Not Cool To Care Too Much

I'm fascinated by the values that have taken hold of western countries, forbidding people from caring too much about things that others either don't care about or don't like.

What I mean is that if you care about the environment, you can go in your clapped out V-Dub to the pop concerts where rich pop singers who can afford solar panels, wind turbines and dentists for their dogs tell you to be green, you can buy the recycled bog-paper and talk about the latest play that shows us how environmentally unfriendly your neighbours are but, you mustn't allow it to change the way you live if it means that the way you live must become less comfortable, less 'normal' or (god forbid), less cool. You certainly must never allow yourself to care about it in equal passion if your opinion is the opposite.

In the 'woteva' world, caring is uncool if it's not what others are caring about or telling you that you should be caring about it. If it was, then the unnamed charity worker who has spent ten years in a third world country looking after children who orphaned by HIV AIDS would be as celebrated, adored and 'cool' as Madonna or Bono or pop over every now and again before returning to their not-so uncomfortable lives.

What prompted this post was this YouTube video where some Christians (allegedly) walked out of a performance by someone who was using what they considered to be crude language.

I'm not defending the person who poured water on the performer's notes, but I am defending the right of those who walked out, because they cared about something. They actually cared enough about something that mattered to them that they allowed it to change what they were doing and planning to do.

That's not cool.

They're not supposed to care about that, and the comments on that video make it clear.

In my opinion, those who are saying that these people are somehow inferior to everyone else for caring, are as wrong as the person who poured the water on the performer's paper because inasmuch as that man was saying the performer shouldn't perform with such language, they are saying that those who walked out shouldn't care.

It's sad that so many people are being swept along by the tide of popular culture that they never seem to stop and think about what they are doing. Sure, they stop and think about what people are doing differently and how they're odd and maybe even a terrorist threat because they care enough about something to let it change their behaviour, but they don't seem to stop and think about what is influencing them, what is making them do what they are doing.

Christians, Jews and Muslims are often criticised for allowing a book (or books) to tell them what is right and wrong, but what's telling you the difference between right and wrong? How did you come about your moral compass? If your moral compass different today than it was ten years ago? I'm not saying it shouldn't have changed, but what changed it (if it has changed)?

You see, everything we do is about what we care about. What we care about comes from our revelation, and many people don't even know what their revelation is.

To follow the crowd is easy and proof of that is that this is what most of us do, even when we try not to; It's like the whole Western world is like the teenager who is looking to be an individual by dressing like the person they most want to be like. We all did it... and we all do it.

But before you call someone a 'pussy' because they don't like to hear a comedian say 'fuck', where is your moral compass pointing, how did it get to point there and, more importantly, how uncool are you willing to be in order to follow it?

Or will you just not bother to think about it, call me a fundamentalist terrorist and get on with your cool, individual, completely original and totally uninfluenced life?

The Internet - It's Dangerous Out There

About six or seven years ago, I was a regular attendee on an MSN forum. Through that forum, someone got hold of me and we started talking on MSN Messenger. I was immediately concerned and worried because I was a twenty six years old and she was thirteen (so she said).

Instantly, I was worried. She started to talk about suicide and how she felt that nobody loved her, so I really felt that I couldn't just block her and disconnect her from my MSN buddy list, but I also knew that it was not a healthy thing for me to be talking so much to a stranger so young, or for her to be talking to a stranger so old.

In the end, I got the Samaritans in touch with her and she vanished. I hope to God that she's Ok and growing into a well rounded person with all her issues sorted.

But what I find fascinating and concerning at the same time is how she was looking for someone to talk to and she didn't seem to care who it was.

The media portrays the internet as a place where dirty old men are looking for youngsters to groom, but what society must face is that it has created a such a loveless environment that these youngsters are actually going out to look for whoever will listen. In the case of the young lady I just mentioned, I guess she was lucky that I wasn't a predator, but what if I was? What if she had gotten in touch with someone who was more interested in something that would ruin her?

While we must try and clear the streets and (virtual) highways of those who would seek to harm vulnerable people, something also has to be done to address the needs of those who become vulnerable because of a society that tells them they're worthless unless they are economically active.

What has prompted this is a video and a person I have stumbled across on YouTube, someone I shan't mention here, but it has alarmed me at how people are looking to belong and find hope. The internet will only give a sugar coated pill to take the pain away for a few hours, the TV and video games just mask the pain with a numbness and everything else just gets given the 'WOTEVA' treatment.

People are hurting and we think that we can heal them by giving them a webcam and an internet connection?

People who live for state benefits, who hang around bus stops drinking beer, who would rather buy three rings for each finger rather than a baked potato, who would rather vote for Big Brother than a politician who actually cares, who let their toddlers roam the streets at ten in the evening and who only wreck their own houses for the insurance they can get are not the cause of a rotten society, but the symptoms.

I'm not a pinko liberal and I certainly don't think we should molly-coddle people who would rather watch TV and drink beer all day in a house that has more fleas than Tony Blair has teeth, but when we tell people to pull their socks up, we need to try and identify the things that are making them not want to pull their socks up in the first place.

When we start identifying and addressing the underlying causes of society's ills, we may then find that places like the internet are much safer because there will be fewer people looking for love, and fewer people looking for 'love'.

Ultimate Utopia

This is brilliant. Old, but brilliant!

Watching a Robot Learn to Walk

This is pretty cool. Watch as the robot learns from its falls and manages to walk the ramp without falling!

Chocolate Rain

I hate MacBreak Weekly for making me listen to this. Now, it's in my head and it won't get out!

Talking Cats

Far form the high-brow antics of a church with a new logo, I'm amazed at how many YouTube videos there are of talking cats!



This one sounds depressed.
This one sounds possessed*.
This one sounds like an annoying kid who won't shut up.

It's said that cats are extremely intelligent but I think that they're just stupid. You can train a dog to do stuff because a dog has the brains to learn whereas a cat is just too stupid. For example, if I move my cat's food dish, why does it wait for me to put food in the old location while watching me put it in the new?

Cat's can't be trained, not because they're too intelligent to do such menial tasks, but because they're too stupid. Cats are thick. That's why they chase balls of wool and want stare at door handles. Dogs know that people open doors, cats reckon it's door handles that open doors.

Dull or what?

* No offence was intended to trendy neo-atheists who may think that I am trying to oppress the poor and vulnerable by mentioning 'possession'. I was merely using an illustration and not intending to threaten anybody with a weapon of organised religion designed to control the masses through fear of a 'fictional' hate character, allegedly invented for the purpose of instilling fear into a people or social demographic. If you feel that I was trying to instill fear or control anybody, please be assured that I wasn't.

Doctor Who and Star Trek

This music is brilliant!


And, if you can get past the terrible intro music, this is really good as well;


And this is quite funny as well;