Real Talk: Is there too much news?

Seriously, I can't keep up with anything these days. Trying to find time outside of work to socialise, write my book, music, this incessant blog is too exhausting. Filtering out necessary information from articles has simply become a task so impossible that I literally have no idea what's happening anymore - even in my own life. On some nights I return home, put my feet up and ask myself, 'what did I do today?' and try to list things off.

'Well, my dear,' I say to myself affectionately, 'you probably woke up.' This is a given. 'Soon after, you made yourself cereal, the indicator being the bowl next to the sink in the kitchen, which also evidence that you didn't wash up. And apart from work, I guess that you did little else but drink tea and what you believe to be writing.' Thus failing to make arse nor tail of my day. This confusion is furthered by the fact that I fail to make arse nor tail of the World's day.

Nonsense aside, with such collosal news stories as the Crimean disrepute, the Malaysian airline mystery and the Alan Pardew crisis* churning out mountains of information from speculated facts to fabrication passed down the grapevine - let alone completely unrelated splooge - it is difficult to get an idea as to where to begin reading. Give me facts not a load of spruced up coincidence, convincing at a stretch!

Could you possibly imagine the news as told by
Gary Linekerwith special guest analyst Paul
Gascoigne? Compelling to say the least...

For this reason, I propose a news service that sifts through it all - every story, plausible opinion, comment, remark, youtube autotune parody - and just give us squirming trogs a quick summary of what the hell is happening. A bit like a Match of the Day, only for news. A play-by-play of the day's happenings that cuts the crap and gives us digestible chunks of intelligible, tasty mouthfuls of fact. In my naivety, I am guessing that this service already exists somewhere (logically, it must) and, in my juvenile haste, have overlooked it. If so, I urge that you not read on and humour me for I do not need the encouragement.

In summary, with the mass media being more vast than ever, and showing no signs of decreasing its rate of expansion, there should be a more condensed and convenient service for those too lazy to read through the swamp of news that, nearly literally, relates every issue of every day to everything that has ever happened. The Internet is becoming too big and invaluable for its own good - and I am too lazy to use it properly.




Song of the moment:



*This is really not worth knowing about. The less you know, the better.

Today I... Question Love

Love doesn't exist everywhere in the world. Did you know this? I bet you didn't. Its a Western construct that is spreading with globalisation. The Beatles were wrong, as history dictates, many people live without love. Some civilisations actually survive on a healthy mental diet of respect and life-saving water.

No, no, no! This is not one of those heart-broken, forlorn examples of someone whose expectations have fell short and have taken to the keyboard to confront an injustice bestowed upon them by someone who, once a ray of sunshine, turned out to be devoid of a heart. This it is not. It is, however a rant about 'Lurve' and 'Harleywould' derived from the sheer abundance of content that passes by without scrutiny. So, here is another petty blog. Enjoy!

American Hollywood romance creates unrealistic expectations for the rest of us brainless specks. Jude Law is nothing more than a marionette, a prop. Real men are addictive creatures who are afraid or pretty much feckless when it comes to showing a shadow of their true feelings. I couldn't tell you how many times I have been in a situation where I couldn't put words to my deepest, most inner desires; moments when overused, worn out phrases just don't cut it. 'I love you' and the ideology of 'forever' seem to be the easy way out and a segway to an impersonal relationship.

'I love you' or 'I am in love with you' should be savoured and cherished, not a time-filler when you are entangled with your love of 9 months, struggling to find something to say about their eyes, bodies, personality, taste in clothes, style, impact on your life, hot mother, cooking, good graces, similar choice in literature, and so on, that you have not said before. Don't get me wrong or distort my message to produce an argument of your own, because I know how easy it is to 'troll' by deflecting an argument and take a holier-than-thou approach, but I feel love is losing its value.

Love in itself is a magnificent concept; the idea that a bond between two people can make life more meaningful, adding to it what words do not dare begin to explain. It is something of fairy tales and has often been reflected and reproduced beautifully with grace and splendour in classic literature. I just feel that today, it has lost some of its sheen. It has been over-exposed, tailored into a manufactured, promotable product embraced by the media, aimed specifically at the consumer serial sharers amongst us. You know the type, the 'selfie tweetagrammers'.

What initially fuelled me to write this blog was something that someone shared on Facebook that infuriated me. It wreaked with banality. The old same old, same old. It was an image consisting of two frames of a film. The first had a man, looking as forlorn and disappointed; wrinkled forehead - the works. The caption with the first image read, 'Don't go.' The second frame was that of a woman by a door, looking back into the room all forlorn and upset, the very image of the sorrowful goodbye. The accompanying annotation: 'Don't let me.' And you know what? This really got on my nerves, and I can't explain exactly why. This also got on my nerves. I can only go over my train of thought. Which went something like this:

'Dont' go!'
Don't let me!'

There is a choice here? They have a choice? Why the sad faces then? Surely there should be a third frame!


'Don't go!
Don't let me!
Ok, then.'
 
If he wants her to stay, she will? And he wants her to stay? So, what's the problem? Unless, in reality, he doesn't really want her to stay. He is just saying what he thinks he wants her to hear. Ease her pain and his guilty conscious for not caring enough. That's it. The selfish bastard! What a poor woman having to invest her emotions into such a man let alone have it witnessed by millions of viewers then shared by some fool on Facebook who believes it to be a true act of romance.

I know! I know! I may be being a tad bit petty here but can't we relate the concept of love to something a little less trivially contrived than this? Please? Can't we just? Please?


If this article gets enough recognition I will post a second one about being 'in love'.

In the meantime...enjoy my song of the moment

Real Talk: Banter About Breasts

Facebook has been plastered with rants and gripes over a lady who had her breast altered courtesy of the British tax payer. Personally, I find widespread social network scoops hilarious and - more often than not - I feel that I only get about 3% of the full story. More than likely the word spread over the internet as a campaign led by The Sun, read by the general public without being scrutinised and then shared like gospel. Praise the Lord!

Josie Cunningham (the boobed one), is currently running amok all over the media for having her chest extended for £4,800 on the NHS. The near-unanimous outrage has played into her hands, though. If she simply went under the radar she would not have gotten so many offers for modelling jobs. Many people are commenting on the way she looks and deeming her, in so many words, a blight upon humanity. In her defence, she says that this breast enlargement was to improve her life. 

Maybe it is because she didn't like the way she looked, which I don't feel is an example of her stupidity (because I think she may be a chav), but a product of our materialist society and the way we portray beauty in women. The media portrays them as trouser-pleasing bobble-heads. We all hate aspects of ourselves and, given the chance, we would make a change. Given the chance, I would change my ill-fitting rump in a heart-beat. At the end of the day, the NHS offered her this opportunity and she had the guile to take it, fair play to her. It looks like it's keeping her off the dole.

Furthermore, this could not have been a back-alley procedure where the funds were secretly siphoned out of the governments back pockets. I am guessing that the legal procedures preceding this operation were strenuous and long. Sources suggest that it took about 8 years for her to get this operation. I know that I would have given up and learned to live with my qualms after about 2 years of moaning to the government about my fat ass. This entire story seems like a stitch-up fabricated by the Government. The media has created a common enemy, in this case, a very common enemy, but whatever the background, there were many more people involved in this matter. She has just been made the face of it. An easy target. A very easy target.

Either way, I thought people liked boobs. Personally, I think they're great no matter whose chest they are hanging off.