Just A little Wimpy

So occasionally my mates and I go to a cult classic movie night at a venue nearby, for example we watched the Shining last night. Nothing like a little screeching violin background music to get the blood pumping.Intense. Anyway, a few weeks before we watched Valhalla Rising, also an amazing film to look at, the cinematography was absolutely mind blowing but I can't say much about the script, over the 92 minutes the whole cast muttered something like 36 words. Anyway, one of the scenes was a fight between these two viking guys, absolutely brutal. The one guy "One Eye" bit a chunk from the other poor sods neck, he later went on to smash another poor souls skull in with a rock. All the while he is chained to a pole like a dog. Heavy stuff.

So this got me thinking how hard core these people in general where back in the day. I mean, we moan about forgetting our cell phone charger at home. I once saw a grown man cry because someone spilt beer on his shoes. He would have been eaten alive if he did that with vikings around. So I was speaking to my mate about how wimpy we have become as time has progressed, men are looking like women, I think half of us are even starting to wear womens pants! but I digress...So I watched the news in fascination about the whole Egypt riots as they want to get ride of old Hasni Mubarak. Absolute madness, I saw a man on a camel charge into a group of pro-democracy supportes, get pulled off and absolutely destroyed. Another set a Pro-Mubarak supporter afire with a Molotov cocktail.

I have not studied politics or anything like that, but I understand that at some point enough is enough and it might be warranted to stand up and be counted. I have never seem images like that though. Literally hundreds of thousands of supporters going berserk throwing missiles and then some knob starts shooting and all hell breaks loose. Mayhem. But then it goes a bit awry, all the blood pumping leads some previously pacifistic protesters into a rage and they take it out by turning a car over, setting a building on fire and stealing Tutankhamun. Again, I do not understand politics too well but I'm sure the old Kings of the Nile aren't involved. Hope the museum makes it.

So I reckon that regardless if your skinny jeans are too tight, your man liner is running down your face and your ipod is beeping low battery... come crunch time I think everyone has a little Viking in them.

Got Skills?

So apparently we, as humans, have the ability to become masters of absolutely anything. I mean from playing a guitar to rocking a chess game even tight rope walking. Now I have met some pretty dim people and would probably be regarded as pretty dim myself by others, which I reckon is a good thing as there is more of a "blank" canvass to work with, you know, less clutter that could hinder the formative process of becoming a Master. The problem lies in actually getting to the level of a Master... Lets say you want to be a great at ummm...ten pin bowler. Obviously you should want to show an interest and have a passion for your new skill, otherwise what is the point really. Then you have to practice. Alot. I mean a helluva lot. My girlfriend was reading a book the other night about studies done on all these amazing people that have walked the earth like the Mozart's and Einstein's of our time. The common denominator is all the practice they did. Apparently 10 000 hours worth. Such an even number blows my mind, but lets ignore that for arguments sake. So I think, right, 10 000 hours of bowling, piece of cake. It is not. An average game of ten pin takes what, an hour? maybe more if you are drinking beer at the same time? then you play every day, that's 27 years! At a cost of, ignoring inflationary measures, R40 a game? That's already R400 000. To be a Master of ten pin! Okay, so maybe ten pin was a bad example but this theory makes sense if you watch sport today. Professionalism has taken literally every game to massive new heights. You can watch games from 5 years ago and, as entertaining as it was at the time, is incomparable by today's standards. The possibility of earning huge amounts of cash has made parents and sporting agents alike to create super-humans. How this works is they grab a kid of, lets say, 4years old who has shown a natural ability to swim. They then rip this child out of its home and place it in a  concentration campesque sporting clinic and begin training. Imagine the first matrix where Neo gets plugged in..just like that but with less bandwidth. Anyway, so this kid is then trained from a very young age for 5 hours a day so that by the time he/she is 12 years old, they literally Masters of their sport. Brings new meaning to the saying, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" probably cause the poor beast would be dead before training ended.

What Vacuums a Red Carpet?

Right, so the Golden Globes was on a few days ago, I had the pleasure of watching some of it last night. Have you actually watched one of these red carpet events before?
It blows my mind how they manage to create a 4 hr show where no one says absolutely anything at all! I mean nothing! The whole concept behind this show is to show off dresses and shoes, which is fine by me. I enjoy fashion as much as the next guy. But the things they talk about...basically its hot people looking at other hot people, talking about previously hot people who dated other pretty hot people who was wearing that dress. VACUOUS. They talk about that for 4 hours! WTF...they say nothing whatsoever about anything. Crickey, these are people who act for goodness sake. I have absolute control over their little lives. I can pause them, fast forward them..even eject them and burn their copies if I wanted too.
I then noticed the vast difference between the older school guys -well Michael Douglas old - and how much cooler these dudes actually are, at least he has some serious issues to talk about, what having Cancer and all. Also his wife is amazing, I understand why he says that she is keeping him alive. I would refuse to die too.

Although after saying all this, I have decided that Ryan Seacrest and Justin Timberlake should have a fistfight, they are my favourites and should fight to the death for my affection.

Follow The Steps.

Right. So this was a hell of a lot easier than I originally anticipated.  I have been delaying this for quite a while now so lets file this little accomplishment under " New Years Resolutions". tick.

So do you have any new years resolutions? I was listening to a chap talk about his resolutions the other day and he has decided that after 20 years of massive new years eve parties and huge promises to himself at midnight, to scrap all future resolutions entirely. He wonders what the point is of making these life changing or rather life altering decisions on only one day a year. I personally thought it was done on new years purely from a timeline point of view, I mean its easier to say "oh, I haven't been arrested for about 18 days now" then to try and remember its anniversary from some other random date. ( I'm ignoring the whole new beginnings and clean slate idea here.) Anyway, so this guy asks why change so many things in one day ?. He mantains that every time you have an urge to change something, do it immediately when the thought occured to you. Otherwise you will have to write all these little personal tweaks down in a little black book and try to remember them all when you have your epiphinic new years party. The huge amount of change that would occur if you followed through with all your new resolutions at one time would probably be as effective as self immolation. In the sense that absolutely no one would recongnise you anymore. Hey, I reckon change is good but perhaps in smaller doses. At least give it a fair chance.

So here is to my new endevour, a blog, decided on a random date 18th January 2011 and I bet you no one will notice any difference. Only me, and I think that's the point.