Is it bad luck to open crisps the wrong way up? (Letta 2 me grand kidz)

I’ve been using Facebook since the times when the only persons permitted to its use were those with an university email address. I remember when it was used as a tool to discuss current affairs of the university amongst its soon-to-be immortalised alumni. I remember when it advertised student get-togethers and fellow students could remind each other (often in a largely un-sober and therefore amusing state) about forthcoming deadlines for essays etc.
Now the whole world is invited and it’s rather cool. Various friends who, without the use of this social networking phenomenon, would have been forgotten and neglected are now always there to admit they ‘like’ photos of you dressed as a Flowerpot Man…. or something like that.

But I’ll tell you what does enthuse a chuckle…. all these people with all the weird stati posted all day every day. They aren’t half humorous for readers. In fact, one often questions why the hell people post said things in the first place? For example:

I had eggs for breakfast….

I just waxed my toes….

I’m so drunk I can’t feel my face….

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve posted my fair share of pointless randomness too. Paranoia is then manifested and magnified when remembering the odd photo or ‘tasty’ status could also lose you your job because of it. It’s not unheard of!
Facebook is a weird and dangerous place, people!

Twitter isn’t much more technologically safe but I don’t mind because @UberFacts taught me that after just 100 years there will be a breathtaking (spoiler pun!) 750 million dead people with a profile on Facebook….
What an amazingly insane thing to fathom. By the year 2112, 250 times the current population of Wales will be in possession (is that a pun?) of a Facebook profile online.

But I suppose facts like this will always be mind-boggling until someone thinks about the positive effects of said pieces of information.

These will be our letters to our families when we leave life as a conscious being.
Now, instead of learning about the lives of their ancestors through over-grown grave stones and over-priced family heritage websites, our great-great-great-grandchildren can pop our name into a search and there we are.
To be fair, if you’re writing a status that isn’t funny or interesting, I’m largely going to ignore it or judge you on it…. lol! But what you ate on the 20th October 2012 at 10:30am for breakfast may well be strangely comforting to long-lost relatives who only remember meeting you once because you gave them a bag of sweets and a tennis ball you found in your garden.

So as much as I rant on about people’s pointless ‘abuse’ of Facebook and Twitter because they clog up my feeds, I truly do admire every single little thing you do.
Makes you wonder, though, about those who explain how sloshed they are having left their gorgeous / largely unplanned children with someone called Ruth who seems mildly more responsible than the last baby- sitter they employed.

Happy reading, kids….

I’m off to open a bag of crisps the wrong way up…. Thought you’d all want to know?!?!

Smiley face 🙂

Get me someone else’s shoes…. YOLO!

I’m sure many are aware of the recent social networking craze known as ‘YOLO!’…. No? Well I’m told by my often over-enthusiastic students that it stands for ‘You Only Live Once.’ I’m rather a fan of this idea that people recognise mortality and realise that nobody on this planet shares the same life-span as say James Bond (who only lives twice, of course) or, erm, cats!

The part that annoys me is when the term is used to emphasise stupidity…. which, from my scanning of Facebook and Twitter of late, seems to be all too common place.

“I’ve just shaved my eyebrows and put some henna-like substance in their stead…. YOLO!” or….

“Ladies and gentlemen I am officially with child at 15…. YOLO!”

Now granted, said youngsters may not embark on ensuring their grammar is as correct as one would like, but for use in today’s blogging exploits, those are in fact made-up (ha) examples of what these smaller people say.

How the f**k does that warrant your YOLO? I have no idea how one can compare the bringing of a life into the world whilst said soon-to-be-mother is but a child herself with, I don’t know, jumping from a plane for charity or volunteering in a famine-stricken African nation. Please, dear readers, sympathise and sense my annoyance! It is incredulous and unbelievable that our youth see such madness in a tiny phrase.

On the flip side of the coin of disbelief, I also find it hard to share the shoes of those truly in need too. All through our lives we are told of atrocities and disasters that plague the lives of the innocent and are asked whether we ourselves can sympathise with such damning pain and sorrow. Personally, I’ve never been able to.

As a quick and topical example; Hillsborough. Yes it’s fantastic that justice can finally see the light of day and the flames of hope and rememberance have banished the darkness of disgrace, but can we truly put ourselves in the shoes of those who never came home? Can we actually imagine the [avoidable] suffering that caused ninety-six football fans to never return home?

Listening, as per usual, to my national radio service this soggy morning, I heard a Save The Children representitive talking about the atrocities faced by children and young people in Syria recently. Now I’m not asking for you to visit Syria and see how best you can help out. Neither am I asking for you to study the politics behind the events. I’m not asking you to donate money nor hours of your time (YOLO after all, huh?). But just think for moment.

You want to know what YOLO is?…. Get a f**king life first, then we’ll talk!

Smiley face 🙂

Cheers laa!

Growing up I never asked for much. Don’t get me wrong, I never went without necessities or materialistic objects that most of the Western world take for granted, but I was never the one with the latest fashion or up-to-date technology for example. My after-school hours were not spent in front of a games console (which, according to my nain, made my eyes go square), but out in the fields and hills – with a regular terminus being falling from a great height onto my a**e.
Now I’m not going to plead poverty and say that I was brought up in slum-like conditions in the heartlands of Africa or India – in fact, my situation was rather favourable in that I was brought up on a council estate in North East Wales, I took full advantage of the free-school-meals offer and had a wonderful family around me. I guess I’ve always enjoyed the simpler things in life. Need proof?

Recently, a regular (and therefore insane) reader of my blogging informed me she had “cheated” on my irregular [as in both topics and production time] moans and reading other peoples’ blogs. How dare she, I hear you implore! Well, no! I’m over it! And in the true instance of ‘playing fair,’ I’ve chosen to reveal to her, and therefore everyone else, the extent at which people all over the globe are succumbing to the ever-popular insanity that is reading my blogs! Check this out!

As a side note, it took England (under the banner of the ‘United Kingdom’) around 400 years to plunder and wipe out largely helpless civilisations across the globe – around 25% of it, to be precise. Yet it has taken me a mere 6 months to command a far superior chunk of the planet. Check out the following picture from Wikipedia showing Britain’s pitiful attempt at world domination…. Got ntn’ on me!

The sun never sets on a computer screen, I guess! (Whoop – history joke!) Not quite a small sausage factory in Tanganyika huh, Blackadder fans? I am, however, still waiting on the likes of Brazil, Denmark and Turkey to pull their fingers out though. I’ve given up on China and North Korea. They must just not be able to read my posts for some reason??

But whatever the reasons behind people’s reading, my stats page enlightens me that my blogging has enjoyed more than 1,700 hits since their inception which truly is an outstanding thing to get one’s head around. So whether you often ‘cheat’ on my blogs with other readers’ works, or you’re only reading this because it’s been posted on my Facebook wall countless times and you just felt that it would be ‘courteous and polite’ to have a read – THANK YOU. I honestly, and you can quote me on this; really mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Di 🙂 lch yn fawr!