Something I started writing...

I was told by a friend recently that I should start a diary. Or rather... write a diary. In case I die horribly. Or some other ridiculous thing.

But I have this problem... once I start writing I can't stop. So what was going to be a diary entry turned into something I named... quite aptly I though... ramblings.

Now, as this isn't too private or personal or whatnot, and I need someone to proof read it and venture some opinions. So, looking around, I'm not willing to give it to my english teacher at school (as she would probably be able to guess too much about me if I did something like that.. something I try to avoid. Teacher's tend to loose documents to pupils fairly frequently and I have better things to do with my time than discourage bullies from exploiting some of the stuff in it.) but I thought that you Hexites might have too much time on your hands and not much better to do.

You've got all that time at work to fill up with things to do!


Soo.. here goes. This extract is taken from 2 days ago, when I first started it. It is edited, mostly to remove names and things like that, but you'll get some idea.


And yes, I'm planning on using this as coursework for my GCSE (or at least, using extracts from it for that) and then maybe seeing what happens in terms of my grades.

Meh.. I'm getting off of the point.





8th Sept. 2008.

Hello. Good Morning. If you're reading this it means I've publicised it somewhere. Or your a dirty pervert. Or prehaps both. Does it really matter at this moment in time? After all, your life, and my life, are certainly almost insignificant on a bigger scale. Take for example, on a relatively small scale, human kind.

As of the last count I saw there's about 6.6 billion people living on this planet. That's a very big number... about 6,600,000,000 to be precise. So that means that you are one six-billionth of all human life on earth. Relatively nothing. To compare it to say.. money.. it's like having a penny out of 66 million pounds (that's 1 cent to 66 million dollars to the americans.. although that's only worth half as much, much like the americans themselves I suppose... although it's open to debate naturally). In other words - nothing.

But lets take something a little bigger. Let's take your life, your soul - after all, we're talking about YOU here - and compare it to something a little wider. Maybe... all lifeforms on earth? Including bacteria, viruses, aliens, the wierd random person who barely counts as human and the other assorted things. Hazarding a guess, I'd say that there's prehaps 10-20 trillion life forms. You know that amount of money I mentioned earlier? Well now, humankind - as a race - is worth about a penny. I don't know exactly, it's not like I can be bothered to work it out all the time. Just because I CAN do it doesn't mean I have to.

However, is life really how your worth is measured? Surely it's not how much life you have, but how you have that life. Do you spend it all at home, sitting on a computer? Or do you not have a life and spend it all going round your mates, or simply jumping up and down on the spot and being stressed or other pointless activities. Analogous to paint drying, only not quite so interesting. In which case, your life isn't measured in money, or any other form but by your actions.. what you DO.

So, say I have two people. Both of them are average.

One of them is a lazy sod though. They spend their time watching Hollyoaks, perving on the Big Brother toilet block and watching other assorted, fairly rubbish, TV reality shows. In other words - a typical teenager. They kill a few people in doing this... maybe they don't realise it, but for all they know the TV could have been made in China, using illegal child workers in awful conditions where the death toll is in the hundreds. It's not like China will notice if a few hundred of it's billions disappear. So, without realising it, they're killing people. And then, they eat stuff, they use electricity, they cook food, they only recycle some of their waste. All of these things can have negative effects on the world.

And on the other hand, you've got the other average person. They would try to do the same as the first person but for one small problem.. the lack the basic necessities. Due to the peculiarties of the world and the fact that life hates us all, they lack a games console of any description, from a Wii to a PC to a XBOX to some sort of little handheld thingy... a DS or a Gameboy. Both of which are equally good, but some things are more equal than others! Of course, due to the fact they don't have anything along these lines they spend their life doing not very much. Maybe they read books, play chess, grow trees. Well, maybe not grow trees. Doesn't really fit in with the rest of it. Now these books, these chess sets. They were made in China to. They also caused death in the hundreds.

So are both people equally bad? The first person is having fun wheras the second person probably is some sort of loner with no friends and a better social life... when they actually get a friend to talk to. So the answer is yes? They're both heartless people with nothing better to do than kill innocent Chinese people! Or is the anwer no. Is one of them better than the other or is the other worse than the original? I don't know, you decide.

Now I've depressed us all, let's move onto something else.

The next topic I want to talk about is belief. Not just everyday belief in say.. Gods, football, dying, afterlife, underlife, blowing things to pieces. But rather belief in yourself. That whatever you want to do you can do. Within reason. Or is it?

The problem I have with most poeple and their attitude towards life is that they think that somethings are impossible. The most common example is flying.

I stole this unashamedly from HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy. I apologise for the Plagarism, but I hope that they realise that copying is the sincerest form of compliments and that it happens to be one of my favourite books.

"There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day and try it.
THe first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight and not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part - the missing - which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally.
It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it."

It then goes on to suggest that women in not much clothing, or no clothing, jump out at boys, wheras girls could be distracted by a concourse on philosophy. Or - my own personal thoughts on the matter on what might work- the chance to have a credit card which is automatically billed to the husband/boyfriends bank account with unlimited credit. That sort of thing.

So far, in experiementation, I've failed. Spectaculary. I presume this is because I have an amazing lack of scantily clad women and an also amazing capacity to fail to miss the ground. There must be a knack to it. Anyone else up for an attempt? If we chuck you off of a 100 storey building you'll have plenty of time to learn, and about 10 miliseconds of pain whilst the brain passes through the jelly of the body and splats against the pavement.

The song "He jumped without a parachute from 40,000 feet" comes to mind, although I doubt that many people will actually know the song.


Back to belief - I think that nothing is impossible. With the logical exception of doing nothing, which leads me to think that all dictionaries are wrong and nothing doesn't actually mean nothing but something very close to nothing meaning it does mean nothing and therefore doesn't.

If that makes sense to you well done! If not, don't worry. You can go and sit down for a while and put it out your mind. Read HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy. You'll enjoy it. It's got practically no sex in it, apart from pages 1-590 in my 590 page edition.

If you believed, strongly, firmly, without contradictions or doubts, that you would live forever, you would live forever. However, because - subconsciously - you are aware that living forever is a physical "impossiblity" you die. Simple enough. However - you COULD prolong your death. It's called cyrogenics. Its basically murder, but with every intention of bringing you back.

I heard that it was invented by a bunch of level 70 necromancers that escaped from World of Warcraft.

Which leads me onto life and death. Life support technology - or Death Support Technology, as it has been dubbed elsewhere - is becoming increasinly popular. Afterall, which selfish bugger doesn't want to cling to life for another few days?

Personally, I think that by the time I'm 70 or 80 and about to die I think I'll want to die. Obviously, if I don't think I'm ready to die.. say I'm 30... I'll be the selfish bugger. I want to live my life thank you very much! Suicide never really appealed to me though. Maybe I'll go down the Euthanasia route.

Y'know - I saw some total idiot mention that as "Youth in Asia." I'm not sure whether he was being racist by saying that Youths in Asia all like to assist suicide or whether he just can't tell the difference between what are basically hired assassins who you hire to kill yourself and a charity which tries to SAVE people. There is a difference!

For those that don't know, Euthanasia means you stop hanging onto life and let yourself go. Like suicide but with help. The relatives generally have to agree as well.. From a cynic point of view I'm guessing how rich you are plays an important part in how soon they sign on the dotted line and cut off your death prolongment machine.

Joking aside.. if you're some poor person that gets benefits I'm guessing they'll wait until just after you get one batch so as to get the most money. If you're Creosote (that's the greek guy who was really rich) or from Marothea I doubt that they'll wait. They'll be like "Yes, Granny would have wanted to go without pain" and in secret "Okay then.. how long till we can get the new Ferrari?"

Heartless! The lot of them! I bet that the life support stuff is Chinese as well!

However, China may not actually use child labour, and it's been a few months since I last saw anything made in China, and to be honest most of the illegal labour stuff about the Chinese people happens in Britain. Maybe it's just a carefully constructed propoganda assault?


The extract continues on to talk about something else, but I break the word limit. It also goes onto yesterday. If you really like this and decide you want more of it. Although I'll have to edit the days after this one a little more aggressively, mostly because it gets more personal and names are starting to be mentioned.

And if you read through all of that and got to here, please do comment and say what you think of it. I couldn't bear to see you get this far and then drop dead of exhaustion, boredom or other assorted things.

Quote:

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prehaps
americans
wierd

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It's a message.

Someone read the first two paragraphs!

Well.. I suppose it's a start.

was this friend a girl?

I like it, the ranting of it certainly appeals to me as it is what i do, but at people rather than writing it down as something constructive :P It isn't so much as a diary, so if i were you i'd just write stuff like that and compile it without wanting it to be anything else. Nice to see something grammatically correct aswell, not much of that about these days. If you want, PM me and send me the rest :) I'll be glad to help!

Does anyone else get those days when you just wanna liberally douse yourself with petrol and set yourself alight?

wait till after Christmas please Santa :(

Thank you for thinking of me and not yourself :confused:

your invincible you berk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by santa claus

Does anyone else get those days when you just wanna liberally douse yourself with petrol and set yourself alight?

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MadduckUK's avatar underneath that quote just looks perfect. :laugh: I know it's cold at the North Pole, even when you're busy making pressies for everyone, but I can assure you there are less drastic ways of warming yourself up. :) Alcohol for instance. :)

Mediaboy, I know I shouldn't be pedantic and it is kind of besides the point...but I just cant help myself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mediaboy

Hazarding a guess, I'd say that there's prehaps 10-20 trillion life forms.

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Life on Earth scales a lot further than that. Take that figure and add another 15 or so zero's on the end. :)

If you want to submit some of this for coursework you probably may not actually have to show any of it to your teacher yet. Just make sure diary extracts are the sort of thing that commonly get good marks if that is one of the main reasons for you doing this. You may even get pointers as to how to write it to the mark scheme. :)

Might make a good gcse coursework piece though. I only read the first couple of lines, but I might read more after the match, half time is almost over, and ENGLAND ARE 1-0 UP!!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MadduckUK

was this friend a girl?

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I would suspect so

Yes, the friend was a girl, but not a girlfriend.

The life forms were originally 10-20 trillion trillion, which would be about right. But I thought I might be being a little excessive. So I cut it down.


Adam - I have about 14-15 pages of this stuff (unedited. Edited it may be down to 7-8). You really want to volunteer to read through that much? If so then PM me. You'll have to give me an e-mail though, as otherwise I'll be taking up pages of this forum with it. Literally pages.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mediaboy

Yes, the friend was a girl, but not a girlfriend.

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i didnt read it...

:secret: she's trying to turn you into mediagirl, don't listen to her lies

That made me chuckle...

You'll get a mention in today's ramblings.

It's wierd actually.. I started it and then every day I seem to spending 3-4 hours writing more stuff in it. Is like :o

Coursework that I actually enjoy?
And I have this feeling that come the time that I have to hand in any work we're supposed to have done at home I won't be writing that much extra the day before it's due in.

Useful :P

Any more opinions on it? Anyone want any more?


Adam has already volunteered to read it all... I do have to wonder about the relative sanity of some people.

Bugger! Excuse ze French keyboard-induced double post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mediaboy

8th Sept. 2008.

Hello. Good Morning. If you're reading this it means I've publicised (Did you intend to say "published"?) it somewhere. Or your you're a dirty pervert. Or prehaps perhaps both. Does it really matter at this moment in time? After all, your life, and my life, are certainly almost insignificant on a bigger scale. Take for example, on a relatively small scale, human kind.

As of the last count I saw there's about 6.6 billion people living on this planet. That's a very big number... about 6,600,000,000 to be precise. So that means that you are one six-billionth of all human life on earth. Relatively nothing. To compare it to say.. money.. it's like having a penny out of 66 million pounds (that's 1 cent to 66 million dollars to the americans.. Americans, although that's only worth half as much, much like the americans themselves I suppose... although it's open to debate naturally). In other words - nothing.

But lets take something a little bigger. Let's take your life, your soul - after all, we're talking about YOU here - and compare it to something a little wider. Maybe... all lifeforms on earth? Including bacteria, viruses, aliens, the wierd weird random person who barely counts as human and the other assorted things. Hazarding a guess, I'd say that there's prehaps 10-20 trillion life forms. You know that amount of money I mentioned earlier? Well now, humankind - as a race - is worth about a penny. I don't know exactly, it's not like I can be bothered to work it out all the time. Just because I CAN do it doesn't mean I have to.

However, is life really how your worth is measured? Surely it's not how much life you have, but how you have that life. Do you spend it all at home, sitting on a computer? Or do you not have a life and spend it all going round your mates, or simply jumping up and down on the spot and being stressed or other pointless activities. Analogous to paint drying, only not quite so interesting. In which case, your life isn't measured in money, or any other form but by your actions.. what you DO.

So, say I have two people. Both of them are average.

One of them is a lazy sod though. They spend their time watching Hollyoaks, perving on the Big Brother toilet block and watching other assorted, fairly rubbish, TV reality shows. In other words - a typical teenager. They kill a few people in doing this... maybe they don't realise it, but for all they know the TV could have been made in China, using illegal child workers in awful conditions where the death toll is in the hundreds. It's not like China will notice if a few hundred of it's its* billions disappear. So, without realising it, they're killing people. And then, they eat stuff, they use electricity, they cook food, they only recycle some of their waste. All of these things can have negative effects on the world.

And on the other hand, you've got the other average person. They would try to do the same as the first person but for one small problem.. the lack the basic necessities. Due to the peculiarties peculiarities of the world and the fact that life hates us all, they lack a games console of any description, from a Wii to a PC to a XBOX to some sort of little handheld thingy... a DS or a Gameboy. Both of which are equally good, but some things are more equal than others! Of course, due to the fact they don't have anything along these lines they spend their life doing not very much. Maybe they read books, play chess, grow trees. Well, maybe not grow trees. Doesn't really fit in with the rest of it. Now these books, these chess sets. They were made in China to too. They also caused death in the hundreds.

So are both people equally bad? The first person is having fun wheras whereas the second person probably is some sort of loner with no friends and a better social life... when they actually get a friend to talk to. So the answer is yes? They're **both heartless people with nothing better to do than kill innocent Chinese people! Or is the anwer answer no. ? Is one of them better than the other or is the other worse than the original? I don't know, you decide.

Now I've depressed us all, let's move onto something else.

The next topic I want to talk about is belief. Not just everyday belief in say.. Gods gods ***, football, dying, afterlife, underlife, blowing things to pieces. But , but **** rather belief in yourself. That whatever you want to do you can do. Within reason. Or is it?

The problem I have with most poeple people and their attitude towards life is that they think that somethings some things are impossible. The most common example is flying.

I stole this unashamedly from HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy. I apologise for the Plagarismplagiarism, but I hope that they realise that copying is the sincerest form of compliments and that it happens to be one of my favourite books.

"There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Pick a nice day and try it.
THe The first part is easy.
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight and not to mind that it's going to hurt.
That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part - the missing - which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally.
It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it."

It then goes on to suggest that women in not much clothing, or no clothing, jump out at boys, wheras girls could be distracted by a concourse on philosophy. Or - my own personal thoughts on the matter on what might work- the chance to have a credit card which is automatically billed to the husband/boyfriends bank account with unlimited credit. That sort of thing.

So far, in experiementation experimentation, I've failed. Spectaculary ; spectacularly. I presume this is because I have an amazing lack of scantily clad women and an also amazing capacity to fail to miss the ground. There must be a knack to it. Anyone else up for an attempt? If we chuck you off of a 100 storey building you'll have plenty of time to learn, and about 10 miliseconds milliseconds of pain whilst the brain passes through the jelly of the body and splats against the pavement.

Note: Not so. In fact the shock waves pass through the blood causing massive shock waves in the brain and the equivalent of a thousand or so strokesthat pulverise the brain. Since the shock waves travel faster than nerve impulses, the nerve impulses never arrive, but I assume that you were aiming for hyperbole.

The song "He jumped without a parachute from 40,000 feet" comes to mind, although I doubt that many people will actually know the song.


Back to belief - I think that nothing is impossible. With the logical exception of doing nothing, which leads me to think that all dictionaries are wrong and nothing doesn't actually mean nothing but something very close to nothing meaning it does mean nothing and therefore doesn't.

If that makes sense to you well done! If not, don't worry. You can go and sit down for a while and put it out your mind. Read HitchHikers Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You'll enjoy it. It's got practically no sex in it, apart from pages 1-590 in my 590 page edition.

If you believed, strongly, firmly, without contradictions or doubts, that you would live forever, you would live forever. However, because - subconsciously - you are aware that living forever is a physical "impossiblity impossibility" you die. Simple enough. However - you COULD prolong your death. It's called cyrogenics cryogenics. Its basically murder, but with every intention of bringing you back.

I heard that it was invented by a bunch of level 70 necromancers that escaped from World of Warcraft.

Which leads me onto life and death. Life support technology - or Death Support Technology, as it has been dubbed elsewhere - is becoming increasinly increasingly popular. Afterall After all, which selfish bugger doesn't want to cling to life for another few days?

Personally, I think that by the time I'm 70 or 80 and about to die I think I'll want to die. Obviously, if I don't think I'm ready to die.. say I'm 30... I'll be the selfish bugger. I want to live my life thank you very much! Suicide never really appealed to me though. Maybe I'll go down the Euthanasia euthanasia route.

Y'know - I saw some total idiot mention that as "Youth in Asia." I'm not sure whether he was being racist by saying that Youths in Asia all like to assist suicide or whether he just can't tell the difference between what are basically hired assassins who you hire to kill yourself and a charity which tries to SAVE people. There is a difference!

For those that don't know, Euthanasia means you stop hanging onto life and let yourself go. Like suicide but with help. The relatives generally have to agree as well.. From a cynic cynical point of view I'm guessing how rich you are plays an important part in how soon they sign on the dotted line and cut off your death prolongment prolongation machine.

Joking aside.. if you're some poor person that gets benefits I'm guessing they'll wait until just after you get one batch so as to get the most money. If you're Creosote (I assume this is an intentional play on the name of Croesus) (that's the greek Greek guy who was really rich) or from Marothea (? Where's that then? Should I know?) I doubt that they'll wait. They'll be like "Yes, Granny would have wanted to go without pain" and in secret "Okay then.. how long till we can get the new Ferrari?"

Heartless! The lot of them! I bet that the life support stuff is Chinese as well!

However, China may not actually use child labour, and it's been a few months since I last saw anything made in China, and to be honest most of the illegal labour stuff about the Chinese people happens in Britain. Maybe it's just a carefully constructed propoganda propaganda assault?

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* "its" is the proper form of the possessive. It's means "it is".
** Think about using the ? as a comma here, dump the capitalisation.
*** "God" is a proper noun and is capitalised, "gods" is not a proper noun, and should not be capitalised.
**** You should not begin a sentence "But"; "but" is a continuation and works like a comma.

Also try running this through the MS Word spell checker. That might help. Perhaps you should even write it in MS Word so it will offer alternative punctuation.

I would also use the multiple full stops less.... and commas more.

Apart from that, keep on writing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mediaboy

Adam has already volunteered to read it all... I do have to wonder about the relative sanity of some people.

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Haha :P Everything is relative.

*continues rocking backwards and forwards*

I know everything is relative.

And for that very long post that was previous... If you haven't guessed I don't have a spell checker. Wonders of Wordpad!

However, thank you.. Things like that mean that I have to go back and edit the original (And that is a long long way away from an internet connection) to make it make sense, and also proves to me just how much I miss in first-time editing.

As for the grammatical things and use of terminology.

Publicised: "made known"
Published is probably the better of the two words to use in this case.

I always get its and it's mixed up.. it's one of the few words which I can never remember which rule applies.

Thank you for the note about the shock waves, but I like the idea of the pain more. I might correct it, maybe not.. It's one of those things which I should correct but which would start to make it sound more like an essay than something I'm doing for fun.

Creosus? Is that it? Meh.. I always think it is Cresote. Is being corrected now.

Marothea is the name of the planet in Hitch Hiker's where the richest men alive live. They earnt lots of money and are currently spending a few billion years in cyrogenic units to wait for the universal market to recover.

As for the punctuation... it's a matter of what I like to use. I like ellipses but I'm aware that it's not grammatically correct to use them. I'll moderate my usage in future posts.

As I'm bringing the whole thing down for Anubis I guess I'll put up a bit more for you to proof read :P

You pick up on the mistakes which'll lose me marks. Or just get me a reputation as a writer who can't always use the correct punctuation/terminology.

I'll try and proof read it aswell if you want, but I am reading for the content rather than spelling :P I am a grammar nazi, but not too extreme so will pick up on some and not others :P As for marks, you loose some marks for spelling/grammar, but not loads. 1 maybe 2, nowdays they mark it for content rather than full stops etc :P

They've nicknamed the spelling/grammar mark the "SPAG" mark.

That's the "Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar" mark.

It was recently classed as offensive for some reason.

:) because of SPAG BOL, the most offensive of all foods

New extract:

9th Sept. 2008.


Day two of my infernal ramblings. I started this entire thing as a result of being bored at 10 o'clock one evening and having nothing to do and not feeling particulary tired. However, it IS really relaxing and it also seems to quiet down some of my more worrisome fears. Maybe this is why people write a diary.

I was talking about diaries yesterday, to a fairly good, albeit very worrying, friend of mine. I wondered if she (yes... big wow.. I have female friends. It's called friendship, nothing special. Well, excepting in a few people where my feelings for them run in entirely different directions, but I'm getting off of the point) kept a diary. No.. I'm not a pervert that wants to read into peoples head.

Unlike you who obviously want to get into mine. Strange people.

However, I only wondered if she had one for the simple reason that I wanted to know if she thought it was a good idea for me to start one of my own.

Believe it or not... this is what happened. Yes, this. The thing that you're reading. My version of a diary!

Back on topic - she told me it was a good idea. But that she didn't know what I meant (I HAD said "computerized diary" I suppose.) About 10 minutes later, and several explanations of simplified and even simpler simplified words she fianlly got the idea. And then said it was a bad idea, and she didn't keep a diary because she couldn't be arsed. Charming! She needs to wash out her mouth. I'd suggest it but she'd probably murder me, call round for me or set her boyfriend (who also happens to be a friend of mine) on me. Although that WOULD be quite amusing I suppose.

Her boyfriend spends most his time on his comptuer playing games. They're made for each other I suppose. She's got the time and patience to waste away after someone playing games all the time and he's got the money to spend on her. Perfect!


On that same sort of vague topic.. I'll ramble about Gaming for a bit. Yes, that's got a capital letter on it on purpose. I'm not going insane and being unable to write simple words without accidentally hitting the shift key. You see, Gaming isn't just your everyday gaming. It's more important. It's a way of life. I found a gamer's creed on the internet the other day. "Destructoid's 10 Golden Rules of Gaming" they're called. They aren't serious, but they do capture the image of the stereotypical gamer fairly well.

For example;

Rule 1 reads: Gaming is more than a hobby. It is your entire life.
Which is basically true, with the exception of the other neccessities in life... like girls that are willing to wait to get attention with mobiles or rining phones... and parents that have food available to you.

Rule 7 or 8 (I can't remember which reads: The only purpose of a microphone is to play music down it. Especially everything by Rick Astley. All gamers love Rick Astley. You'll get an uber reputation if you play his music.
It DOES neglect to mention that Rick Astley is one of the few universally hated people for the Rick Rolls of the last twenty years and that most of his music will immediately get you a BAD reputation. It is a reputation of some sort, but it's a bit like having a reputation for sleeping around. One that some people want to avoid (girls) and that some people want to have (boys) and that all sensible people (practically no one) ignore.

Other Rules include how to insult people, what tactics NOT to use and so on. Basically it's a joke amongst gamers. Some people, for some bizzarre reason, take it seriously. I can't imagine why. It's not like all gamer's automatically follow them without realising it and that they are actually fairly accurate representations of what goes on. Of course it can't be! What made you think that?

Jokes aside, gaming is a serious buisness. I've been known to literally run home to get on a game before such and such a time so as to get 4 hours playing time in after school. Yes, it's sad... BUT some games are worth it. Take, for instance, the days when I was sadly addicted to Runescape. That online game that most people wouldn't touch with a very long stick and that everyone plays. That one.

I would run home to get home before four o'clock to get the necessary 5 hours training till half nine in (that's 9:30 for those that can't understand good English...) whilst still not bolting down my tea. Dinner. Evening Meal. In those 5 hours I would typically spend 4 hours of that training and about 1 hour running around in the "Wilderness" player killing (or pking as it is called amongst those that actually play the game.)

Player Killing was the only reason I actually played the game. Unlike other games where it's all skill, or other games where it's all luck, Player Killing strikes a balance between long-term skill, short-term skill, luck and how fast you can run away from clans who have more people on their side. For instance, I had to consider things like how people react when I pull out the dread 2H (a slower hitting weapon that needs 2 hands but that hits harder) or when I turned on my prayer so that they couldn't hurt me.

Generally speaking, they didn't like it. They'd run off. Occasionally they'd show a brain and do something different, but it was unlikely that I'd ever get anything from doing it. Or at least, enough to make a profit. I could just about break even normally.

For example, I'd kill some guy and get a nice suit of armour worth.. say... 300,000 gold pieces. I'd run back and sell it, and on the next trip I'd die, losing MY armour worth 300,000 and having to replace it with what I just made from selling the armour I got from the last trip. It's the rules of logic.. it can't be made profitable for everyone. But if you PK long enough, getting enough breaking evens you can nudge into the realms of money making with a few lucky kills.. as in - the other person's computer is so awful that they lag and therefore just had to sit watching you slaughter their virtual selfs whilst being unable to do anything about it.

So you ask, if I hardly ever made money, why did I actually bother withthe whole thing?

The answer is quite simple. It was fun. Addictive, simplistic fun. I didn't have to worry about how I felt about this girl and that girl and the other girl and no one cares about how old you are or how tall you are, or indeed - very little about anything but how you act towards other players.

It means that I can drop most of the inhibitions I put upon myself and just act myself.. something I find myself sadly unable to do in the real world. It's depressing. That is.. it's depressing to think of it like that. It's much better to think that I trust the online world to totally not care about myself and therefore act better. Although that COULD be seen badly I suppose. Lose lose situation for me in this scenario, so I'll move swiftly on.

But I hear some people shouting at me. "What about all those strategy games you play? Aren't they all skill based?" The answer, believe it or not, is yes. But there I have skill. I can play strategy games. Until 3 in the morning if necessary, although I DO like my sleep. And, of course, I like strategy games... I don't mind practising and practising until I can play at a semi-decent level where there's more than enough things to distract me and to make me get involved in the game unlike in some games where I basically just have to sit back and watch my digital world get on with playing itself.

Games like that suck majorly I'm afraid. Dawn of War is a good game. Buy it if you don't have it, if you do have it get expansion packs. If you have all the expansion packs already you're a sad sad person. Welcome to the world of gaming.

Continuation:

ICT GCSE.... One of those compulsory subjects that you drop as soon as possible. Reading from the sheet I have to do... word for word:

"AOW1 File Management

1 Create two subfolders inside of a main folder
2 Show Files in an appropiate place inside of a subfolder
3 Show that you can delete move copy files
3. Show that you can delte move copy folders...

etc."

The list goes on for two pages. There's about 60-70 bulletpoints. As someone I know put it "Well here's the next couple of hours work. What we doing after that?"

The answer, believe it or not, is that the ticklist was an entire years work. A year of sitting around and doing nothing. Or doing very little. And I'll probably get more detentions in this than in anything else.

Joking aside, my LITTLE sister (the 9 year old that is also refferred to as "the pet" or "the chaperone" depending on what she is doing at the time) could do this. And pass with better marks than the majority of my class. I mean.. they really have no clue. We're on windows XP... one of the most sold Operating Systems in the WORLD (Of course, I'm basing this on no evidence whatsoever, so I could be wrong).. and no one knows how to use it. The TEACHER doesn't know how to use it.

How can you teach a subject which you know nothing about? I mean.. seriously... I could take an attentive class through about 2 units in the time it took her to take us through how to take a screenshot. I could take one person through the entirity of this years work in about 2 or 3 hours. I will, however, have to prove this before I go any further.
If you've read this far you really must have nothing better to do with your time.

I like the way you suggest we can all drop dead of boredom and then b0redom thanks Clunk in the following post...

probably saved a few lives there Clunk!

Mediaboy, I haven't read all of it, but how are you intending to use this as coursework? I'm presuming you mean English? It's been a while since I did my GCSEs but don't you usually have to analyse a set text, to fulfill certain assessment objectives for basic writing ability, contextual knowledge and understanding of content? I remember writing a short story for English Lang, but that was more to test if you could structure a peice of writing properly.

From the look of things, you should definately start a blog, although I think you could refine your writing a little in terms of structure. I know they are cathartic 'ramblings' but the stream-of-conciousness becomes difficult to read, especially considering the length of your extracts. Also, not having a spell checker is no excuse for bad spelling, especially if you intend to use this as coursework! :P

You should start a blog :D

I can nick extracts from it to use as coursework.

Although my teacher only calls it coursework; I am beginning to have doubts that she means actual coursework as opposed to homework dressed up in a fancy name to make us do it and not stress out too much. However, I'll keep it up even if she has been lying to us all for the last 13 days, which as she's a teacher is extremely likely, as it's good practise in terms of "establishing a sense of style" as she put it.


How would you suggest I refine my writing? You mean follow logically on from one topic onto another? It doesn't help that I'm cutting out various parts of this as I post it. If I was to post all of it it might make more sense.

Find me somewhere to start a blog and I'll start one... like I said... writing is always good.

Did you mean a blog on these forums? Will the mods and fellow Hexites put up with that?

Whoa, hard to see where the Hitch hikers quote starts and ends. It's all written in the same way, but done well. When I think of the person who is saying these words, in my head they speak fast.
And uuurrggghhhh, makes my head go

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blo...003-745492.jpg

For those that want to see the full thing and not just extracts:

Look here as I took Virtual Monkey's idea and used it.

The link leads to a blogging site, where you can view all of it, personal and impersonal and the ramblings.

Not got today's up there yet, I'm still writing it. I tend to spend hours rambling on... On the plus side I no longer do it to all my friends. Yeah! They're fairly pleased.

For those whom the link doesn't work: theteenramblings.blogspot.com