A game of musical chairs

Capitalism is a game of musical chairs. It’s all a big game; you can make a big show out of it with the music playing and lots of nice decorations, but that’s still what it is- a game. Those in the chairs have a great time, unbeknownst to the ‘irrational’ disillusionment of those who are unfortunate enough to not get a chair and have to go out. Rats.

Socialism is everyone grouping together to buy an extra chair, so they can all sit down and cheerily listen to the music. Nobody has to go out, everyone’s ‘in’, per se. It’s no longer a game, but what good’s a game anyway? They have the music to listen to and console themselves with; they have that freedom. Freedom isn’t the ability to make a game; it’s the freedom to be able to enjoy yourself.

Excuse the analogy. But I think it’s quite apt. Capitalism is a game, essentially. If it weren’t a ‘game’ how would so many bankers who contribute nothing to society be able to manipulate it to such a degree as to make their livings off it? Or just generally, people who contribute nothing to the greater good. Anything where the primary motive is to make money is never going to be the pinnacle of morality now, is it?

And that’s what capitalism is. It’s a system made out of money, and money keeps it revolving. There’s no escaping it now. What you reap is what you sow; capitalism is such a repeating cycle that there’s no way out. All capitalism can ever produce is capitalism.

So congratulations. You’re in a game that you can’t get out of. There’s no respawns either, so once you’re out, you’re…out. Good luck with that.

This is Not a Suicide Note; This is a Letter of Resignation

Sound, my homies. It's raw, and childish because I refuse to use anything other than ABCB* but essentially this is a poem saying a big fuck you to society and it's all about conceptualisation of ideas culminating in metaphorical martyrdom and shit. It's also probably incredibly flawed in places, but essentially life is a business. Yes.

Constructive criticism welcomed greatly.

This is not a suicide note;

This is a letter of resignation.

I grow disillusioned working here

In this lifeless corporation.

Have my notice; let me take

My chances somewhere else.

Change my expiration date

And pull me from the shelf.

I’ll take no baggage when at last

This letter has been sent.

Life; I never truly owned-

I merely paid for rent.

Forgive me this, but life transcends

The beating of my heart.

Shakespeare exists in his own words

And Van Gogh in his art.

I dare not speak these words for you

Will only tax my breath.

Perhaps it’s true, that as footprints

These notes are better left.

Good sir, you built this mind of mine;

You dare not strike me now I say

That life has such a bitter taste

And I would rather eat away.

I’m tired of imitation products;

I want to have the real thing.

I want to feel the greener grass;

I want to hear the true birds sing.

The party in the cave goes on;

I’m left alone and weary.

Good sir, I leave your presence now

You shall not notice me.

I leave behind this whisper

I write as my own lament.

This Eulogy I hope will be

An echo once it’s sent.

A final purpose; more than I

Have ever been before.

Unwanted products are nothing

Till they’re shipped out of the store.

Good sir, I’ve left. I doubt you’ll chase

This ghost of mine; I’m gone.

Echoes are not swayed by bars

And I think you’ll find I’m one.

This is not a suicide note;

This is a postcard from afar.

I’d ‘wish that you were here’

But you can’t drive here by car.

*correction made from 'ABAB' to 'ABCB' <--- my bad, folks.

Is 'free will' an illusion?

I've been studying determinism and libertarianism in Ethics recently, which has been rather brilliantly timed considering it made me think about in greater detail the thoughts that had already been in my head for quite a while. I'm on the roots to becoming a sociological determinist, essentially. And I've said previously that free will is, indeed, an illusion. It's not a wacky claim by any means; in fact it is entirely rational and a product of common sense. I shall now tell you why and develop that into a greater pondering on adjoining thought processes.

There are two aspects to human development or characteristics: nurture and nature. Before we are born, genes incline us towards certain things, or perhaps restrict us. After we are born, society nurtures and builds our character and (here lying the difference between determinism and libertarianism) our moral self. That is my belief, anyway. And bearing in mind from the moment we are born, and even before we are born in the case of genetics, we are externally built as an individual in both of these senses, how can we have free will? Our entire character has been built and shaped by society and to what I believe is a lesser degree, our genes.

I'd rather ignored the genes side of this argument, focusing more on the sociological side, which is what made me a sociological determinist, briefly. But there is an incredibly interesting article I read that focuses largely on genetics and free will. For instance, you know when you're just sitting down doing nothing of interest and just decide to tap your finger on the desk, randomly? Scientists can observe brain patterns and would be able to know that you were about to tap your finger on the desk before you'd done it, or thought of it. That presents the idea of us being products of our genes; and our actions being products of our genes further from that.

I'm less convinced by that whole segment, largely as I believe nobody knows enough about genetics to commit to an argument the exact implications they mean for the person we will become, or more pertinently the character we will go on to represent. I like to focus on the sociological side of things, really. I believe that free will is to a great degree a complete illusion as it is decided by our character. And this character has been built through exposure to external influences within society its entire life. It is the most inherent and pertinent influence on our being and it shapes, eventually, every action we will make.

I kind of extended this idea past ethics to a more socialist view on things. I already believed that society is irrelevant to any moral outlook, and no morals lie in society, and also that the role of society should be to ensure nobody is disadvantaged before they even have the chance of entering it. This is a very socialist view, I'm saying that as morals do not themselves lie within society; they are priori concepts made to be reached with the mind, the least a society can do is give everyone an equal playing field at the time someone is born into it, to give everyone an equal chance of achieving their potential; whether that be morally, or in any other sense of the word. I'm not condoning full blown communism here, I'm not saying that everyone should always be equal as we must reap the products of our actions, but I'm saying that nobody should be disadvantaged before they are born or have a chance to do otherwise.

Now, a hard determinist would say that things are always destined to be as such. They would say that due to the inherent chain of causation of the universe, which also applies to humans and human actions, external influences would destine a child from a family of smokers to always smoke, and (this is the political extension I made) a child from a poor family to always do worse.

Now, let me defend the hard determinist for a second. Of course the child from a family of smokers does not always smoke. But the cases in which they don't end up smoking would have to be due to another internal chain of causation; essentially to be a hard determinist you don't need or have the ability to predict things that will happen, but you recognise that there is and always will be a cause to everything- including human actions.

I am saying as an extension that whilst a child from a poor family will not always do worse in life, they are far more likely to. This is because society sets up a chain of obstacles that aren't present for the richer families to make life and fulfilling their potential far more difficult to do. Now clearly the child from the poor family will not always fail in life. Clearly not. But they are more likely to. Society disadvantages a child that should have equal rights at birth by throwing unnecessary obstacles in its way that it doesn't throw in the path of others. Not only is society the bane of all morality, it also irrationally screws people over.

Now really I'm a soft determinist as I'm saying that there isn't a definitive path and timeline laid out in front of everything. I'm saying that things are far more likely to happen, but they needn't necessarily happen. Either way, free will is the product of a character developed by society and thus is nothing more than a brainchild and will always have its limits. What is free will? Am I free to fly? I'm certainly free to have a go; but is the freedom of having the choice the concept of free will in itself?

This all presents itself rather nicely in John Locke's locked door analogy, where there is a man in a locked room that he does not know is locked, but chooses to stay sitting in the room and the question is asked of whether he is free to leave at that moment. He is certainly free to choose to leave. It will inevitably turn out that the door is locked, but he entirely has the free will to choose to leave. The external circumstances of someone locking the door are restricting him; like the external circumstances of me not having wings are restricting me from being free to fly and the external circumstances of a worse environment and financial disadvantage will restrict the poor child. Now the latter of these would be the one argued as not definite. In a way, yes. But it's surely undeniable that it is as disadvantage to not have these luxuries? Even if we're not saying that not having these luxuries definitively brings you a destiny of failure; nobody is saying that. The fact is that it is a restrictive external circumstance.

What's interesting is that I argued the libertarian perspective when this issue was raised. I'd argued that he was free. That just because the door is locked doesn't mean it will be locked when he gets up and decided to open it. So long as he has the illusion of a choice the choice is still there and there is still the chance of the door not being locked. Just because every time I drop a ball gravity brings it to the ground doesn't mean it will the next time I do it. I think he is free. This is all rather strange, of course. And doesn't combine my two beliefs to any degree.

So how can I argue free will is an illusion? Who knows. I can't believe it's an entire illusion, but I do to a large degree. Our choices are made by a character that is built by external circumstances. The inevitable chain of causation is ever more inherent and pertinent in this context. I believe that morality lies outside of society; so one can always be free to reason and as long as they reach beyond society then they can always be free in one sense. But the man in the room wasn't even doing this. So it's all very confusing.

Yes, I have many tangents to spring off from but I think I best restrain myself. In summary, and to justify myself:

Free will is, to a degree, an illusion as our character is built by a series of external circumstances and this is what makes our decisions.

Good day, one and all.

Education

I decided to blog on education, because - why not?

I've recently been thinking how utterly barbaric a concept it is that such a simple basic human right such as education is somehow a commodity to be bought for the best price. It's disgraceful that somebody is entitled to more learning because their parents can pay the price for it. Education is a right which should not be inhibited in any way at all by the wealth of your parents, quite simply. It's ruthlessly unfair that somebody is unfortunate enough to be less likely to fulfil their learning potential due to the fact that they are born into a poorer family.

Of course, this isn't entirely the case. All humans have a basic right to a GOOD education. If the state can provide this, then that right is fulfilled and really the private sector can be left alone to its own business. Still, it irks me greatly that people are so much more fortunate than others, but as long as the state fulfils its duty to give every child the potential for a good education then it's irrelevant, really.

I don't agree with faith schools. I went to a COE primary school, and I loved it. It was and still is a brilliant school. Faith schools have no place in society, though. I was given a Bible reading every week and combine that with my parents taking me to Church every Sunday from a young age, grew up a Christian. This is all well and good, until I later realised that I couldn't justify the existence of God. I accepted him; I didn't believe in him. Essentially, I was brainwashed. Because God was an idea placed in front of me just like the things I can see with my eyes. He was presented as an empirical idea - a fact. I can entirely understand Christian parents wanting to save their child from eternal damnation, it makes sense. But it removes the concept of free will, thus belittling their own concept of God; we weren't given free will to be programmed as robots to believe in God anyway. God gave us free will to reason his existence, if he wanted us to merely be his robots and believe in him then he would have not bothered to give us free will. So nobody should have this concept removed as a child. Quite simply, as a child the idea of God was put in front of me like 2+2=4 would be put in front of me; I accepted it as such. This is wrong.

Society programmes us, in many senses. Supposedly this is a 'sociological determinist' perspective, but I won't conform entirely to those ideals. We will never have complete free will as our character is built externally - by the society we are brought up in. Faith schools allow God to be a prominent part of this society. Now, the failure here is that society is an entirely empirical concept, and the very idea of God is one that needs to be from priori reasoning. You can't present God as a fact, you need to encourage reasoning from within the mind to try and obtain faith. Faith schools brainwash in many senses because they put God as an empirical concept - part of the whole society a child is raised up in. From either a religious or atheist perspective I disagree with it. School is a huge part of your environment, and your environment is a huge part of the society which builds your character as a child. Faith schools place the idea of God as an empirical fact before a full choice is foreseen. As a 5 year old child, there's no way I was ready to produce an internal dialogue of philosophical debate to reason the existence of a divine being. This talent should be developed, rather than inhibited. The concept of God is priori, and placing him as an empirical concept in a child's environment is belittling to both religion and reason. Of course I'm sure all this is more relevant to the younger years of faith schooling - perhaps I harbour serious cynical reminiscences of my memory of faith school. I disagree with the concept, at any rate. Perhaps this should just apply to faith primary schools rather than secondary schools though; I just don't want to see 5 year olds having their development impinged like that.

Honestly, I had a wonderful time at that school. So it's funny how I can argue faith schools are such a horrible concept. I think it's the fact that I had such a wonderful time that is the bitter punchline to convince myself; I didn't have a wonderful time because of the prominent Christian intrusions, those were something totally unnecessary.

Thus ends my rant.

A Story I Once Wrote

Hello there. I often feel like a writer without a pen, so feel honoured that I am displaying to you the only veiled sense of achievement I have ever had in any writing I have done. I wrote this two years ago for my GCSE English Language coursework and it truly is the only veiled success I have ever had in this field; largely because I managed to complete it and ultimately achieve what I aimed to.

It's a short story, it won't take long. But I realise nobody reads this blog and thus expect even fewer than nobody to spare the time to read it. I'm not really sure how to introduce it, but if anybody does spare the time to read it then I would be grateful for any thoughts, even though they may be two years too late. To be honest I'd just be delighted you'd spared the time.

Thanks.

Tainted Justice

My name is Benjamin James and I’ve been stuck in this hellhole for 2 years now, but it feels like an eternity already. My story is not a happy one, nor is it sad, as feelings are no more than words to me now. I don’t expect you to pity me, or understand me, but this is my story, and it has been left untold and ignored for too long now.

On the 5th October 2005 I was sentenced to 5 years in jail; I may have got less had I been able to afford a lawyer. To say that that my world collapsed on that day is an understatement- it disappeared entirely. That past life of mine is gone now, and I desperately try to grasp any reminder of the happiness that deserted me, but the remorseless punch line I face is that I can barely see that world anymore. I had a family- a wife and two daughters, but their faces evade me. In dreams I chase them, but they are always too far away. This sullen cell is my cage of self-pity and sorrow, and hope is but a jest at me, enticing me to believe in the impossible. I will get out of here one day, but that day means nothing as these bars are in my mind more so than they trap my body. Angela, my wife will never forgive me, and that is my sentence.

I worked as a cleaner and the pay wasn’t great but it was enough. Angela would stay at home and look after Louise and Emily, my daughters. They were 4 years old and 2 years old when I last saw them. The girls that I remember don’t even exist anymore, they’re just figures in my mind, lost in amongst my sadness and regrets. We were happy once, but that all changed. They both looked just like their mother, blond hair and eyes as blue as a summer’s sky. I remember so little of them, and I know that I haven’t been here that long, but my soul has been tainted by this bitter air I breathe, and my mind corrupted by these blinding walls, holding me in this cell with sadness as my company, treading alongside me like an unwanted shadow, bitter from the taste of the mocking sunlight.

I remember that sometimes I would get frustrated that I could give them all so little, when I loved them so much. Angela would always calm me, she used to say that I was enough, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t afford much for Louise and Emily, but I remember I gave them a bunny rabbit before I left. I don’t know what happened to that rabbit, I hope that it is a happy reminder, rather than a dragging curse of a past memory that Angela portrays me as. She loved me once, but now I am as much of a torment to her as this place is to me.

I am so scared. Before the trial I remember how nervous I was, frightened of how everything could change. I thought of everything I would miss and leave behind, and I realised how much weighed on one decision, so complex. I was alone then, like now. My family didn’t want me as a burden after what I’d done. That night still haunts me. At the time what I did didn’t seem like a decision, or a straightforward choice- it was an impulse of love as opposed to revenge.

I am limping forwards across the road. All I hear is the thumping of rain against the ground and my own deep breathing. Whilst everything seems so surreal, I struggle to keep my eyes open, but to my right I see my wife lying on the ground next to a battered blue car with a pool of blood around her, the taunting red not perturbed by the water rushing off the ground. The pace of my own rushing heart beat is hypnotic as I struggle forwards further, not knowing where my daughters are, or whether my wife is still alive, but assured by my mind that I know where I’m going, my impulses dragging me like a wounded soldier from battle, unknowing of the intentions or purpose to where I am going, but certain it is the correct way. My left leg is in agony, but I can’t draw the effort to scream or cry, the pain like knives stabbing at me as I force myself onwards. I don’t remember much of what happened, only the screeching of the car and a huge force crashing against me. It is then that I look forwards, my eyes struggling to focus, before I see him in front of me. He is holding one of my daughters, though I can’t tell which, as my eyes feel so weary. Mockingly he looks at her, she is not awake, but there is a wound from her arm bleeding onto his hands. Suddenly overcome with what is not anger, but an understanding that something is needed, an overwhelming lust for justice, I move faster towards him, the pain irrelevant. He looks up towards me, noticing the piercing glare in my eyes, but he still holds onto her. His eyes wander through fear before I reach him. Like a man possessed I hit him repeatedly, with no remorse or break. Everything is distorted; I can’t tell what is going on. The scene fades as my eyes close, before I hear the taunting of sirens, the wailing getting closer and closer.

That night a lawyer called John Boyd drove a car into my family and me. He was driven by hatred and revenge; his distorted perceptions inspired him to madness. Three months beforehand his wife had thrown herself in front of my car, in an attempt of suicide. She died that day. There was nothing that I could have done. It was on the freeway and there was nothing I could have changed. She had come from nowhere and had nothing on her mind but death. He had always blamed me and I don’t think he had ever dealt with his loss. I could only assume this was a twisted attempt of retribution, weighing up the scales of justice in his own sick mind. Ever since her death he sent me threatening letters and sometimes I caught him following me home from work. After he had drove the car into my family I had struggled up and hit him repeatedly. The court sentenced me with grievous bodily harm for 5 years imprisonment. I can’t remember what happened to him, maybe I’ve blocked it out, my mind has collapsed in here, but I don’t want to remember. That man is at fault for all this pain that I feel, and I blame him entirely.

I am standing in the courtroom. Everything looks grim and dull but I am not fazed, such is my trust in justice. In truth I enjoy the unimaginative nature of the room, I feel more alive in the straightforward manner of everything here. It is all so definite and precise, from the insipid brown of the bench to the verdict I face; only two words will I hear, but the implications are so severe on such a simple decision between words.

As I look down I see my perfectly aligned tie, a bleak black suit against the naïve white of my shirt. My arms are still, positioned at my sides, and my attire is so splendorous in its sombre appearance, smart against my composed upright figure. I find myself standing in an imposing manner, as if I am self-assured in my own recognition of my importance. As I turn I see a similarly smart man, dressed in another harsh black suit, and a resolute expression, calm and collected in such a nonchalant manner, returning my stare with no emotion to his face. Behind him is no one. The seats are vacated, but they only look as glum as myself. My family aren’t here, but I feel no more unconfident or dismayed, as I am at ease with the justice that I expect to prevail, like the first dawn of day against an eternity of darkness. To my left, on the other side of the court is a man, more scruffy, and his eyes painting the picture of worry and anguish he portrays. His suit is worn and grey, and he is sat in his seat alone fumbling with his hands, no doubt shaking through anxiety and fear.

I remember no more of that day. My family weren’t there to support me, and I was sent here. I broke down after that. I don’t deserve this; I have always been a good person. And now I am just a body with the life sucked out of me. I go on, but with no purpose or meaning, each day I contemplate my motive to breathe. Everything seems so dark here. There is no colour anymore, everything is so grim, and my mind only feels sorrow. Everything seems so bright outside that door, but I can’t leave. My story may be short and incomplete, but it is my story and I just need to tell it. Sometimes people listen to me, when I leave this cell for my diabetes jabs sometimes my voice gets heard. But not for long, I return here to my sadness each day and nothing changes.

I am sitting on the bed in my cell. The walls seem too bright for me; I prefer grim colours, colours that are definite and straightforward. A man is approaching the door. I can see his face through the tiny window. He is old, and wearing glasses. He looks into my cell but not at me. It’s as if he stares right through me. I can see his mouth moving- he is talking to someone, but I can’t hear him. He opens the door and he speaks to me. Everything seems so unfamiliar now, I am so used to being alone, only my thoughts understand me. But still he speaks.

“Mr. Boyd,” he says, stern enough to command my attention but soft enough to seem as if he cares.

I look up at him, as if to examine him, to see if he is trustworthy, but say nothing.

“Mr. Boyd, the doctor wants to see you,” he reiterates, before opening the door wider and staring at me, as if to encourage me to go with him.

“Is it for my diabetes jab?” I question the man, I have never seen him before and I don’t know whether or not to trust him, though I see no reason not to and there are no consequences that I could suffer.

He looks at me strangely, raising an eyebrow as if I had just said something silly, he doesn’t reply, but continues standing holding the door.

I follow the man out of my cell; he is wearing a white coat with a strange badge on the front. I cannot read it. He is holding a clipboard of papers but is clutching them to his chest. Another man steps out behind me, wearing green uniform, much younger and even sterner looking. I follow the older man down the narrow corridor, passing other doors as I go by, much similar to my own. We come to a door at the end of the corridor, the same as all the others- white to match the walls. The man puts his clipboard beneath his left arm and pushes a series of numbers on some kind of mechanism on the door. He pushes the door and it opens. I continue to follow him, the room is larger than my own, and it is squarer, with no bed but a table with two chairs in the middle. The younger man stops behind me, and stands in front of the door, as if to guard it. The older man sits down on the chair furthest away and gestures with his arm for me to sit down on the other chair. I am confused, I don’t know what is going on here, I have never seen this man before and yet he clearly wants something from me. I cautiously sit down on the chair, my hands held together on my lap and my back upright. The man leans closer, over the table and looks at me, not menacingly nor friendly, and he speaks to me once more.

“Mr. Boyd,” he states, slowly and calmly in an almost inquisitive fashion, but with no question asked.

“My name is Benjamin James,” I reply, correcting his mistake. Why would he call me that? He has never met me before so maybe he has got confused.

“No, your name is John Boyd,” he assures me, almost patronisingly, “And I would like to talk with you.”

“My name isn’t John Boyd”, I restate, my voice more stern and loud than before, though I still haven’t moved. “And I don’t know who you are. Who are you?”

“My name is Dr. Brown, we’ve been through this before.”

We hadn’t been through this before and I did not know this man. My eyes begin to wander around the room. The younger man is still standing by the door, but he doesn’t return my look. I look down at my lap, and see my hands. Suddenly they look so old and withered. I see wrinkles and they look so weak. I begin to breathe heavily, still in my seat, trying to maintain my collection.

“What have you done to me?” I say even more sternly, but as if I am just holding myself back from shouting.

“Mr. Boyd, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We haven’t done anything. I think it’s time for your jabs.”

“I don’t need my jabs, I need to know what you have done to me.”

“We haven’t done anything,” he replies, assuring in his tone but still seeming patronising. “Bill, bring the syringe,” he says more hastily, standing up and looking over to the younger man by the door. He responds and brings over a black Velcro bag. He opens it and reveals a wide range of syringes. I get up, in shock, standing petrified. In the bag I see a small mirror, I reach over the table and grab it, before staring at my own face, so old. I look at least 60, but I’m not, my name is Benjamin James and I’ve been in this hellhole for 2 years now.

It is now that I see it all. I don’t know whether it is shock or realisation, but suddenly everything makes sense. I am John Boyd. I am 60 years old and I have been in this mental institution for 30 years now. Every day I tell myself that I am Benjamin James, but I am not. I drove that car into him and his family, his wife stepped out to grab his daughters but she died in the process. He was holding his daughter when I attacked him again, more relentless in my lust for justice. He had taken her away from me, I didn’t deserve that pain, and I needed justice. Not revenge, but justice. I took them away from him like he had taken her away from me. I remember so little about that family because I did not know them. I followed him and sometimes I saw him with them. He did not earn that happiness. That happiness should have been mine. That man standing behind me in the courtroom was my lawyer, he had pleaded insanity and sent me here. I was a lawyer also, I served justice but I received none. I was young and intelligent, fair and good and I fought for justice. In this world there are two possibilities. There is black and white, right and wrong. Everything is straightforward and yet I was punished for maintaining the good and equality in this world.

“Mr. Boyd,” the older man is right in front of me. “It’s time for your injections.”

I sit down on the chair again as the man prepares the syringe.

“Are you ready, Mr. Boyd?”

“I was ready 30 years ago.”

“Excellent. Now this won’t hurt a bit.”

I feel the syringe dig into my arm, but I don’t scowl or flinch. I sit here once more and feel nothing.

My name is Benjamin James and I’ve been stuck in this hellhole for 2 years now, but it feels like an eternity already. My story is not a happy one, nor is it sad, as feelings are no more than words to me now. I don’t expect you to pity me, or understand me, but this is my story, and it has been left untold and ignored for too long now.

Society will be the death of me

Good afternoon, world.

Yesterday I finally finished reading Anna Karenina, which is one of six texts I promised to read over the summer for English. It's taken longer than it should have and has been tiresome at times, but it's a truly remarkable piece of work and I'm delighted that I chose to read it.

I chose it because for Literature next year we are focusing on the theme of 'love'. I know, I know, where can you find a book about 'love'; that's a bit specific, surely? But have no fear, the exam board have kindly narrowed it down to 'love over the past 1000 years', although I would desperately have liked to read the old testament as one of my texts just to be a meddlesome, pretentious prick. I like doing things like that, you see. Since I was 8 and read the word 'ubiquitous' in a book and from that decided to base my entire storyline of the story we were supposed to be writing in class around the idea of being able to fit that word in, it has been a particularly inherent aspect of my being. Not to mention the fact that my Year 4 teacher had to ward me away from my over reliance on the phrase 'nought but'; that is to say that I would compose sentences such as -

'The sun was nought but bright on that day'

'The football was nought but red'

So yes, I was a weird kid, in summary. But I chose Anna Karenina because I wished to focus on the idea of a love outside of society's bounds; a love that is somehow perceived 'unnatural' or is not conforming to convention. This is largely because I have already decided I wish to use Lolita, and the overriding theme in that is Humbert's love for small children. So I had to work around that, and after deciding that reading any more books about paedophilia would cause some very strange glances from my English teachers and no doubt society in general, I decided to go for the more casual idea of affairs. I could use Romeo and Juliet as one of my Shakespeare plays though; Juliet was only 13 in the play, I'll have you know. TAKE THAT, SOCIETY - one of your most beloved romance works is a vicious bout of paedophilia.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Or, more pertinently, the translation at the beginning of my version begins -

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

It doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same manner, much to my frustration. So upon opening the book I was pissed off, but I recovered from this brutal bastardisation of the line I was expecting and went on with the book.

It's very much about society, which I loved. I was definitely in the mood for a huge slight against society; to which Tolstoy fulfils this ideal with great efficiency, precision and rather creates the image in my mind of a madman repeatedly stabbing an already dying man in the chest, whilst laughing. I realise that this analogy probably says more about my state of mind than the book, but fuck it - this is how I roll. *rolls*

Really the analogy should have related to a train station. I found the metaphor brilliant in the book of the parallels between the train station and a depiction of society; it was quite brilliant.

I don't really want to review the book too much on here, because I don't want to give away the whole plot. On the other hand, of course, nobody reads this thing so I can say what I want and there is nobody to disappoint or laugh at my understanding. Hmm.

BUT YES, it's about society. It's interesting, Tolstoy somehow manages to not only present society as a concept that is just as abstract as love; still within every one of us like some ingrained, inherent attribute, but also to present it as quite a literal place out of your state of mind. He also very much presents society as the disease and love as the cure, I feel. But of course the marriages as one can expect from the opening line are depicting largely hardship and the struggles or non-existence of love, so on the other hand society really gets the better of everyone.

Fuck it, I'll stop writing here. Peace out, motherfuckers.

Lord of the fucking rings.

Ladies and gentlemen, today has been a day of victory. As a child, I very much enjoyed playing Top Trumps. This might shock you, due to my inherent and overpowering coolness that you no doubt perceive now, but it is true. I especially liked Lord of the Rings Top Trumps; I remain undefeated in 2 player action with any of the LOTR decks. I love, and still love, Lord of the Rings. It was probably my favourite book in childhood and contrary to popular culture and society would expect, I even read the trilogy before I saw the final two films. This is quite an achievement considering the second film came out in 2002; when I was 8.

2002 was also the year that, naturally, the Two Towers deck came out. After playing with it for a while, and knowing the deck statistics mostly of by heart, I became confused and vaguely disillusioned with this card - The 'Beserker'.

( http://twitpic.com/2hqm76 )

Now this seems like any other card in the deck at first notice, if you were playing I would encourage you to use 'Ferocity - 59' which to my memory only Gandalf, Aragorn and King Theoden can surpass. (Eomer and Uglúk can match it).

I realise that this is all too cool for your brains to take in at one time. But I beg of you; bear with me. BEAR THE FUCK WITH ME. It also says that it has a Height of '5'1'. I've seen the films; it looks fairly tall in those, so this is slightly odd.

( http://twitpic.com/2hqms3 )

It looks even more odd when we read this and see it referred to as 'largest of the Uruk-Hai'. Now everyone (and by 'everyone', I mean everyone who within a certain coolness range; the ultimate level, naturally) knows that Uruk-Hai are taller than Orcs, and this is taller than Uruk-Hai. Hmm.

( http://twitpic.com/2hqnv2 )

On the left is your average Orc; standing at a pitiful 5'3 - taller than the Beserker.

On the right is Uglúk, the fiercest of the Uruk-Hai, who is 5'9.

Now, bearing in mind The Beserker is supposedly taller than the average Uruk-Hai, this appears very wrong indeed.

Especially when this source backs me up, saying:

'Beserkers were larger, even more fearsome versions of the Uruk-Hai, standing about seven feet tall'

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Berserkers

OMGWTFLMAOROFLZOMG‽ (*is slightly chuffed that the interrobang works on this site*)

So this is a clear error, right? Someone at the Top Trumps company has fucked up. Now, being the 8 year old I was, I wrote to the Top Trumps company and complained about these very, blatant, inaccuracies, naturally. I don't have the letter I wrote, but I do have the reply they sent me.

( http://twitpic.com/2hqoqw )

Upon receiving this reply, I remember being very angry that she had completely missed my point. (Lol at my 'enthusiasm', hah). After having the sheer insolence to misspell 'Tolkien', she then argues that The Beserker is an Orc; I know that Orcs are a small race, that's merely irrelevant. We know it's not an Orc, all you need to do is look at the card (picture at the top) to see it twice referred to as an 'Uruk-Hai'. I shouldn't really be complaining at her, it was very polite and nice of her to reply to me, though I'm sure they had a laugh around the office about an angry 8 year old writing in to complain. Like Junior Watchdog. But yes, she merely works in customer services and it was very nice of her to actually ask the marketing department, though clearly they're largely at fault and should be better informed if an 8 year old can pick up on their mistakes. I very much doubt the Tolkien Society would be that stupid, so I blame them.

So, yeah. I win basically. Fuck you, marketing department. This further enhances my position as the coolest 8 year old ever to walk the face of the earth.

I realise this whole blog-post makes me look like a supreme nerd. I'm half proud of this, and the other half of me has intentionally tried to exacerbate these 'symptoms' because I like to appear 'inversely cool'. So yeah; one last 'fuck you' to the marketing department, get your facts straight. Let this be a lesson to marketing departments everywhere - there is always an 8 year old kid waiting to trip you up on your inaccuracies BITCHES.

Lots of love, a person who never blogs any more.

TOODLEPIP, MO'FUCKERS. (*apologises for unnecessary amount of swearing in the blog post*)

Alas, the Machine Rumbles on

Sup. My Rage Against the Machine tickets arrived the other day. It was a very sad moment of realisation when I noticed that my dad's mail I had signed for, was actually my ticket. I'm fairly sure that going to the concert would count towards a module for my A Level in life, but life is shit anyway, and I decided not to take it.

If I was to use an analogy to descibe my blog it would be an empty cave with random cavemen scribblings on the wall. Not even good scribblings, just the shit stick men which make you truly doubt cavemen were ever really that awesome to begin with. I'm basically using this blog to randomly procrastinate, as always, whilst venting my anger that I can't go to Rage Fest. Did I say they have Gogol Bordello supporting as well? I love Gogol fucking Bordello, and Gogol Bordello are almost as good as they are.

I love how the encouragement that my English teacher gave me when I asked ages ago was merely worrying where it was, rather than the fact I should be revising for my English exam the next day. But it's in London, so I wouldn't be able to get back at any reasonable time anyway. This would have actually made my life. I was in the Natural History Museum in Washington DC when I found out I'd got tickets, looking at random skulls, and it was a pretty epic moment.

Go to your exam. Fuck you I won't... fine, I will. *sigh* maybe I wasn't cut out for all this anti-society shit anyway. I'd like to live on the edge, I mean the views must be nice, but the insurance costs a fucking bomb. And I don't have a bomb. I guess what really sucks is that not only do I love the band, but the gig means something to me, having had random arguments with McElderry fanbois all through December. #Ratm4Xmas was my pinnacle. At that point, Twitter was my Oyster. And I was a master of Oysters. I favourited the most retarded arguments I had back at me during all this, actually. Epic lolz. They're like the only things on my Favourites list that weren't written by me.

"fkin coon, ratm are SHIT!!!!!"

"do you understand? you are supporting some old cunts from 1990... welcome to 21st century :)"

"am i saying that? you are supporting them over a boy who WE voted for to win? They people support some old shit? LOL... OK"

"so ur saying every song that doesnt have a purpose doesnt deserve 2 be #1? songs stopped havin a purpose in 90s where they stay"

"if it was such a fail? why did he win and why is x factor still going? i'm just saying leave the songs with meanings behind.. x"

"i'm not saying that atall lol.. let's look at rihanna - umbrella, number 1 for 11weeks.. no cause? causes don't belong in 00's"

"but like i've said in like 10 other tweets.. music stopped having a cause.. leave it behind thats why no one makes them anymore"

This guy turned out to be racist as well. So that underlined my perceptions that he was utter scum. Which was good. Please, read this cunt's retarded arguments and tell me you don't just want to cut yourself.

Henceforth

This is the second part of that entry just now, if you like. Now, I know what you're thinking- "Who the fuck do you think you are doing a two-parter, Harvey, the fucking writer of Dr. Who?". You probably aren't thinking that. But if you are, then my psychic training really has gone to plan.

Anyway, last week I went to an inter-school debate. The plan is that 4/5 schools from around the area gather up and do it, but only two of us turned up. Me and Alexej are notorious because we represented our school as speakers at the inter-school debate last time, only for everyone else to drop out out of sheer fear of our mighty debating skills. We were so good that they didn't even manage to make a point in response to us. That means me and him not only have a 100% winning record, but that we naturally earned our self-dubbed nicknames 'Juggernaut and Destroyer'.

This debate was at an all girls school in the area, which meant that basically I felt like a serial sexual predator walking in. When we got up to their common room, they had a massive 'Wall of men' which was filled with pictures of men, sometimes half-clothed. I was shocked and appalled at this. We don't even have walls at our school. Naturally, I checked to see if I was on the wall, but they must have had no pictures of me available, or something, because I couldn't find me.

The debate was weird. We had two other Year 8s from our school, and two Year 10/11 girls from their school, as well as me and Jacob. So we each had 3 speakers, and Alexej chaired. This was funny, as we basically just shouted at each other the whole time and Alexej had no control. I didn't have any notes, so I just drew pictures of the Simpsons on a sheet of paper before improvising a 4 minute speech, 'twas fun.

But forget the debate. Me, Joe, George and Alexej went into town on the weekend. Yes, you heard correctly, town. We began by spending half an hour in the apple store going on webcam with each other and taking pictures (thus my Twitter picture of me and George) and generally had a rave. We then saw this guy who balanced himself on a tight-rope whilst playing the violin. Joe immediately shouted 'He's from Cardiff, we have to give him money!'. His explanation for this was that he saw him when he went to Cardiff once, but I could tell that the Violinist had sent him some subliminal message telling him to give him money.

George's girlfriend works in the Library, and Alexej needed the toilet, so we went to the Library, where there are toilets as well. Alexej spent 2 minutes walking up and down the corridor, confused by the fact that they were both girls toilets, and he needed to go downstairs. There was a sign saying this, but he thought it would be best to leave it until the nice old lady directed him instead. After this, we went into the library and played hide of seek, naturally, and found George's girlfriend before realising we were idiots and leaving again almost straight away. I asked her if they 'had any books by Pendulum', because George bums Pendulum, but alas, they did not.

Then came the epic WH Smiths moment, where as Alexej was looking through potential Calculators to purchase (he bought the £20; goon), we ended up getting into a conversation with the man and woman behind the counter. As George and Joe left, me and Alexej were left talking with them. They were telling us how they are forced to ask people if they want to pre-order the Twilight DVD, which we all agreed was shit and needed everyone involved massacred immediately, and how this embarrassed them. The woman then said 'But I get 6 creme eggs for doing it though!' so I asked whether it was really worth the embarrassment. Alexej, in a very Alexej-esque manner then said 'I'd give them sex for 6 creme eggs'. Everyone burst out laughing, including me, and we left.

Here's the video of George attempting to throw his rubbish into the bin immediately after. But other than that, epic times. Toodlepip y'all.

http://twitvid.com/4UPHV

Thus

Right. So I basically made this blog with the intention of writing about my New York trip. Now I'm left at the stage where I've written about that, so what the fuck do I do next? If by 'next' I mean a month later, then I shall write another, entirely trivial and mundane entry next, depicting my pitifully boring life.

I've grown a huge affinity for Classic Rock over the past few months. Not only is it good to listen to, but the fact that you can be so snobby to the rest of society is excellent. I maintain that saying 'The Beatles' to 'What's your favourite artist of all time?' is on a par with 'so is your mum' as the greatest comeback ever used in the history of the world.

I've just realised that I have something genuine to write about in my blog, but seeing as I've started off writing this entry with no purpose whatsoever; leaving it to inevitable constant rambling about nothing interesting, I shall continue in this vein- like a captain solemnly going down with his ship, if his ship were a shit blog and the captain were a superawesome human being writing the blog.

I'm listening to the Rolling Stones at the moment, me and my friend are going to see them if they actually reunite and do a tour. This would be unbelievably awesome. I'd be going for purely scientific purposes, of course, merely to observe the effects of hideous amount of LSD and Crack on pensioners' attempts to use their zimmer-frames and whether this actually affects their ability to play their instruments. (Note: 'play their instruments' was not supposed to be any kind of euphemism, naturally I immediately noticed this possible ambiguity, being a huge pioneer of 'that's what she said' and the ilk, but this was definitely not meant in that manner)

I've just booked a Uni open day at Nottingham. I want to do Law, if you (by you I mean the one figment of my imagination actually bothering to read this) are remotely interested. I need 3 A's, which means I have to work hard. This sucks, might I add. But I've been a step ahead of most people I know merely by knowing what I want to do and where, so that's good. I should imagine it's hugely competitive, being 4th in the country for Law, so I'll need to think up my back-up options better though.

Day Six

This was effectively our last day in the US. I set my alarm for 6.45 again, which I could tell annoyed the living shit out of the others when Rage Against the Machine 'WAAAAKEEE UPPPPPP' started playing. Desperately reaching for my phone to turn it off, I eventually managed it. Nobody else in the room got up until 7.30, so there was the awkwardness after having a shower of having fuck all to do for half an hour, combined with the challenge of not waking any of them up. In hindsight, I probably should have woken them up, we needed to be downstairs and ready to leave at 8. I wandered into the others' room anyway, which was surreal, because they're such a strange bunch of kids, and Joe had ended up sleeping on the floor that night. There was a gym downstairs where I could have gone to pump some iron, but I was worried that they didn't make any of the equipment strong enough to handle my superhuman strength.

When we eventually left at 8, we went to the Supreme Court and Capitol Building tour. We had a great view of the Capitol Building from our Hotel, which was better than the strip club view in New York, definitely. Like most places in the US, they put you through vigorous testing on your way into these places, and made us take all the food out of our bag and then scanned us on our way through. Little did they know, the rebel I am, I had chocolate in my bag the entire time I was in there. Oh the things I could have done. But anyway, inside the Capitol Building they show you the most Patriotic film of all time, which began by expressing the great pride in the US Electal system, which was 'Based on the votes of the people, and not run by any monarch or dictator'. They genuinely expressed as some new concept that they were the first to exhibit, refusing to label it 'democracy', or point out that pretty much everywhere in the world had it. There were points in the film where the sense of nationalism was so extreme that I wanted to go home and learn about the Empire and how we ruled the world, that, or just use the bar of chocolate I had stolen into the building to create some massive explosion. I should also point out that this was Lindt chocolate bought on 5th avenue, not some of that Herschey's normal American shite, which is just plain sickening. Seriously, American chocolate is so bad. I describe its taste as 'Eating normal chocolate, and then feeling like you've thrown up in your mouth and are trying to reswallow the vomit', believe it or not, this is actually accurate. The aftertaste is more abysmal than the Jonas Brothers' attempts at creating any kind of song that doesn't make you want to vomit, smack your head on the ground and then stab them repeatedly with the nearest remotely sharp object.

The building itself was pretty cool, and the history behind it was actually quite interesting. I bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the gift shop at the end, naturally. This was also the point at which Joe decided he would be cool and take on the persona of his made up character 'Stanley Peterson', who speaks with a retarded voice and videos us saying 'Heyyy, Harrrvey. Whirrr arre weee?'. He also at one point decided to zoom in on my crotch. Which was disturbing to know, and perhaps backed up by his insecurities in his sexuality that he couldn't sleep with another male the night before...

We went back to the Hotel after this and had quite an experience. We had to finish packing up all our suitcases to get ready to leave, but we already knew at this point that there was an American White Supremacist group coming to stay at this very hotel on the same day we were leaving. In fact, Nick Griffin (Leader of the BNP) was supposed to turn up, but didn't in the end. Needless to say we ran into a crazy old American who followed us out to our coach and tried convincing us that we should vote for Griffin. He also said that 'clearly our parents had sense' because we were all white, as well as explaining Griffin's reasons for not turning up as 'having a busy schedule because he was doing so well'. Naturally we shouted expletives at him and I was particularly appalled at his distored concept of the 'revolution' that he perceived himself as leading, himself being shocked that it was the elderly who had to lead this 'revolution' whilst the lives of the young were 'managed by the Television'. I pointed out that a revolution should not take society back 100 years, but he was an idiot. This was also an extremely black neighbourhood, and the Hotel in fact was run by mostly black people, so there was a positive hope that he was at some point beaten up after we left. This run in really affected the mood in the coach on our way to the 'Potomac Mills Shopping Mall' just out of DC, in Virginia.

We only had two hours in this shopping mall, but it is huge. I didn't actually buy that much in NYC, and still had about $250 left just for this. It has 7 'Neighbourhoods' and in the two hours we were there only managed to explore one. But still, this had the cheapest Hollister outlet imaginable, where everything was $10, and mostly the same stuff as in the UK, only 20% of the price. I just went on a huge shopping spree, because I had money to spend that I couldn't be bothered to change back to sterling, and fuckloads of great shops to buy stuff from. But that was cool, anyway, great fun. And I was actually running around to make sure I got as much done as possible before we had to get back. George also replaced the £100 Sunglasses he lost in NYC with a lovely new pair of Sunglasses costing $235. With these and his £100 headphones, I now refer to him as having the most expensive face this side of Bristol.

After this we got back on the Coach and went to the Airport. I had to try and stuff in all these new clothes into my suitcase, which I managed, and also didn't beep on my way through security this time. I had to refrain from getting all excited then and there, however, as they would probably strip search me out of suspicion. Whilst sitting in the seats by the departure lounge at the airport, Alexej failed to notice that one of our teachers had stolen my place next to him when I had walked off briefly, and I had had to sit next to her instead. Unknowing of this, still, Alexej turned around without thinking saying 'I want to put my hand in your toffee pot', thinking I was sat there. It was probably one of the funniest moments of my life, and the combination of extreme shock and fright on the teacher's face was classic. He then ended up having to sit next to her on the flight back, until he managed to swap seats with someone.

At this point we were laughing at these American kids who came in suits to the airport and were sat by us. There were kids in suits and the airport on the way to NYC, as well, and they sickened me. It turned out that these American kids weren't even remotely posh, and sat behind us in our economy seating. Gutted. The plane on the way back didn't have the great array of movies as it did on the way there, which meant I didn't get to watch Inglourious Basterds, and had to watch the Invention of Lying instead, which is shit. By the time we got back to the UK, it was about 7.00 AM GMT, meaning that our body clocks were still on 2 in the morning. We laughed at all the suitcases coming out which had clearly been searched through customs, unknowing that George's had been as well. And then we got on the coach for our lovely 3 hour odd trip back to School. Me and Joe were the only ones not to fall asleep on the coach, which was good as it turned out we were being filmed, so naturally were the only ones not to look like idiots. Alexej was behind us, drooling. We were peeking through the seat looking at the drool drip down his face when we just burst out laughing. I'm still not sure whether it was our laughter, or the drool that woke him, but it was funny nonetheless. When I got back I showered and then slept until 3 in the afternoon. Good times.

So this was the best time of my life. If you've read it you probably know me in real life anyway, because nobody would really want to read through all this without actually having reasons to reminisce, and I apologise for my rambling skills, but I am an English Literature student. It was a huge bonding experience, with inside jokes that only we will understand, leading to strange looks from people who don't 'get' the true nature of this trip's awesomeness for the rest of our lives. I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog, or at the very least managed to get through it without having the urge to kill multiple strangers thrust upon you through sheer frustration, but thanks nonetheless. If you have read up to this point, message me and I will give you a prize.

Thanks to everyone who went on the trip, and the names that we put on our hoodies are disclosed after their real name...

Me: You got slade

George: G-Nade

Alexej: The Lethal V

Sam: G-Dawg

Joe: J-Man

Emily: Emmz (boring)

Kat: Kat (boring)

Jacob: Jacob? (Anyway, it was boring)

We must have looked like total idiots with these names emblazoned on our chests, but it was all worth it.

Thanks for reading, again. xx

Day Five

This was the first day in Washington DC. I slept with George this night. Apparently I groped his ass with my leg as we were asleep. Clearly the rufilin must have not been strong enough...

Anyway. The rooms were much nicer, and had a working shower, which ruled. We'd been up the night before having the most hilarious time discussing 'In a parallel universe...' things, naturally. Jacob didn't find these funny at all, and was trying to get to sleep in the bed which he didn't have to share with anyone. This was because Alexej wasn't man enough to sleep with another man for the night. He sat on a chair and was adamant that he was going to sleep there. It was quite hilarious, in the night he ended up falling off and just sleeping on the floor.

We spent this day on a 4 hour guided tour around all the Government buildings and monuments. Our tour guide was brilliant, in the sense that she was a total racist bitch who I wanted to smack more than Claire on Heroes when she goes on one of her episode rants about how she is 'only wants to be normal'. She persisted in pointing out regularly how they 'beat us in the war'. She also decided to point out how many of the buildings had been in 'Night at the Museum' and 'National Treasure'. Now, these are very famous buildings. They are in many movies. So why would she choose two such shit movies? Anyway. Some of the pavements were really icy, because it had snowed more than in DC's history in the past week, you know. But it wasn't too bad. They really deal with snow a lot better over there. It was predicted to reach 55 inches, and at this point in the UK they were saying 'Heavy Snow' forecast, with a mighty '2 Inches'. Now, I'm not trying to say that mine is bigger than yours, but trust me, it was huge. If only there was some way I could sneak in an immature joke about this...

The most memorable bits we went to on this 'tour' were the 'Nam memorial, The White House, The Smithsonian Natural History Museum (Yes, it was in Night at the Museum! *Cuts self*) and the Lincoln Memorial followed by the Washington Monument (Pencil). Firstly, with the 'Nam memorial, you might not understand it like we do. You weren't there, mannnn. It was at this point that our tour guide praised us for our walking abilities, saying that 'Americans wouldn't walk that far... they'd get the Subway'. Not us, this was only fuel to the fire in my ever increasingly burning idea that we were the true kings of men. We also went to the World War 2 memorial, so you can tell already that this was a light-hearted, joyous day out.

Anyhoo, the White House was awesome. Now, you might have already read about how me and George stripped down to our mere shirts in these serious sub-zero, arctic, far worse than the day after tomorrow, conditions. But this was nearly as good. Basically, I like Obama. I bought a 'Yes We Can' shirt, ages ago that has his Acceptance Speech written onto the front. Naturally, I decided to strip down on two occasions (One from the front, and then from the back, of the White House) just so that my shirt could get a showing in front of the White House. I like to think he was staring out of the window, thinking 'Wow, that's one cool kid there braving these conditions that would kill any mere mortal, just to show how politically aware and active he is', he probably was, in fairness. But I should probably have been more worried by the fact that there were two snipers on the roof genuinely focussed onto us as we'd stayed in front of the White House 'longer than we are allowed to', supposedly. They were probably thinking I was stripping down to unveil an explosive device.

The Lincoln Memorial was cool, and from it you can see the pool of water that has the Washington Monument (Pencil) in the background, which was in Forrest Gump (And Night at the Museum, probably FML). What made this awesome was the fact that it had completely frozen over and people were walking on it. Apparently this was dangerous. But as you might be able to tell, I like to live life on the edge. You know, every now and then I like to interrupt the teacher by a light cough, sharpening my pencil slightly too much, murdering those who go against me, that kind of thing. But yeah, I didn't walk on there anyway, we weren't allowed. The path next to it was so snowy/icy that it was unbelievably hard to walk on, however.

The Smithsonian Natural History Museum was where we went to fill in the final hour of time we had in the day before going back to the Hotel to prepare for our group meal out. I remember I was walking through some section about man through the ages when I received a text from my dad telling me that 'I had got Rage Against the Machine concert tickets'. This was one of the best moments of my life. It turns out I can't go now, due to exams, of course, but that takes nothing away from how good I felt then, with my friends walking through random museum sections. Me and Alexej wondered into some Movie about a Squirrel's party and how this related to evolution, and George tried eating everybody's muffins, naturally.

In the evening we went to the ESPN zone for a group meal. It's just a huge sports arcade where you can also eat. I lost to a girl at Basketball, 3 times, and then lost to her at Air Hockey, twice. My Air Hockey skills are crazy. I once managed to knock the puck roughly 20 yards into the Shoe Collection Zone in Bowlplex, after serving it against the edge of the table. When paying for Tokens, the lovely American lady shouted at me because instead of putting the money into her hand, I put it in front of her hand by about 1 inch. We passed China Town on the way back, so naturally I started shouting taunts of 'Free Tibet Town', and that ended our day. George couldn't get into the bed in the night, as he came in late after being downstairs most of the night and found I had taken up most of the bed. He slept for a couple of hours on the floor. I had a lovely night's sleep, however.

Oh yes, there was also some American in a shop who asked me where we came from, to my reply 'England', they said 'Oh, I didn't think you were even speaking English.' Win.

Day Four

This was our last day in New York, before we moved on to Washington DC. In the morning we went to the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens. The reason we did this was so that we could all use it to help us with our Media Studies learning. This was a Media Studies trip, but only half of us took it (I didn't take it), because as there weren't enough people who wanted to go on the trip, they opened it up to everyone. That was pretty cool. They had a showing of how early video technology worked by taking pictures really quickly so that they can go onto a flick book. The idea in this is that you actually do something that would be funny as having in a flick book, like dancing, or having a pretend kung fu fight. Alas, this was not what our feeble minded Joe decided to do. He donated his set of pictures to me, because he didn't want them. But they really are artistically profound in every sense of the word.

Notice how he doesn't move, at all. The brilliance of the man; he knows that this technology is nothing to him, it is inferior to his very being.

They also had a device where you get to choose a famous movie scene, and dub over the original lines with your own voice. The idea is that you copy the original lines, and watch back as the characters magically speak with your voice all of a sudden. But, no. This was no challenge for our brilliance. We did the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy first meets the Oompa Lumpa/Hobbits/Whatever the fuck they are things, dubbing over every one of her lines with 'Maatttt Dammonnnn', varying the tone depending on the emotions she was trying to convey, such is our acting talent. We recorded it, and George has it, and it is hilarious, but he hasn't uploaded it... if you wish to see it, please hassle him. It's a shame, because we appear to have now missed the Oscar ceremonies, and I was sure that this would be a shoo in for best short picture.

After that we had lunch at some random Mall thing. It was ok. (I know, right, gripping stuff)

Then we left New York once and for all. It was probably the saddest moment in the history of the world, perhaps only surpassed by that bit in Titanic where that rich guy ends up not getting his diamond back. Or maybe the fact that Troy and Gabriella don't get shot in the face by a Sniper, causing their inevitable deaths, during High School Musical. Yes, it was that sad. Sadder than all the teen girls on twitter tweeting about He Who Must Not Be Named (Bieber) hoping he follows them because they are so insecure about their very being that they constantly need reassurance from a pathetic mimic of an idol through the most trivial manner possible. Sadder than when Vegeta dies on Dragonball Z. Sadder than when you lose to the Lance in the Elite Four, when you were so close to doing it, and one revive would have saved you.

The coach to Washington DC was four hours, and I listened to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, naturally, and lots of the Doors and RATM. We stopped off at a Burger King for dinner, where we bet George that he couldn't down a cup of what would be a mixture of Iced Tea, Coke, Dr.Pepper, Lemonade, Ice, Fanta and lots of other stuff in one go. Alexej is an idiot when it comes to these things. He genuinely bet him $50, and only managed to escape on the formality that George didn't finish off the Ice Cubes.

The Washington Hotel was really nice. It was much smaller, so inevitably Elevator Riding became impossible, which was a great shame. But other than that it was good. They even had free internet on the two computers they had in the lobby. "What is the internet?", I hear you ask. I didn't know either. But believe me, I sure relished the opportunity to see how many Facebook notifications I had. "How many?", I hear you ask, with a sense of excitement and admiration for my brilliance, well let's just say it was approximately 31. It was that moment when I realised that I truly was the master of the internet. Nothing could stop my plans for world domination, as I updated my status like a true god of men. In an entirely unrelated note, I enjoy using sarcasm, I don't really take myself that seriously.

That was basically our day. I would like to reassure you that I genuinely don't think I am God of all men... or master of the internet. But one day, maybe. But I did die inside without the internet, in fairness. It's probably more important to me than breathing. I haven't checked, but I'm fairly certain that somewhere there is a wire that keeps me running connected to the internet.

Day Three

Day Three

I think I've mentioned the 5 'magic phrases' before. These were basically phrases that we used so repetitively that we had to impose sanctions against using them, for the good of mankind.

1.) 'You sunk my battleship'. It is important that this is said in the voice of that old guy from the Simpsons, who always says this. Alexej coined this in the airport, and it was largely me and him who were the pioneers of this genius phrase, which would never be relevant, just purely said because me and him would find it hilarious.

2.) 'Man up'. After Alexej's serious lack of manliness due to falling prey to illness, this phrase became poignant. We would even say it to the girls, but generally this was a phrase used whenever somebody wasn't conforming to our supremely high level of masculinity.

3.) 'MAAATTT DAMMONNN'. Now, funnily enough this phrase would have taken off even had we not lied to Alexej about seeing Matt Damon, it was just a brilliant phrase. It must be said in the voice off of Team America, and this was the main perpetrating phrase when we decided that we weren't allowed to say any of these phrases for the goodness of mankind.

4.) 'That's what she said'. We basically just did this whenever something vaguely related to innuendo came up. In my case it didn't even have to be vaguely related, I'd do something which didn't even make sense just to see their confused, 'trying to figure it out', expressions. My personal favourite was when we went to the Washington Monument (Which is the huge Pencil that is seen in many movies) and our tour guide asked "Now, who wants to touch it?". Naturally I said it loudly and was delighted when some of the Year 13s turned round laughing. There were funnier ones than this, but I think me having the sheer balls to say it loud enough so that our teachers could hear was the defining factor.

5.) 'In a parallel universe....' we just sat for hours on end discussing random scenarios, such as 'In a parallel universe, Alexej wasn't ill when we saw Matt Damon'. Eventually these became more and more obscure and strange, until we ended up saying stuff like 'In a parallel universe me and Alexej are siamese twins who murdered the rest of you for drugs money'.

Anyway. In Day Three we went to the UN building, and then Grand Central Station for lunch. Grand Central Station is seriously packed at all times, and it's a real mission to try and find seats. After lunch, we needed to get back to the meeting point, but Alexej needed to go to the toilet. Me and Joe kindly waited for him, but naturally we decided that it was only fair to lie about seeing Macaulay Culkin walking down the escalator. After this, we went to central park, which was truly brilliant. It was snowing quite strongly at this point, and bearing in mind that New York had seen it's heaviest snow in about 100 years only the week before we came, it was unbelievably picturesque. We had a snowball fight whilst walking through Central Park, which was great, and then we went to 5th Avenue.

5th Avenue is notoriously well known for shopping, and has an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to go in here, as the queues were fucking massive, just to get into the store. I bought some Jeans from H&M, however, just to make sure I can officially say how I bought something from 5th avenue. I was also desperate to go into the Toy Store round the corner, which is massive and has the Piano that you play with your feet from 'Big' with Tom Hanks, which is a great movie, by the way. I would have taken a picture of it, but I was worried that the parents there would think that I was taking pictures of their children, and inevitably chase me out the store, so I didn't.

We got to chill back at the Hotel for a bit after this, but luckily our Hotel was basically right in the Centre of Manhattan and only a few blocks away from The Empire State Building, and right next to Macy's Department Store (The biggest in the world). Most people had a view of the Empire State Building from their room, in fact. Except us, who had a view of a strip club instead. So we went there, and basically failed at shopping. Bearing in mind there are 17 floors, we went past the men's stuff on the first floor, thinking there wasn't much there, and preceded to go up the escalator on every floor saying 'there's no men's stuff'. Apparently it was all in that same corner all the way up the floors, which we didn't notice (FML). After that we had a McDonalds, which was kind of what I lived off for a week, as they didn't appear to sell fruit anywhere.

In the evening we went to Times Square again. It was still snowing heavily, which made it inescapably pretty, and once more I was just in plain awe. We spent about two hours shopping for everything we needed, such as hideously cheap, 6 for $10 'I heart NY' shirts, and then realised we only had 20 minutes left to get George's headphones. Now, let me tell you the story of these headphones. George had had no headphones up to this point, as he had broken them before the trip and had planned on buying these $135 ones, which we couldn't find anywhere. But we were directed to 'Best Buy', which is about two (very long) blocks off of Times Square.

It took us 15 minutes to walk there. But everyone else left early, because they were worried about being late (man up). It was just me, George and Alexej left. We had 5 minutes to get back across two blocks, and from one end of Times Square to the other. We did the most epic sprint to make it in time. J-Walking across every red light possible, passing all the strangely dishevelled tourists, it was awesome. The snow was still falling, and we even ran too far in the end, and had to track back slightly. But we still made it early. Genuinely epic, I tell you. You appreciate these little things more than the big ones once you eventually look back in hindsight, which I'm given the benefit of doing now, but it was hilarious, picturesque like you would not believe and one of the best times I have had in my life.

(George and Alexej after our epic run)