The Cycle of Pain

If you were reading this blog at this time last year, then you probably know that revising for my exams has left me feeling incredibly unfulfilled. Working thanklessly for months only for a a little bit of that to pay off… I know it’s necessary (at least in our current system), but it’s frustrating and it makes me want to curl up into a little ball and sleep for a thousand years.

What I do like however, is writing. Only when I’m doing it recently I feel guilty for not using my time for revision, which makes me want to write – it’s a cycle of pain. Why couldn’t I be doing an entirely coursework-based degree? Damn you, science.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I put a fiction sample up on here, and seeing as every one I’ve done so far has been (in hindsight) a steaming turd with a smiley face painted on it, I’m going to hold back on that until I know it’s worth putting out there.

It pays to be your harshest critic sometimes.

Not that I’m not excited by what I’m doing, but I have no doubt that when I look over it again it will play out a little something like this:

Me: Well, I’ve left this alone for a month, time to do another draft.

Me again: Wow, I thought this was much better when I was doing it.

Still me: I’m a terrible writer.

Me after a week to think about it: Well, practice makes perfect.

*Does another draft/starts something new*

[REPEAT PROCESS AD INFINITUM]

And to think when I started this blog I was arrogant enough to think my first project would be published. Pffft, that one’s in a pile gathering virtual dust, as this one may end up if I haven’t improved enough to fix it in two years.

Printing Guns

You may have heard that, somewhere in Texas, there is someone 3D printing guns. The actual news item is, of course, much less vague than I’m making out it is, but the point is that this is now a thing, and it’s being done in the name of liberty and freedom. I have a problem with those words, not because I dislike being free (duh), but because their meanings have become so conflated. I can’t see how we in Britain, where guns are much harder to get hold of, are any less ‘free’ than, say, people in the US where gun laws are more relaxed.

There’s a certain mindset, it seems, that sees regulation as an inherently bad thing. Well, regulations can be good, and certainly if all of them were taken away we’d be left with something that barely resembled modern society at all (although some might think that a good thing).

I’d like a world where it was harder for dangerous people to get hold of dangerous weapons that let them do dangerous things. I mean, guns have one purpose, they’re made to kill. There’s not much else you could want a gun for unless it’s to protect yourself from other people with guns, in which case the problem is still one of people having guns.

And printing them out doesn’t seem like the best way to aid that situation.

I admit that I could be wrong, if everyone gets printed guns and gun crime becomes a thing of the past, I will concede that I was wrong and guns are just the thing everyone should need.

Until then, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable about the whole idea.

Giving Racists the Power

I know, I’ve been gone a long time. Well, it’s felt like a long time to me, but for you it’s probably felt like two days, or something like that. See how rough I am with this? Well, I shouldn’t be, because I’ve continued to write for Teen Skepchick even while I’ve been away from here. These posts will increase in frequency though, I swear it, even if it kills me (which it won’t, after all, it’s a blog, not a bomb).

So, everyone in the UK knows by now that UKIP (the UK independence party for those across the pond), got way too many votes in the local elections. Is it me, or do some people get a kick out of giving racists more power?

As I remember, in the last round of elections (general, not local, it’s only a little bit confusing), the BNP (the British National(ist?) Party) got a fair amount of support for a bunch of blatantly racist pricks, and now with UKIP, we have an overwhelming amount of support for some more covertly racist pricks.

Although, from the facebook profiles of some of their candidates, it’s not actually that subtle, they’re pretty much racists.

Well, if you want to throw your vote away, you’re welcome to. I voted Liberal Democrats so I pretty much did. Not because they’re not worth supporting, but because they’ll probably never get in again. 

And if I could be sure that the Green Party had completely abandoned their previous promises to incorporate alternative and complementary medicine into the NHS I’d probably vote for them instead. 

Ah, the joys of politics, where you disagree with pretty much everyone but are forced to work out which one you dislike the least.

Fuck The Oceans!

I have a very special facepalm reserved for some business endeavors these days, namely the ones that would trample over ecosystems we know shit all about in seconds if it could get them a tiny bit of metal we could just recycle from our current stocks. How many people have gold necklaces that they no longer use? I’m willing to bet there’s more gold in them than you’ll find on the sea bed, and not only that but they would be easier to get at and wouldn’t involve devastating ancient environments with unique organisms that could possibly even help us understand how life began.

Yes, I’m talking about hydrothermal vents and the quest to scour the ocean floor for them to dig up the last of our resources. Seriously, what do we need gold for? Surely, the negligent amounts we need for important things could be much more easily derived from jewellery that people don’t actually need? I understand the need for copper more, but seriously, wouldn’t it be easier to recycle than to take a bulldozer to the ocean floor? 

Why is it that this seems like a no brainer to me but when it’s presented on the news, reporters are acting like it’s the solution to all of our problems?

Heckles

What’s with people shouting from their cars at three in the morning? Specifically the ones simultaneously objectifying women in the most insulting way. It really confuses me. Why do they do it? What do they do afterwards? Do they high five each other and say, ‘boy, I am such a great person. I bet she really wants to have sex with me!’

I hope they don’t think that, because I can’t think of anything much less attractive than dehumanizing someone. I can’t imagine making anyone feel like a possession ever got anybody laid, but I could be wrong, the world is disappointing like that sometimes.

In future guys, think about it. What are you achieving by this? If you genuinely feel like that was a good idea after thinking it through, I advise that you commit some major crime so that you can be locked up away from the rest of society who can use their brain properly.

Hoarse Update

I still don’t care about horse meat. Ikea meatballs or no, we’ve eaten it and it tastes pretty damn similar to the other animals we stick in our mouths. Seriously, there’s no point withdrawing these things, just change the labeling. I’d be happy to eat the mystery meat, it probably tastes nice either way and it’s a sustainable use of dead horses. The French eat them and so should we, it’s a shame to give cows all the spotlight.

A Bad Case Of Suck

Hey, how have you been?

I recently started going through that novel I’ve droned on and on about on here before and I had a little moment. You may think that having a couple of months away from a project would make me feel distant from it, but when I got back to it I wasn’t feeling distant, I felt like I’d found something I loved broken on the floor, because honestly, the writing was sucky, especially the earlier parts. 

Those of you who have read this blog before probably wouldn’t be surprised about this (oh, self-deprecation, how original) but I stumbled a little trying to figure out how I thought that some of the sentences were readable.

Also, I’ve never seen the word truly used so many times, Truly this is a hurdle that I need to get over.

So I’m going to make some brief notes on the different chapters and then go back through it, rewriting large chunks and slaughtering adverbs as I go, as well as generally making the thing readable.

That may sound like less of a challenge than it’s actually going to be.