WillWybrow.com

Sometimes I really do wonder about the people in this town. I was walking outside not an hour ago and I heard a loud pair of middle-aged men talking. I rounded the corner and one of them at least had a can of something cheap in his hands, and the words I caught were: “…but a woman burping is abhorrent.”

At this point, two things went through my head. First: what could they possibly have been talking about to lead up to that point? Had they been having a whole conversation centred on disgusting bodily functions? The second was: how can someone this moronic use a word like “abhorrent”? To further add to my confusion, when he went on with his point to say the same about “a woman farting,” I’m pretty sure he pronounced it “apparent.”

As I sadly was not walking in the same direction, the conversation rapidly faded out of earshot with this little gem: “you don’t want a woman to be all like *retching noise* and scratching her bum. A woman should be a woman, you know?” to which his walking partner silently assented.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be fun to pretend to go along with people like that, to see just how far their stupidity reaches. Chime in with something casual yet bigoted like “and what about them blacks, eh?” or anything along those lines. Poking fun at them feels like the only way of coping, because, when you look at the fact that people holding these views exist, if you don’t shrug it off with laughter, the despair will start to set in and you’ll realise that even though there are six billion people on the planet, being a decent person amongst them is pretty fucking lonely.

I was watching a film just lately, and one of the guys in it told one of the girls in it that she was beautiful, or whatever, and she said thanks and whatever, they hook up or something and live happily ever after. I guess that’s how these things work in film. Oh yeah, before we go any further, this is my warning that nobody is going to agree with what I’ve got to say because, like a lot of my ideas, it’s just too different and will undoubtedly be expressed badly. But even if you do agree in theory, I don’t imagine you will in practice. Hell, I’m not ever going to think about this in a real-life situation, so I don’t expect anyone else to.

Breakdown of a Compliment

When Person A says something flattering about Person B’s looks, Person A can be saying a number of things. The first and most obvious one that comes to mind is that the “compliment” Person A is paying means literally that Person A finds Person B to be visually appealing through whatever it is between people that facilitates that reaction. It doesn’t matter if it’s innate or learned through “society’s standard of beauty” or something like that. What Person A could be saying is that he (for the sake of argument, let’s say Person A is male and Person B is female) likes the way Person B looks through no action on Person B’s part.

Person A might also be making a point about Person B’s specific appearance at that point: “you look nice today” for a (weak) example. Coming across in this instance is the implication that Person A has recognised the fact that Person B has either deliberately or inadvertently made a difference in her appearance and Person A approves.

Person A might also be saying that he finds Person B to be attractive even though most people wouldn’t. I wanted to avoid saying the word “objective” here, because I don’t think there is an “objectively” good-looking person, but there are people that an overwhelming majority of peers would consider attractive, and there are people that an overwhelming majority of peers would consider not attractive (plus, obviously, the whole range in between). If Person A is sincere when he pays his compliment to Person B, he is saying that even though most people think Person B is unattractive, she happens to be to Person A’s personal taste.

For the sake of the argument, I am going to make two assumptions. The first is that people cannot actively choose which physical traits they find to be attractive and which ones they don’t. I don’t think this is too far from the truth, and while taste may change over time, I feel it is largely out of the control of people themselves. That first assumption now lets me make my second, which consists of me lumping together my first scenario (where Person B is “objectively” attractive) with my third scenario (where Person B is not “objectively” attractive, but is to Person A’s personal taste) under the heading of Inadvertent Attraction, and leave scenario two (where Person B has made an effort) as Deliberate Attraction.

So, in this film, the line was something like “you have really pretty eyes,” it doesn’t matter about the specifics. This line fits into my category of Inadvertent Attraction — it wasn’t through any effort on Person B’s part that Person A liked her eyes. Given this, her next line, “thank you,” doesn’t entirely make sense. A compliment is praise or even congratulations for something, but if it’s a compliment for something that isn’t deliberate, why the thanks afterwards? Person B didn’t choose to have nice eyes, so the compliment doesn’t deal with her. The compliment goes to whoever is responsible for Person B being attractive to Person A. Which is nobody.

What am I saying? That nobody should pay each other compliments anymore? No, of course not. They’re nice things to say, and everyone wants nice things said to them and about them. But I am remarking on the realisation that Person B doesn’t get to say “thanks” afterwards. Nothing nice has been said about her, just the unchangeable circumstances that mean Person A likes Person B’s appearance. Person B can’t really take pride in having an arbitrary facial arrangement any more than I can take pride in being white. It’s just genetic make-up that we have no control over.

Of course, the thanks may have only been out of polite courtesy, and that’s maybe how it is the world over. But people flush with pride when they hear something good said about them — I know I do. I just wanted to say to everyone that, on paper, it’s just incorrect to be proud about such things.

Then we get into murky waters with things like nice hair or make-up, which can be part Inadvertent and part Deliberate, and then there are things which are totally Deliberate, like picking clothes or picking perfume. Paying a compliment to deliberate choices people make to please each other is like saying “good job, I approve.” In this society where having free will is an assumption we all live by (even if it’s not true), we are allowed to be proud of the choices we make. So that’s fine.

But good-looking people, beware. I’m on to you.

The film was Hitch, if you were wondering, and it was quite enjoyable.

Give it up, bitch.

You might have read about Laura Williams recently, the eighteen-year-old who got pregnant with conjoined twins, and against all advice, decided not to end the pregnancy, but to give little Faith and Hope a shot at life.

Ok, fair enough, you’re just a little girl who has filled her head with fancies and dreams about the inner strength of your babies, but come on. Not only is it completely irresponsible, but it’s completely inhumane. Why bother letting the children live out a terrible and short existence when you can easily and painlessly abort them?

Well, go ahead with it then. Let your babies get beyond the abortion limit. Then it becomes murder.

Ok, all the moral and ethical piss aside, let’s have a look at the delicious poetic justice at work here: the doctors advise to abort the children, the defiant mother keeps the babies. She names them Faith and Hope to show off how much she believes (without evidence) that her babies can survive in the face of all the experts that predict otherwise. One dies at the start of December in the operation to seperate them, and the other dies on Christmas Day from being too fucking weak. So you’d think the mother would have no more hope or faith like this. Gracefully accept that you make a stupid decision and back down. But no, “if I had to do it all again, I would,” she says. What?! You would kill two more babies? WHAT?! Hello? Did you miss the part where you fucking just lost two babies named Faith and Hope?! Hello?!?!

You can read the story on BBC News, but they put a horrible spin on it where it makes that stupid bitch look admirable for being so stubborn and foolish, but anyone with an independent thought in their brain, especially if they’ve followed the story, can see that all Laura Williams’ steps were the wrong steps, and her defiance to the end of this fisaco is unworthy of admiration in the same way that blind faith in an imaginary god should be criticised and ridiculed.

I’m pretty angry at the BBC for being so biased.

…but Relentless prices up?

It’s a bit of an economical mixed bag. I was enjoying it when a can of Relentless was cheaper than a litre of petrol. Fuck petrol! Though the fact that it’s getting cheaper is probably a good thing. It’s less than 94p per litre at my local supermarket, but they put Relentless Inferno up about 10p just a few days ago! Nightmare!

But I went to 24 hour Tesco on campus yesterday night and bought some where it was still under £1. It’s good.

I don’t think I am being affected very much by the, ah, “credit crunch.” Things still seem to be costing the same as they always have. And, as usual, it’s easy to spend too much. Especially with my housemates; they don’t really realise that students aren’t meant to live in comfort and luxury. They’re supposed to buy all the cheapest things possible and barely live on them. It’s a nightmare when other people come back from shopping and ask for my money. They didn’t ask what I wanted to put my money towards…

Oh well, got a little bit of cash coming soon enough (in time for the holiday season, in fact), and maybe a little pocket of cash as gifts from Santa. Money is a bitch, but it’s the only path to true happiness.

Yeah, I donated to a fucking CHARITY.

How selfless am I?

Have you ever stumbled across something so utterly ridiculous that you are certain it is a joke, only to realise with dawning horror that these people are completely serious?

Arch-conservative White Supremacist Christians are hindering the social, technological and intellectual progress of the free world. I give you: the Conservapedia - a right-wing, authoritarian collection of pro-Christian, pro-racism, pro-fascism, anti-Common Sense propaganda spread by pompous egotistical middle-aged men who, for all their complaining and rigidity, are doing as little as they can to help the world, because driving for what they want is, as their self-imposed label implies, conservative regarding true progress.

The collection of sourced articles and original essays is riddled with distaste for anything in the world changing. Acceptance of multiculturalism or homosexuality, for example, is rare and delightfully disguised under layers of elegantly spun prose. It is unashamedly biased, despite hypocritically advocating and claiming otherwise, and I think that it might just be the ultimate collection of the worst views in the world. It might not, though… I can’t speak for the whole world here.

I’d advise giving this one a miss if you’re looking for some unbiased, neutral information. The massively successful Wikipedia, although it has its flaws, is still your best bet, whether it’s a casual interest in something you know little about, or the starting point for a more serious endeavour. You can’t place restrictions on the sources of true knowledge, or you exclude too much of what nobody has enough of.

Or, just hit the alternative, where if it’s there, it’s whacky and if it isn’t, make it up!

It seems to the Chronicler that these days, it’s difficult for people to get anything right at all. Especially when it comes to how people have invented, developed and otherwise handled “casual” relationships.

Nowadays, it’s ‘cooler’ to be casually involved with a member of the opposing gender than it is to be in a real, meaningful, loving relationship. And the recent increase in the popularity of the term and concept of a “fuck-buddy” doesn’t help matters.

I place the blame at the door of feminism. Women have been pushing for equality for years and years and socially they have a pretty much equal standing. They integrate into groups of mixed-gender friends and this encourages the detrimental casual attitude towards men. Suddenly, the modern woman has male friends who have no interest in romantic intimacy. And she has no interest in that either. Add a few decades and we’re watching the world sink deeper and deeper into desensitivity and immorality as our sexual inhibitions as a culture begin to fade. We look to the institutionalised religions here to lead the way back from the brink of depravity, but they’re so wrapped up in depraved acts of their own that they don’t care - no amount of hypocrisy is going to destroy the foothold they’ve gained in the world.

So we have a country with a more liberal and open approach to sex - this has to be a good thing, right? Talking about things will surely lead to spreading knowledge and experience that will make people wiser, right? And that, in turn, will reduce things like sexually transmitted infections or illegitimate (including underage) pregnancies, right?

Such would have been the dream-like reality that only a perfect world could endow. The opposite happened; people decided that if it’s ok to discuss these things, it’s ok to do them too.

So, these independent women of the world started getting ideas that if they could have a casual friendship with a man, they could have a casual relationship too. Which, of course, leads inevitably to casual sex, precisely the reverse of what was meant to occur.

We who take relationships seriously are a dying breed. One day, we’ll be outcast, outdated; we’ll be labelled as old-fashioned or worse: wrong.

Then, of course, it’s “better luck with the next social revolution, old man.”

As promised, dotben.

As a general rule, I don’t stand by the effectiveness of a democratic system where everybody, no matter how uneducated or corrupt, gets an equal voice in a system. But then there are the days when it pays off, and I realise that things aren’t so bad after all.

For example, I was present during our Students’ Union’s Annual General Meeting. Some liberal hippie fool wanted to open up the Union’s doors and arms to members of our beloved British Nationalist Party and actively invite those racist pigs into our university to let them address the students, the entire body of which is sourced by about 120 countries, 116 of which are not part of Britain. The indicative vote taken at the time showed a slim majority tending towards keeping blacklisted speakers from being invited and endorsed by the Union.

I am not against free speech. I heavily endorse an individual or group’s right to express whatever they want - otherwise there would be people outspeaking against this very website. But the defence I use whenever people voice their misgivings about the unsavoury nature of this site is: if it bothers you, don’t read it. I believe that such a policy is best for everyone, because it provides each person with a choice.

Were the Union to invite speakers from the BNP on to campus, it would lend them both credibility and support. It says to them “it’s ok to publicly broadcast these views,” which will undoubtedly be interpreted by some as “it’s ok to have these views,” and the message on this part couldn’t be further from the truth. Judging someone because of their race is almost universally agreed as unacceptable, and it doesn’t have any real arguments in its favour.

I don’t think that, as a university that is striving to become one of the top internationally accredited academic institutions worldwide, I feel that inviting the British Nationalists on to campus to our Union, a place that’s supposed to provide a good service and fair treatment for all students, we’d be denying that policy.

And to all of you weed-smoking, jobless, transient, liberal, bleeding-heart hippie scum who think that by barring them from campus we are somehow restricting “free speech,” to start with I will say a giant FUCK YOU, followed by a more coherent and logical argument.

The BNP have more than enough freedom. They can canvas people in the streets, they can go to people’s houses and talk racism at them for hours if the people are interested. But if they aren’t, why should their representatives in the Union permit and invite the BNP onto campus?

Furthermore, any of you who say that it would be a great opportunity to shout them down is heavily ignorant. Students generally aren’t motivated enough to get up and shout them down, and the few that might be will not want to, simply because it means they’d have to show up to the speech and put another tally on the total. If people were passionate enough to want to ask difficult questions and really put the speaker on the spot, they’d actively seek out the speakers they wish to protest against and do their whining there. The same goes for those people who actually want to hear what said speakers have to say. They are not needed here and they are not wanted here, and our students should not have to suffer being insulted.

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.