I realise I’m a little late to the party on this subject.

Just wanted to quickly go over what I think of it and give the protestors a shout out (a very quiet shout out albeit, considering how few people read this.)

I’m really quite impressed by the protestors, really quite disgusted with the police and the majority of the extremely wealthy’s reactions.

The protesters have been extremely peaceful, even co-operative. perhaps more than they should be considering they are trying to “occupy”. Moving to a different spot when asked seems a bit counter to that.

The police have been violent and abusive, I don’t really feel the need to cite that given the sheer vast amount of photographic and video proof, but here you go anyway: one and two.

The “1%” call the desire for what is in all rights, an empirically proven inequality and broken tax rate to be made fair, “class warfare”.

Despite how organised and how much protesting is going on with so many people, I don’t think it will lead to anything, it seems the USA isn’t a democracy anymore, it is a ‘kleptocracy’ I’m only surprised Obama agrees with the tax rates portion of Occupy Wall Street’s agenda.

But if there is any success and the protesters win their battle, I’d ask them to remember this:

Was contemplating leaving it on that note, breaking from tradition with no music embed, but then I remembered this:

I was recently pondering on the nature of opinions, more specifically; the nature of opinions in modern times and how/if the nature of opinion has changed.

I realise discussions over social media’s impact on our lives are common but I haven’t been witness to much in the way of how the ease of expression we now enjoy, like my blogging right here, affects our opinions and how we come to them.

Now if you’ve not given much thought to opinion and bias, watch this video where Vlogbrother Hank Green (not John Green) explains bias pretty well

To come back to my main point however, technologies effect on opinion, we now all have a tool far more effective at expressing our views to a lot more people than our ability to speak verbally grants us.
For instance, you shout out in a high street “Obama is a socialist!” How many people are going to hear you, how many people will actually hear you correctly and how many people will be able to recipricate their opinions, maybe 50 people hear, 40 people hear correctly, and a few are going to be able to get a word in edge ways.

Now you do the same thing on facebook where you have, say, 200 friends (these are really rough guesstimates and you’d have thousands if you were famous) you have a potential audience of 200 people all able to read and re read your message as much as needed to understand it, as well as everyone getting a more or less fair opportunity to be heard.

This means that if someone wants to express some unregulated, stupid thought they can do so to much greater effect, but also people’s’ ability to ridicule that person and the thought and explain its fallacy is also heightened. I just don’t know which is the greater force.

ultimately I’m not convinced that the answers to these questions are as important as the questions themselves, awareness by analysing the way radically new forms of communication affect us is important so we don’t become a big, stupid hive mind. (or if you’re a redditor, a big ‘circlejerk’)

Next time I talk about Occupy Wall Street

To add to my problems the minimum wage has jumped up 15p to £6.08 an hour. Which will likely make employers even more hesitant.

It’s not that I’m lazy or I don’t care about anything, I never really wanted like motivated people want.

I have, however been more motivated and driven in the past 2 or 3 months.

And I’m no longer comfortable wasting away my days, it’s quite annoying really, the days where I was comfortable wasting away were some of the best I ever had.

I feel the drive to do something, anything, Anything I can be proud of having done, write a book, all but master a musical instrument (like the cello, I’m a ways off that) I don’t know. Do … something.

So, adult life is described pretty damn well by one of my favorite people. John Green:

And motivation, well this was something that really helped me, because honestly, before watching and listening to this, I don’t think I even understood motivation.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, I just hope it won’t be spent in this uncomfortable state of being half motivated, enough motivated to care that you’re not doing anything, but not enough to actually do what you want to do.
It’s pathetic really. I really hope that if I decide I want to become a world famous guy who sings a cappella polka songs I’ll be a world-famous a ceppella polka singer.

Now is the time not only for optimism, but action. I’ll move towards something, even if I’m hobbling and I have no idea what it is I’m trying to reach

My trial period working for Lush ended in disappointment, they decided they didn’t want to hire me. This was a shame, as it’s the first full-time job, (not like I’ve had more than 2 so far) I’ve been able to show up for, enjoy showing up for, felt productive in and ultimately felt suited me. I’ll miss my co workers.
But I honestly tried my best and I left with my head held up high. I’ll find more employment, despite the difficulty. I’ve done some job hunting today, a few places either said they did have vacancies or that they might have. Things in that respect are looking far more hopeful. I’m quite used to going from door to door hearing of no vacancies.

As long as my employment history isn’t scrutinized I now essentially have on my CV, 3 previous employers. Hopefully this will open up doors, at least enough for me to get an interview where I can impress them despite the bad circumstances of the last  two. (Which I’m keeping off my CV)

I’m feeling quite optimistic. I’ve got to keep moving forward, it’s all any of us can do. You’ve never failed until you refuse to get up.

Anyone who knows me or of this song, knew it was only a matter of time before I made a contentless post just to embed it.

It’s been a long time since I  put a quote at the top of my blog posts, so I was very happy when I remembered this one from The Prophet (which I’ve been meaning to re-read) that is fitting for my current situation as I am trying to adapt to the drudgery of my new full-time job working at a Lush cosmetics factory. I won’t spend a long time going on about it, but just to say that it is a lot better than my last job yet it still is a challenge.

My older brother has gone off to university as of early morning today. He left me with a saxophone and an electric violin, which is pretty sweet. They both sit just about fitting next to my cello in the corner of the room, looking sexy, here. Have a look.

Sorry I couldn’t get a better picture, limited to my webcam and that being taken from the furthest corner of my desk.

I’ve done little more than mess around with them so far, tried tuning the violin and learning the correct way of holding it and such.
Reminded myself and practiced a bit at sound quality and controlling my volume and such with the saxophone.

I don’t want them to take a single minute of my time I would have spent practicing the cello, however. fortunately or unfortunately though, I was missing my electric tuner and online cello tuning notes werent very good so I never got a chance to practice today. God, it was strange playing my cello after tuning the violin. If you play a low or high-pitched instrument for a long time you get desensitized to that fact. but after playing something else your ears suddenly understand the contrast and that yes, the cello is a low frequency instrument.Was even weird trying to turn the tuning pegs after the diddy violin ones. It was like “These things are HUGE” while trying to tighten my cello strings.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when this came on the factory radio. I mean sure it’s a bit of a downer, but after countless shallow pop songs with lyrical content that would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. My ears were rejoicing.

Me:

Okay, so I think It’s pretty clear that no one said anything like that, but objectivity in matters of factuality grows boring quickly.

Recently, my life has consisted of working, spending time with the girlfriend, sprinkled with reading and cello practice.
There’s not a great deal much more to it than that.

But that doesn’t mean I have nothing to write about, oh no. Kind of gotten completely and utterly tired of working at Kerry Foods, almost certainly quitting imminently and that is helped by the fact that I was offered a trial at a cosmetics factory, Lush just today. unfortunately I told them I couldn’t work just now because well, I sort of broke my little toe a couple of nights ago, at least I think I did. Kicked a sofa a couple of days ago now I can barely walk on it or move it and it’s swollen up to be not so little.

But I was told to call back once I was better so I remain hopeful.

As for my free time I have been reading John Green, starting with Looking for Alaska, I am now reading An Abundance of Katherines, looking forward to two other books I have waiting for me, Paper Towns and ‘Will Grayson Will Grayson’ good reading, just trying to get used to not reading fantasy for a change.

Hot drinks, Coffee and Hot Chocolate now dominate my mind for some reason now.

And as for TV, I’m Rewatching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Hey check out my drawing of fluttershy) watching through Flashpoint (A kind of high stakes Police show that has the Strategic Response Unit handle hostage and other situations) and Ugly Americans. (A mature cartoon about a social worker in a fictional New York that has lots of monsters, creatures, demons and aliens in the population)

And I could KILL for the new season of Dexter to start.

and lastly, I’ve never been less modest about how awesome my music tastes are.

I still don’t understand the end of this song, even though I know exactly where it comes from. ._.

Then here’s where the negativity ends, spending time and loving every second with my girlfriend – despite the above tone of cynicism, I’m a happy person, but spending time with my girlfriend brings a whole new level to my happiness and to try to describe it with my level of poetic competency would only serve to diminish and tarnish it. And then there’s my other love affair, reading. With every chapter of every book I read I feel like I’m falling further and further in love with literature, I want to start a new creative writing project, get my own thoughts and narratives into a carefully orchestrated and beautiful sequence of words, maybe another blovel (blog-novel) which will end up being incompleted. I could use the feed back on that if anyone has any thoughts on the matter.

And in recent events Portal 2 and a new EP by my favorite band has been released today. Been enjoying both very much so. Upcoming events include a group of friends and I going to the cinema and a double date with a couple who my girl and I are good friends with, it will be nice to get out and do something like that, it’s been too long.

Oh and I broke my word about the cello cover of Still Alive, sorry, just not ready to record stuff yet, my fundamental skills with the instrument have become ludicrously better since my teacher (who I have no lack of praises for) started giving me lessons, but they’re still not good enough for recording.