loy·al·ty
[loi-uh l-tee]
–noun, plural -ties.
1. the state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.
2. faithful adherence to a sovereign, government, leader, cause, etc.
3. an example or instance of faithfulness, adherence, or the like: a man with fierce loyalties.
Whenever I watch Jersey Shore, I’m always impressed by how fiercely they all seem to have each others’ backs. Out of everything to observe I suppose this is possibly the least significant – why not dwell on their inexplicable capability to drown themselves in booze, pass out in bed and still get up to work out the next day? Or their seemingly endless strings of skanky men and women being bought in and kicked out of the ‘communal smush room’ for one night? But having pretty much got past all these wonders by the first few episodes, I’ve started to have ulterior observations. On the whole, if someone’s your friend, then they’re your friend and that’s the end of it. They’ll believe what you say, have your back in a confrontation and probably even drag you home when you’re messy. At times I’ve found myself wistfully thinking ‘if only my own friendships were that simple’.
It’s hard to find loyal friends, ones that will listen to and believe your side of a story. It’s not a needle in a haystack, it’s worse. And what’s worse is that when you think you’ve sought out someone who’s got your back, it turns out they couldn’t give less of a crap about what you have to say. It’s like finding the perfect heels in the January sales - only to find when you wear them out, the strap breaks. I begin to wonder sometimes if I was born with a stamp on my head saying ‘don’t believe anything I say’ when I was born, only it can’t be seen unless I’m really trying to get my point across. Maybe that would explain why some people are prepared to accept the drivel, lies and nonsensical rubbish spewed into their ears by others who simply do not know what they’re talking about.
I guess it just bothers me when I hear people talking crap and not sticking up for my views because I just automatically assume that it’s part of the package. If you’re going to be someone’s friend, be loyal to them. Have their fucking back. Even if you can’t do that, have the fucking lenience to sit there whilst they speak their mind. And if you can’t do that, have the audacity to admit you’ve not got the tolerance, loyalty or reliability to be their friend.
Sorry if this blog has depressed you. Here is an adorable video to bring up your mood:
Add a pinch of praise, a dash of humour, a cup of sarcasm and two sugars.
07 January 2011
16 December 2010
The Ghost of Christmas Failure
2010 seems to have a dire lack of the usual Christmas mania. Even though the usual Christmas street lights are twinkling around town, Starbucks are serving their delicious Gingerbread lattes and the standard array of omnipresent Christmas carols has arrived, somehow, Christmas hasn’t quite hit me yet. To me, Christmas time means too much food, a whole lot of wrapping paper, a sprinkling of arguments and well meaning but not always successful family get-togethers. But thus far I’ve been spared from any Christmas feelings, and my advent calendar has practically become a countdown till doomsday.
Tackling the Christmas tree is usually a matter of civil war. Most of our tinsel looks like it’s been through the wars these days and my sister and I never fail to have a vicious argument about the colour scheme (God forbid we ever have another painfully tacky blue-and-white year…if we do, she’s getting bitten). The problem with sharing the decoration of the Christmas tree is it’s such a personal thing, and if neither person gets what they really want out of it, they’ll resent the damned thing until January when it gets lobbed out the door. After the saggy tinsel and bashed up baubles have been strategically placed by either party, our dear old dad will come lumbering in to attempt to fix the ever-faulty Christmas lights, which results in another stupid argument and someone storming off, stamping on a bulb in their dramatic exit. This year I was free to decorate the tree as I wished, but it was a sad a solitary event. I never really thought my sister would get old enough to actually get her own house, as in my eyes she will always be a gawky sixteen-year-old, and never a university graduate with a full-time job. So it was a lonesome and hurried task in a bid to make our house ‘festive’, and certainly not a ‘Christmassy’ process.
Presents are another minefield. I’m usually one of those over-prepared Christmas fanatics who have got every ribbon and bow down to perfection by late November, but this year I’m down the river without a paddle and have no gift ideas. Usually, I spend hours scrutinising over which bulky M&S jumper would look better on my dad, he always shakes, pokes and smells his presents before opening them, and dully takes a stab at what he thinks the gift is. My brother usually uses the same vacant expression for every gift and says ‘ooh’. My sister and mum have pretty much perfected the art of faking excitement at crappy gifts. I think the only time I have ever witness my mother show disappointment towards a Christmas present was the time my dad bought her a size 20 dressing gown. But alas, this year I’ve had little time or inspiration to shop, other than a ‘Fishing With Ferrets!’ calendar which I expect my mother to fawn over for the rest of her life.
My lack of Christmas festivities might have something to do with my college’s dire lack of decoration, or in fact any signs that it’s Christmas time at all. I’ve not seen a glimpse of tinsel, a flicker of fairy lights or a dusting of glitter at all. It makes me reminisce over my Secondary School days of wearing elf hats and belting out Christmas carols in our weird annual nativity assemblies. I can’t blame it all on Strode’s being their Scrooge-y selves though; the weather’s also played its part. My idea of snow as a symbol of Christmas and festivities has completely gone out the window – it plagues us, prevents us, and seeing as no one will make a snowman with me, depresses me.
With only a few days of college left, I’ll be glad to have some time off, and hopefully I can brainwash myself into feeling more festive through constant carol singing and mince pie making sessions. As for the rest of you, I hope you’re not dreading the 25th as much as me. So happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Tackling the Christmas tree is usually a matter of civil war. Most of our tinsel looks like it’s been through the wars these days and my sister and I never fail to have a vicious argument about the colour scheme (God forbid we ever have another painfully tacky blue-and-white year…if we do, she’s getting bitten). The problem with sharing the decoration of the Christmas tree is it’s such a personal thing, and if neither person gets what they really want out of it, they’ll resent the damned thing until January when it gets lobbed out the door. After the saggy tinsel and bashed up baubles have been strategically placed by either party, our dear old dad will come lumbering in to attempt to fix the ever-faulty Christmas lights, which results in another stupid argument and someone storming off, stamping on a bulb in their dramatic exit. This year I was free to decorate the tree as I wished, but it was a sad a solitary event. I never really thought my sister would get old enough to actually get her own house, as in my eyes she will always be a gawky sixteen-year-old, and never a university graduate with a full-time job. So it was a lonesome and hurried task in a bid to make our house ‘festive’, and certainly not a ‘Christmassy’ process.
Presents are another minefield. I’m usually one of those over-prepared Christmas fanatics who have got every ribbon and bow down to perfection by late November, but this year I’m down the river without a paddle and have no gift ideas. Usually, I spend hours scrutinising over which bulky M&S jumper would look better on my dad, he always shakes, pokes and smells his presents before opening them, and dully takes a stab at what he thinks the gift is. My brother usually uses the same vacant expression for every gift and says ‘ooh’. My sister and mum have pretty much perfected the art of faking excitement at crappy gifts. I think the only time I have ever witness my mother show disappointment towards a Christmas present was the time my dad bought her a size 20 dressing gown. But alas, this year I’ve had little time or inspiration to shop, other than a ‘Fishing With Ferrets!’ calendar which I expect my mother to fawn over for the rest of her life.
My lack of Christmas festivities might have something to do with my college’s dire lack of decoration, or in fact any signs that it’s Christmas time at all. I’ve not seen a glimpse of tinsel, a flicker of fairy lights or a dusting of glitter at all. It makes me reminisce over my Secondary School days of wearing elf hats and belting out Christmas carols in our weird annual nativity assemblies. I can’t blame it all on Strode’s being their Scrooge-y selves though; the weather’s also played its part. My idea of snow as a symbol of Christmas and festivities has completely gone out the window – it plagues us, prevents us, and seeing as no one will make a snowman with me, depresses me.
With only a few days of college left, I’ll be glad to have some time off, and hopefully I can brainwash myself into feeling more festive through constant carol singing and mince pie making sessions. As for the rest of you, I hope you’re not dreading the 25th as much as me. So happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
21 November 2010
Pro-protest Post: Millbank 'riots' as told by someone who ACTUALLY went to demonstrate
Protesting gets you out of college. Protesting is good exercise, which means potentially less self-loathing. Protesting is a fun way to learn that ‘buts’ and ‘cuts’ rhyme. Protesting is an enjoyable bonding experience. Protesting could possibly save you a fuckload of money.
I feel I appealed to most variations of people with my reasoning. If you need any more reasons I attended the NUS ‘Fund Our Future’ protest in London last week, you can leave me a comment and I will personally find you and break down exactly why my generation don’t deserve to have to shell out ridiculously huge amounts of money, have their futures shrouded by debt and possibly miss out on higher education all together. On Wednesday morning after 2nd period, I hopped on the train with some equally minded individuals (in other words, my friends who bothered going) and made it up to London. As Queen of all dumbasses, I thought the small amount of people I saw walking towards the meeting place were the only attendees of the march. After seeing about ten people with banners, I contemplated my support for the cause. It was only when we arrived to see the huge crowd, taking up so much space we couldn’t even see who was making the speeches, that I got into the spirit of things and made an embarrassingly shaggy placard out of the back of a notepad. It read ‘what’s the story, traitor and Tory?’ and on the back, to acknowledge how lacking my efforts were, ‘I’m so poor I couldn’t even afford a real banner’.
The protest itself was a bit of a laugh. At some points it was hard to distinguish between the protest atmosphere and a just-got-to-a-festival feeling, where everybody you meet is sober and overly-nice to you because they’re not expecting rain (or in this case, a riot). As a whole, 99% of the whole thing was spent walking really slowly and shouting ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME ON YOU! SHAME ON YOU FOR TURNING BLUE’, ‘NO IFS, NO BUTS, NO EDUCATION CUTS!’ or my personal favourite, ‘JUDAS CLEGG!’ , and as far as I can see everybody there was really into what we were doing; so shucks to everyone who said ‘no one there even knows what they’re protesting about..yaddah yaddah yaddah...’. I’m pretty sure people don’t bother to travel from as far as Ireland and Scotland, make huge banners and commit an entire day to a cause they haven’t bothered researching. Contrary to the bogus spiel Sky News and the BBC have fed the public, most of the protest consisted of shouting, walking and chatting with fellow protesters. There wasn’t a hint of revolt, a trace of violence or any other sort of suggestion things would turn sour, until we got to Millbank.
I feel I appealed to most variations of people with my reasoning. If you need any more reasons I attended the NUS ‘Fund Our Future’ protest in London last week, you can leave me a comment and I will personally find you and break down exactly why my generation don’t deserve to have to shell out ridiculously huge amounts of money, have their futures shrouded by debt and possibly miss out on higher education all together. On Wednesday morning after 2nd period, I hopped on the train with some equally minded individuals (in other words, my friends who bothered going) and made it up to London. As Queen of all dumbasses, I thought the small amount of people I saw walking towards the meeting place were the only attendees of the march. After seeing about ten people with banners, I contemplated my support for the cause. It was only when we arrived to see the huge crowd, taking up so much space we couldn’t even see who was making the speeches, that I got into the spirit of things and made an embarrassingly shaggy placard out of the back of a notepad. It read ‘what’s the story, traitor and Tory?’ and on the back, to acknowledge how lacking my efforts were, ‘I’m so poor I couldn’t even afford a real banner’.
The protest itself was a bit of a laugh. At some points it was hard to distinguish between the protest atmosphere and a just-got-to-a-festival feeling, where everybody you meet is sober and overly-nice to you because they’re not expecting rain (or in this case, a riot). As a whole, 99% of the whole thing was spent walking really slowly and shouting ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME ON YOU! SHAME ON YOU FOR TURNING BLUE’, ‘NO IFS, NO BUTS, NO EDUCATION CUTS!’ or my personal favourite, ‘JUDAS CLEGG!’ , and as far as I can see everybody there was really into what we were doing; so shucks to everyone who said ‘no one there even knows what they’re protesting about..yaddah yaddah yaddah...’. I’m pretty sure people don’t bother to travel from as far as Ireland and Scotland, make huge banners and commit an entire day to a cause they haven’t bothered researching. Contrary to the bogus spiel Sky News and the BBC have fed the public, most of the protest consisted of shouting, walking and chatting with fellow protesters. There wasn’t a hint of revolt, a trace of violence or any other sort of suggestion things would turn sour, until we got to Millbank.
You couldn’t miss it. Aside from the obvious huge crowd leaking out of the place, some enthusiastic young specimen was stood outside yelling ‘that’s where the Tories make all their decisions! Let’s get ‘em!’, so off we wandered into the abyss of shouty teenagers and ‘crusty anarchists’. The whole thing was crazy and pretty fun, unless you’re the world’s biggest pussy like me. I ran as far/fast as I could every time someone set off a flare, and I wasn’t exactly one to stick around when some fat emo chick set her deodorant can on fire. To be honest, the whole thing was a bit too ‘Sunday night at Reading’ for me. My cohorts and I completely missed the integral smashing of the window because our stomachs got the better of us and we decided a quick trip to Pizza Express wouldn’t hurt, which meant when we came out we didn’t understand how so many people were on the roof/why the building suddenly seemed considerably worse of the wear. I liked the part where loads of random people with drums and symbols and bells came out of nowhere and started playing an endless ‘no ifs! No buts! No education cuts!’ song, but other than that he whole thing was pretty fruitless for those too scared to get to the front. The height of my anarchy was kicking a bush and throwing a parker pen at a window, only to miss and hit some poor girl in the face.
All in all a day well spent? I don’t feel we are any closer to our goal. But after a day spent waving cardboard and shouting my throat sore, I don’t regret it. We were part of history – however events go from here will determine how much so – but I definitely feel like I was PART of something. And a note to everyone who’s been whining ‘the violence just belittled our cause, no one is going to listen now’: no one was going to listen to us anyway, so it’s just as well we inconvenienced some assholes by trashing a reception. Or in my case, kicking a bush.
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