Today is the start of a new decade

 Many people just won't get this, but then so many people are dickheads. It's really quite simple. Today is the first day of the new decade. I'm not going to repeat myself because you can jolly well read what I posted a year ago here. It's maths and in maths you have two choices, the right answer and the wrong answer. If you can't grasp this very simple concept about when decades start then you really are utterly stupid. If you start wittering on about Gregorian and Julian calendars then you are beyond stupid and need to crawl under the nearest stone. This is not up for discussion. You're welcome.

The decade doesn’t end here!

The current decade ends on 31/12/20.

To distort* slightly Goebbels’ quote “If you tell a lie… ...keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” and that’s just what has happened in terms of how we classify what a decade is, thanks to the media. They peddled the lie that the millennium ended on the 31st December 1999 (when obviously it ended a year later of 31/12/2000) and they continue to end decades a year too early. The Victorians knew when decades, centuries and millennia ended why don’t we?

There's enough lazy thinking and illogical behaviour in the world without adding to it unnecessarily. The last year of a decade, a century or a millennium always ends in a zero. It's very simple maths. It has nothing to do with Gregorian or Julian calendars. People that even mention that in a conversation about this stupidity are going off on a pointless tangent. It’s all about logic. Whatever calendar you work to, if you use numbers as the measurement, the first year of the calendar will always be one. You wouldn’t have a year zero. Zero represents nothing. Having a year zero would be like saying this is a year but really it isn’t as it’s a year without value. So by applying logic the first year is always 1, and therefore the last year of the first decade will be year 10, and thus the pattern will continue. If you can’t grasp that then there is no hope for you quite frankly.

Now you're probably saying, so what? In the great scheme of things does it really matter? Well on one level it really doesn't, but it's an indicator of what a poor state we are in if people can't grasp a simple maths concept. If people aren’t capable of understanding simple maths how the hell are they going to grasp even the basics of economics, and therefore be able to make political/voting decisions?

Of course you could argue that you can re-calibrate the calendar and start decades, centuries and millennia at 0. Which you could do, but you could also take 14.5 years and decide to call it a Doris! I'm not sure how useful it would be but there's nothing to stop anyone doing it. The whole point of measurement surely is that it's a communication tool. A way of telling someone how much of something you have got etc. If we're all using different measurements how do we communicate what we really mean?

So people, please stop this gross stupidity and start measuring things properly again.

*I like the irony of that.

My top 10 list of 2015

At this time of year people like to review the previous 12 months and make lists about their favourite things, their least favourite things or things or events they believe to be significant. Why?

Newspapers and periodicals are full of them. They are easy; they fill space with very little effort. They are cheap, and in so many ways.

I don’t have a top ten list. It’s all arse!

Time is essentially a manmade constraint and calendars are just a tool to falsely measure it in a very arbitrary way. We don’t live our lives like chapters in a book so why pretend otherwise? In my opinion it’s all to make things tidy in our minds. Filing for those that can’t cope with the fluid nature of existence. It’s laziness.

Lists of favourite things would seem to be the worst of the genre; trying to measure stuff that can only ever be subjective is worthless, anal and crass. If I like something it doesn’t make it important to anyone else. Someone else might also like it, but popularity is just what it says on the box, it’s popular, which doesn’t make it better or worse than stuff that’s not as popular.

If chaos theory is to be believed, and I have no reason not to believe it, then a butterfly flapping its wings is a significant and therefore warrants a place on any list of important world events, but I doubt you’ll ever see it.

So come on people, lets shun this lists nonsense and accept the fractal reality of being. Break free from your filing. Get a life!

A new decade

#newdecade 
2011 hails the start of a new decade. Sadly the media won’t be making any fuss about it because most of those working in the media are a bunch of morons incapable of logical thought. Your average person in the street won’t realise either because most people’s thoughts are conditioned by the media. This time last year people were duped into thinking that a new decade started with 2010 but of course those of us that are at least mildly intelligent know this not to be the case.

Does it really matter?

Compared to the scale of human suffering in the world, no it doesn’t really matter, but the point I’m trying to make is that if people are easily fooled into believing something illogical they will believe other nonsense, like black is white, there is a god and that the Con-Dem cuts are necessary and not just driven by political dogma.

Year zero

I think without doubt I am becoming a grumpy old bloke. Why else would I get so irritated by the stupidity of others?

Time does not exist! It is merely an invention of man to measure his passing, a mathematical ruse. The calendar is nothing but a mathematical chart. It is not determined or guided by some cosmic being or force. A calendar starts at year 1 and carries on until people get fed up with it. It’s as simple as that.

Given that it is that simple why on earth are there so many idiots that can’t grasp the concept of a decade? I suppose they are the same idiots that thought the millennium started in the year 2000. Everybody has the right to be stupid but so many people seem to want to abuse the privilege.

So for the retarded out there:

Years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 equal a decade.

Years 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 also equal a decade.

Easy hey?

All you have to do is ‘do the maths’!

If there were a year zero, then this would indeed be the end of a decade, but as there wouldn’t be then this isn’t.

End of the decade my arse!

Why is it that ‘the media’ seem to be under the impression that we are just over a week away from the end of a decade?
Don’t they know we have got another year to go before that happens?
Of course I know the answer:
They and the vast majority of people that consume their nonsense output are too stupid and mathematically challenged to realise any different. They are the same morons who thought the last century ended with the dawn of the year 2000. Tossers!

The current decade ends on 31/12/10 - it’s very simple maths!

Shakespeare

"Shakespeare was a man of wit,
And on his shirt he had some sh…


…irt buttons!"

Had he lived, young Willy would have been 445 today.

Today should be a bank holiday, but only in celebration of The Bard!

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Das Kinder

Just when I thought I had got the Christmas present buying nonsense sorted a month or so ago, the cold realisation that I had bought a selection box for a three month old Great Nephew dawned on me. Bugger! The replacement was easily resolved. I purchased a fluffy toy. But, I now had one Kinder Selection Box too many, along with a predicament. What to do with the surplus selection box?

When I was a lad, Kinder products either weren’t available in the UK, or they didn’t exist. When my son was growing up there were Kinder Eggs, but I don’t remember any other sweets from them. The Kinder selection box contained all manner of wonderful looking sweets. All on a similar theme, chocolate with creamy fillings.

I’ve now eaten the lot. My favourite was the Happy Hippo, a hippo shaped wafer with a milky white filling, and part dipped in either white or milk chocolate. The white ones had the edge. I might well succumb to a Happy Hippo next time I find myself in a sweet shop.

Looking Back

As I sit here at my computer on New Year’s Eve, eating a bag of Fair Trade Bombay mix, and drinking a bottle of Nicholas Feuillatte Champagne, I’m trying to think of something clever to write to sum up 2007. Not sure why I’m not drinking ale, and I’m failing miserably on the summing up. The year 2007 wasn’t a fantastic year for me, although there were probably more good times than I can possibly remember. We had a great holiday in Alsace. The lady got a much more interesting and better-paid job. And there were a number of nice outings and weekends away. To counteract that some shit happened; I was diagnosed with skin cancer, and we have so far failed to sell the house (with very little prospect of a sale in the near future), so no move to Norwich just yet. Bugger.

Quite by accident, I’ve just come across an article about the New Forest, on the website of The Boston Globe. I am immediately transported back to my childhood. I was probably about 10 or 11 and we had embarked on our first camping holiday. We were headed for Dorset. It was in the days before many major motorways, and so to avoid a lot of traffic, and being in the school holidays, it had been decided that we would travel overnight. We stopped for a few hours passed London, and all five of us tried to get some sleep. Mum and Dad managed some, but it was impossibility for excited children. After the early hours catnap we hit the road again, just as dawn was breaking. I could make a smutty joke about ‘the crack of Dawn’ at this juncture, but rest assured readers I’ll not bother. It was breakfast time as we came upon the edge of the New Forest. Our stomachs were rumbling. Time to stop. In this age of Health & Safety etc. etc. it’s probably not allowed, but on that morning Dad got out the Primus stove, started pumping away at it, lit it, and proceeded to fry up. Sausages, eggs and bacon in the New Forest. Mother busily buttered bread, or was it rolls? I can’t quite remember. I suppose it’s why barbecues are so popular, as you can’t beat the experience of food cooked and eaten out of doors. It assaults all of the senses. I’m sure in terms of what someone like Heston Blumenthal does it was very mediocre fare, but to a little lad on his first experience of a camping breakfast, it was the best meal I’d ever had. Still today I would say that it was certainly the best breakfast I’d ever eaten; Great smell, great taste, priceless atmosphere and beautiful surroundings. The memory of the smell, the air and the early morning dew on the leaves and plants will I hope never leave me.

I’ve looked a bit further back than just the past year. Thank you The Boston Globe for jogging my memory.

Saturnalia I presume

Whenever you hear the phrase ‘political correctness gone made’ you know very well that it’s a hoax with no or very little basis of truth and the flames of this outrage (driven invariably by bigotry and xenophobia) usually being fanned by the likes of the Daily Mail. This sort of Neanderthal thinking always raises its ugly head at this time of year, when normal right thinking people who dare to describe the period around the winter solstice as anything other than Christmas get labelled as p.c. nutters.

As an atheist, I use the term Christmas along with a number of other labels to describe this time of year. My personal favourite is Yuletide because I just happen to like the way it sounds. But I wouldn’t care if the word Christmas were banned from common usage. Festivities in aid of the Winter solstice have been around a lot longer than the notion of monotheistic delusions about worshipping a magic man with a beard. So quite frankly I don’t give a shit what people call it, as long as they don’t call it the holiday season or holidays. Holidays are what you go away for when you take time off work. Often somewhere warm, but not exclusively. Holidays ain’t fucking Christmas!

The Daily Mail squad, in a hang-up from Victorian times, are so morally and probably sexually repressed that they can’t cope with anything that challenges social conventions that owe their ancestry to the time when ‘we were not amused’.

Holiday Season

What the fuck is the ‘holiday season’?

I know one thing, it isn't now. The holiday season is all year round as people take holidays all year round! I suppose typically people take the majority of their holidays in the summertime, although winter breaks have become a lot more popular. So there you have it the holiday season is all year. So unless you want to show yourself up as the wanker you possibly are, stop using the wretched term.