Of Stupid Beards

As is common for this blog, the title refers to something that may (or may not, depending on how I feel) appear at the end, but certainly not the beginning.

So, once again, I've trawled the depths of the internet so that you don't have to.  This trawling includes many game related websites, none of which will make it onto this page because you already think I'm nerdy enough, without me shouting out 'LOOK AT THE BUMP MAPPING ON THAT.'

Anywho, the first thing I saw on the BBC website was this article about piracy in Japan.  Democracy in the west is predicated on the idea that if you piss enough people off, they won't vote for you.  As such, the massively unpopular ideas rarely make it into law.  As a prime example there have been many people who have advocated improving the NHS (an example plucked from the air) by changing the very system itself.  As luddites, or 'voters,' as they're colloquially known, don't like change, the improvements have been vetoed in favour of spending eye-watering sums with no targets, aims or ideas.  Of course there are the few who make substantial sums by virtue of having gone to school with some otherwise exceptionally well to do peer or lord, but the majority are lumped with a slow, inefficient system that benefits senior administrators financially, and no one else.  The result is a system that doesn't work.  Yay for democratic powers!

The alternative is Japanese democracy which works very much like this:  I am the president of Japan.  My friend who runs Sony, doesn't like people pirating songs.  I will therefore enact a law that breaks the constitutional foundations of our country, because he will invite me to tea parties.

In many cases, the person who summons the idea is brazenly the same friend with whom we wish to dine, as in the case of this piracy law in Japan.

'This revision will reduce the spread of copyright infringement activities on the internet,' (ed - no it won't) said the body's chairman Naoki Kitagawa, who is also chief executive of Sony Entertainment Japan...' (ed - boldness added by the nobhead author)

So, they put someone who had clear ulterior motives, in charge of an organisation whose purpose is to lobby the government on behalf of a billion dollar company, in order to enact laws that are unjust, to further infringe upon the rights of the luddites.  Of course, the 'voters,' in Japan are more placid than those in England even, meaning they can do whatever the hell they want; and make no mistakes, they do.  Let this be a lesson for everyone in England - when you find yourself on the ass end of an unlawful arrest, with no access to a lawyer, food or water, and you're starved to death by a gestapo-esque secret police who are above the law, the incremental steps they took to get there could have been avoided had you decided to do something about it, instead of just sitting on your great big, gelatinous asses.  Take heed.  (Of course you won't, that's why 1984 is ever more referred to whenever someone mentions the state of human rights in contemporary society).

The next article is one about the EU.  Apparently we've been pissing people off in Europe (hot news just off the press).  The germans don't know whether to kick us out, the french have all but made up their mind (as this story, based off blogs of all things, seems to indicate).  No one else seems to care.  Should England sever all ties, it would of course be disastrous.  We wouldn't be able to handle worldwide finances without incurring heavy levies and taxes and this would mean losing 99% of all our income.  The other 1% are farmers, and they wouldn't be able to flog their stuff abroad, both because they'd be priced out of the market, and the government wouldn't be able to prop them up.  Gutted.  Should we abscond, someone else will take our place within four or five minutes, and we'd have permanently lost our source of income.

On the flip-side, screw the frogs and krauts, we don't need them as long as we have america.  Oh, they don't have any money anymore.  Well, maybe the chinese have forgotten about the opium wars by now?  Well, there's always Iran...

In sporting news, Nicky Hayden is one of my new favourite riders.  He is ballsy to the point of recklessness, and that merits a special place in my heart.

Take this for example:

Fuck that for a game of soldiers

It's not tiddly winks, but goddamn that's a big one.

He followed the above highside with this ballsy attempt at saving the bike.  As the various commentators have noted, he could have bailed a dozen times before he hit the barrier and slid to a painful, if unspectacular stop.  No one knows as of yet (as far as I know) why he didn't, but I suspect with his recent track record (pun) he was trying to save the bike to save the team from rebuilding yet another one.

It's worth noting that I've used the word ballsy so many times because it really conveys the kahoonas on this guy - gutsy or brave really don't have the same impact for my money.  Again, he deserves respect, and gets it from me.

Everyone seems to think he's okay.  Christ on a bike, the more I watch it the more horrific it gets.  He damn near does two flips, and that's only at 40mph!

The next clip comes from the hyperbole machine that is the BBC.

A typhoon hit mainland Japan last night, making landfall at Okinawa some hours prior.  By all accounts it was quite strong when it reached Okinawa, but when it came to mainland Japan it was weak and pathetic.  Having said that (or written), it wasn't a particularly earth-shattering one even over Okinawa.  They do like to hype these events though, so we got this self-evidently factually inaccurate report.

It's self-evident because the car is not in the air at any point, nor is it picked up.

It's made all the more hilarious by the slow-mo, as if trying to prove the validity of the headline.

Not funny for the man who owns the car though.  Poor guy.

If you want to see something that's actually impressive, watch the first plane land here.  That's a ballsy pilot.  Ballsy again, see.  Irreplaceable in the English language.

Nearly at an end now, this article makes me hate England.  Then it makes me hate humanity.  It turns out that dog-dirt sounds (not worthy of being called music) are enjoyed by people regardless of social upbringing, this pile of shit having bridged the language divide from korea to England.  What a shithouse state of affairs you lot must be in if you listen to this utter tripe.  Christ.  Go take a long, hard, semi-suicidal look at yourselves, people of England.

If you were one of the morons who partook of this crime against humanity, take out the 'semi,' from the previous sentence.

And finally, onto the bit about the beards.  In Japan, having a beard is sinful.  The vast, vast majority of men are physically incapable of growing facial hair, so to save their blushes beards are considered unsavoury by the aforementioned vast majority.

This is a problem for me because I'm fantastically lazy.  So lazy I can barely keep my eyelids open outside of rugby related activities.  This is a high-priority concern because I grow facial hair at a rate that would make Rapunzel blush (presumably her facial hair grew pretty quickly too) and cannot be bothered to cut it every day.  So far I've been getting by on weekly shaves that entail me looking like a spotty devil, rather like this, at the start of the week, then in the middle I look ruggedly handsome, and at the end I look like a stowaway aboard a transatlantic cruise powered by dreams.  Think Tom Hanks, if he spent another eight or so years on the island.

I'm pretty sure I would get fired if I didn't shave at all, so I devised a cunning plan.  If I shave just a little bit, to give the appearance of giving a flying one, they won't fire me.  I don't have to spend the requisite hours shaving it all off, taking mere moments instead - and I get to look like a complete douchebag in the process!  Bonus!

This came about from talking to someone who only shaved every time he scored a try, which was surprisingly often given his position.  I vowed to do the same (only tries for Lion count) but wondered how to enact that plan without turning into cousin It.

Anyway, this first trial resulted in a loss of moustache, next week I might keep the tache attached to the beard, and shave it down a bit, hoping to look like this:

I'm starting to get the old white hairs (hehe).  It's indicative of imperfect cell division, don'cha know.

But more than likely ending up like this:

You have to imagine green/black eyes instead.

Why all the beard talk?  Simple; I've nothing else better to talk about.

Bye.

#EDIT#  I just noticed someone left me a message on the previous post:

hahahahahaha
where do you get the brilliant words? soooooo funny

There are two possible options here:  He is a sincere fan, or a bitter, sarcastic dick.

Considering the fact that the kind of person who would sincerely leave a message of this kind probably isn't inclined to read anything I write (non-pop culture, non-fashion, non-celebrity) I have to assume he's option B.

In which case: Dick.

I Raise You a Stupidity

So I've come across two forms of stupidity in the news today.

Both have their merits, but I'll leave the politically motivated form for later.  Firstly, let's focus on why the zodiac-challenged among us are superior human beings.

This article from the BBC shows several things.  It shows that chinese people like to be born in the year of the dragon.  It's auspicious.  There are several problems here - not least that their zodiac only contains twelve animals.  This means everyone shares their sign with a few other people, and by a few I mean more than five hundred million others.  Clearly, not everyone can be successful, or angry, not everyone can demonstrate the traits of their animal; thus rendering this entire belief system pointless.  It's almost as pointless as worshiping (worshiping doesn't look right, I think it needs two p's) a deity who rapes a woman every two thousand years in order to create a son who dies and magically comes back to life after a few days, but not quite.

Having derailed my own thoughts with that aside, I feel it important to note that this website debunks the myth that global warming has consensus among all scientists everywhere the world over.  In the states there are thirty odd thousand scientists who aren't employed by Al Gore, so presumably there will be a few more knocking around Europe.  Then again, scientists are people too; I expect all European scientists to have been swept into a carbon frenzy like the lay person (you and I) and be frothing at the mouth at such outrageous suggestions.  Frothing at the mouth, like the whole of humanity will be when we poison ourselves in an endless quest to dig up the planet in search of minerals and resources that we can re-use and recycle.  But of course, combating the natural tendency for this planets climate to change is more important than giving everyone cancer.

Anyway, half a billion people being identical in zodiac terms isn't enough apparently, so mainlanders are trying their best to create even more dragons.  I can't see anyone actually trying for a child at this juncture just to make sure their sign is dragon orientated.  Sure, being Dohvakin might be fun for the first few hours, but all the shouting will ruin your throat pretty quickly, not to mention the blocky faces and ugly textures.

Sorry, I slipped away from reality again there.

The point of all this is simple:  superstition and religion are stupid.

I find the spiel accompanying each animal extremely interesting reading, not for their accuracy, but for their use of description.  They describe people so well (just not the people associated with the signs).  It's obviously an art that bears fruit from watching people (obviously) but I do wonder how they spent aeons looking for characteristics and traits without being sucked into the oblivion that is humanities' stupidity.  Maybe they did, maybe this is the true fruit of their labor.

Anyway, the other stupidity on display today was demonstrated by the americans.  Of course, the two biggest groups of idiots are the two superpowers.  Or the one superpower, and the aging old fart who is in so much debt they have to invent new numbers to describe it, while feeding it fried chicken to keep the obesity from dying down.

This article describes the successful elimination of competition within the boundaries of american internet domains.  Except it's not just within their own boundaries.  I can no longer access the site, and I'm in Japan (I think).  This means a pissed off american billionaire conglomerate permanently shut down a website based in Hong Kong (I think) and had civilians arrested in New Zealand at the same time.  This is one of the myriad reasons why the world hates you america - it's also one of the reasons why the world laughs, because your collective fat rolls seem to cover your eyes and at least partially blind you.  Shutting down one website is like banning, er, well it's like banning something that's easily replicated and spread ad infinitum.  Like a website.  So destroying one website and grievously denying the human rights of several individuals is like shutting down a website, because ten thousand will pop up and take its place.  Those ten thousand will host significantly less information, but as a whole will contain vastly more.  Try shutting ten thousand websites, when it took you five years to wobble your way to a resolution on this single site.  Good luck, fatso.

Why this is particularly important right now, is the ill-timed demise of two bills, SOPA and PIPA.  They essentially grant the power for a website to be blacklisted from within the US, despite it being hosted outside the US.  It also grants a number of exceedingly murky powers enabling the usage of individuals to be monitored.

They're essentially asking for more power, which is ludicrous in light of the latest action.  Non-american individuals have been arrested, in countries that are not the U.S, over crimes committed that are nothing to do with them in the slightest.  They run a website, other people upload the content.  If someone drives my car (without my consent, as they regularly take down copyrighted material, not to mention the myriad warnings on their ex-website) into another person and kills them, I'm culpable?  Makes sense to me!

They need more power than they already have, despite having infinite power to do whatever the hell they want.  Sounds like a legitimate cause for concern on behalf of they.  They being anyone who produces content within america, which essentially boils down to a handful of companies (think Time Warner, Sony et al.)

A lot of people (worldwide) are against these bills.  If you live in america, I can understand your reluctance to sign up for this particular brand of skulduggery, but the rest of the world SHOULD FULLY SUPPORT THESE BILLS.

No really, we should be parading around the streets getting this bill passed.  We should raid forums and boards with Pro-SOPA pro-PIPA messages.

The reason is extremely simple.  SOPA and PIPA are designed to ensure that established mediums, such as TV, film, radio, magazines, newspapers and the like (controlled by aforementioned obese billionaires) maintain a monopoly over internet based innovation.  Startups like google, youtube, facebook and so on, would simply no longer exist on american soil.  All these require user generated content and most users prefer to, inadvertently or otherwise, use other products and ideas within their videos/recordings.

The death of innovation within america would create infinite opportunity abroad, as innovators would turn to Europe in order to house, store and create their billion dollar websites.  Of course they would no longer be billion dollar websites, but billion euro websites.  If trends continue, this would obviously be a trillion euro industry, then a quadrillion euro industry, then a pentillion euro industry in-line with the imminent collapse of the value of a euro.

Imagine if facebook (soon to be floated for a hundred billion dollars) were in England.  60% (the going tax rate for those individuals who earn a decent wage in England (of course businesses pay in the region of 15%, unless they're really big in which case they don't pay any tax, but we can all dream right?)) of 75 billion pounds could pay for some of the MP's sex toys and moats, leaving the actual tax money to be spent on bribing FIFA officials.  Imagine that!  We could be rolling in FIFA officials if facebook were English.

So the reason we should be marching and campaigning for SOPA and PIPA is the same reason the american politicians are shooting it down now.  They want more money, we want more money, everyone wants more money.  FIFA will have to continue as a parasitic entity on the sparse millions it's bribed with at the moment.

Those poor millionaires.