The Tragedy of the Gourmet

Originally penned February 2015.

A short theatrical performance from the great mind of [RETRACTED].

Prussia still exists, in Birmingham!?

It's 1736 in the Prussian city of Königsberg, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, and Leonhard Euler, probably the greatest mathematician of the 2nd Millennium, is on a jog or something and decides to try to cross every one of the seven bridges over the river Pregel once and only once to prove his worth as a nerd. He failed. And subsequently he went home and drew up a snazzy mathematical proof as an excuse.

Great World Wide Rail Almanac IV: Stratford

Haha gotcha, I’m not doing either of the Birmingham stations after all; because it turns out there are actually 3 stations in Birmingham centre. And I’d be amiss not to make it a three-parter. I’ll have to wait until I’m next in Brum to pick up some photos, although I hope it isn’t too far out; Birmingham has a safe zone of only 1 mile radius about Vicky Square before you get to the no-go zone.

Instead, I’ll be doing another Warwickshire classic, Stratford station. Stratford station is located in Stratford. Not the one in London, the one upon the Avon you fuck. Whenever people make that mistake I actually want to stab them to death with a sharpened Elizabethan quill.

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen.”

Thanks Shakey, always a big help. You’re always there for me.

“Friendship is constant in all things. Save in the office and affairs of love.”

Well I guess I’m going all “Et tu, Brute” on your ass coz I freaking LOVE Stratford. Stratford is my country. I guess it’s also yours but that’s besides the point. I wish I could tell you how Stratford is the Dark Souls of middle England mediaeval towns, but this is the great world wide rail almanac and I have a duty to almanac the great railways world-wide. And so, unfortunately, I should limit this to just the station. Here’s a photo:

I actually really like what they’ve done to the station facade recently. They’ve opened up a huge area out the front and redone all the paving, giving it this snazzy old-new look; almost like its a museum exhibition, when in reality its just fucking old and needs replacing. Clever. Thinking about it, isn’t that just what this entire country is? We try to keep everything clean and spanking, but maybe what we truly need is a complete restructure of the system. Interesting, I’ll put “overthrow the government” on my stack of things to do.

You see the black gate that looks like the entrance? It’s not. As far as I can tell its purely ornamental. Although “ornate” is a weird way to phrase it, it being covered in graffiti and all. Here’s a close-up:

Okay. I’ll admit that it does look like a weak attempt at inner city nu-age artsy graffiti. Cut some slack guys, most people in Stratford actually have real jobs to attend to. If you think that these photos are lower quality than usual that’s because they are, it wasn’t me took them. I outsourced this job to my secretary. And apparently the camera on my secretary’s phone is like 200% shittier quality than mine, and mine isn’t even fancy. To break up this section here’s a photo of the actual platform:

I’m glad I already said these photos aren’t mine, I wouldn’t be seen dead taking a vertical photograph; that’s what I get for outsourcing my work. I need a new secretary. Or maybe I should just stop being lazy.

Here’s a story I just remembered that happened at Stratford station. It was around 5 years ago and I was hanging out around Stratford on a Wednesday afternoon skipping PE, like all good kids do. One thing led to another, and eventually we were setting of a homemade firework on the wall outside the station. Why? Because it’d be funny. It was. Very. It broke a little bit of the wall off and it stayed like that for a good few years before they did the refurbishments a year or so back. Good times. One day I’ll tell some more stories about our extra curricula chemistry research, but assured to say they weren’t all crackers, some of them were pipe bombs.

Stratford is a sparsely used station, being the termination point of a line that only runs Stratford-New Street. It’s just a nice, quiet (usually) station that’s fun for all the family. I saw a steam train there once too; wholesome stuff. What d’you say Billy?

“Good.”

Thanks Billy.

PS - There's a new index page for the GWWRA, along with a never-before-seen Forward chapter!

Great World Wide Rail Almanac III: Nottingham

Hey look at the time, it's tomorrow already. Time for Nottingham! What's that? It's been a month? Well check your privilege nerd, some of us don't have the luxury of 24 hours every day. Sheesh. Saying that, it has now been quite a while since I actually went on that journey that included Nottingham station. In fact, I've already been on a different train adventure since then, but since I live here now, it's not surprising Nottingham came up again. Here's a photo of the platform. Platform 3a to be precise:

But who cares. It's not a remarkable platform. None of them were. I checked. Since I mentioned it earlier, now is a good a time as ever to spill the beans on the story of the first trip that will serve as inspiration for the first entries into this here almighty almanac. I was back to Nottingham university from my home near Dorridge, thus Dorridge was my first station. It wasn't a single journey oh no. First I took the Chiltern Line from Dorridge to Birmingham Moor Street, walked over to Grand Central New Street (popping into both Costa and Waterstones on the way) and then got the wrong train, kind of. You see New street station's platforms are split into A and B each, and evidently I got the wrong one, because I ended up on a train that did in fact go to Nottingham, but via Derby. So I ended up stuck in Derby station for an hour and a half. That's when I thought to myself; “you know what, this is a shite station isn't it. Dorridge is much better. I bet nobody could come to that conclusion by themselves; as the administrator of a successful and influential internet text blog, I have a duty to tell the lowly plebeians about the quality of these two stations. In fact, why not all the train stations. Yes I must take up this mantle. I must fulfil my duty as the direct ancestor of Mr T. Station, inventor of the train station. My destiny awaits me.”

And so I made this, the comprehensive great grand almanac of train stations by me, [name redacted]. Hope you like it. Remember to fucking like, comment and suicide. Donate to my Patreon at http://bit.ly/2ARsMxE. Kill me baby. Kill your baby. Kill god and steal his throne. Die in a hole, hole in one, one for all, all for me. Thank you.

Nottingham stations pretty decent actually. It has a fucky mix of old and new, with the framework of the old station still standing, but this time they actually gave it a roof. Like wtf, did it just not have one before. Here, look at this photo of the main lobby:

Did Victorians just like to be rained on then? And they were meant to be good at inventing stuff. Here's a different pleasing photo I took:

I call it, symmetrical ATMs on both sides of the clock tower entrance. There are symmetrical ATMs on both sides of the entrance under the clock tower. This way two individuals can withdraw cash simultaneously. But yet, there is not even a single person doing that. What does it mean? Very deep. A commentary on society's gradual disengagement and awakening to the true nature of the world in which they live? A satirical mocking of modern corporations' seemingly constant unashamed advertising, patronising its customers to no end? Or maybe they were both out-of-order? Who knows. I know. They weren't. The photo probably would've been better if those people weren't standing in shot. What was I going to do though? Ask them to move out the way? That's ridiculous. I'm British.

One cool aspect about Nottingham station is that it's directly connected into the city tram line. As in you can climb some stairs onto a ramp way that goes over the top of the rails, and straight to the tram stop. It's actually pretty cool. Now I'm a bumpkin so this is about as close as I've ever felt to being a city boy. Trams? What is this, freaking Coruscant? If God had intended us to take trams everywhere he would've given us built in oyster cards instead of legs. Ooah I'm pleased with that gag. Yes, very good. Here's a shot from on top of the tram ramp, looking across the entire station complex:

Well at the time I thought that this was a really good photo, I was well chuffed; but now I'm looking at it again, it just isn't. It's blurry, there's no real focus, there are weird light reflections all over the place. Hmm not my finest work. I'll blame the shitty camera lens. It would've been perfect if I'd had my proper snapper. I would try to explain what's in this photo but honestly I'm not sure. I've never been to the area the other side of the station, but I assume that pointy tower is some kind of church? And the chimney is presumably connected to some industrial thingy. Your guess is as good as mine.

I rate Nottingham good. Robin hood would be pleased. Except he didn't really live here, he lived a good 25 miles North in Sherwood, but antidigressionally I can say he'd really like it here. Yeah, you should come here. Nottingham as a city is really nice too. Although don't hype yourself up too much for the castle, think soggy-bottomed fried bread rather than a full English breakfast. Also it's just called fried bread, not French toast goddamnit. Screw the Frenchies, 1415 for life.

Here's a poll that you're not allowed to vote on, should I do Birmingham Moor Street or Birmingham New Street next? I don't care what you think. Democracy's for yellow bellies and cuckolds. Maybe I'll do a double station spectacular! Maybe this time it won't take me a whole month! Find out next time in: The Grandiose Expeditionary Stori of Iklone the Wise in a Cautionary Tale: Great Railways and Where to Find Them, the Almanac!

Great World Wide Rail Almanac II: Derby

Hello and welcome back to the magnum almanac of my superior locomotive travel in and around the affordable range surrounding my house. Last time I spoilt the surprise and told you that today's station would be Derby. I wasn't lying. Here's Derby:

Being a capital city, you'd expect something pretty grand out of the station right? Well that's either the opposite of true, or they were hiding it real good. Ok, cutting to the chase; this was the most boring station I think I've ever had the fortune to depreciate. The concrete block of a floor really goes well with the monotonous steel girders holding up the roofing. Does science really explain the perfect parallel here between the people and the aesthetic of a town? Such pathetic fallacy surely proves a divine creation. Truly my visit to platform 1b of Derby station was a religious experience, if not an apostolic phenomena of life-changing proportions.

Really what you see is what you get. The photo says it all. No cycling. Broken vending machine. No smoking. No proper bike rack. Boring rail-side benches. Boring rail-side folk. Train. Rail tracks. Transportation. Connection. Communication. Community. Friendship. Marriage. Love. Life. Death. Heaven. Heaven. Heaven. Maybe this is heaven? It kinda looks like that place where Harry meets Dumbledore in the the Deathly Hallows part II. That was heaven I think? Wait that was obviously meant to be King's Cross, duh. I should go there instead, oh wait... Derby is bad. My feet hurt. I want to go home. How do I get home? Wait it's a train station! Perfect. Maybe Derby isn't so bad. Oh wait no there's guards freaking everywhere. What are they even guarding? Who knows and who frankly cares. Recommended to all those who wish to change here for somewhere that isn't here. Or for those wishing to find God betwixt the sepulchral tower blocks of Derby's streets. Next time I promise I'll go somewhere more coherent, and try to write something less characterless.

I say all this as if I know the first thing about Derby. To tell you the truth this was just a change over on the way back to Nottingham. I had all of an hour to wait and I wasn't going to pay the (probably) enormous toll needed to get a day pass into the city. But I'm sure its bad, don't worry.

PS- This was a short one. Expect my Nottingham station entry to be soon. Probably tomorrow. Not today though, I can't even bring myself to edit this one it's so awful. Oh well, it's not like that'd help much anyway. I need more Whiskey.

Great World Wide Rail Almanac I: Dorridge

Hi there. Welcome to the first entry into this, my august almanac of train stations. Time flies by when you're the driver of a train, eh? All aboard the fucking express please thank you; first stop is the closest stop to my house, Dorridge station  of County Warwick. It's pretty cool I guess, not really getting the point of the almanac though, it's meant to be about travelling to exotic climes on Romantic voyages of discovery and fun, but oh well, I gotta get the basics out the way and its a nice place to start with you know? Anyway here's a photo:

Pretty pretty yeah? Also hopefully the photographs will be a running gag in this novel since photography is cool, and proves I've been there too. Ooh look at that willow behind the bridge. Very nice yes.

Dorridge station consists of three platforms: 1, 2 and 3. Its got a ticket office, free toilets and even a bike rack. The ticket office is well known in the area for never being open, even though the ticket master is clearly sitting there behind the curtain. If you ask him to give you a ticket his typical response will be: “Sorry sir we're closed. Please use the ticket machine located on platform 1.”

At which point you sigh a sigh of relief that you can escape this awkward situation and move on; thank god for technology am I right? The ultimate saviour of the anti-socialite. But alas. The machine's fucking out of order. It literally always is. I'm not sure they are even trying to fix it. And so you gotta troop back to the station master and tell him what he so obviously already knows. Or not. You could just get on the damn train. They never check the tickets out here in the sticks anyway. Unless you're off to Moor Street; then just fuck you I guess. Basically the ticket machine doesn't work and who cares.

Hey look at that fucker in the photo behind the lamp post. He makes me laugh every time I look at him, He's either an under-age nonce on his way to his grandma's or a the village clown out for a jog. I don't know why, he's just funny. Also I just noticed there's a grit box there on the left. Why? There isn't another grit box for a dozen miles in any direction. Why on earth does the station need one? Talk about state oversight. Also tut tut, looks like there outta Metros. Sad!

Okay I'm back, I really needed a smoke and a hobnob.

The architecture is very nice. Real classic 19X0's stuff there. If I remember right the bridge was restored a couple years back and they never bothered to remove the scaffolding. If you look closely you can see it poking out over the hand rail. But seriously platform 2 has a really nice array of plant pots along the central divide. I'm upset I didn't get a good photo of them. My grandmother actually waters them as part of her duties in the village council. It's one of their responsibilities along with administering the mob judicial system and organising any current raiding operations on neighbouring parishes. Oh look another photo:

This one's taken from astride the bridge looking South towards where I was standing before. This one's got my signature shitty focus since I was too awkward to stand there and adjust the lens because an important looking man in a suit was coming up the stairs hurriedly and I'd hate to be seen to be a loitering youth. Hey look its the bike rack. Don't you see? Its obviously that collection of 12 blurred pixels in the centre of the image, wait that might be the car park. Also it kinda looks like it was raining from this photo. It wasn't.

Now under the administration of the Arch-Earl of Warwick and situated in the centre of the great forest of Arden (deceased), Dorridge station has a rich and long history of stationing many a train. I would even name it one of the seven wonders of the Dorridge-Knowle county parish; for the sole reason that I can't for the life of me understand how it managed to stay open through the great rail purge; divine protection or maybe consorted oversight? I'd recommend to all those who wish to leave or depart from Dorridge. See you next time for another super exciting entry into the almanac: this time the Gare Saint-Lazare of Paris. Wait no I meant Derby.

I Can't Believe my Bass Guitarist is a Slime Monster!?

Forward: When I said that I can't write fiction unplanned I wasn't lying. This train-wreck was the result of a "random idea generator" returning: "A slime monster has trouble with the local band." Enjoy? It's not proofread at all so is possibly definitely incoherent at points.

In Can't Believe my Bass Guitarist is a Slime Monster!?

Kelsie checked the store shelf once again. She was looking for something very specific and it didn't look like they had it in stock. She glanced over at the store manager to try and get his attention. No luck, he still seemed to be intensely interested with the floor and was ignoring her presence completely. Kelsie sighed internally. People ignoring her like this was almost an everyday occurrence; she knew they didn't mean any harm personally, but it still injured her self-esteem every time it happened. Such was the life of a slime monster in modern society, shunned as an outsider.

She turned back to the shelf of guitar picks that she'd been perusing before. Being a slime monster she required custom picks due to the biological differences between her and humans. But alas, it didn't seem like she was in any luck. They had picks for mermen and centaurs sure, but absolutely zilch for slime monsters. Oh well, she'd just have to deal with what she already had for now. She quickly checked her internal slime watch, a common slime monster trait, and realised that she'd spent much longer in this shop than planned. With a curt “thank you” to the store owner, who responded with a grunt more akin to a goblin than a human, she left the music store and headed left down the hill towards the house of her best friend Katie, and where she was scheduled for band practice in just under 10 minutes.

“I'll never make it in time,” she muttered under her breath as she made way briskly down the pavement. Suddenly an idea came to her. Checking up and down the road for passers-by she skipped over to the drain cover across the street. With one last glance over her shoulder, and with a gelatinous sloshing sound, she disappeared through the grating down into the drain; now she was in business. When constructing their towns and cities, the humans had unwittingly placed in super-highways perfectly suited for slime monster transport. As she whisked down the sewage pipe she smiled at the small triumph her human superiors had accidentally handed her. Down in the drains was Kelsie's safe space. Away from the constant heckling in the streets above and into an environment only her body could handle.

Taking a sharp left Kelsie zipped along, unimpeded by the various unspeakably disgusting objects littering the pipeway. She didn't mind though, this is how a slime monster like her should be living; with the grime of a subterranean abode. Next she took a right, then another left, and finally a 90 degree pivot upwards. She had reached her destination. With a satisfying glooping noise she appeared from the tap in Katie's bathroom. She took just a few seconds to reassemble herself properly and proceeded to slowly push open the bathroom door. Creeping down the hallway all was quiet, which meant band practice hadn't started yet, success! Just as she was reaching for the garage door it swung open, and the face of Katie appeared, paint adorning her cheeks.

“Kelsie!” she exclaimed, “you took the sewer route again didn't you? I told you not to do that, you know what the police'd do if they caught you... Oh well. Your bass's over by the amplifier so go get set up.”

Kelsie nodded and, entered the suburban house's garage. The other two band members were setting up too. June was tuning her guitar against the back wall, her white feathered wings folded up neatly against her back. Danielle the spider girl was there too, spinning her 4 guitar sticks at the end of her arachnid arms. She smiled at Kelsie as she entered, the black paint on her face cracking slightly.

“Ayy it's Kelsie, hurry and kit up I wanna start playing.”

“Aye aye.” responded Kelsie, the excitement already building in her, “just let me tune my bass.”

“No time!”, yelled Katie from behind her, having already returned from the errand she'd been running, “we gotta start playing now, I've already set the timer!”

Five seconds was all it took for June to play the first chord, and five seconds was all Kelsie needed to throw the strap over her shoulder and ready her pick. And they were off. From the first ear-shattering chord played, Kelsie could tell they'd be going full force on this one. The noise emanating from her amp alone was enough to set car alarms off for miles around. She strummed hard. Real hard. The vibrations from the noise travelled all the way up her body, causing a rippling sensation up her invertebrate body. She was vaguely aware that Katie had started singing at some point, although singing was a generous description of the sound emanating from the teenager's mouth. More like a power drill than a human voice, her screams pierced over the low earthquake of Kelsie's bass. It didn't really matter what chords she played. It never did. As long as she didn't stop for a breath the cacophony could continue.

This was harder than they'd ever played before, much harder; a new record for the Black Eternal Suicide Death Brigade. Then the fire show started. Katie had linked up her kitchen's gas stove up to a pipe transporting the highly flammable gas into garden sprinklers set up in the garage. They were set to go off when Katie pushed a foot pedal and go off they did. Fire filled the room searing the hair off Kelsie's comrades with the immense heat. Far from deterring the foursome it merely made them more powerful, the noise level now rivalling a rocket launch, causing visible vibrations in the walls of the surrounding house. Not that the girls noticed, they had passed beyond mere mortal consciousness. This was their life now. The creation of greater and greater discord and to finally, finally deconstruct the cruel unfair world they had been born into. Pull down the society that surrounded them, treated them as outcasts, as lesser citizens. Destroy that which their enemies had worked so hard to create. This was their destiny. And collectively they could achieve the pure and total annihilation of all civilisation. Order to anarchy. Form to chaos. Kelsie suddenly became aware that she could no longer hear. Her eardrums had long since burst and her only sensation was a loud ringing noise along with the vibrating force of a Richter scale 9 earthquake of pure noise around her. Her vision was starting to fade also, but she didn't care. None of them did. They were only doing what had to be done. They weren't going to survive this. They had never expected to. This was their final stand and BY GOD they were going to achieve MAXIMUM ENERGY. Kelsie strummed harder than she had ever strummed before, her jelly fingers being ground down into the strings. Even the ringing had stopped now. The loudest silence ever recorded. The fire had piped down to a simmer, like a cobra ready to pounce. It was time. Katie turned to the members of the band and gave a shrewd, bloody smile. Kelsie nodded. With a stamp on the ignition pedal the entire garage was engulfed in a blast of plasmarised air. The heat instantly evaporated the performers, no the heroes. Although the heroes were gone, they had won. The legacy of that day turned out to be louder than even the event itself. Echoing across the globe, starting the fire that had been coming for so many years. The end of life as you all know it; the age of monsters had begun.

The Centralisation of the Internet

The corporatisation and centralisation of the internet is by far the greatest threat to current internet culture and content. Forget malware propagation or government legislation, there is no greater threat than this. With the recent explosion of internet usage over the last decade, the internet has become a tool and platform that everyone uses. Not just for a niche for nerds, geeks and teens; but an everyday surfing ground for anyone and everyone. There is no entry barrier, no idiot nets no nothing. This huge influx of users has brought one major asset. Money. Or at least a platform from which to make money. The precursor to this was the .com bubble of the late 90s. Businesses, mostly small, jumped on to the new biggest thing and jumped straight back of when that burst. But nowadays we have something much more sinister, corporations based around the internet. These are companies that built the current web we use everyday, pioneered innovations that we take for granted. Such as Google and the only successful search engine, or Facebook with there super-profit machine MySpace rip-off. Companies such as these make a lot of money. And with this money they can do two things. They can invest into their own projects to make them the best around; or they can buy other people's projects that are already the best around. Great, right? Now these companies will build a service that everyone can use (probably for free) and it'll be the best in the world! There's no need for alternatives when there is one, objectively best option! Hmm. Once one company, or website, has a monopoly on a market; there is virtually no incentive for smaller competition to attempt to rival them. And once nobody rivals them, there is no point for the large company to invest any further into that product, from a business perspective.

Take Youtube for example. When Youtube was a baby, it had a multitude of rival sites that had either the same, or slightly nuanced, functionality. For example, if you wanted to post animations to the net, Youtube was not the place to do it. Newgrounds maybe? And nobody in their right mind would post music there. There's SoundCloud or BandCamp for that. But over the years Youtube became the place for internet video hosting; and once it was purchased by Google, there was no turning back. Youtube is currently the second most visited site on the internet, beaten only by Google's own Google, so any competition would have to be in the multi-millions-of-dollars range to present to much as a scratch to the site's base. As for users, Youtube is really the only viable option to find an audience at any amount that will rake money. Even content that Youtube was never built for, such as music or even product selling has migrated over, just because of the huge potential audience crowded in one spot. And the more people migrate to Youtube, the less reason there will be to ever leave, thus forming a vicious circle where Google always wins. Damn even this fucking blog is built on a Google-owned framework. There is no escape from giants.

This is a pattern that can be seen throughout the internet. Whatever the type of site, there will almost invariably be a huge, conglomerate site that dwarfs and squashes any rivals out of importance. Micro-blogging with Twitter, video-games with Steam, streaming with Twitch; even the more traditional base of text-forums are being funneled into Reddit. We've seen it all before. In the real world globalisation has made starting and maintaining a small business something that relies mostly on luck and is incredibly rare to occur. Try and set up successful grocery store that can compete with any supermarket, good luck. In a sense the internet represents a totally interconnected 100% globalised market. Any site is as easy to access than any other, so why would you use for anything other than the best? And once the internet base is completely controlled by a few huge, corporate, faceless monstrosities your precious “culture” and "innovative content" will be squashed with whatever they need in order to maximise their profits. Innovation will die without its incentive; why strive to be better when there's no rival to beat? The internet will stagnate, just as globalisation has stagnated so much before.

Enforce the stupidity police! Keep out the normies! Boycott the fat cats! Nothing will work, we need to innovate fast. Make something cleverer than the huge sites, attack their weak points. Return the internet to a bastion of expression and innovation. Keep the wild west free.

Manabi Straight

Sometimes when you consume a shit tonne of the same sort of media, it becomes difficult to tell whether or not you are actually enjoying something for what it is, or just because its similar to a thing you do like. For me one of these things is SoL anime. And by SoL I don't mean the half-assed pansy shit like Kokoro Connect or any Key-shit. No. SoL doesn't really mean Slice-of-Life literally, it's its own thing. A good policy would be that if a show has more than one gender, its not SoL; and if it's guys then its gay. Except Nichibros, I liked that show. (And Cromartie) ((Wait no Cromartie's pretty gay))

Anyways, my recent experiences with SoL is that its hard to tell if a show is shit or not. A good'un is always pretty obvious, like nobody watched K-On episode 1 and thought it was nothing special. But I seem to be finding it hard to recognise when a show is truly good until a week or so after I finish it. I don't really get it. It only ever happens with media types that I consume an unholy amount of. I'll be the first to point out the flaws in any Shounen-Harem show or an FPS vidya. It's probably because I'm inherently attracted to the concept or something. I can easily blaze through a mediocre 2-cour SoL; but getting through just 12 episodes of shounen battle show is a slog no matter the show's quality. In fact. That may be the crux of the whole problem. I seem to get bored with a show much faster the more action there is. If there is no action, I'll scream through; if there's only action, I'll end up dropping before half-way. A good case study of this is Cardcaptor Sakura. I really loved the show, its been the benchmark of mahou shoujo for nearly 20 years and its animation blows most of today's stuff out the water. But it took me an age to get through, because it insisted on not only being SoL, but also action. I'm not saying action is bad. Action is cool. But so is not-action. And it just so happens that I get bored with action way faster that not-action. Maybe it drains me faster? I don't know. Oh fuck yeah this was meant to be about Manabi Straight.

Manabi Straight is a cool anime centred around cute girls in high school. But I don't care about you so if you don't know it then oh well fuck off. But the reason it's worth toalking about is that watching Manabi Straight made me the least bored I've been in ages. Usually I end up putting a show on auto-run and falling asleep around 3 episodes in. With Manabi Straught I binged straight from midnight till sunrise. And I think the reason why, is that my subconscious innately knew it was a well made show. It'd been crafted in such a way that it held my attention, made me care about the story and all the while still pandering to moe culture. I think some dick with a mic and an inflated ego could go into great depth over each scene individually and how well its made, but as a consumer I don't give a shit. I can just feel that it works, everything clicks together. The plot never gets too big, meaning all the loose ends are tied up at the end. There are 5 (five) main characters, the optimum amount to give each an in-depth development arc but not to be too smushed in to one another. The character's personalities aren't overly anime, and are grounded in some sensible realm (except for Manabi's) without going and being all “realistic” and just removing the reason why people find fictional characters fun in the first place. The list goes on. But the overarching problem here is that I don't actually know. Unlike other favourites where I can give conclusive reasoning behind my ratings, with this one I can't put my finger on it. At the time of writing its been 3 weeks since I finished it, and I still would rank it among my tops, so I doubt its just a matter of the post-binge wankfan. Bringing this sprawl back to the start, I think my love for this show is just that its a really good version of a formula that I love. Its a high school SoL that stands out from the crowd, if only for being sufficiently proficient in every area I notice or care about. And of course the weird funky aesthetic design choices are a huge plus for me; being an arthouse-fag.

Cool all around with a hint of spice.

A Diatribe on Objectivity

The most meaningless point someone can use in an argument is one claiming “objectively”. Stating that something is objectively true, objectively false or objectively objective. Opinions can't be objective. Even most facts are really just opinions based on facts, and therefore are also subjective to the person. Anything idea that we think, any “fact” that we believe are and can only be seen through our own perspective, where we filter anything we hear through layers of abstraction before reaching our mind. Whether something is correct or not depends on our own, heavily biased, contextual minds. Anything we think is a product of our upbringing or even genetics. It is impossible to view something from a detached, impartial viewpoint, because even the concept of an impartial judge is based on our preconceptions of such a thing.

Context matters. It matters a lot. To look at something without its context is barely looking at it at all. Take someone else's opinion. Do you agree with it? Maybe, maybe not. But any person with intelligence wouldn't judge the person based solely on this one opinion, as if the context in which it was said, and the context of the person in question didn't matter. Here's a case study: murder. Intentional murder of another human. Surely that must be wrong? Well it all depends on context. Is the murder of a terrorist moments before he blows himself wrong? What about abortion? Euthanasia? Suicide? They are all the intentional ending of another persons life, but yet whether they are “wrong” or not is subjective.

And for this reason, I think that objectivity is not only a trap and fallacy, but also is a bad one. Nobody should strive for objectivity, personal biases are what make humans people. They literally are our personality. When you try to look at something objectively, you are disregarding everything you have learnt through your life, any prior knowledge is cast away as a bias. If a court judge looked at everything through the cold eyes of a robot, he wouldn't last too long. The context matters, and it matters a lot. Maybe it is the only thing that matters? Well that depends on your personal opinion crafted over the course of your entire life and shaped into whatever world views you currently hold. Nothing is objectively right, nothing is objectively wrong; and don't pretend it is.

The New Frontier

The late 19th century Americas were the heyday of exploration and modern day conquest. Cowboys facing off in the high noon sun, pirates swashbuckling around and doing piratey shit. Worlds where every man was looking out for himself, and himself only. Where you could do anything you wanted, and there was no long arm of the law to close in on you. While we have excessively romanticised this lifestyle in our current society, most sane people can see that life as a gun-slinging cowboy or swashbuckling pirate would be much less glamorous in real life than we like to portray it as. But what if I told you that you could live that life right now: present day, present time. And what's more, you could live it without any of those pesky side-consequences like having you're possessions stripped or being shot in the head with a block of lead. All you need is to be born somewhere decent and to own a piece of super-modern technology. A time machine. Wait, I meant a computer. Or I guess a phone if you're fine being forever pleb tier. What I'm really talking about is the good old Internet, and you should've guessed: it's the only thing I talk about!

Quoting a wise anon from /jp/, “the internet is still in it's wild west stage, and I'd like to keep it that way desu.” The capabilities of the internet are currently mostly unexplored. Every week some new web technology is revealed, and the 70s sci-fi Borg rhetoric edges ever closer to reality. Many remote corners of the internet remain lawless; the ever elusive deep web, the real hives of Nazi flat earth societies; gee, even actual pirating is a thing. It is a way to get information directly from real people, to communicate with anyone anywhere without the veil of some supreme authority. A place where any opinion is valid, and anything can be said/done without repercussions. The current internet is rife with opportunity, but also with danger. But the danger is what makes it fun. Any idiot can wander into the deepest corner of internet culture, but they'll be damned if they don't understand the language used, etiquette preached and exactly how everything works, almost like walking into a bar without knowing its run by a local drug lord. For those in the know it acts almost as a second home, somewhere to refuge from all those normies and wallow in depressing cyclical arguments.

While its cool to make comparisons pointing out the similarities, I want to throw in one, important, parallel. The wild west didn't last forever. Eventually the federalists came in and set up the rule of law, imposed taxes, stopped all that damn killing. Already we see the enormous conglomerates moving in and marking down their territory and their rules. Economic machines such as Google or Facebook, once themselves children of internet freedom, now controlling large portions of internet usage closely. When once people would visit independent forums to surf, they now flock to much more normal corporate websites. While the fringes of the cyber frontier are far from being under their authority, we're all definitely at risk. And there doesn't seem like there's much we can do but watch. Its the classic trade of freedom for safety; but do we need safety when there's nothing to fear? The internet never killed nobody, and now acts as the vanguard for free speech in an ever more controlling society. Always question authority and stand up to it, while we still have the upper hand.

Mindless Self Indulgence

     -And how I learned to stop giving a shit and love it.

Preface: You know how I said I had a few blogs backed up to post? Well this is it, there were only two, so you better enjoy it.

One human flaw that is wrought throughout culture, and is especially prevalent on internet forums; is the disgusting, immoral practice I'm going to dub media elitism. When a certain object or concept is held in such high regard that everyone has to think it is the epitome of greatness, lest they be named as a shit-tasted normie. Oh wait, did I call it a flaw? I meant completely normal idea that has been practised throughout history and is part of humanity's innate attraction to certain things over others.

You see, I've been through three phases of media elitism. At first I was like your average edgy teen. I held such veneration of the collective idea of “good taste” that I would purposefully seek out these “ascended forms of art” and force myself to like them. I often didn't really get it, as most people don't with high art, but I just attributed this to me being an idiot pleb and I'd just try harder to work it out next time. I spent hours watching films I didn't get, listening to albums I didn't get, binging anime I didn't get. Stupid, right? Wrong. Because you're overlooking one important factor. The most important factor. In fact, it is quite possibly the only factor that even matters.

But before I tell you what it is, I'll move through the two other phases, just because I'm a bait switching cunt. The second stage was the inventively named “elitist elitist” stage. One day, or rather over a transitional period, I realised that liking things just because other people told me to was dumb, and a thing only idiot plebs would do. So I stopped liking the things I was told were good, and looked for things I liked all on my own. I tried to judge a thing based purely on its own merits, disregarding anyone else's opinions or the context of the thing in question. This might sound like an admirable breakthrough, becoming a better person, growing up. However, it's not like I came to these conclusions on my own, or even if these conclusions were even grounded. It was just that the people that I looked up to had changed. Now I looked up to the people that looked down on those I used to idolise. So I switched from calling my original idols “gods of good taste” to “the idiot masses”; and the content they liked from “intellectual masterpieces” to “pretentious artsy bull crap”. Even though I believed I was rejecting elitism, I had just ascended into a higher form of elitism, elitism elitism: the belief that you are above elitism and elitists. Putting it this way you can see that its just as dumb, if not dumber, as stage one, and much more dangerous.

It was around this time that I actually started to mature mentally. And by mature I mean completely destroy my humanity by becoming engrossed in my own cynicism and nihilistic tendencies. Don't worry, I'm perfectly mind broken. I entered the pit of philosophy (ie. - Having no life and spending all my time in my room with the curtains shut), and left it with my favourite phrase: “Fun things are good.” God that was a fucking waste of two years. But this phrase does actually sum up my point nicely. The only reason to ever do something is to have fun, and this brings me back to that oh-so-juicy snag point from half a page back. The factor that I omitted was that the act of indulging in elitism was fun. Being an elitist is fun. Watching pretentious Japanese cartoons that I don't understand is fun. Every aspect of being an elitist is fun, mindless fun. And it doesn't really harm anyone either, as long as you keep it to meaningless stuff (like art). And as we all know, fun things are good. If it's fun then there is no reason to stop. So I have returned to being an autist. Sorry, elitist. I watch French noir, listen to prog rock, hell I even write esoteric elitist blogs on the internet. And right now I find it fun. And that's good enough for me. And that is the story of how I learnt to stop giving a shit, and love mindless self indulgence.

PS- If you thought this would have any relevance to the band, you were right. This is literally what they're all about. MSI is all about not caring anymore and just loving fun things: it's literally their name. I'll write a full post about them at some point. Or maybe I'm just a fraud and this is just another mindless rip off ;)

Selling my Soul to the Internet

Preface: This is a blog post from late December intended for the old site. Its short and kinda crap, so perfect for a first post. If you're a filthy outsider then this is pretty much what you're in for. (Also please leave.)

I was born in early 1999, and so was part of the first set of kids who grew up with easy and universal access to the internet from a young age. Growing up I would often spend time on the family PC and from the age of about 7 I would start accessing the internet. First it was purely for viewing images on Google, but soon I found my way onto flash game websites; followed by Youtube; followed by text forums. However, the history of my internet usage isn't really the point I was going to make so I'll stop, but I'll probably make a proper one in the future.

What I do want to talk about is how the internet broke my mind, or at least fundamentally altered the person I grew up into. The modern age of the 21st century is often referred to as the “Information Age”, where any and all information is freely available to anyone at anytime, as long as your not poor. And while this is all well and good, retrospectively I believe that my mind was completely overloaded with boundless information and ideas. In ages past parental guidance has always been the main source for a child's moral and cultural education, but with the turn of the internet, we all had other people to look up to, to admire and to copy. Now this is obviously completely fine because the internet is populated solely by upstanding and inspirational heroes. Except it isn't. And by the time I had worked this out I was in too deep and didn't want to pull out. Here I am mainly talking about the old-guard internet forums of pre 2010; namely Newgrounds and 4chan. I always knew it was all meaningless and dumb, but I carried on despite it. Despite knowing full well that this was a waste of my time, I was drawn in by just how cool it all seemed to me. And this is the crux of the problem. Its fun dicking around on the internet, or at least it looks fun. When you hear of these guys its almost like some kind of myth. A cool club full of the best people. And you instantly want to be a part of it. At a time when nothing was happening in my life, aged around 13, I saw this as an opportunity to ignore the real world and just fanny around online with a bunch of douchebags. And here's the thing. I don't regret it at all. I had just as much fun as anyone else was having, probably, and I doubt I'd change much if I could. So I, completely purposefully, went deeper and kept going on my quest to be an oldfag. This is why the title of this post is “selling my soul”; my soul wasn't taken, I knew very clearly what I was doing and I thought it was good. I still do.

It boils down to my fundamental ethos behind what I do with my time: Fun things are good. If I like a thing then that thing is good, and I will carry on that thing, despite what other people lead me to believe. To this day I visit virtually all the same sites, and I'm realising that everyone around me (in a virtual sense) is just as, if not more, degenerate as me, and my choosing of what I do with my life is A-OK. I'm telling you that you should give up your soul to the internet, or anything else for that matter. Humility and restraint are two important qualities. But you should also take any opinions people have about things with a handful of salt, they're probably wrong. While you shouldn't break norms for the sake of breaking norms, do whatever you want and you'll be a cooler person for it.