Moon Landing happened at the height of the Cold War. For those of you who don't know much about history I'll summarise, Russia and America weren't getting on. In fact there was a thing called the Space Race. For reasons unknown, well actually the entire thing was stirred up by a man who wanted a space program... can't remember his name, Russia and America had decided that what with a meaningful war being out of the question a race to the moon was the best substitute. Now for those of you who have never been involved in a competition with someone else one of the things you do if you lose is check that the other guy actually won.

Well he said he had a full house, why would he lie?

Now at this point the conspiracy theorists jump in with some bullshit about the Russians and Americans being in cahoots, which by extension of course means that the next twenty years of the Cold War up to and including the fall of the Berlin Wall was also a colossal fib. This was at a time when every nation on earth was engaged in the most elaborate spy-game of all time, so in addition to these two governments being engaged in this deception every other government on earth was also in on this and didn't use the opportunity to show up the most powerful nation on earth.

If he wasn't wearing any trousers would you just let it slide?

Next up let's look at a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin.

"Three people may keep a secret, if two of them are dead”

How many people would have been in this on conspiracy? Yet over the years there has been not a single whistle blower... believable that there was some sort of cover-up before the internet was invented, but since no-way, you'd be able to get the info out long before the cover-up swooped in. Even the conspiracy sites don't have any bullshitters pretending to be insiders from the program. Next up, you still need to build, and launch, a massive fucking rocket.

Massive fucking rocket is a technical term.

Because people would've noticed if you pretended to go to the Moon without launching a massive rocket. So having covered all the basic reasons why you have the intelligence of a dead gazelle for questioning whether or not this transpired. I'm now going to drill down into the science of the moon landing debunking.

Pictured: Science

I'm not going to go through all the little 'flaws' found in the video footage of the event. That's been covered fairly exhaustively by many people including Patrick Moore and Mythbusters. Also the truth of the matter is that if you want to believe this then you'll write that off as others who have bought into the lie. However I think we can all agree that the idea of a conspiracy so monumentally huge that the entire scientific community being in on something that actively harms the advancement of human knowledge is fundamentally ridiculous. To believe that you first have to believe that every single person who has ever decided to work in the field of science has done so with an ulterior motive. Again not within the realms of human behaviour as I have experienced it and probably not as you have if you are honest. So when you hear that the Moon is moving away from the earth at a speed of 3.8cm a year, then you can easily accept that it is a peer reviewed scientific fact.

This may well overtake the Glen Beck picture as my most used image.

It is. Here's a question for you though, how do we know that? Well there is a simple explanation. You see if you have two mirrors placed together at a right angle to one another and you fire a laser at them, then no matter what the laser will bounce back to a sensor next to the point of origin. Using an incredibly accurate clock you can measure distance in the most accurate way known to mankind. So here is the final nail in the head of mindless conspiracy cunt-ery. We measure the distance to the moon using the mirrors on the lander from the Apollo 11 mission. That's right conspiracy theorists. To accept that the mission never happened you have to accept that the above fact is made up... which begs the question of why? No-one on earth would ever have noticed.

"Is it just me or does the Moon look 3.8cm further away than last year?"
"I have no fucking idea... why would you even ask that? Are you a moron."

Oh and also this.

Taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter...
as part of NASA's 'Suck it, Bitches!' Program 

That's a photo taken of the landing site by the LRO back in 2009, it also took pictures of all the other landing sites, because even NASA is sick of this bullshit by now.

"I've actually managed to distil my hatred for this
bullshit into the most potent acid ever discovered"

Look I believe that the governments of earth are up to all sorts of skeevy unethical stuff but this is conspiracy is born of a complete inability to accept that mankind is capable of the exceptional. If that's your point of view then allow me to ask exactly how you are reading this? Because believe it or not the creation of the internet is actually significantly more difficult than sending two people to the Moon.

eddie <if you want to argue about this with me fine, but I may lose control and slap you>

Monday 16 January 2012

An Open Letter To Scotland


Dear Scotland,

Hi, how's it going with you guys. How's the weather, I understand it gets chilly up there during the winter. It's been a little cold down here as well but I'm sure you guys have it worse, but then you are a hardy people and I know you'll be coping with it much better than we do. So I've been hearing that you guys want independence.

Imagine my surprise when I learnt
Independence wasn't a brand of whiskey

I can understand that. I get that maybe the rest of us take you for granted, I myself have made many a joke at your expense but hey you gave us Frankie Boyle, if anyone can take a joke it's you guys. If I'm honest I'm not massively worried about you guys leaving from an economic stand-point as much money as Britain makes out of the offal, shortbread and heroine industries, we spend almost as much trying to make sure you guys live past fifty. That's not to detract from your many fine achievements, hell you guys gave the world whiskey and I'm pretty certain that even if everyone in London went out tomorrow and sucked of the first homeless person they found we'd still not be close to thanking you for that one.

Pictured: Scottish People, Not Pictured: Dignity

On a serious note though you're as much a part of British culture as the English are. We're the bickering couple of the world political scene and you leaving the relationship isn't going to help anyone. I'm certain there's nothing wrong here that we can't solve by sitting down and having a chat and a nice cup of tea.

At least we can agree on the awesomeness of tea.

Is this working at all? It isn't is it. OK, fuck it I'm jump straight to the core of the issue. Don't leave, please, please don't leave. As much as I love the Netherlands I don't want to move out there, all my friends live here. Sorry I've gotten a bit ahead of myself there. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about moving to the Netherlands. Well I got to talking with my flatmate the other night and we realised something terrible about Scotland leaving the Union. It fucks Britain so hard it hurts.

I've quit smoking but there are *ahem* other attractions

You see there are 59 parliamentary constituencies in Scotland. There are 650 constituencies in the UK in total. Simple maths lets you know that removing Scotland from the UK leaves us with 599. So that'll be a little extra room in the Commons. Eric Pickles will have enough room to sit down without crushing the two bastards next to him, it doesn't matter where he is sitting it's the House of Commons they're all bastards. The problem comes when you give those seats a cursory glance, let's have a look at how those seats break down shall we.

            • Conservatives         306
            • Labour                    258
            • Liberal Democrats  57
            • Other                      29


So as you can see the cunts don't have a majority meaning they've had to team up with the back-stabbers. Let's play a little guessing a game. How many of the scottish seats do you think belong to the Tories?

1

Fucking 1! Let's have a look at how those figures would break down without the scottish seats.

            • Conservatives         305
            • Labour                    226
            • Liberal Democrats  45
            • Other                      23


Without those scottish seats a party only needs 300 seats to form a majority. That's right Scotland you're going to give the UK, and more importantly London, to those cunts. Scotland as a country you just about break even, without you the UK is still the worlds fourth largest economy and you're giving it to the FUCKING TORIES! This is page one of the evil-doers play-book, divide and conquer, they've even done the thing where they trick you into thinking it's your own idea. Come on you hate those cunt's more than I do, if you leave the UK then they've one, if you stay you can keep being a thorn in their side constantly fucking with their plans of world domination by the simple act of not voting for them... you do that anyway. 

The number of results for angry scottish people  is fucking ridiculous.

So stay with us and don't let those fuckers win... please, how can I sweeten the deal. You can have Prince Harry, he's the most entertaining one, fuck it we'll throw in Pippa Middleton.

eddie <don't leave me trapped with these bastards>

Sunday 15 January 2012

Being Awesome; Part 3


So I've now been successively more awesome every day for fifteen days, and I would have to say the overall philosophy has been a success. To breakdown some of the major achievements, I've been given a set of keys for work which means I am now able to head to work earlier without fear of being stuck waiting in the freezing cold, this means I'm able to compensate for the overall terribleness of the local transport system and avoid being late for work. Now I feel it's important to point out that my job isn't part of the awesome philosophy, it's something I have to do to pay the bills. My dream job seeing as you asked is to be an ambulance driver, to that end I intend to get my driving license this year and then spend the next two years (because you need a clean driving licence for that period to get the job) picking up qualifications that'll be useful to the role.

However focussing on the future or the past is not the true spirit of awesome so let's look at the week just gone and the one coming up. If that's not in the now enough for you then you don't fully understand the transient nature of time. So I've sent of my DNA sample to be a fully signed up bone marrow donor, this is a wicked thing to do I highly recommend doing it, if you're a man they need your marrow just go to the website of the Anthony Nolan Trust and register. Look the likelihood of you ever getting called upon is actually really low and in most cases it's a completely painless procedure, if however it is the more complicated procedure you have to have, MAN THE FUCK UP! Oh no, it might be a little hurty, so what mother-fucker people are fucking dying if you aren't man enough to go through a little discomfort to help someone in the time of need please turn in your testicles and someone will be along shortly to rescind your Y chromosome.

I'm still not smoking and I'm eating healthier, I'll admit I'm a wee bit tipsy as I write this though, but in my defence it's nearly midnight on a Friday. I've still managed to massively cutback on the booze, which has left me feeling... different. I'm actually feeling pretty good at the moment but that maybe because I've started meditating again rather than the whole detox thingymabob.

In other news I've been writing like some sort of crazy demon. I've been welded to the keyboard. I've written a kid's book aimed at the under tens that aims to explain depression to them in a way that is easy to understand while still giving them the right information. It's basically the book that I wished had existed when I was a youngling. I've had a proper meeting with my artist friend the wonderful Miss Victoria Graves and will be meeting her again next week to review the projects development. It may not end up being a book as I'm starting to think it may well work better as an online project, but we'll see how it goes.

In other news I'm working up a project for a short series of online episodes for a short comedy series, think After Hours over at cracked.com and the Guild but with a table-top slant rather than focussing on the world of MMOs. I'm hoping that I by citing the major influences straight off the bat I'll avoid being accused of ripping them off at a later date.

So what have I got planned in the field of continued and aggressive awesomage for the next week. Well I'll be writing like the Flash on mecha-speed and using the fantastic service available over at the Khan Academy to teach myself physics, I'm gonna try and rack up a couple of GCSE's and A-Levels this year. Oh yeah I also booked myself in to give blood, which is totally something you should be doing. Anyway... yeah that's all the awesome I've been for now.

eddie <be awesome and increase the peace>

Thursday 12 January 2012

SOPA, so good?


(Firstly I apologise for that title I couldn't resist.)

Stop Online Piracy! It's a noble goal, isn't it? Or is it? On the one hand I think we can all agree that if you make something you deserve at least a slice of any profit that it makes. As such the US Senate/Congress (I really don't know or care which one) is currently debating the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA is just about one of the most terrifying effronteries to a free and open society that has been considered by a democracy since the Reichstag declared a state of emergency. You see SOPA basically puts forward the idea that a rights-holder can have a website removed from the internet if it is in breach of copyright. This has little or no oversight, and you don't even need to be informed that it's happened. This is a terrifying.

That's the obligatory Orwell and Nazi references done with

Allow me to explain. Imagine you've got a lovingly crafted website filled with hand drawn images of horses fucking dogs, I'm not going to judge you. Now one day you get an e-mail from one horsedoglover@gmail.com telling you that they cannot access your website from the USA. That's the first time you know that someone has lodged a complaint against you. After this you send out a flurry of e-mails, after all your crude etchings of inter-species porn are your only source of income, you discover that someone over at Disney has decided that one of the horses you've scribbled looks exceedingly like the one from Tangled. You now need to lodge an appeal with the US Government to get the block lifted and allow the traffic back to your website. It's worth noting that take-down notice that Disney will have requested won't need to specify what breach of copyright has occurred. This legislation allows corporations to get any website they should choose removed from the internet. It is only after the site has been taken down, that any due process is used.

I'll give you £10 if you can give me another blog that'd have this
picture underneath  a paragraph that included inter-species dicking

That means there is absolutely nothing to stop me from getting Google taken down. Unless of course the US Government decides that my rights as a private citizen are not as valid as those of a large corporation. So we have a piece of legislation about to hit the books in the good old US of A that means that anyone can shut down chunks of the internet. The list of those who are against this ridiculous piece of legislation includes Microsoft, Google, eBay, twitter, Amazon... and no I'm not linking to those sites, they don't really need exposure. The real problem here is that if they do pass this bill other governments will not wait to see if it works or if it is a terrible idea, they'll leap on the band wagon. It's always been true that small countries follow the lead of larger and more powerful states, but this time it's China we're all stumbling after. Stopping free use of the internet is what the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan governments tried to do before their respective countries caught fire. Now I'm not stupid enough to say the US administration is identical to these states, that would be an over-exaggeration that I'll leave to the many morons that inhabit the web.

I'm getting more mileage out of this picture than
the lesbian nun-one... something is very amiss here

What I will say however is this. It won't effect me. I'm serious. Every attempt at creating a firewall of this type has failed. You see the people who create the systems to block these sites don't want to do it, they're the kind of people who live on the internet. So instead they make a basic system show it to the people who have hired them and take the money, within a few weeks programs appear that allow those who wish to circumvent the barriers. It's happened with the great firewall of China, and that government is far better at censoring shit than the Americans... practice makes perfect after all. This will only effect law abiding citizens... actually now I come to think of it I operate on the assumption that everyone who reads this runs at least one illegal dog-fighting ring so this probably won't effect you either. I live in the UK so I have at least a week before my country's government decides to follow suit, as part of our governments ongoing 'work the shaft, cradle the balls' policy towards the US. I have no intention of obeying this law. In fact I intend on deliberately griefing it absolutely senseless. I'm going to fuck this law harder than a group of premiership footballers fuck an eighteen year old crack-whore.

I'm not calling Rooney a rapist... I'm calling all premier league footballers rapists

Here's what I plan to do. On day one of this bills enactment, I'm going to send out a flurry of take-down requests to the relevant authorities. There is absolutely no penalty for this. I will be aiming to get the official websites of all US political parties, Senators, Congressmen and all official government, presidential and white-house sites. I will also target every single site I can think of that is crucial to modern day life, Google, twitter et al. Now they can choose to ignore those requests if they want to, in fact that will be better as it will prove that this law exists entirely to allow the rich and the powerful to control the internet.

Couldn't find a single image that summed up the internet accurately
that I was comfortable with showing you... there is entirely to
much Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle gay porn in the world

That's what this law is really for. You see the entertainment industry has seen a massive fall in profits since the internet was created. It turns out that when presented with the ability to easily access any piece of music, any film or any TV show people choose, by and large, not to get stuck with the absolute wank these industries have tried to force on us. Would you rather watch Michael Bay's latest series of explosions or Blade Runner? Would you rather listen to the latest winner of whatever low-rent freak-show Cowell's just produced or the frankly fantastic Hadestown by Anais Mitchell? Would you rather watch Hole in the Wall or download Modern Family? Then of course you have the artists themselves who have now realised that there is little or no reason to give a cut of the money that they've worked for to these cowboys when they can get 100% of the profits for themselves. This law is nothing more than a swaggering bullying power play by a group best described as cunts. I'm not out on the streets protesting with the Occupy guys because I don't have the free time, I'm lucky enough to be employed, but I'm fully willing to fuck off the other shit going on in my life if the fucking revolution has started, and this law's passing is pretty much the first step on that fucking highway. Your move Senators.

I'm not saying I have a cyborg-bear...
I'm saying I can and will make one

eddie <if your government shuts down the internet then you shutdown the government>