If you buy a hedge trimmer, it’s probably covered in stickers telling you not to shove your digits, (or any other protruding parts), into the moving sharp bit of it. It may seem like common sense but if they’ve put the sticker on it, someone’s fingers will have become detached, which means that things that are obviously dangerous, still need warnings to make sure that average-joe-retard can still tie his shoe laces.

Cigarettes, while not as obviously dangerous (I mean, who would’ve thought that inhaling smoke twenty to forty times a day was bad for you), significantly increase the risk of developing cancer and various other debilitating ailments. Since those little sticks of carbon monoxide poisoning don’t cause immediate death and blood loss, they really do need warnings.

When it comes to things that aren’t dangerous, doing nothing is top of the list. Sitting still in an empty room isn’t going to cause you any harm, unless you do it indefinitely, because then you’ll die of thirst.

Doing nothing can often be the most dangerous and risky thing you can do, if you’re in the middle of the road with a car coming towards you the best thing you can do is get the hell out of the way and the worst is to stand still. That’s obvious, we all know what happens when a car hits someone: they die. The same thinking comes into play if you feel sharp pains in your left arm and chest. Sitting there and waiting it out is what most people call a very bad idea, but getting yourself down to your local A&E by some means, is widely accepted to be a good idea.

Medicine is good because it stops people from dying. During the 20th century, 300 to 500 million people died because of smallpox, with many more being seriously scarred and blinded. Do you know how many people die now because of smallpox? None. With population growth as it is now that’s probably a billion lives saved by that vaccination alone. Yet some fucking nut-jobs argue that vaccinations are bad, “dangerous”, “unnatural”, cause autism and are there only as a cash cow for ‘Big Pharma’. This is false and very dangerous; with powerful idiots spreading false information on this subject, parents will refrain from vaccinating their children because they’ve been told it’s bad for them. This is tantamount to child abuse; by doing so they put their children’s lives at risk and the lives of many other children at risk through weakened herd immunity. Children will die because of these people.

Some people may say that not taking vaccinations is one thing, but that things like homeopathy and various other flavours of alternative medicine are harmless. Well, they’d be partly right and also at the same time completely wrong. Under the government of Thabo Mbeki in South Africa it is estimated that 365,000 people died due to his insistence that HIV/AIDS could be treated better through beetroot, garlic and lemon oil than antiretroviral drugs, which have been proven to significantly slow down the progress of HIV. The fact that you can’t overdose on homeopathic and alternative medicine is vastly outweighed by the fact that it doesn’t work.

It seems as if alternative ‘medicine’ is gaining popularity in the modern world, possibly from a mistrust of authority and science after how close we all got to being wiped out in the cold war. It’s good to be sceptical and distrust authority, but you do have to accept evidence that proves things one way or another. It’s not good to have your views set against something and keeping them that way, even with a torrent of evidence against you.

Tim Minchin said "You know what they call 'alternative medicine' that’s been proved to work? Medicine." People seem to think that because something is natural it’s better for you but quite often it can be worse. This is why I propose that alternative ‘medicine’ should carry massive warning stickers stating that it’s no more effective than a placebo, because it may not do any harm in trying to treat the common cold but if someone takes it instead of cancer or HIV drugs people will die.

For some reason I always end up writing on buses and with the digital age I can spawn my bullshit without the use of a parchment and quill. Some of the things I do when bored are to listen to music that’s far too loud and playing death worm. I'm fridge cool baby.

I feel that boredom makes you need to do little tasks, things of no real importance. I'll get bored during conversations. I’ll get bored enough to start conversations, pointless small talk. “How was your weekend? Oh really? Blah blah blah.” as time melts away.

With our generation we no longer need others to entertain us. The headphones go in and a bubble forms, cutting us off from the world, makes us blissfully unaware of oncoming traffic. Splatter goes the head against the windshield of a transit, you’re now a smeared mess of tangled limbs and veins, but you had some “Banging tunes on bro”. Wandering around with music is one of the simple joys we have.

But I draw the line at phones. I use phones, yeah, sure. Texting and calling is as vital as inhaling oxygen and ingesting food. Apparently. But not when someone’s stood there, that’s rude. “Oh yeah sorry but there’s someone more important to talk to that isn't here, now talk to the top of my head and ill grunt in agreement.”

Like many of these chunks of word faeces I’m being hypocritical. I'm aware that it goes against the etiquette of the situation, but I still text when I'm with people. I won’t answer phones though: that is just so cringe worthily awkward I’d rather leave it ringing on the table. Talk to a friend and ignore the vibrating elephant in the room.

That’s unless you continue to text, perhaps apologising to a previous less thought out text. Maybe you said something you shouldn't. Maybe not. Just make sure that you try and refrain from doing this when with a group of friends, just as a word of warning. I did this recently and my phone was submerged in alcohol. Like a person it slowly lost control and ceased to function. Unlike a person though, it did not sober up in the morning: it just lay there, dead.

The Devil makes work for idle hands, but idle brains are never considered. If hands have nothing in them then the phone will be reached for. “I'm just checking my emails”, “I'm just sending a text”, “Oh, seen this on Facebook...” Behind this lies a message. “You’re boring me you, you’re so utterly and unbelievably dull. I'd rather text myself than talk to you. It’s the only way I can guarantee an intelligent conversation.”

I carry a Phone and an mp3 player with me almost everywhere I go, and they’re practically identical, both are mixtures of glass, plastic and metal. They both have slabs of screen that change colour and pattern as you touch them, and that’s fantastic. It’s modern and futuristic to have a dooh-dah that doesn’t go click, clunk or snap when you manipulate it. As minority report-y and “cool” as that is, there’s something deeply satisfying about flicking a switch and hearing a satisfying clunk when you do so. 

Maybe its my neanderthal brain latching on to a primal urge for haptic feedback when I use a tool or me being a geek-hipster. Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to prod at glass slabs to get something done, it’s a great way to give visual feedback (and play angry birds), but I feel somehow disconnected from the whole experience. Like I’m trying to interact with something from behind a glass case. This is where the old stuff comes in, I have fond memories of picking the Wallace and Gromit tape from the shelf, sliding it into the VCR, pressing the play button to hear a whirr and see the screen go from blank. It’s just not the same pointing my mouse over to a place on the screen and hitting play.

Apple is the major culprit when it comes to to de-tactileifcation, product after product comes out from the Chinese sweatshops with fewer and fewer buttons. For me it’s not a use-ability thing, it’s emotional (even though having buttons does make things easier to use in the dark). I grew up (and still have much growing up to do) in the first generation to have widespread access to the Internet and as such probably the last generation to be able to program a video recorder to tape the latest episode of blue-peter. I span the analogue-digital divide.

I’m not saying that it was better “back then”, “back then” people got typhoid, had the three day week and had to actually talk to real people in real life. I’m just stating that the connection i feel with whats being churned out is less as everything seems to be turning into emotionless indistinguishable monoliths of boringness. 

Just for once, please someone make a slidey metal thing that does something cool, rather than a horrible lump of plastic and mediocrity. Who knows, maybe the loss of tactile interaction with technology is the price we have to pay for being able to find pictures of cats with silly captions on them from our phones.

Travel broadens the mind, waist and sense of inadequacy. Such a large world, and the more you see the smaller you feel. It’s like going up in an elevator in a skyscraper: the land spreads out beneath, ever expanding. Your own pointlessness becomes more and more apparent. You could fart, die, or both, and millions of your fellow people would be none the wiser. Another bag of oxygen gives up and time ticks on.

I’m not going to bleat on about my holiday, mainly because it would be both dull to write and to read. If you’re not directly affected by my excursion why read about it? Exactly, so I won’t bother. I think that’s the reason I can’t read post cards, its hard to read the hastily scrawled scribblings through the fog of smugness which comes with such a piece of writing. It was good, and I’ll leave it there.

So anyway, being robbed. That’s right, I’ve witnessed robbing once more. It's the third first hand experience of live theft. We had a few relatively rob free days in Barcelona, the city of paella and cruelty to animals (I say “relatively rob free”, there was an attempt on the subway, but a quick kick backwards put the stop to that).

I’m always tempted fill my pockets with custard and mousetraps in situations such as these. But unfortunately I don't live in a Warner Brother cartoon.

On the last tube of the holiday my dad and I walked towards the pass gate. If you have not seen them, imagine walking through the width of your chair, perhaps a metre or so. Dad went first (at this point I should mention that we were both carrying rather large bags, which made us incredibly targetable, shorts and shades didn't help either).

So Dad walked through, then out of nowhere some lank haired fuckwit walked towards him blocking his path. Two similarly styled blokes barged me out of the way and had him caught in the middle. I assumed these two tanned tits where only assisting top c*nt, leader of the gang. There was a scuffle and I could see what was occurring. I saw my chance to act, and this is what I did....

These narrow gates are roughly elbow height so I leapt upwards, eyes fixed on T.C., his glistening gel strewn hair a shiny target for my foot. I swung my leg backwards, heavily weighted with hiking boots my foot arched forwards heels blazing. I delivered a full blow to his face. Like a sack of spuds he fell dragging his mucus and blood drenched face down.

The goons stared at me briefly distracted from their pickpocketing; Dad grabbed a loose key from his pocket and crammed it into one’s ear, unlocking an opportunity for me to take out his thieving pal. Trying to help his writhing friends he was distracted and I took the opportunity to heel kick his neck. He fell onto his friend in a Jenga of loose limbs.

By this point T.C. Had passed out and was no longer a problem, we got an arm and leg each and dragged him over to the body pile. Lining up the bodies on top of each other I stomped on their three lifeless necks, three clicks ending the incident. We picked up our bags and walked away. Four bloody wheel tracks behind us.

Well those were my thoughts anyhow; in reality I froze and stood there, watching my helpless Dad. Perspex gates preventing me from helping him. I could have acted, it would have been easy to block their path as they passed, but they could have had knives or anything. They took about 10 pounds of actual currency then we dawdled off defeated.

Both pumped up with suppressed aggression, the next person to try and mug us would be sorry. Sorry that we stood still at them as they stole our possessions, that'd teach them. You think you could handle it, but you can't. They only managed to steal 10 euros and I got a post out of it. I win. In the most feeble way possible.

Last week, as you may have noticed, I did not have any writing flung like faeces onto the monkey enclosure wall of this website. Instead the site’s other (and arguably better) writer filled the void for me. I would apologize for the absence of my post, but with respect, we did not get any complaints. So why did I not post anything on here? For what reason? Ay? Ay?! Well, I'm afraid I’ve recently fallen into the dark crevice of procrastination.

I am now on my tenth day of procrastination and still going strong. The problem with putting everything off is eventually you end up with a huge pile of things that need doing. Once you've snow ploughed everything up, eventually it can’t be pushed any longer, and you must do everything. Now. This second. At the moment, this is very personal to my situation; I have a ton of Photography and Graphic Design work to do. And by ‘Graphic Design’ I mean ‘a bung load of cutting and sticking to no real end’. These two main things have been pushed into the distance and every time they even come close to being started I replace them with something altogether more interesting.

Suddenly with this mind-set, everything becomes more interesting, even really boring things; meaningless tasks fill your time. Today, for example, I had to write this post. That was my task of the day and another distraction from doing some actual work. The time is now 9:20pm and I have been writing for about three hours and this is as far as I have got. I waste time and am very complacent at present. The “Yeah, that’ll do.” attitude is really starting to come into play, so apologies for this seemingly pointless post.

So, “What have you been doing with your time?” I hear you cry. Well, not ‘cry’, no sound is really audible from here at my keyboard. Well, like many of you I’m enjoying the Easter break, celebrating the chocolate egg laying J-man. I have been enjoying lying in bed till late and being even less productive for the rest of the day. I’ve re-ordered some books, started writing my own, bought pointless things, and had even more pointless conversations. My shoes are clean, my carpet’s been hoovered bald and I’ve learnt to make better pancakes. I've drunk 20 cans of Dr. Pepper and my chair’s now moulded to the shape of my arse.

Everything comes before work and I like it that way, having work to do makes everything else a more favourable option. The laundry is a holiday away from essays. Those murders that need committing sparkle and distract you from the photos you need to take or notes you need to write. You appreciate your life like a dwarf fetishist: you can’t get enough of the small things.

I like to see time as a large doodle pad hiding behind the important tasks I have to do. I try to do work but sometimes I’d rather push everything aside and draw pictures of cocks. 

Drugs are a problem. There's no getting around that and because we can't un-invent them we have to deal with this in the best way possible. Throughout the 20th century we saw drugs as a matter for our justice systems to deal with, we banned the substances we found harmful and threw anyone who so much as touched them behind bars. 

This method of control is great for things where the harm it would cause is obvious and clear cut, such as nuclear weapons, because why on earth would a regular citizen require a doomsday device. You can put me firmly in the prohibition of nuclear weaponry for citizens camp. Drugs however are more complex, there are up-sides and down sides to drugs, there are different reasons why people take them, there are different types and there are different people. People from all walks of life use drugs be it high-powered bankers or homeless tramps. The point I am trying to get at is that a helluva lot of people engage with drugs on a regular basis.

Drugs now are illegal, cheap, popular, easily accessible and unregulated. Many people right now use illegal drugs on a regular basis, this means that the prohibition obviously isn't stopping the flow and use. All that is happening is that people subverting the law, and not paying tax are making very real money form an illicit trade. This trade has no governing body and no trading standards, meaning that these criminals are able to sell what ever they want in guise of a drug without any repercussions. That it is now easier for a 14 year old to buy a bag of marijuana than a bottle of vodka is a damning tale of how prohibition isn't working and how regulation works well.

All drugs are not created equal, drugs like cannabis are widely accepted to do little harm, whereas substances such as heroin are highly physically addictive and dangerous. Personally i think we should decriminalize possession of all drugs and instead regulate the sale of the softer drugs in a similar way to alcohol and tobacco, and treat the use of harder drugs like cocaine and heroin as a health problem to be dealt with by the NHS. 

Drugs are seen as an escape from regular life by most people be it alcohol, canabis or heroin, people use these to lighten the load of life. The fact that people are turning to drugs in the first place is a major problem that has been mostly overlooked by government after government. We need to offer more help to people in tough situations to prevent them from resorting to substance abuse of any type in the first place. Treating this problem as a criminal problem only makes the problem worse by pushing those who are the most vulnerable in society in a corner.

Countries like Portugal have decriminalized drugs and have since seen the lowest usage rates in europe. I personally do not aggree with prohibition from a libertarian stand point of that people should be able to do anything to themselves that they wish and maybe i'm just grasping for arguments to support this, but surely it's time for a fresh look at the rules. Britain has a drug problem and it's not getting better.

Part of me fucking loves compromise and another part hates them more than a hipster hates other hipsters, so through a mental battle I have come to a compromise on compromise. This is my personal compromise apathy. I wish everyone shared this kind of view, it seems as if people see an average of extremes is the best choice for many situations now. I don't know whether this is a recent development, due to me having not watched people that long in the big scale of things or if this is as old as civilization itself. 

One of the biggest culprits for these false compromises is 24 hour news, they roll in "experts" any time anything remotely interesting happens. "New missing link fossil found in Sub-Saharan Africa" Let's roll in Proffesor Dawkins and Dave the preacher from the high street who wears a sandwich board. Thees morons who run T.V. stations think that if you take any two differing view-points from opposite ends of the spectrum that you end up with a balanced discussion. This is not the case, you see in this case one side is backed by masses of peer-reviewed scientific evidence and a man who has dedicated his life to researching this field, and the other by a guy who spends his weekends shouting from a several thousand year old book about a cosmic jewish zombie. 

Just the other day the BBC had a well respected nuclear Physicist who researched the the field of nuclear energy and a Chemist/activist with two badly received (and researched) books about radiation. They were discussing the terrible tsunami and earthquake in japan and it's damage to a nuclear power station. The problem here isn't obvious at first glance, but it's there, you see the Chemist is a member of the green party and an environmentalist, the physicist however is not a member of a political party and would rather let the evidence do the talking. Putting aside that the physicist will likely know more about the field in question, there is a clear mismatch here. The chemist's aim will likely be to further his political opinions, and the physicist to speak about evidence and facts. As I thought the physicist offered a balanced view of the risks involved, and the chemist an ill informed, sensationalist, fear-mongering growl of gibberish. 

People need to understand that the middle ground isn't always the best decision, and that if you get some people together and "talk things out" you might end up with a solution to a problem that neither solves the problem nor pleases anyone. You wouldn't work out a half way deal on genocide or slavery would you? With the news it seems that the producers would rather have a heated interplay of shouts and abuse for entertainment's sake with a veneer balance rather than a real discussion which gives people the correct information to make their own decisions. Just because you're a spineless turd who doesn't know what they're doing, doesn't mean you have to cause a fight to convince people you know what you're doing. The moral of the story is stick to what you know, and the answer isn't always in the middle.  

Shooting an innocent man, locking a child in a cool box, setting a dog on fire, and stealing a stapler. We can all agree that these things are very naughty indeed, just on different levels. Some are arrestable offences, others are inconvenient and some are just doggone funny. I'll let you decide which is which. 

Now, what I'm trying to get at here is the ‘sense’ of being naughty you have pummeled into you from an early age, it kind of makes sense. Steal an apple as a child and that's a good shouting at and depending if your folks take on the ‘To whack or not to whack’ argument, a smacked arse. I never did steal any more apples.

At that age it's awful, you think “My god, if that's what I get for stealing the apple where will a hate crime get me? A kick to the groin and no desert?” Obviously you know the inner workings of the police force at that point, because of all the accurate cops ‘n’ robbers games you have been playing.

It's the level of perspective I have now that makes me look back and laugh at how terrified I was of trivial childish things. Being grounded for a bad parents evening, Getting shouted at in a super Market for making a scene, petty theft from school. At the time you were scared, but in the long run it matters not one jot, it's hilarious and if I were to be put back in that situation again I’d burst with laughter.

The conviction of your parents and teachers is only powerful because of the hold they had on your life. Shout at me now for stealing a pen I'd laugh in your face, shout then and I'd wee. It’s just the way you deal with things as you get older. The slight fear is still there, but it's subtle. It’s more about what people will think than how you will be punished, unless you’re out committing murders.

So often is the case that the punishment does not fit the crime. Being late at college is not worthy of being shouted at, at the time it may be an inconvenience, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. Nobody died, the day won’t be changed, you’re just slightly late. Everything said to you has to be taken with a pinch (if not a heaped teaspoon) of salt.

Because it doesn't really matter, the stolen pens didn't matter, that guy you called a cunt doesn't matter, and back-chatting your boss doesn't matter. Time ticks merrily on, you just have to grin and take it, it’s easy to accept a little defeat then explain how pointless it all is. The world is a large place, some say big in fact and your little speck of life will not have a massive impact. Don't say that to them mind, it's too complicated, just stick with the spiel.

Yes Sir,

No Sir,

Three bloody bags full Sir.

It's 2011; one year away from the apocalypse, if brain dead morons are to be believed, and our level of technological advancement is nowhere near what we were promised. In Back to the Future we saw Doc Brown arrive from 2015 in a flying DeLorean, and in 1985 this probably didn't seem too far-fetched.

Why would that be? Well, over the few decades before Marty McFly went back in time and almost slept with his mother, the rate at which the human race had been doing cool stuff had skyrocketed. In 1944 we hadn't even beaten Hitler yet, plate tectonics wasn't a widely accepted theory and we were a whole year away from the dropping of the atomic bomb. Had you told the average person that within 25 years there would be men on the Moon, they'd think you a little crazy. 

By 1969 the double helix model of DNA had been discovered, we had transistors in pretty much everything, and most importantly we had arrived on the Moon. With progress like this it was no wonder that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke expected us to have artificial intelligence beyond the level of us mere meat bags and for us to be exploring (and regularly visiting) the outer reaches of our solar system, by ten years ago.

Twenty-six years on from Back to the Future, and just how far have we come? We don't have shoes that do themselves up and we most definitely don't have flying cars, but hey, we've got 4 years to get this stuff. I do however have a device, about the size of a cassette, in my right pocket, which I can use to find information out about almost anything in an instant almost anywhere. This is an amazing technological leap that has come about over the last few years, but it's not quite a trip to Mars is it? Practically un-restricted free speech, accessible almost anywhere in the world is great and all, but I want to go to space.

We went to the Moon almost 42 years ago, we traveled almost 240,000 miles back then, I'm sure we could manage another 78 million miles now, but we won't. The horrible truth is that it's just not profitable to go to Mars, heck it wasn't really a financially sound idea to go to the Moon back in the 60s. So why did we go? To put it bluntly, the Yanks were in a pissing contest with the "Commies" and wanted to show that they could pee the furthest, 240,000 miles to be exact.

The only reason we have the Internet now is that some bright-sparks figured out ways to make money from it, and until someone manages to do that for space travel we're stuck here. John F. Kennedy said we were going to the Moon "... not because it's easy, but because it's hard". Progress has seemingly ground to a halt because we are now doing things because it lines our pockets, not because it's bleeding awesome. So go out there and do something because it's hard, because I don't want to be trapped on this hover-carless hellhole for much longer.

Dealing with the passing of time is just another thing that we all must deal with. From birth till death and beyond. Even as a corpse, time is still passing by, it’s just measured not in birthdays but how much more you look like a putrid apple lying in the sun.

When you’re 10 years old, a year is an awfully long time; it is basically 10% of your existence. When you’re 20, it’s 5% and when you’re 40 it’s 2.5% and when you’re 80 you piss yourself at dinner parties.

Little increments of time tick by till the end. Some of which important, others not so much. Some that seemed important a while back are now trivial. You did not enjoy being with that person as much as this Mars bar. But at the time no amount of confectionery could drag you away from whomever it was at the time. If I were to go back I’d flick myself in the nuts a lot. Not that I’m bitter.

The reason I bring up the subject of time is because tomorrow is the 2nd year anniversary of me writing articles for this site, not that I’m expecting any flowers. So much rage has been pummeled into these passages that I’m now typing with two bloody elbow stumps; which may explain some of the terrible spelling (before the Joe Green treatment).

As you may have noticed, my 18th birthday passed by without a whimper. The reason for this is I feel birthdays are not really an achievement. It’s just a celebration of not yet dying.

“Now shh cut the dry cake and smile.”

With this anniversary, it is almost an achievement. It’s not like a gold medal at the Olympics, more like throwing M&M’s in the air and trying to catch them in your mouth. Some hit, some miss. But it is still something reasonably amusing to fill your time with.

So this site may have been renamed and undergone numerous changes and renovations, but it is still a pillar to stand on and shout, not at you, at the world and all the silly little things that go on.

Here’s to another year of this shit.