Blog 9: For the sake of ranting...

Motivation skills really are going down the pan. At my work the other day my boss kept telling me off for any little finickity thing I did wrong, but never praised me for doing stuff right. It's silly really. When someone pops up behind me going "Mike you haven't done this little bit right" even though the rest is right, I just think, well, I don't care. You are just wandering about moaning. So shut up. However, another one of my bosses is like "Wow nice job Michael, thanks for working today" and he actually WORKS, and this makes me feel so much more motivated. And guess what? Boss number 2 don't complain 'bout nuffin' cos I is doin' it right 'cos I care more. And if I doooo make a mistake, he just points it out in a nice way, or a jokey way, so you don't feel stupid. He's a good boss.

Blog 8: Ties

Ties can be relatively annoying. I hate the bit at the back of the tie; the bit you can hold onto while adjusting the tie length. It always gets in the way. Yes, you can tuck it in but it always pops out again, and it's just a faff. BUT it is neccessary for the tie to work successfully.
However, when you have to wear a clip on tie, say because you are around dangerous machinery, then why the freeakin heck do you need that bit stickin outta the back?
I asked some people and they said it is so it looks like a normal tie, but clip-ons are pretty unique anyway. For example, they make your collar look all wierd, like there is a lack of air under there, and they tend to pop open all the time anyway. So I say, if you have a clip-on tie, CUT THE BACK BIT OFF! Let's start a world-wide trend (including you, 1 follower of this blog...)
This will work when I'm famous, honest.

Blog 7: Stressy

The only way to make it in this world, unless you make it as a rockstar or filmstar or sports star or big brother star (?) is to go to Uni and do something academic. The problem with all that is that often, you can be 25 before you finish uni. And then they say that the peak of your life is at 30. So you have 5 years to live before you begin to die. So why are we wasting it on education?
Life expectancy in England is about 80, why do we have to rush and cram in all our education in about 12 years? Why not stretch it out, make it a little less pressured and learn over a longer time, and live a little while we're at it, instead of spending time doing homework.
I'm 17, and i consider myself a child still, basically. Why am i expected to take exams this year that will determine the rest of my life? Two years ago i had to choose 4 subjects to take forward into LIFE. Now I have to spend the rest of my life in those subjects.
Another thing; why do Unis require sometimes stupid grades? I'm looking into art for uni, but Universities like Reading require AAB grades to take graphics. Only one of those needs to be arty...why do I need maths or politics to go to university to do art?
They say school years are the best years of your life. Well, uh-oh.

Blog 6: Another Rant

You know what I really can't stand? Old people who think all young people are bad. They seem to forget that they too once were our age, and many of them probably rebelled at some point in their lives... in fact, THEY were the ones who led the 60s with the free love and the drugs etc, not us, and our decade is NOTHING compared to the horrors that happened then (although the 60s IS my favorite decade, i am empathizing with the old people in them days.) I just dislike it when they think kids are all bad! At our school we have to dress nicely and on the end of term, we get to go home early, but we have to go home, and then get changed, and then come back out for any fun stuff going on, because grannies get scared of large groups, and if those large groups are in our uniform, they complain. Well, i think that one 50 year old guy can be as dangerous as 16 16 year olds, and can't understand why they assume we are worse. I know some old people who treat teenagers like people, (which we are, unbelievably) and this is the right way. By all means, if you get to know someone and they are a stupid teenager who is living a bad, rebel life, you can voice your opinion about them being a rapscallion, but i know loads of kids who aren't. Some old folk get to know you before they judge you, and funny enough, these are the old folk we respect, and therefore, even if we DO have rebellious ways and non-conformist attitudes at our awkward stage in life, we don't want to rebel against these people 'cos they respect us and our views, and we respect them back. Any old guy comes to me and unfairly accuses me of being a rapscallion, and well, I'm gonna rapscallionate him, that's for sure, because I will think he is a git and I won't respect him. That's not just with old folk: if anyone does that then I am not gonna make any effort to try and appease their views. If someone is SO stuck in their view that we're bad eggs, so be it. We don't want that culture shock thing to happen, and then they end up going insane with the sudden realization that actually we're not bad eggs, so I'll act like a bad egg to keep up the illusion they're under. That's the way I roll. I think this should be called a Rant rather than a blog, as that is essentially what it is.

Blog 5: First Impressions

Started school again today. It's gonna be a good year I reckon. When i got my timetable, my three free periods of last year have nearly quadrupled, and now stand at 11! My typical tuesday is 3 frees and two art lessons, which i am doing something i enjoy all day! My art project's gonna be good i hope. I realize that people aren't happy enough. People who smile and laugh in public get weird looks, and i don't know why society has become so that it is almost forbidden to laugh unless you are a mental. Why does "cool" and "hard" have to exclude cheerful? Anyhow, my art is basically going to push my views on this further and in a way that gets the message to people. Hopefully it'll put a smile on their faces. Our new Head of 6th form introduced himself today. He essentially just had a go at us all, which i thought was a bit out. What he was saying was true, and the problems do need to be tackled, but the way he went about it didn't work for me. I'd have done it different. Hopefully its just bad first impressions though, and he may get better. I've decided to go all out this last year and get mega involved. So I'm signing up for inter house music, both orchestra and choir. I'm not going to sign up for cross country though. Today in politics, we had a test to see what we had learnt in our summer about american politics at the moment. I was asked Barrack Obama's running partner, and I panicked, because i didn't know that we had to know who the potential next president's jogging buddy is. I didn't realize she meant his would-be Vice President should he win, someone called Joe Biden or summat. When asked what was unusual about him I wrote "He enjoys running." The answer was that he had a successful hair transplant. Anyway, I'm ready for another holiday, although I've only had two lessons so far.

Blog 4: Foreign Safety Standards

If you’ve ever been to a foreign country, I wonder if you’ve ever noticed that the health and safety, especially in the rest of Europe anyway, is just not the same as in England. I’m in Spain as I’m writing this, although I’ll probably be back home before it gets blogged. Anyway, I’m staying in this apartment block on the beach at a town called Xeraco, which is nearish to Valencia. Today we went to a town called Bunol, which is probably better known for one of its annual traditions. This is the reason we went there anyway. It’s called the Tomattina, and you may have guessed that it has something to do with tomatoes. It is a massive food fight. People come from all over the world, I saw Australians, Americans, Poles, Italians, Britons, Frenchies, Germans, and even some Spanish. Anyway, every year the town gets a load of trucks full of tomatoes to deliver to the town for this festival. It’s about 10 tons of tomatoes, although whether it’s tons or tonnes, I’m not sure. Still, it’s alot. My dad and mum and sister didn’t wanna get tomatoed, so me and my brother Stephen went off and went to see this little tomato-fest. On the way there we had seen people literally covered head to toe in tomato mush. It looked like a laugh. At first it was alright, if a little disappointing. I only managed to find two tomatoes, and everyone looked pretty clean. There was a news reporter and she was all dressed up nice in red with her hair and makeup etc, and I thought, there’s all these people here covered in tomatoes, it’s not fair that you’re clean, so crushed the tomato over her head, and my brother threw one at her. That was funny. We were shirtless, because apparently the tradition is to rip off any shirts, male’s or female’s. We found out that this was because the shirts were dipped in tomato mush and thrown around, making a horrible weapon. We progressed further down this at first rubbish procession, and then we saw it. The square was basically a slightly wide road, with another road going to the left. We could see one of the trucks, which carried people in yellow shirts around, and they threw tomatoes on us. The square was full of people, literally, and when we eventually made our way into the square, the people had to compress into nothing. My first thoughts were, “He he this is fun”, however, when we were crushed between to massive swarms of people going opposite ways, I remembered the incident years ago when people at a Liverpool Juventus match died for similar reasons. I realised that if someone was to fall they would be trampled, probably to death. Little did I know that my mum and dad had seen about 6 ambulances go by towards where we were. Anyway, I told my brother that we should leave, but as we were making our way towards safety, the two confronting armies decided to have a pushing match, and we were split up. I was forced down the road to the left. My brother made it back, but for all I knew he could have been dead. There was a small child with his dad in front, and they looked like people out of Blood Diamond, all panicky, with the kid crying. He was basically being smothered and pulled down by the crowds all around. I helped the dad a little, but me pushing back at about 300 people pushing forward didn’t do much. Eventually I lost them. The entire floor of this street was literally a small stream of tomatoes, with shoes and ripped shirts and beer cans all over. It looked like a river of blood. It was quite weird, seeing loads of Spanish men with long black hair, bear chested, roaring and throwing stuff, covered in red, walking through red. It was like Apocalypto there. Anyhoo, after being pushed halfway down the street I managed to make it onto the sides. Here people were standing. Some girls were climbing up the wall to reach a man who was on a balcony with a long sheet, pulling them to safety. He was quite like Jesus, bearded, and saving us from “sin” which was in this case a bloodthirsty tomato nightmare. I spoke to some Americans, who were soon taken away, probably to be slaughtered to the Gods, and then this small Chinese girl, who was half my height began to follow me, using me as protection. I tried my best to save her, but in the end, she too was eaten alive. By now the street had got a little less crowded, and I decided to go back, and get away. I had to take my flip flops off because they had basically shifted so they were up my leg rather than on my feet, due to the amount of people treading on my feet, and the back of my flip flops. I got away, only to be bombarded with freezing water. We began our long way back, covered in tomato, and surrounded by other similar war victims. We were like refugees, escaping conflict, half of us injured and bleeding tomato. Everyone stank of tomato. Cars couldn’t get past the waves of wounded near-dead people. There were queues for hoses, and some people used the water hose at the car wash. On the way back my mum found a massive paella dish and decided to spend ages taking photos, while I stood there practically unconscious, and in shock. Eventually we got back to the car, washed with water from mineral water bottles, and dried of, got changed (though I kept my tomato pants on) and drove home, which took about 2 hours, and all I could smell or taste was tomato. I thought i was traumatised, but I had ketchup with chips later, and then in the evening had pasta with tomato, so obviously not. Although I couldn’t help but think it tasted like the tomatoes smelt. The only good thing that happened today was when I was walking back, slightly large stomach out for all to see, and this hot Spanish girl eyed me up. Literally looked at my face, then my body, then my (wonderful and manly) legs, back to my plumpy torso, and to my face again. I felt good. Even though I was covered in tomato. The best thing about Spain is girls seem to look at me a lot here. The other day we went to a restaurant with Spanish dancers and I held this really hot ones gaze for a whole 4 seconds, before her dance meant she had to turn around. They say if you can hold a girl’s eye for 3 seconds, they’re interested. I held hers for 4. She must have wanted me to marry her. She was gorgeous.

Blog 3: Cheer Up!

Why's Everyone so unhappy all the time? What does it cost to simply SMILE! instead of frowning, or saying hi as you see someone? Why does everyone have to moan and moan and winge about money and stuff, it's not that important! When your gone, what's money gonna do? Why do people moan about the government and how Gordon Brown has made mistakes, when, actually, the standard of living in England is one of the best in the world? Let's face it, for most of us, Life isn't that hard. It's boring, but if we all cheered up a little and smiled and had a laugh, and took things less seriously, then perhaps it wouldn't be so boring!

Blog 2: Impersonal

You know what annoys me?

I was at the train station yesterday, meeting some people, and their train was delayed. Anyway, an announcement was made: "First Capital Connect are sorry for any inconvenience". However it's all a recorded message. It just frustrates me, 'cos they're not REALLY sorry, otherwise they would have it done in a more personal way, instead of a robotronic announcement. The world is just too impersonal nowadays.

Blog 1: Chill Out

Don't you think that everything is way too stressful today?

School is too much for kids, we have enormous pressure right from year 2 with SATs, then we get them again in year 6 and year 9, then we get GCSE mock mocks, then Mocks, then GCSEs, then AS exams, then A Levels, then we need to find a Uni, then we have work etc etc etc.

Everything needs to just chill out. Money and success have become such important things on this planet, and it just means everybody gets more and more uptight about everything. So everyone, CHILL OUT.