The Gap Isn’t That Big
Ughn. I haven’t updated in aages. Sorry. I was trying to think of something that would interest others, but then I remembered that’s not really the point of this blog.
My Grandma is still over here, and I love her, but some of the things she says are just so… biased! She’s always interested in how many asians are in my year level at school, and whenever she’s watching the tennis she will always comment on ‘the black people’. I think we’ve all made a lot of headway on this issue, but I guess this just reminded me on how far we still have to go. My Grandma was born in the late 1920’s, and it seems that the belief that Europeans are superior just stuck with her through her life. Whereas nowdays, in history, we get educated about Australia’s Indigenous people/Aborigines and how their land was unrightfully taken. But yet we still need to have a national “Sorry Day” to these people.
But when it comes down to it, are we all that different? Just because one race is adept at doing something or bad at something else, it doesn’t mean all that race have the same skills and beliefs. Each person in a race is an individual. For example, not all dark skinned people are great dancers or fast runners, there is one boy in my year level who is dark skinned and is really unfit. Not all Chinese people are smart, and not all Chinese people cannot understand English. They also don’t all wear glasses. I’ve been to China, trust me, I know.
When I went to China, near the end of the trip we were all low on money, and a few of us went to McDonalds for lunch. There we all were, laughing and flicking chips at each other, and I looked across the diner and there were a group of kids, the same age as us, doing the exact same thing. They just had differently shaped eyes, and darker hair.
I always get really upset when I hear people being biased. One of my best friends is a Muslim, and her family always cops the flack for the terrorism in Iraq. My friend is too embarrassed to even wear her traditional headscarf to school, because then everyone knows ‘what she is’. We all know what it’s like to be the new kid in town or at school, when everyone stares at us for no reason at all, simply just because we’re different. That eventually goes away. But for some people, it never does. Some people who have African names that they must put on their job resumes get sent away from a job because of their nationality. Why do we feel the need to shun someone all the time? Does everyone see these people? They live on our planet. They’re our neighbours. We need to treat them with the respect that they deserve. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
x Gezza
Photoshop: A Leap Too Far Forward?
I am completely shocked, after watching a slideshow on NineMSN, right here. It shows pictures of celebrities before Photoshop, and after. It’s quite disturbing, really. Everyone in the gallery gets a flawless body, made up face, perfect hair, and magically looses those wrinkles in the after shot. Not only that, their eyes change colour, they loose the occasional dimple, their poses and facial expressions change… why do we even bother taking the picture in the first place? But more importantly, why do we even feel the need to ask ourselves: Why do so many teenage girls have eating disorders?
Is the answer not clear? Photoshop is giving a new meaning to the term “picture perfect.” It’s bordering surreal. I did a unit in photoshop last year for my computer technologies class, and we watched I video where an obese woman wearing no makeup, glasses and unstyled hair was transformed into a skinny, glasses free, makeup wearing, perfectly styled supermodel. Even her clothes were changed. I wouldn’t have recognized her if I saw her on the street, it was that bad.
Sometimes, I read articles about what a “confident performer” so-and-so was. Not only that, every single magazine I read has some celebrity saying: “girls, you should feel confident about your bodies.” What about the celebrities themselves? I’m a regular reader of Kelly Clarkson’s blog on WordPress, and I was shocked when she said: “This album has the best album cover ever, they’ve photoshopped the crap out of me.” Come on, I dare you guys to post a photo shoot on the internet without using photoshop. I thought some of the “Before” shots were pretty to begin with. For god’s sake, Eva Longoria has curves!
It would be a welcome maneuver if the Government did something to stop photoshopped images on CD’s, advertisments and magazines. Makeup is enough to begin with. In Australia, there is currently one magazine who has taken a pledge to not photoshop images. One. And even then, they twisted their promise, saying they only meant that they “wouldn’t photoshop images of readers who appeared in their magazine.” All this is getting totally insane. When I did my photoshop course, I used the program to turn monkeys purple. Now, we’re turning everyone into breathing lumps of plastic.
x Gezza
Deviantart Account
I finally got off my lazy procrastinating ass and created a Deviantart account! From now on, I’ll be uploading pictures onto there, so perhaps you should check it out. Seriously. Check it out. I love feedback on my work! But don’t worry, I’ll still be updating here. In case I actually have some regular readers. Oh, also, I accidently gave my friend in real life I link to this blog and now she knows all my innermost thoughts, which was one of my smarter moments. But, once again, visit my page? (Large numbers make me feel special.)
x Gezza
P.S: Yes, I love shameless plugs.
Grow
Looking at my Grandma now, I’m surprised to see how much she’s changed since the past two years I saw her. Isn’t it strange how when we’re young, all we want to do is to grow up, and as soon as we get past thirty we want to stop aging? It’s like how people want it to be cold in summer, and when it’s winter, they want it to be hot again. It seems like it’s always within our nature to want what we can’t have, or receive something we want only to see it’s a burden.
Aging can be something that is good and yet awful. The older we get, the wiser we can get, or we can just drive ourselves further into despair. We can make the most of every experience and take risks, or we can spend or lives in isolation. I’m not exactly on the verge of retirement, but looking back on my life so far, I can see it’s been a bit of an apocalypse of both good and bad experiences. I’ve traveled to numerous countries and holidayed in exotic places, made some great friends and had a ton of laughs, but I’ve also been picked on quite a lot, and I’ve had to deal with my father’s alcoholism.
Life really is what you make it, and I hope when I’m my Grandma’s age, I can say I’ve achieved everything I wanted to in life. Growing old and death are inevitable in life, (I highly doubt we’ll ever find out how to reverse aging, no matter what those cosmetic companies say about their rip off creams) and I want to make sure I can be satisfied when I die. And if I die tomorrow, I am so kicking the Grim Reaper’s sorry ass.
x Gezza
Hobbies
Honestly, although I love the holidays, I am getting slightly bored, and I don’t want to look back on my holidays and say that they were a complete waste of time. So I have decided to try and do something interesting. (This is the part where you all gasp.) The other day, I went into town and bought myself a sketchbook and some pencils. And have to say, life is getting less boring with a hobby.
I’m not very good at drawing, but my art teacher gave me an A+ last term for art, and my family thinks I’m pretty good. It’s amazing how caught up I can get in drawing a picture, and I spent two hours doing a facial close up drawing a couple of days ago. I didn’t even colour it! I don’t think it’s the best picture out there, but I can still look at it with a sense of pride, knowing that I spent my free time being productive and creating something.
I think the world might be a better place if we all persevered at something, and doing something like drawing is strangely theraputic. It takes my mind off things, and I can draw my emotions as well! Of course, not all people are good at art, and you don’t have to draw. You could start playing an instrument and writing songs, or take up a sport. Even going for a quick morning walk may be more interesting than it seems, and you’ll get fitter too! And wouldn’t we all like to reap rewards from the things we do? I’m not telling you to become a top athlete, artist or singer, but try something different. You could enjoy it. And if not, second time’s the charm? 
x Gezza
Fall
My Grandma came over from New Zealand last night. It’s always good seeing her, but she’s a bit of a bad luck magnet. (Last time she was here she almost stepped on a snake) So,we went to the airport and all was well, until we were walking along in the carpark and she tripped over one of those yellow things in the ground that are there for people’s “safety”. She fell down pretty quickly and I didn’t have time to catch her, but I still felt guilty. I know how important she is to my Mother, Aunts and Uncles, and I couldn’t even catch her. She was supposed to come over for a holiday and there she went, hurting herself!
Some car park staff came over and called some first aid staff. The damage: two sprained, cut, bruised and swollen hands, and one huge bruise to her left temple. The bruises came out horribly after five minutes, and today her hands are fully purple. Anyway, we had to drive her to the hospital afterwards, and then gave up waiting and drove back home and got back by midnight (she’s back at the hospital now, getting X-rays). My mum was saying that it was lucky nothing else happened, but what if it had? What if she hadn’t put her hands out and fallen head first onto the carpark? While about ten people including the rest of my family were around my Grandma giving her comfort, I snuck off into the car and started crying from guilt, I couldn’t help feeling partly to blame.
That made me realize something about myself I hadn’t noticed before, I really hate it when people are in pain. I saw it at the hospital, when we were in the waiting room and a mother and her son rushed a girl about my age howling in pain. The girl was rushed through the swinging doors to the Emergency Room, while her family waited. I hate hospitals. I felt bad enough to start crying again when I saw all those people in the waiting room sitting there in pain while they waited for a doctor. “You know,” my Grandma said, “when you were a little girl, you broke your arm, and when we took you to the hospital you fought off about six doctors from putting a cast on your arm!” Gosh, I even loathed hospitals then. Why did I not realize this? It’s like finding another room in my house!
But I don’t think of myself as a very compassionate person. I think it’s just the physical pain I hate, I have been a complete b*tch in the past and hurt people on purpose, just not punching or kicking them. (Though don’t people say that mental pain is worse than physical pain? Wow, what a nice person I am then…) So yeah, no real moral to this post, just getting my thoughts out.
x Gezza
Role Models?
I can’t believe young girls look up to celebrities these days. How can we aspire to become those people, when they do things that are so stupid they may as well be arrested. Here are a few recent articles I’ve found on MSN which demonstrates this point.
- Lily Allen gives the green light for drug usage
- Lady Gaga admits she “loves seeing girls intheir underwear”
- Rihanna is ordered to cover up during her Malaysian concerts
- Miley Cyrus wants a tattoo with her boyfriend’s initials on it
And let’s not forget Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and of course, Amy Winehouse. Now, let’s all ponder why thirteen year olds want rhinoplasty, boob jobs and liposuction. Everyone in the spotlight these days abuses their power. Okay, I’m not telling them off for doing what they find interesting or fun, I’m telling them off for not realizing that people of all ages see this. And we’re letting them reap the profits of their bad behaviour by buying their singles, EPs and albums! Don’t think I’m having a go at artists I don’t like either, I’ve got a massive Lady Gaga poster in my bedroom, I listen to Lily Allen all the time, and I love her style. You two: you’ve just lost a fan. I’ve made a rule that I don’t listen to bad role models, even on the radio, I just turn it off.
I have written letters to celebrities like this, but I don’t think they read most of their mail, I’ve never gotten a reply. But I think we should take action against things like this, these celebrities are making little brats out of the people who are going to inherit the earh after we’re all dead. if that’s not scary, what is?
x Gezza
Musical Genius For January
A lot of people are always looking out for new musicians and music, so I thought I’d link some music I’m listening to at the moment so you can hear it too. My taste varies, but at least listen to some songs, they’re great!
The Wombats: Kill The Director This song is wickedly awesome, something nice and different from the mainstream.
The Pipettes: ABC I love the almost retro quality of the Pipettes, and this was the first song by them I heard.
The Halo Theme I don’t care if you don’t play the game, just listen to the score, that orchestra is incredible.
The Cinematic Orchestra: Burn Out Another instrumental, which I like listening to late at night to wind down.
The Fray: Fall Away Not their most famous song, but my favourite because it’s got relevance to my life.
Hikaru Utada: Sanctuary The emotion in this song is absoltely superb, I’m so glad it’s one of Hikaru’s english songs. It was used as the theme for Kingdom Hearts II.
x Gezza
Panties Theif Found
Here’s an article in the regional newspaper I found today.
STOLEN UNDERWEAR FOUND
Following a string of stolen washing offences in the *bleep* area, police executed a serach warrant on a nearby property last month where a large amount of women’s underwear was found. A man residing at the address admitted to the theft of the clothing and was interviewed. Local police would like to hear from any person who may have noticed any clothing, particularly female underwear, missing from their clothesline in recent months.
(Copyright to the newspaper)
I’m disgusted, but at the same time laughing my head off. What has the world come to when there are articles about underwear theft in the paper? XD So what, I have to keep my panties locked up now, do I? I’ll have to keep a look out and see what he’s sentanced to.
x Gezza
CPUs… The Bad Part About Video Games
Am I the only one out there who hasn’t noticed just how bad some CPUs in video games an get? There just too stupid! They’re supposed to be helpful, but they never really seem to do anything of use. So, I’m going to do a little countdown of some of the stupidest CPUs I’ve seen. Note: I don’t think these games are stupid, they’re lots of fun! But the CPUs… *groan*
4. Gears of War: The Locust
Geez. Playing as Dom with a friend, we were having a lot of fun storming buildings and giving those Locust what for. Then, I stormed one building and found a soldier in it! Hoozah! Help! He even followed us around for about a minute. Then I got shot from behind. We hadn’t paid close enough attention, the “soldier” was one of the locust, and though he was supposed to shoot at us, he’d defected for the last minute and actually been helpful! And then, there was the time some came out of an emergence hole and ran in the opposite direction from us, into trees.
3. The Sims 2: Neighbourhood NPCs
Ooooh dear. These Sims should all be recieving mental treatment. Not only do these wonderful pieces of coding walk around without stopping so your Sim can never talk to them, they also plod themselves down and watch the TV wherever they are. And inviting them over is completely stupid. Generally, the concept of having a person over is to talk to them. But these NPCs are dead set on ignoring you. I invited the private school principal over to get my Sim’s kid into private school, and he spent the whole time sitting in the hot tub and never coming out. They also do lovely things and call your Sim after two days of no communication and have a sook at them as well. Well, you did get invited over, NPC, you just spent the time playing darts and nicked off at 2am because it got late. *sigh*
2. The Halo Trilogy: Marines and Brutes
Let’s start with the Brutes, those lovely ape-like creatures that were introduced in Halo 2 which have the lovely quality of beserking, leading them to jump into lifts if you position your character in front of them carefully, and over cliffs. Sometimes, after engaging with them in battle and then hiding youself again, you can listen to their amazing comments of “Let’s sniff him out.”, which they prefer to do instead of looking up to see that you are in fact on a ledge above them. But the Marines take the cake. The terrorists should recruit them as suicide bombers! Let’s say you’re playing the game on the hardest difficulty, and you’re about to go into an area with a horde of enemies and drop ships to boot. You stealthily sneak around. The Marines? Well, of course they charge into the middle of the clearing, all of them ending up being killed by Grunts, the easiest enemies to defeat. And, when you do get bored and start killing the sorry CPUs, they only seem to notice that you’re not accidently shooting them until only two or three out of the squad remain. But, even this sort of stupidity isn’t the worst you can get in a game. At number 1… it’s…
1. Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2: Everyone except yourself
This game is absolutely crazy at times with the idiotic CPUs, shooting at walls, running into them and running into heavily guarded bases and getting killed, meaning the enemy can just go along and capture yours. If there’s 220 people on the enemy team, you’ve got to kill perhaps 80 to ensure a victory. That’s how bad these CPUs are. But, in these dark times of war in Star Wars Battlefront, the stupid CPUs need someone to look up to, an idol of idiocy, a true hero. A CPU Jedi. And the dark side has just amazing CPU Jedis, especially the emperor. His lightning is devastating, and he uses it to kill his own troops, as does Count Dooku. Not only do the Jedi walk into walls, they spin in circles too, and jet pack into them as well. Some even manage to escape the level, and set their sights on destroying trees and bushes. But, if it wasn’t for the silly CPUs in battelfront, I don’t think I’d have any funny memories about it. Congrats Battlefront, your CPUs are the worst out of any game I’ve played! 
x Gezza
