Infant Stress and Feats Of Human Engineering.

Part of my new job is to read a lot of news stories. It's good, it means I'm well informed and can watch an episode of Have I Got News For You and understand it, making witty comments whilst I stir my martini with olives on a stick.

But as people know sad news sells better than good news. So I am ultimately driven into a state of depression. I mean it's just all bad. Not all bad but enough for it be acceptable to exaggerate the amount of bad.

But some things just annoy me like today I read about classes for infants coping with stress. Yeah, babies who have high stress.

I mean how stressed can a toddler be?! I mean Sex And The City toddlers would just be "Oh I had such a stressful meeting with father today, I had to sit in my own urine for several minutes..." 

I mean thinking about it logically, if you were to raise the level of stress up in accordance with your age, if you were getting therapy session at aged two, you should be allowed 6 months of hibernation where you can cry in the foetal position drinking ice cream and nobody can disturb you at age 18. And when you have kids you just get a years holiday. From anything you don't want to do. But then your kids would probably have some sort of stress problem from not having parents for the first year of their life, which would mean they would have therapy aged two to cope with it. 

It's a vicious cycle.

Point is it's like pet therapy, or psychic readings in a mall. It's just mollycoddling to the point of delusion. Sure hug your kid but don't take hugging classes to learn how to appreciate each other more.

Now I put Human Engineering in the title of this for a reason. This is a separate title, because it's the only word I can use to describe this person. I mean there must have been thousands of years of genetics gone into creating this guy. He is what I can only describe as perfect. Now I'm not gay but I can appreciate if a guy seems amazingly perfect. I was recently catching up with an old friend. 

I've always liked her and she is great and stuff obviously there would be no point to this story if I didn't have a soft spot for her. So anyway it's basically a story of obstacles, on my way to find a partner. I say it in such a formal manner so that it doesn't become all weird and awkward. 

Point is I realised from a very early stage that nothing was going to happen between me and this girl so I quickly forgot about it. And by forgot I mean pushed into the back of my mind so that one day when I least suspect it, it will come out in a flurry or anger and violence. Which will be awful but hey, I hurt my wrist when I try and hit stuff so it's not like anyone will be the least bit affected.

Anyway she recently said she liked this guy so I of course enquired to him and he is the aforementioned feat of genetic engineering I spoke of above. Now of course he is at university which is where most normal people my age are, and probably doing very well so this is sign No. 1. 

He is what I assume women would call attractive and not like to anyone person but like generally, so he has mass appeal. Sign No. 2. 

When he is not studying to better himself he is helping sick children in Africa. This isn't even a joke, It's  such a stereotype that I'm not even sure people still do it but they do indeed. Sign No 3 + 4. (It's so impressive that it counts as two. 

Lastly he plays guitar and sings. And well! Not like me who mumbles and thinks if he is quiet enough people will think he is really intense. I mean come on, he will take you to Africa and then propose through song...playing an instrument he will be able to afford with the money from his well paid job he got through his degree. Sign No. 5...

The only thing that people could consider wrong is that he is a little short. Not even like short just average probably. I mean I do beat him there but then again 6ft 4 is almost getting too tall. Like awkwardly tall too.

And that's all I have to say about that. 

But yeah if you like the stuff I write, and want to hang and are not from Russia (Nothing wrong with Russia just can't afford the flights on my wage...) Hit me up through the default comments system which was set up without my knowing. Or is that weird? Probably. Screw it.

This is your Facebook Life!

I was recently going through my 'mandatory because it's 2013 and if you don't have one it's like you don't exist Facebook page' and I saw that I was receiving updates from things I had liked when I had joined in 2008.

Now back then I was much less of a stickler for liking stuff so there was a lot of it. I also lied a lot more back then because when you go to a boarding school you don't see much of the outside world so really I wasn't sure what stage of development I should be at, and I was definitely not going to go along with what everyone else at that school did...

Anywho I realised what with Facebook tracking your stuff blah blah and employers now finding you they could see the things that it seemed I was interested in and there is no way for them to see when I liked it so they could believe that I liked the group "BEST HOMEWORK EXCUSE EVER! WORKS EVERY TIME!!!1!" yesterday, when in reality that was definitely not the case. How I ever moved forward in education with such a disastrous online trail is beyond me.

I'm not talking about the little things like them knowing I have a penchant for "Bourbon Biscuits" or "Chris Addison" in fact the opposite both show I am a relatively down to Earth guy that likes to laugh but the things like "Sorry Liver, But You're Going To Be Working Overtime This Summer". Pretty sure I liked that in 2010 when I was 15. And I'm even more sure that I drank no alcohol that summer. So the fact is apparently to potential clients or employers I look like a seasonal alcoholic who loves chocolate biscuits and in a similar vein hates it when you try to twist an Oreo and it breaks. Oh and "BUS WANKERS!" That doesn't even make sense! Does it mean I like the phrase bus wankers of do I literally love people on bus stops breaking indecent exposure laws?

Still the point I'm trying to make is that Facebook is a dangerous thing and even though I may swear occasionally on Facebook or have the odd bad drunken photo (which is always weird because at the time in which they are taken I always feel fabulous) we can rest assured that someone else has it worse. Until we get to that person in which case it's just hard cheese.

Although the likes isn't the worst of it. The updates and comments are like reading a bad book of poetry. As in really bad like unpublished. And by book I mean stack of paper I write on when drunk, which of course was definitely not in 2010.

It's the use of numbers as words, g2g, l8er etc. It's not even ironic!

Also the capitalisation of every word phase of 2009. Which Was Actually A Lot More Trouble Than It Was Worth. But then again at the time if it was a noun and it wasn't capitalised it didn't look right.

And LOL. The bane of my online life. There was no wittiness. It was just pure absent minded filth. I hate it. It's even worse than when my mother makes an abbreviation unknown to anyone but herself.
"BBIHAHLFT"

"What?"

"Be back in half an hour lasagne for tea, duh!"

Yes I know my Mother is in an American High School. But she is much better at technology than other out there so it's not that bad.

So basically I'm just trying to say learn from my mistakes, if you're just joining Facebook as a young child then how did you find this? Seriously who points you in the direction of a young man's ramblings about things that happened before you hit puberty? But also don't like weird Facebook pages.

Now go! Cleanse your pages and free yourselves from the torment of getting posts from "The 'Sup Nod". Or don't and just make your page private I really don't mind.

A Modest Failure.

For Christ's sake I can't even stick to a once a week blog post about something short.

I don't even know why I try to make these things as it adds pressure. I kind of want to do video versions as they would involve less time writing which is my problem but to I still have yet to acquire the technology for those.

To be fair it has been the Christmas period which as usual I loved - Sense the undertones - and I came home etc. Could use the excuse that I was spending time with the family but to be honest I was with friends at pubs spending too much money that I don't have.

To be fair as I have now left my old job I can write about it without fear of reprimand but it was a little unusual, and it ties in a little with why I was struggling with writing these things.

I was working for a London based Nigerian newspaper. I'm not going to name it just in case but it was an experience. I mean I am the last guy anybody would pick to work at a Nigerian newspaper. First of all I'm really white. And I don't mean just white I mean singing a capella versions of Get Low in the shower (Also looking up the meaning of 'skeet' on Urban Dictionary and being shocked, although not surprised, at the result).

So it was pretty weird and my jobs were varied. On the first day I was asked if I knew anything about social media for the purpose of upping their exposure. Now I thought this was just something they asked everyone but it turns out they asked me because of my age! You don't pick a guy to play golf with because he looks a little like Tiger Woods! Anyway once it was found that I didn't know how to get 100,000 views in one day they let that one go.

I have a hard enough time getting views on here. Most of mine come from traffic from a dodgy Russian illegal music site.

Anyway most of my job involved writing stories that were rarely used. I had a certain number of stories to write a day because a niche of this newspaper was that it was stories about Nigerians living in London, and I found it difficult to reach the number of stories per day as when you have a niche market it may just be that not a lot of news comes up on that subject. So to be honest it always felt hard to separate work and this. Because this is supposed to be fun stuff where I talk about shows and films, and occasionally make amusing jokes. Like the fact that I'm watching the American Office all the way through again for the fourth time. Just to put this is perspective, there are 9 series of 26 episodes averagely.

So anyway in the spirit of me trying to reclaim this as my own here Are some cartoons that artist Justin White has created of various shows and films which I love. (Link to his website with more below).

http://justinwhiteratedg.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/artwork-from-justin-whites-rated-g-seen.html

http://nineteeneightyeight.com/collections/justin-white-rated-g-1