I take things too seriously

Sometimes I feel like I take things too seriously. Michael McIntyre presented a skit where he talks about people who say "I can't do accents." He imagines an Irish family introducing themselves in typical Irish accents: "Hello, I'm Tommy! This is my wife Susan!" he says in that beautiful Gaelic lilt: "Hello, I'm Susan, Tommy's wife, this is Little Tommy Jr. Say hello!" she says, still with that distinct linguistic flavour. And Little Tommy Jr. says in your average London-speak "Yeah, sorry mate, I can't do accents." I know the comedy comes from the contrast between the two accents and the ridiculous notion that someone born into an Irish family wouldn't be able to "do accents", but then I go and fuck it up by overanalysing it. It's a classic reductio ad absurdum: McIntyre ridicules the idea that English people "can't do accents" by imagining that an Irish person was unable to speak in an Irish accent and so defaulted to an English accent, which is absurd. Therefore, everybody can "do accents" because we can all do at least one.

But of course we all speak according to one accent pattern, the argument fails because we laypeople are saying that we can't do other accents. Indian accents, French accents, Geordie accents, Queens accents; for the unable linguist, mimicking all the subtle accent and dialect features is hard. You have to really sink your teeth into an accent to know all the different ways words are pronounced. Not to mention that the idea that we "speak in an accent" at all is misleading. We grow up and learn language the way our parents and friends speak it. We  never try to "put on" our accent, it's just the way we're taught to use phonetics.

But Michael McIntyre wasn't making an argument, he was doing a comedy sketch. So you've just wasted five minutes of your life reading two paragraphs that weren't even relevant. You're welcome.

Nonetheless, I do take things too seriously. I can't simply come out with something for comedic effect if I know it's fallacious, misleading, or blatantly wrong. Though of course I do present myself a certain way, if I went and told someone that "it's ridiculous to suggest people can't do accents because everyone can do at least one! *Make way for stolen sketch material*", I would feel wrong inside. A cheat. Because a little person inside my fuzzy head would be telling me "Well yes, but that's not the point..."

It's one reason I don't really write blogs anymore. I'd love to carry on talking about exciting and interesting things, but I get to trying to write about them and realise that I don't really know anything much. "Determinism, yeah, that'd be a great subject for a blog post! I'm gonna talk all about that, it'll be great, people will love it, I'll get 117% in my Philosophy exams! Okay, let's go... what do I know about determinism..."

*Ten minutes later*

"Well, shit."

I've wanted to make a website for a long time. It's bothered me for a while that there's no clear tool out there for finding that word you're looking for: it's on the tip-of-your-tongue; presque vu. But it doesn't come to mind. You want a reverse dictionary, a tool to find words starting with this or ending with that, something that gives you synonyms and definitions and a list of words relating to the concept you want to describe. And I've found nothing to solve that problem. Sure, thesauruses (thesauri?) in a pinch, if you know the rough meaning of what you're sort-of looking for and the word just so happens to have a handy synonym somewhere at the bottom of the page. But it's designed to look for alternative words, not to find your words for you. And okay, there's OneLook.com, if you want a reverse dictionary, and a tool to find words that start with that or end with this, something that gives you synonyms and...

Oh. Shit again.

So maybe that's a project that will come about some time in the future, when I can muster the energy to relearn web design. As for the future... heck knows. Over the past months, tutors have been applying more pressure to start researching which universities I want to go to when I finish college, which degree courses I want to do, etc. Me being my terrible procrastinatory self, that research didn't really happen. So many variables, agh! Hundreds of universities in the UK, how on Earth should I work out what I want to study? Do I want to apply to Oxford, or Cambridge? Which college within either of those should I apply to?

My last tutor made things even worse by adding another variable: do you want to study abroad? Why not go to another European university where the fees and cheaper and you can go and learn a modern language? "Learn a language, ooh, that sounds good... and I do want to do Linguistics... I should really do that..." Then that presented a conflict with the advice my mother gave me, which was never to go too far from home for university, because I'll be cut off from my family and regret it seriously when I'm too poor to do shit, living on student wages, in bloody Amsterdam. Shit, what do I do!

There was a Higher Education fair at my college three weeks ago, which was what got me to finally start learning more about universities and degrees, and I came across a great degree option!. I decided that I want to study Linguistics and Japanese joint honours, the latter would give me an opportunity to study abroad in Japan. Hey, I'd learn a new language! Problem solved, I don't have to study... abroad....

But seriously, the prospect of studying Japanese excites me a great deal. I admit that I didn't care a minute for GCSE French at my secondary school: French is a language that British students learn for the same reason that you go round your next-door-neighbour's house when you run out of toilet paper. While I have a great deal of admiration for the French language spoken by natives - it's truly gorgeous when spoken properly - it really isn't the most interesting of languages out there, sharing our alphabet, and a bunch of cognates. Japanese is fresh, exciting, a whole different kettle of characters! Okay, the thought of having to learn around two thousand kanji - the symbols that represent their words - is daunting, but they have two alphabets to learn, as well. Two.

...Okay, they're actually syllabaries, but it's easier to say alphabet. (See? I can never just say it, I have to qualify.)

So if I studied Linguistics and Japanese, I think that would be great for me. I'd learn a new language, get life experience studying abroad, and get to apply the language skills I pick up to my linguistics modules. It sounds like great fun. It just sucks that they offer it in only six universities across the United Kingdom. Six. And these aren't my next-door neighbours, heck no. Not Southampton or Exeter, Reading or Brighton, Winchester or Bournemouth, not even bloody Portsmouth. My list consists of: Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Edinburgh, and SOAS, London. Hey, London! The one university on my list that isn't over two hundred miles away... oeeii :c.

I don't want to study in Scotland. But at least if I do go up to Edinburgh and study Linguistics and Japanese, I'll have an excuse for my posh Southern-English inflection. I really can't do accents.

~Love Leonidas

Edit: I told a lie, it wasn't Lancaster, it was Sheffield. But you never noticed that mistake, did you now ;).

Just be yourself

Phoebe is about to meet the parents of her boyfriend, Mike, and like any woman in that situation, is freaking out. Monica reassures her "They're just gonna love you, just be yourself," to which Phoebe points out "They live on the Upper East side on Park Avenue." Rachel says "Oh yeah, she can't be herself."

The idea that you should "just be yourself" has good principles behind it. While literally it doesn't mean much - you are always yourself and there's no changing that - the saying is there to remind you not to act in a way that completely contradicts your character just to satisfy someone else's prejudices or demands, something that can make you feel fake and hollow. Or you might be about to meet someone and are preparing to put on a big cheesy smile, all smarm and charm in the attempt to win them over, when your friend advises you to drop all that and "just be yourself", because if you try too hard to act a certain way you'll probably just end up intimidating the other party and achieving the opposite effect.

So it's a good principle. But it didn't really work out for Phoebe in the Friends episode I referenced. Phoebe is an eccentric character, and Monica and Rachel are relatively used to her quirky personality, but when they hear that the people she's going to meet are from a very upper-class part of town, they realise that "just being herself" isn't going to benefit her at all. Mike's parents have certain expectations about the way people act, and once they get to someone that probably doesn't matter so much, but first impressions do matter. The comedy in the episode comes from Phoebe trying desperately to strike a balance between being herself (playfully punching Mike's father, who just had surgery, in the stomach,) and being a woman of high class who Mike's parents would respect (which obviously goes to shit.) And there is a middle ground - it's just funny when people can't work it out - there's a degree to which you should "be yourself" when meeting new people for the first time.

Between people you know, this really isn't much of a problem. If your natural inclination is to go around slicing people's limbs off with a rusty battleaxe, that's probably a part of your personality you should repress, but otherwise, if your friends are used to your personality, and you're not generally an asshole, then you shouldn't worry about changing who you are. But if you're going for a job interview, or on a first date, or just meeting someone new in general, you can't "just be yourself" straight away. If you're the type who just gets so enthusiastic about meeting new people that you shake uncontrollably and jump up and down on your chair, that's something you should probably work on when you're applying for a job. And if you're the type who likes to intimately hug people, you should at least get to know the person you're taking out to dinner before you climb on their lap and stroke their face.

Even here, writing blog posts, I think there's a degree of control you have to exercise. Though as you probably know I don't update my blog much any more, when I do I aim to write a post that people can read and enjoy - whether or not I do is another matter. If I just spout random crap off the top of my head, it's not worth reading. There are many aspects of my personality, too, that I try not to translate onto a blog post because I don't think it would make sense or be appropriate.

In an earlier episode of Friends, Monica gives the same advice to Chandler when he sees an attractive woman that he wants to talk to. "Just be yourself... but not too much!" In general, it's a fair comment. People respond well when they can see that you're being genuine and not trying too hard or putting on a show. But the addendum on Monica's advice is telling: sometimes, if you're not used to someone with a certain type of personality, they can be a little intimidating and that's something you generally want to try and avoid. I know I can sometimes be a lot to take in when someone meets me for the first time: I do try my best not to scare people off, though!

At the end of the day, there's not much of a "should" to it. We are always ourselves. It's just about the aspects of our personality we let other people see... and until you get to know someone better, the phrase really should be: "Just be yourself, but not too much."

~Love Leonidas

Swimming pools and nihilism

These days as an AS Philosophy student, it doesn't take much to get me thinking about the ultimate meaning of life, the universe and everything. But for a long time I've been unable to get away from the view that there is... well, no meaning. No purpose. We live, our parents teach us how to speak an arbitrary language (unless we're raised by wolves, in which case the whole linguistic upbringing is a lot more exciting,) we learn the arbitrary rules of morality in our particular arbitrary society based on our arbitrary location, we decide on an arbitrary career that has some questionable usefulness in terms of the whole society (or at least, we like to think it does,) we go about a significant portion of our lives filling out that career in order to perpetuate a cycle of earning money, eating food and doing any other arbitrary things in between that we think might entertain us. And then we die.

It doesn't surprise me that nihilism isn't a very popular viewpoint.

One of the distinct joys of going through Philosophy lessons over the past few months has been having everything I thought I knew questioned and ultimately scrapped. It's fascinating watching other people go through the same process - you can plot our collective credulity on a graph. We've breached four units now, and in each unit - and often at the start of a sub-unit - we'll start with a question that we think should be obvious. "Which of the following are persons?" or "Do we have free will?" And then we start to learn why Turing thought a computer could be a person, and that's where our credulity hits a high "Oh yeah, that makes complete sense, I really like that idea, yeah, I'm totally convinced that a computer is a person now." But then it reaches a low when we go and learn about how Searle thought that that was bullshit and computers can't be persons. "Oh, right, yeah, I see what he's saying, I can't really believe that a computer is a person now." You could compare the graphs for every section and we'd come out essentially the same for every section. We really don't know how much we don't know.

One of the views in particular that was a big high on the credulity graph was Sartre's existentialism (philosophy has a habit of producing zombie nouns with more syllables than are comfortable like nobody's business.) Essentially, the people at the time were saying that we have a soul. That's your personality, and that's it. You're a shopkeeper/pianist/crazy-axe-murderer because that was the kind of soul that God bestowed upon you. And Sartre said "Well, that's bullshit" (in politer words that would have most likely been French.) He told the people of the world: "Be what you want to be, it's not your soul that makes you what you are, YOU make you what you are. Go out and punch a dolphin or learn the euphonium or do whatever the fuck you want, because you are a free spirit and there ain't nobody gonna tell you what to do." Ever-so-slight paraphrasing here.

Naturally, this was a popular view. Existentialism is a nice idea. If you're not one for Christian theology, go you! Screw becoming the children of God and spreading the message of Jesus: the meaning of life is what you make it. You choose the path. There's no one "direction" for your life that's written in to the stars, carved in the ground, coded into your DNA. It's all you. So of course, this was high on our credulity graph.

But at the end of the day, I can't come to see this as anything more than what it is: a nice perspective. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, the meaning of life is just what the universe tells you: nothing. There is nothing written in the stars or the ground or your genes. Sartre and I are agreed on this. But the decision to carve a meaning out of it is ultimately your arbitrary (you see a theme here,) human decision to do so, to make you feel happier and get you through life without a crushing sense of meaninglessness. (Of course, that's if you're not a determinist and believe we have free decisions in the first place, but that's possibly even more depressing, so I won't get into that here.)

I was thinking about this while swimming earlier. Obviously I have a very narrow and uninformed perspective as a poorly traveled 17 year old college student couched in the safety of a protective Western capitalist meritocracy, so I haven't done much more than what people living in protective Western capitalist meritocracies do, which is maximise your own happiness. For some reason, swimming is a frequent contender on the list of things that we like to do to have a pleasurable day. And you can derive pleasure out of anything if you like - it's certainly a lot easier when you've got a chance to travel fast down a watery slide or release a few happy hormones pumping your arms travelling from one end of the pool to the other. But ultimately, that's all you're doing. Falling down water slides. Swimming from one end of the pool to the other. Or in most cases, stagnating in a lukewarm pool of water that usually serves to make the other pool colder.

They're a real testament to nihilism. We pay money (and don't get me started on the pointlessness of money,) to a group of people who happen to own and clean a body of water so that we can spend an hour or two getting ourselves wet, moving around in an environment slightly different from the standard mix of oxygen and nitrogen that we'd get walking around otherwise. And then we get out, shiver from the cold, try not to expose our nudity to the world while we change into clothes more suitable for outside, and go home.

I mean obviously, some people go there to exercise: to develop their muscles or aid their breathing, or train to be a professional water acrobat or Olympic diver or what-have-you. And that'll extend their lifetime for a bit, maybe, but at the end of the day they're moving from one end of the pool to another. Some just happen to be entering the pool from one, five or ten metres height.

Nihilism is not an attractive view, and I may grow out of it yet, so I don't try to force it on people. But everywhere I go I see people who want their lives to be meaningful and I think "That's all good but... you really are pointless." I am pointless. Human society is pointless. I just prefer existing to not existing, because it's more than troublesome to kill myself and I get a lot of pleasure out of living. And pleasure is the root of it all, I believe. We exist to be happy. It's just nice to believe that we're here for a bit more than to stuff ourselves with food or sit in an office fulfilling a questionable function from 9 to 5.

So religion probably has the right idea. It's no surprise, considering the universe from a nihilistic perspective, that religion became as popular as it did. When you live in a universe with no inherent meaning and someone comes along to tell you "You're going to a place of eternal bliss after you die! All you have to do is live a productive and morally beneficial life and pledge your support to this particular deity, and don't listen to any of those foul pretenders!" then you'd naturally expect people to follow, build that deity into a human form that we can relate to (Jesus,) establish a moral code that generally leads to a beneficient lifestyle (Bible), and proclaim everything you say to be the gospel truth (church). It worked for Ricky Gervais, and it sure beats "You are a creature born of a long chain of evolution with no intrinsic purpose who lives, eats, breeds and dies."

Yet I can't bring myself to believe in God any more than I can believe we have a deep-seated reason for existing. Sartre had the right idea, too. Nobody wants to face a life of pointless hedonism, punctuated by frequent suffering. Far better to at least make some purpose out of your life than to wallow in nihilistic despair as I do now and then.

Besides, if I die without having fulfilled any particular purpose, that will have been a lot of money I wasted on swimming pools.

~Love Leonidas

College and colds

At the moment of writing, I’m sitting on a train – no wi-fi, but hey – and boy am I not at favour with public transport. It’s not like it’s done anything to me, like a train came up to me once and smacked me on the face, but every time I go for a train it occurs to me that I’m always running for it. Usually bearing heavy bags, on a bike that may or may not have a fully inflated tyre, on a questionable timescale as to whether I can get to the station in time… the list goes on. They’re better than buses for sure – there’s no traffic, much more secure, goes in one direction and does it quickly, and there’s a lot more stability. But while I can get buses from outside my house or the next road along, the nearest train station is buried some ten-twenty minutes bike-ride away from my house, and I hate travelling in the first place! Thus, trains, buses and the like are generally never happy moments for me.

Though really, I’m just not a morning person. A cold is not the worst illness to be had for sure – there’s flu, fever and life-changing, life-threatening conditions which really gives me little cause for complaint. But that doesn’t change the fact that waking up with a cold in the morning is not the least bit fun. The train I’m on is bound for Brighton, the first leg of the two-part journey to Eastbourne, which is usually easier on the first part than the second, but people are wanting for seats here, too. I’m wondering what’s so attractive about Brighton on the 15^th of September.

I should bring something positive into an otherwise depressive blog post. College! Hey! I’ve just gone through my first week of real college (as opposed to the imaginary college I was going to the previous week.) Before you ask: Philosophy, English Language, English Literature and Computing. Philosophy, needless to say, I am loving and finding myself an aptitude for – though truth be told I feel a little ahead. I’m doing my best to master the basics, though, as would any other student. Computing is so much awesome fun – we’re starting on coding in Visual Basic, which I’ve never used before. At present, we’re only writing programs to go onto Command Prompt, but it’s nonetheless very addictive and a great deal of fun. My computing teacher also happens to be my tutor, which helps somewhat – she’s really nice, and Welsh. What more could one want in a tutor? (Saying that though, I much prefer the Irish accent.)

Literature and Language are less “Ohmigodthisissomuchfunwheeeeee” but nonetheless enjoyable – we’re studying Much Ado about Nothing in Literature, which I’m surprising myself by genuinely enjoying.  Shakespearean comedy, by the way – but of course you knew that (I didn’t.)

Language is a little less than I expected, but, early days, and… well, it’s language. Anyone wo knows me know that that is my thing. I’m expecting to come to love it like my own child – something like that, anyway J.

Subject specifics aside, I’m loving the fact that I’m seriously in college – a young adult in a ;place for other young adults. I’m meeting awesome new people, playing Team Hockey (I’m very unfit,) and just generally enjoying the feeling of being in a college. I expect it to be a few months before I start saying the name “Barton Peveril” with a tone of disgust and exasperation, but until that day, I shall proceed with as much dedication and happiness as I can :).

On a side note, I’m very happy I got this train early – I just looked around and people are filling the aisles because there are no seats. The sun is glaring onto the laptop though, which makes me thankful that I can touchtype.

I’ll wrap this up on account of the fact that I’ll probably be arriving in Eastbourne soon, and as soon as I get internet access (yeah,) I’ll publish this and be done with it. It feels good to be writing a blog again though, even if only on Microsoft Word.

All the best from Leonidas <3 .="." o:p="o:p">

College, woo!

College, man! Barton Peveril!

Before anyone asks: English Literature, English Language, Philosophy and Computing :).

Today was only the first of two induction days, but it's still really exciting, and I'm looking forward to getting started on the real thing! I've met some new folks, got some homeworks to worry about, got a hell of a lot of organising to get done, a bus system to familiarise myself with... ahh, joys.

I don't know when I'll be writing blogs. I never feel inspired to these days, and my laptop finally became useless yesterday.

In Philosophy, we had put to us "What is an idea?" The best I could come up with is that an idea is an object/descriptor that we can conceive of that is true/exists, or we believe to be true/to exist. Then, thinking about it, an idea is also the concept of something that's yet to come. A plan for what will be. The blueprints of an architect. It's not deep, but it's something.

I still have painted nails from days ago. It's silver - if anyone's noticed they're not saying.

I may be on a hockey team! But boy I need to get more fit ._.

Until next time <3 .="." p="p">

Why I don't like patriotism

This is the longest I've ever gone without posting. Holy hell have I been uninspired lately.

I don't have any issue with patriots (much.) I think that it's a very good thing to love your country, helps to unify people and get them to work as one, helps especially in the military, where strong dedication is needed at all times. I don't hold favour with the people who go around and tell anyone who'll listen that their country is a piece of shit, the Queen/PM/President/Dictator is an asshole, and anyone who believes otherwise is a moron. In that respect I don't consider myself an anti-patriot.

But the reason I don't like it is because it's so manipulative.

The whole point of patriotism is as I said: to unify. To bring people together under one banner in support of the same thing, as denizens of the same nation. And so in going about this, they (the unifiers) seed every speech with words like "nation" and "glory" and "pride" in an elaborate rhetoric that makes no secret of the fact that it's trying to rile you up in a flurry of nationalistic zeal.

Maybe I'm a little shortsighted about this, though I'm well aware that the unifiers aren't the only ones trying to manipulate you. Every single business - whose ultimate aim is to make a profit - works to manipulate you into buying their wares or services, and they do it in clever, brilliant ways, which is why advertising and PR etc. are such big business.

But the point is that they are subtle about it. The unifiers and patriots are almost never subtle, and the manipulative intent is very clear. I don't like being manipulated because I know that I can be easily, and that proves a weakness. It's not just patriotism - anything impassioned that doesn't bother to hide the fact that it's trying to recruit me bugs the hell out of me. This week I was helping out at the church for a youth club for young people, and had to sit through "1000 questions", where a black Christian woman sang and preached and rapped the word of Jesus, and the rhetoric was so thick it was stifling. I hated it because it was nothing informative, it was preaching. I don't like being preached at, I like being given good reasons to adopt a certain view.

That's why I'm not a patriot. Give me good reasons to support England as a country, don't try to invoke some kind of nationalistic pride in me as some poor substitute that amounts to "You should be proud of your country... because!" I don't buy it.

Huh.

Arial - abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Helvetica - abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ


Call me crazy, but Arial and Helvetica look COMPLETELY identical. There are supposed to be differences, but they're subtle. Not on Blogger. What wizardry is this?


Maybe they're just lazy.


Do you guys have a favourite font?

~Love Leonidas

Numbers

I was just spinning round in circles thinking "What could I write a blog about?". I sit before a soroban. I'm sure I've mentioned it somewhere in the dusty realms of the rambly detritus that makes up most of my blogs - it's a cute Japanese abacus that I originally bought with the intention of facilitating addition in a fun and new way, but never got round to learning how to use it. I am going to try though.

A lot of this rambly detritus comes out of my mouth and is directed towards my poor mother, who I've always been one to plague with questions to which she has not an answer. Some of it is maths related, because I often find maths fascinating - certain parts of it - and she remarked that the way the number system works is just remarkable, that "Noone could ever just devise a system like that." Totally agreed on that one.

As often the case, this is a rumination about something which I don't know a great deal. Have fun <3.

The number system is such a curious thing. It fits together perfectly, and you have to ask: how much of it is natural of the system of numbers to which we've given a name, and how much of it is purely of our own construction, that fits together just the same? An even bigger question: is there such thing as a natural number system? It's easy to think "Yes, of course, numbers are as natural as volcanoes and trees," but I honestly can't say if that's accurate or not.

Imagine apples. A tree full of apples. You take a group of apples and divide them like the primitive caveman you may or may not be (just kidding, I know y'all aren't cavemen. I think.) You identify a single apple, and by some linguistic means or another, you give a designation for the singularity of that apple. In other words, you say there is "one" apple. You understand that it means one single apple, and not many of them. You then add another apple to the party. You clearly understand the distinctness of the separate apples - you feel them, see that they're independent of each other, realise that affecting one apple doesn't affect the other apple. You conclude that they're separate and come up with a word for there being one apple, and a second apple. You call this "two". So it goes on. Unless you're a culture that only has words for "one," "two" and "many", of which there are some.

Those are named numbers. We use them all the time. But what about when you move away from names and you deal with the abstract, the constructions of algebra, for instance? Geometry and the rules that hold it in harmony? Are they as grounded as the difference in the number of apples? I guess that they must be, because algebra generates rules that you could just as well use for apples and get the same result - geometry, too. Perhaps for every mathematic rule, there is some way you can use objects to demonstrate them. But is that any better than writing down "the area of a circle is pi*r^2"?

And also, are basic numbers even grounded in natural principles? If we put together ten apples, we can count them and say "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten," and point to each one in a determined position along the line of apples. A French person would count them similarly, "Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix." But what about someone who uses a different base of counting? We use base-10 - it's convenient because we have ten fingers, and this convenience is echoed in the ongoing battle between metric and imperial measurements. You see conflicts between base-12 and base-10 all the time: measurements are done in both inches (12 inches in a foot,) and centimetres (100 centimetres in a metre;) the clock, zodiac chart and western year are split into twelve; a dozen is twelve and a gross is 144, or twelve twelves, the origin of the word "grocer". They're just two different ways of counting, and both equally valid, but both bases will get you a different English word when counting apples, even though you mean the same thing. If you have 64 apples (which is 12 to the power of 1.673657673906779, God knows why you'd ever want to know that,) that would be 54 in base-12.

But whatever base or language we express it in, numbers are always going to be the same, expressible in one form or another. Perhaps in that sense, they're really objective. Hard to say.

The world of maths is full of constructions and numbers, and who really knows what there is that makes numbers work. They're just awesome like that.

I've only got one apple left :(.

Modern music

I really don't know about the new blogger layout. It looks neater but I can't decide if it's better laid out. I also don't like that it takes you more steps to get from the editor to the blog.

I was watching Chuggaaconroy's Okami Let's Play just now. Scenario: Wolf-God called Amaterasu is the reincarnated form of a wolf called Shiranui, who slew the dreaded beast Yamata-No-Orochi 100 years ago, and died from the battle. Amaterasu goes back in time and ends up fighting the original Orochi along with the hero of legend, Nagi, and together, they defeat him, but in an act of vengeance, the spirit of the dead beast summons a boulder to crush Nagi. Just as you think Nagi is crushed, suddenly a beautiful white light appears, and it turns out that, supporting the rock while nearly dying himself, Shiranui himself has saved Nagi's life. The music that plays during this scene is the most beautiful, soul-reaching music that cuts down to the heart, and when I was watching this video about a video game - albeit an incredible one - I honestly felt close to tears, because the music is so beautiful and the sacrifice of Shiranui to save Nagi so touching. Don't give a crap what anyone says.

This is the theme of Shiranui, and I'm listening to it it again as I write this. No words, but who needs words? Excuse me while I pause writing....

Songs like this bring the ever-present question to my mind: what is there in modern music? The entirety of anything that I argue on the subject of music can be blown away in an instant by recognising the fact that tastes are subjective and certain people like different things. So I write this without the expectation that anybody should take it seriously, and honestly, I don't think you should. This is just the thoughts of one sixteen-year-old.

I was complaining earlier this evening about the song that I now know is called "Boyfriend" - I also didn't have any idea that it was written by Justin Bieber, I just can't stand that song. Whatever that noise is that undulates throughout the song and sounds like someone whistling in the background is creepy. The song is nothing new, it's the same thing every artist sings about - love and being the perfect guy for you etc. It's nothing new from what Bieber seems to sing about either. It's more than the quality of the music and the banality of it, but the way it comes across just grates on my nerves. It's a song that paints the picture of a shallow little pretty-boy who's really only in it for sex but wants to make it look like he's all about the love and "I'm the perfect boyfriend for you." I don't hate it because it's Justin Bieber, I hate it because in my head, it's a horrible, dull song.

This isn't isolated. The radio is on a lot, and I'm constantly hearing stuff that's in the charts, and every time, almost every song I hear makes me think "I hate modern music!" So many artists just sound exactly the same to me, the lyrics seem dull and uninspired, and the music, too, so samey. I think it's because to me, music is more important than words, which is why something like Shiranui's theme from Okami cuts deep, whereas Justin Bieber saying how if he was my boyfriend then he'd never let me go doesn't impress me.

There are lots of exceptions. There are great singers who stand out, have a distinctive, strong voice that you hear and you think "Oh, that's Adele" or "That's Florence!" There are beautiful, wonderful instrumentalists who write deep and passionate music that hits home with me. But modern music is just somewhere that I don't care about. It's dancing, parties, love, lust, drink, drugs, rap, beats, techno, girl bands, boy bands, teen sensations - I don't want any of that, I want good music. I don't mean that to disparagingly say that anything not on my favourite tracks list isn't considered music at all, what I mean is that I like it when the emphasis is placed on making deep music with emotion, who are trying to really get a message across, and not just be another popular, famous singer who makes it big and gets lots of fans. The singers and the guitarists and pianists and musicians of all kind who have something to say, and they play it, and god damn it do they play it well.

Those are the type of people who strike a chord with me.

~Love Leonidas

Labels

Unholy toast, this is the longest period in which I've not written a blog post ever.

I don't think we should confine people to strict labels of "male" and "female". That's my topic sentence for today from which hopefully all things shall flow - because of course, I never plan a blog.

On the one hand, I can see it from the point of view of society. We need labels, to help us function in every day life. How are we to go to the building that vends items of food, clothing and other such essentials if we have no way of referring to it, i.e. "shop"? And we have a very compulsive habit of labelling things where there is no label for them - taxonomy is a field entirely dedicated to a very meticulous process that does just this. There's even a dedicated nomenclature of astronomy for how new stars, planets and so on are to be named, from which area of mythology they can be taken, and look at the system that meteorologists use for hurricanes, recycling 26 alphabetical names in a certain order every so-many years. We have a society built on labels.

But labelling can go too far. For one, examples we should be vaguely familiar with are the insults hurled in the playground, in society at large, especially on the internet with the cover of anonymity. Labels of every black and awful kind hurled willy-nilly at people with no thought for who the people they're insulting really are. Maybe out of a desire to see the world conform to certain patterns gone too far. Maybe because they've been taught that every gay person automatically goes under the label "faggot". Maybe because they're bored on a Saturday evening and calling people "noobs" because they haven't spent as many years grinding Slayer on RuneScape as you have.

I started this blog with the idea that we shouldn't strictly conform to the idea of male and female. Beating a dead horse before I've really started on that one, given that the demarcation between genders is one of the oldest lines out there, but hey, it's 2012, we're a so-called "civilised society", so I'm gonna put it out there just the same.

I am male. In the sense that I was born with all the components of maleness. Yup, that included. But I don't hugely identify by it - my friends accept me as honorary girls, I consider myself one of the girls, and I can be very effeminate. I can also be emasculate at times - believe it or not, for anyone who knows me. Biologically, I'm a guy. In reality, I don't give a crap. I can call myself a blueberry pie if I want to and nobody's gonna stop me. If I wanted not to identify by the category of male, I don't see that that should be a huge problem.

Keight Fahr, BionicDance on YouTube, is a very fierce debater to be sure. I was reading a debate that she was taking part in where she was getting absolutely ballistic at the commenters on the topic of labelling, particularly if people want to call themselves "agnostic", then they should be able to. So argues Keight, there is no such thing as "agnostic". Labelling themselves as such is therefore false, and here's the important bit: that they should not be allowed to identify by a false label.

The example I gave before might strike as a bit silly, and it probably is. Talking about labels is just getting around the issue - the word given for the English language for someone of my gender of the human race is "male". If I decided to call myself "female", then that would be untrue because I'd be using a word to describe myself that doesn't fit to reality. If I call myself a "blueberry pie", again, there's no conformation to any kind of reality. Not that that stops me from saying random shit, but, I can see why people would argue against the point just the same.

But I think the agnosticism label is a lot more interesting. The popular argument is the the position of "agnostic" cannot exist on its own, i.e. you can't just say that you "don't know whether God exists or not," because anything that isn't belief is non-belief. Which is true in its strictest sense. But this ignores what people mean when they say the word "agnostic". What they mean is that they take a position which involves not taking up a proactive stance either for or against religion - they may see the issue of whether God exists from both sides, atheist and Christian. They may not think one side is necessarily wrong. They may think that it is not worth pursuing the question of God's existence at all, or that it is of no significance. This is a very distinct set of people from the group of people who assert "God exists" or "God doesn't exist", and people who argue against the possibility of agnosticism so often completely ignore this in trying to shoehorn these people into the category of "atheism". Yes, atheism as a word applies logically to their position. But does it best describe them or accurately represent their position? No. What word do they choose to accurately describe their position? Agnosticism. People say that it's not real, logical, or that it's just a way around saying that you're an atheist, but this is another example of people being overeager to classify everyone into certain groups. Agnostics generally don't fit into either group. So don't try to make them.

This post has not been very consistent at all and I'm sure you'll find pletny of errors, but I think the ultimate point I want to make out of this is that: sometimes, labels aren't for you to decide. Sometimes they're necessary, sometimes they aren't. And when they concern situations such as agnosticism, where people know their own position a lot better than you do, that's when you put away the dictionary and let them call themselves what they will.