WillWybrow.com

It’s my ideal situation - to be able to freely say what you think about someone, to their face, without people thinking you’re being “harsh,” or without the other person considering it unfair or rude. People need to stop taking things personally if another person genuinely dislikes them. But we’re still hung up on this notion of trying to please everybody.

I’m not going to pretend I’m perfect at being one-faced (the opposite of two-faced… work it out, kids), because I’m sure people will come flocking around to point out times I might have failed to uphold that concept. It’s irrelevant; the point is, it’s morally wrong (as I see it). I’m digressing, but the point I am trying to make is that I wasn’t always as brutally honest with people as I am today, and I want to talk about the little thing that made me reconsider my way of thinking.

To start us off, I’ll let you all know that I’m a user, if not a completely convinced fan, of Microsoft’s Messenger program (however it’s being branded these days… “Windows Live,” is it? Windows don’t live, they sit there looking bloated and transparent just getting lazy from having the easiest job in the world - letting light through). It’s handy for keeping in instant touch with people, and it helps me see who’s around and up to what. It’s also good for keeping people up to date with what I think of them. I can pop on at any one moment, tell someone that they’re a cunt, and disappear again. That’s really convenient if you happen to have Easy Enmity Syndrome, like I do.

I appear to be digressing again. Something must be making my mind wander. So, I’ve been a user of Messenger for many years. It must be approaching five now, if not longer. And until recently, if you typed a message to someone who wasn’t online at the time, the message wouldn’t be delivered. That’s a great way to vent things - it feels like you’re getting everything out in the open (such as, “I think you’re a cunt,”) without all those nasty repercussions, like, oh, people wanting to stab you. For instance. Well, I’m not sure how long ago it was now, but Microsoft decided that they should implement some sort of basic offline messaging service - like e-mail. This way, if you typed in the window of an offline user, the message would be delivered when they returned.

You’re probably all hoping I’ll go somewhere with this. Maybe you expect an anecdote of me telling someone that they are a (guess? 4 letters, starts with ‘c’, rhymes with “punt”), not realising that Messenger now delivered the messages. And hilarity would ensue. Well, sorry to disappoint you all, but I’m not that foolish. What it did do, however, was to make me stop and think that maybe we shouldn’t type to them when they can’t see it, or talk about them when they can’t hear. Especially when that kind of two-faced talk is derisive or defamatory in nature. Maybe it would be better for everyone if people just plainly said what they thought, and didn’t try and play this whole game of keeping the wool pulled over someone’s eyes while slandering them while their back is turned. Just maybe, if we were a little more transparent, there wouldn’t be so much hurt from lies and hatred spread behind someone’s back, only to have them find out in a humiliating way. People would get used to the idea that it’s impossible to get along with everyone, such is the diversity of human nature, and such is one of the most important things about us. That little piece of us that lets us make the decision between fun and boring, right and wrong, love and hate. It’s different in all of us and it’s time to embrace it.

The Great Sport Centre Scam

I’m going to have to be honest with all of you here - I’ve never been to a gym by choice. Let me tell you what a gym is. It is a place where middle aged people go when they realise they’ve been overweight and unfit for too long, and they think they can do something about their awful social status by becoming able to live longer. A gym is where people come to sweat and grunt. A gym is for people who need the direct debit coming out of their account to motivate them to get fit. A gym might even be for people who love sportwear but don’t want to be seen in public thusly dressed in case people suspect them of carrying knives and taking drugs while wallowing in double figures of intelligence.

You people are all being ripped to pieces by some greedy, wise man with a big room and lots of expensive, shiny equipment. What are the common elements of a gym, and what do they do?

The Endless Road

Ok, so we have a belt looped around some motorised rollers. Now, this belt doesn’t serve a useful purpose, like getting things down a production line. It’s not even one of those sanding belts that wears things down. All it does is keep a person in the same two-square-metre area while that person is running or jogging. Doesn’t sound fantastic, does it? Well, there’s more. For all that gym membership money, you can run as much as you want without getting anywhere! And what’s more, you get to decide how fast or slowly you run, unlike on public property where you have to abide by the pedestrian speed limits and not run too quickly or slowly. You get the security of not having to look at changing scenery or make a decision about which route to follow when you’re on the Endless Road, and you can always be sure you won’t get any of that disgusting fresh air in your lungs with the endlessly circulated (but cooled) sweaty stale air of the gym.

The Endless Bicycle

This one, similar to the endless road, is a stationary bicycle. Again you get to control your speed and you won’t move an inch. No interesting places to distract you from all the concentrating on how fit you’re going to become and how many more people will like you when you’re able to take short walks without becoming short of breath.

The Endless River

I can’t stress enough to you all the importance of putting in so much effort into travelling and still not getting anywhere. At least when you’re actually in a boat and rowing away like a champion, you’ll end up somewhere else, instead of the same corner of the same room twice a week after the same work at the same office.

The Uniform Rod with a Cylindrical Mass Positioned at Either End

This is a great one - there are no moving parts. So you’re paying for the use of an inanimate, unmoving object whose sole purpose is being heavy. Are you all going to tell me that none of you have anything heavy in your house? Spare cans of paint? Stack of phonebooks? PC monitor? Dining chair? Sure you’d look a bit silly lifting them, so you could go out and buy a set of weights for less than your average monthly gym membership. Hold on - what’s this? Exercise at home? Surely not an activity without an ongoing cost that can actually make a difference to you? What’s the catch? Why is there not a fee to pay, like the phone, or the gas, or the electricity, or the TV license? Where’s my bank balance reduction to prove I’m affecting something? I guess there are some things that don’t need a receipt to be valid.

It’s like those dieting centres - they’ll charge you a membership fee and give you your weight every two weeks. In addition to that, they’ll tell you to eat healthily. You’re the one who actually does the shopping and cooking. The dieting centres don’t actually do anything, but people feel like it’s making more of a difference if there’s some money going into it. Perhaps that’s what income tax is all about? Making people think that the money pouring into their bank accounts from their deadend nine to five jobs is more worthwhile.

The Government will hopefully pour that money back into roads and footpaths to run and cycle on. So the people who choose to waste their money on things that don’t go anywhere are still making their contribution to the wise people who do their running on the road for free and their heavy lifting in their home for a small one-off cost. I can’t help but think I should be trying to capitalise on this somehow… So any of you people need to spend money on something superficial and unnecessary can get in contact with me for my new programme, Premium Air services. For a low monthly fee I will send you a free sample of air and my booklet on where to breathe the best air. And then once a month we’ll meet up and discuss the different air we’ve breathed. I accept PayPal, so please, get in touch.

I’m starting to worry about knowledge these days. It’s not really safe, I find. This sort of thinking has come about, much to my unhappiness, due to my interest in atheism. Because, when you talk to a theist, they’ll have all sorts of convicing “arguments” and “facts,” snippets of so-called “truth” that make you stop and think “is that really true? That could change X or make person Y think differently.” Well, it’s not truth. If you hear anything that makes you doubt something you heard from a more reliable person (e.g. an atheist), it is wrong. I have been given leaflets from a Christian preacher who came to our door to spread his bullshit propaganda. It tells about the “embryo hoax,” which I only learned from that leaflet (way to hold on to past mistakes and rack them up against us… we’ll be remembering the death toll of your crusades when it comes to that, don’t you worry), which is that someone photocopied a picture of an embryo and gave the photocopies different names, like “horse” and “frog” and then said that since they were all the same: evolution. Just… evolution. Well, I’ve never heard anything like that, I’m persuaded by fossils and the things I observe around me. Then Dr. Christian tells me that we’re missing fossils. Thanks for that, I’ll note down what you’re telling me without citing any sources as fact, and tell all my friends. Oh, no I won’t.

Far too many people are being allowed to spread their rubbish as “truth,” and the lies that they feed us are then mislabelled in our minds. People should stop spreading facts by word of mouth. Everything should be published, and checked by an objective team of researchers before publishing can begin. Except with fiction. Unless that fiction is fiction that claims to be fact (e.g. Bible, Torah, Qur’an, the Da Vinci Code etc.), in which case, the authors (or, in the absence of authors, the attempted publisher) should be murdered punished for their crimes of deliberate misdirection.

When will we go back to the days of real truth? When we get rid of modern philosophers, I’d imagine…

TC

…That Modern Art is a Complete Farce?

I’ve been to the Tate Modern gallery. Twice. And do you know what? It blew. I can appreciate art when it’s a well-painted depiction of something, whether inspired or original, but when you’re faced with some of the garbage being dubbed “art” these days… it’s enough to make one want to crawl into a dark, deep hole and never emerge again until the world has destroyed itself completely, and only feral wolves and dirty insects are alive.

Art is not a real-life object taken out of context. Nor is it abstract paintings of real-life things. Art is not a urine-coloured plastic toilet bowl, nor a plughole set into the wall, nor yet red plastic strips hung from the ceiling. And art is definitely not a blank canvas with a single slash in it, like I saw last time I was there. What a fucking ripoff, even free is too much to pay to get into that fecal passage of a gallery. They did have some paying customers there to see the chargeable exhibitions, though, so I guess they keep all the “real” art for the subscribers.

The last time I went, they had a parrot on show as one of the pieces. A real-life, flapping, yapping parrot. I mean - what? It’s a goddamn parrot. A picture of it would be art. But the parrot itself is not art, it’s just lazy. Just paint the fucking thing! Whenever you go to the zoo to see animals, you think you’re seeing captive creatures, but what you actually see is art. The zoo is a lie, children, just like Father Christmas and Gordon Brown. Do not believe anything your parents tell you.

I’m sick of this label of “art” being thrown out all over the place these days. Next they’ll be labelling the crap I doodled onto a tissue “art”. Or maybe the crap I crapped onto a tissue? I’m going to submit some used toilet paper as art… let’s see what those ignorant bastards have to say to that.

Art is art, not this pussy brand we get today. It’s like music these days too. That, like modern art, tries to be something it isn’t. Music these days has to have ‘deep meaning’ to it, and ‘emotions’ behind it. Well, that’s flawed, because often the real meaning put across has to be compromised to make the lyrics fit the tune, rhyme or beat of a song. Real truth would just be a passage of prose with neither rhyme nor reason.

Because, let’s face it: sometimes, the truth just isn’t poetic.

Love, TC.

A holiday stolen by Christians from a host of other religions to mark the beginning of their false legacy which has plagued this world for too long. The very fact that the festival is built on a lie is reason enough to make one think twice about the happiness implied in the word. But couple that with the fact that people are going to be unreasonably gluttonous when it comes to food and drink, and heavily regret it afterwards, I might add, and you get the perfect recipe for unhappiness descending the turn of the day. Well, I’m not going to stand for that. That’s why I’ve been bitter leading up to Christmas, and I’ll be bitter after it’s gone - I’m not going to let a lie affect my mood.

Given that, I’d normally be not updating my site right about now, so I’d better get back to doing that. Yep, just a short one for you guys this year. Stick around for other bastardised pagan holidays (cf. Easter) to be discussed in the future.

Peace.

Just kidding. Chaos and anarchy this Yuletide. Ciao, TC.

Due to popular demand, I’m putting up a second page about eating. This should satisfy some of you whining, bitchy little girls.

Worcester Sauce

What is there to say, except this stuff tastes really fantastic when applied to any meal or cooking process. It brings all that is good about Worcester (which is actually only the fact that this sauce shares the name) to the dining table or kitchen.

Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce

I argued this one when it was suggested, but that was actually just to avoid admitting the obvious: I’d forgotten it. Deliberately, of course - I was waiting for the second installment, weren’t you? Anyway, the Thais, as a race, may be as indistinguishable from their oriental neighbours as one grain of rice from the next, but their use of sweet chillis is pretty renowned and tasty. Perfect accompaniment for anything.

Honey

Another sweet one for all of you dessert-loving women. Honey is a soft, sweet substance which is made by little bumble bees for the sole purpose of making our sweets taste better. And honey is as versatile as sugar itself - it goes with dairy-sweet (like yoghurt - a must for Greek style anyway), and both types of fruit-sweet (even citrus… heard of honey and lemon cough medicine, you philistines?). So this one goes in too.

That’s all for you this time, folks. But stay tuned!

TC

I don’t know what it is, but recently, some of the additional effects of being inebriated have seemed to become a more permanent addition to the personality.

That heroic feeling of invincibility is rolling over from sobering up further and further after every time, and while this makes everyday life a little less dull, it does have some negative side-effects.

For example, when we are in a nice, safe environment - closed off from the outside - and I’ve just had an exceptionally good day, so I’m feeling really elated, and then the drinks start pouring, there’s that leftover heroism still lurking just beneath the surface, and the drunken courage poured on top of that starts making even the most daunting mountain climb seem a breezy walk to the top.

And that’s why I don’t drink… Because people who drink end up making fools of themselves in front of other people’s mothers, and intoxicated people spew verbal puke when they try and talk life. This only works when both parties are completely removed from themselves and placed inside that shimmering cage of drink, not when only one is, as the one looks foolish in the eyes of the other.

What a mess!

Welcome, friends and enemies alike. What you’re seeing is the first ToolChronicles post after what we shall refer to as the “Alex Robinson Incident,” which I will write up in an objective way some time in the future, for all of you to enjoy. At any rate, most of you probably heard that the problem was with my host. Well, now I have a shiny new host to put up my website from now on. They’re more suited to my needs, so let’s see how this pans out.

For now, let me promise that there will be no stopping the updates. This close shave with obliteration has given me lots to think about. But the future is secure, believe me, and you won’t be deprived for long.

Welcome back. It seems I’m always saying this… but hopefully this time we can delay it indefinitely.

Peace out. Love, Chronicler.

I would love to put an article into the Warwick Boar [for those of you who are not locals, this is the student newspaper here at Warwick University], backed by the Warwick Atheists, but I really can’t see that I’d have all that much to say that was relevant, really. Writing here is fine, and sure, I’d love to get some of this down in print for at least some of the student body to experience, because I believe that somewhere along the line, I’ve written something useful or entertaining, but I don’t think I’d like to write under the pressure of a deadline. It’s much better when I have a nice, casual situation like this, and I can churn out the prose whenever it’s convenient, and more importantly about any topic I want, without constraints or censorship.

What’s more, I’m not sure I could deal with the responsiblity of representing the entire society, because I know I’d only mess it up and have everyone come down on me like a ton of bricks. I’d say something stupid that offends people, and they’d get all furious at me, like it was my fault. Yeah, right. Plus, my views don’t necessarily represent everyone’s, so who’s to say that even the people backing me would agree with what I’d publish?

No, far better that I keep to myself here, don’t you think? That way the only people who are offended are those who come here under their own steam and so can only blame themselves. But people who pick up a copy of the Boar, read what I wrote and then are surprised and offended by it will be able to lay a fraction of the blame at my door, and I’m not willing to accept that. Or, the opposite might happen, everyone will realise how right I am and the fan mail will come flooding in.

But I doubt it…

Let me tell you a tale of a man of the sea. Every mile he sailed pushed him further away from his home, and he was sorely troubled, for he was divided in his heart between his birth place and the high seas, where he had spent most of his life. With his homeland, he had stability and security, but a sometimes tiring monotony that made him yearn for the ocean once more. On the water, however, he had the thrill of the ever-shifting planes and the comfort of knowing he could choose his own path, wherever and whenever he wished.

But sometimes when he was far from port, he began to feel afraid, and once again he wanted only the comforting embrace of an unchanging and perpetual world.

This man exists today as a part of some people’s natures. It represents the changeability of human nature and our inherent instability. But we, unlike the pirate from the story, do not always have the freedom to flick back and forth between worlds when we feel that other side of us stirring beneath the surface. We often are forced to pick one and stick with it, to compromise the choice for what we think will be least painful in the long run. Do we choose to live in safety and occasional annoyance for the repetitive state of our lives, or should we instead opt for the thrill of changeability, but live with the occasional fear that everything we have can be swept away in an instant on an errant current and that our lives are completely out of our hands? It will never be an easy choice, but you can sleep soundly in the knowledge that once you have chosen, you never have to experience anything different, so you never have to find out how good you could have had it.