Silence and Waterfalls

So it's been a while since I've even looked at this. I'm not quite sure what happened really, things just got away from me. However, for anyone who stumbles across this, a bit of background information for you.

In November I did the NaNoWrimo challenge and completed it, after taking some time to stare blankly at the wall I got round to starting to rewrite and edit the damn thing, so after several months I finally have a working chapter and a cleaned up plot and development that works much better.

The story is a first person modern fantasy and revolves around Matt, a half blood - someone who has inhuman blood in them from somewhere in their family - the more they use their powers, the more inhuman they become. The story chronicles his life as he moves into a new job and how things go dramatically, explosively wrong. There are explosions, and dragons. So if I've managed to keep your attention this far then you might as well keep reading and see whether it's actually any good. If you do, I hope you enjoy it and if you don't, please let me know why.

Click here to explore my world.

So I had this grand plan to actually try and update this thing fairly regularly. Then I started working, it's not the most exciting work in the world, in fact it revolves mainly around card/paper and assembling fun things like folders etc. That said, I did spend a good few hours this afternoon making up the induction paperwork for Spearmint Rhino. Sadly enough that was the highlight of my time working there thus far. This year anyway, previous years have included such entertainments as removing a store of asbestos with only some work gloves for protection, being paid to destroy an over grown hedge in a childish manner and other such bizarre things.

The most memorable experience however was a group of nine of us (all teenagers) getting called in to make up and fill 20,000 folders in two days. Day one consisted of myself and two friends and a load of extras getting nine thousand done. Then a complete lack of sleep, a bit of alcohol and pizza at 6am for breakfast found only myself and the same two friends back there to do the other 11,000. Most of what I remember about that day was the fact that they exempted the building we were in from the no smoking rule for that day and supplied us with a CD player and free caffeine. I seem to remember jumping at random noises when I got home for the next few days but we managed it.

Anyway, my slightly distracted point I was trying to make was that this work numbs your brain, hence the lack of updates.

So a nice rant for you today.

Last time I posted on here I came up with a slightly clumsy defence of teh internets that culminated in a slightly made up finish otherwise the post would have defeated itself. In this post however I'm going to talk about another part of the internet.

I'm a geek, I watch animé, read and write both sci fi and fantasy and for the  final blow I admit to playing MMORPGs. For the uninitiated a MMORPG stands for a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Now i'm not geekish enough to actually play these things so I manage to get my hands on the few good free ones (and they do exist - Trickster for one if you can put up with the cute style). They tend to have a good player base, lots of development and generally an intelligent group of people playing them.

Most of them however have something completely different. Despite what I have claimed in the past, most of the world cannot be made up of idiots, it's logically impossible that the human race has reached this level of technology and artistry to make this true. Somehow however this doesn't apply on these MMORPGs. The levels of absolute stupidity are beyond phenomenal. If people become rude and stupider when they're generally online and don't have to put their real face or name then just imagine what they're like when they have an animated sprite with swords/magic/guns. It's like they regress back to being 4 - with hormones and teenage wangst. Seriously now, if you're ever feeling optimistic about life then I dare you to load up Runescape and after an hour or two take another look at your perspective on the human race.

The saddening thing is that it's not just the noobs (New players who have no idea what they are doing and are painfully illiterate). Gaming message boards are choking to death on ego and self importance. You see people threatening to leave a free game in a seriously melodramatic manner on one of these things nearly every downtime/maintenance. It's like - well it doesn't even need a simile, it's a group of socially awkward, egotistical, power-tripping geeks who are denied what they want.

Yes, it really is that funny.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the racism. The Americans hate Korea and Japan for stealing their Bandwidths and creating lots of lag (despite the fact that most servers are hosted in said places), most of the Europeans are either laughing at everyone or trying to get a pity trip because they're under appreciated. As to South America and China? Well the less said about them the better.

Next time I hope to end up with something a little more literary and I'm back in Norwich on Monday which means it should be less incomprehensible.

A quick edit, came across this - truly truly phenomenal skiing recovery from an amazing skier! http://youtube.com/watch?v=f1V4CQxFTgo

I like reading blogs.

The ones that are well written are an interesting read, they're a way to look into someone's world without being accused of stalking. A chance to see what a profession or lifestyle is like whilst only dealing with personal bias which is mostly far more palatable than the official spin.

Normally however I read a blog and get a feeling that perhaps I should write something in return, perhaps I would be able to write something entertaining and constructive and nice. When I've stopped laughing at myself, my natural personality engages and I go for a smoke and possibly inform an innocent passer by that there is a small chance that all the atoms in their body may decide to go elsewhere at the same time and they will simply cease to exist (If there is one thing that chemistry has taught me it's that it makes things infinitely easier to freak people out).

For some reason however I found myself clicking the 'Join' button and starting to type. I could claim that it was that urge to do something constructive, to have something in front of me that I could look at and feel happy and proud of but the truth is that I am bored. Also I have something to rant about.

When the internet was first conceived I imagine that it was created by people who had read too many science fiction novels and wanted to create a global database where amazing works of art and music were easily obtainable. Where arcane and useful information was obtainable at a moments work and it would be one of the great and pure achievements of man. Possibly they just wanted a way to share and obtain more porn. I'm guessing that it was somewhere in between personally.

The thing is that the internet has become the new bogeyman. In the pre-Christian era there were evil spirits that could compel people to do horrible things. In the Christian era there was the devil which was big and nasty and could compel people to do evil things. Today's evil creature is the internet.

If I squint and slam my head into something heavy I can possibly see the vague links.

+ Spirits and Demons are intangible and ethereal. The internet is intangible and ethereal (I'm leaving the concept of servers and cables out of this for idiots sake).

+ Spirits and Demons are said to whisper perverse and disturbing things to you late at night. The internet has *chan (Ok, I can actually grant this one - oh and if you don't know what *chan is, please don't blame me if you look at it in public and get arrested).

+ Spirits and Demons speak to people in gibberish and horrifying words that are said to be able to drive a pure and just man to death. The internet has leet speak...

Ok, possibly there are a few more similarities there than I was expecting. The thing is, people like to place blame on other things, other people. The concept of taking responsibility for your own actions seems to be something that the human race never really seemed to grasp. Oh there are people out there that can do it, who are capable of putting their hands up and saying. "Whoops, my mistake. I'm really sorry."

These people are good, we like these people.

It's just a shame that they're in the minority.