My Chemical Fuck-With-You

So...anyone who's known me for longer than 12 months knows that something I absolutely cannot stand is a band called My Chemical Romance. You may have heard of them. With "wonderful" hits such as I'm Not Okay (I Promise), Helena and basically everything off the The Black Parade album, and if you grew up in Britain, they were on the cover of Kerrang!, the biggest selling rock magazine and has been for about thirty years at least once every couple of months and in their posters with alarming regularity.

I know my saying how much I cannot stand this bad, or that I would quite happily punch lead singer Gerard Way in the face and have felt that way since about 2004 will get me a lot of hate, but that's okay. However...right now, as a music fan and a compassionate human being, my need to do this has hit levels that I never thought it would hit. Now, allow me to explain.

Yesterday (20 July 2016), social media went completely batty over a video that MCR had released over their Facebook page. And rightful was their reaction; their split had broken their hearts as many have done to others before them, and I have been part of that heartbreak more than once. So to see this teaser video yesterday may have had me rolling my eyes but it most certainly did have possibly millions of people freaking out because something that defined their adolescence was returning. Part of that may have come from the fact so many of them are products of the 90s, where anything that brings the slightest feelings of nostalgia is something to be cherished and held onto for dear life, unlike so much of what we were taught, what we believed as children.

I fully admit that I didn't especially give a damn about the video or what its intentions might be. I was vaguely aware that we were coming on the anniversary of The Black Parade, whose title track I will fully admit is a wonderfully put together piece of music. The album that had Teenagers which I have definitely caught myself singing more than once, But I knew a lot of my friends did and do, so I kept my mouth shut out of respect for that. For them, I hoped they got the news they wanted. Would it be new material? Would it be a tour in celebration of The Black Parade's tenth anniversary? Like I said, I cared because I like to see those I care about happy, and I know a lot of people who adore this band.

And then it happened. I watched it all fall apart.



I...I have nothing. What the actual fuck, guys?! You go to all that effort, doing something you knew was going to cause something like this...for that. To announce that you were re releasing an album for its tenth anniversary. Something that you could have done over social media in a Facebook or Twitter post that would have taken you less time than it did for me to work out how to embed your godforsaken heartbreak of a post in this thing that I so rarely actually use?! Fuck. Just...what the fuck, guys.

Well done. It was never a secret that I dislike you guys, but now you've given me an actual reason beyond "I just don't like their music". Toying with people like that is not, and never, ever will be okay. It's almost as if for these guys it was no different to telling your holiday fling you're going home, but you promise to write occasionally, knowing that you never will - now there's a reference my boy is never going to get, he'll have his holiday flings on social media. Anyway, notes about my boy and the change of the world in the last 15 years isn't what's important here. The important thing is how this is literally breaking thousands of hearts and making them angry. And I don't blame them. Not a jot.

I wanted my friends to be happy. I wanted them, after how fucking horrible this year has been on so many fronts, to have something to look forward to. You know...the year that was terrible before it even started with the death of Lemmy, then carried on with David Bowie and Alan Rickman in less than two weeks of each other. The latter especially, as so many of us know him as a certain snivelling, greasy-haired borderline necrophiliac. I mean right in the childhood for fuck sake. Depending on where you come from, the death toll in pop culture...Britain lost the other half of the Two Ronnies, for example. Again, for Britain and especially Scotland and Northern Ireland, the fact we are now being forced to leave a political agreement that was in our best interest to stay in, The list is almost endless, and they just wanted something to look forward to. Maybe not the heartbreak at not getting tickets that would then sell for £3000 on eBay because people would actually pay money they do not have to see a band that got them through the hardest years of their life.

And they wrecked it. They dealt yet another fucking blow.

That's not okay.

Release your anniversary edition that maybe has a couple of tracks that didn't make the original cut. Enjoy the royalties that come from a re release,,,and enjoy knowing how many hearts your broke in the process.

Congratulations, My Chemical Romance. You made yourselves from a band I just didn't like who happened to have a singer that had (to me) a very punchable face, to a band that I will honestly view as complete arseholes from here until the day I die, who I now have a legitimate reason for wanting to punch in the face. And the worst part of it all is...they're heartbroken. The people whose lives you may or may not have saved, the people whose lives you changed, and the people who adore you because you're you. They're heartbroken because of you, made bitter sweet for you because they will still buy whatever it is you're doing for the anniversary of that album. Because you would rather pay a pretty penny and wait a few weeks than take two minutes to announce your intentions over social media textually.

Enjoy those extra bucks, because you sure as shit don't deserve them.

Dear British Parents, From Another British Parent

So...Easter has just been, even though it's Easter Monday and the Christians of the world are still celebrating and awaiting the return of Jesus Christ while dealing with the fact their children's sore stomachs from all the chocolate and minted lamb.

...Oh! Animals! Look at that. This is going somewhere  I promise. Namely...here.

Channel Five showed Watership Down and it didn't go well.

The link above (which leads to the article posted by British newspaper The Mirror) talks about the anger and disgust of parents who allowed their presumably quite small children to watch a movie about cute little bunny rabbits because Easter...who go through the rabbit version of a slaughter, basically. I...can't get my head around this. At all. It's...no, you know what? No, I can't go there.

It's not the fact kids got scared by the film. It scared the pants off me when I was a kid and it probably still does now. Kids get scared all the time by movies, it's just something that happens. Kids don't want to see other living creatures, real or otherwise, get shot and whatever else. It's understandable. It's also understandable that parents want to protect their children. I have a three-year-old, you're right I want to protect him, and as a parent you're an idiot if you don't think I won't do everything in my power to keep him safe. Safe. Safe. SAFE. Key word there. I will protect my son from harm, but I'm not going to pretend that bad things happen and complain when a choice I make upsets him, and especially not to a person that has no control over what is shown...who works for a business that you don't have to take anything to do with.

Did Watership Down turn into nightmare fuel for your little one? Yes? Well you know what you should have done when they started showing signs of being upset? Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Pick up the television remote (you know, the thing that looks a little bit like a rectangle and has loads of buttons on it?)

2) Changed the channel or turned off your television

3) Cuddled your child, dried their eyes and...

4) Explain in an age-appropriate manner the material that upset them.

5) Do not, under any circumstances, take to social media and tell a television channel that you did not have to watch that they were showing something you did not have to watch

Unless of course someone had entered your home and a statistically unlikely series of events occurred that results in either watching this movie or atrocities happening to you and yours. With this still in mind however, number 5 is still not a thing. You are not contractually obliged by any television provider and their online counterpart under the sun to watch anything they broadcast.

Do you know what the most...upsetting/annoying thing about this whole malarkey is? Watership Down was written (yes, it's a book. Marketed as a children's book at that) in the 1970s, published in 1972, and the movie parents are complaining about was released in 1978. Now the law of averages says that most of these parents are what...twenties and thirties? (Teen parents and older parents do skew this average a little, however) I find it very unlikely that these parents have never in their lives at the very least heard of Watership Down. However, this is not the 1970s but the age of Google, Wikipedia and IMDB [Internet Movie Database], which allows people who may be unfamiliar to do something that their parents would not have been able to do; research. I'm not going to say I'm perfect and know what everything my boy will ever watch is about...but I would like to consider myself perhaps more knowledgeable than as to let him get scared and then complain to the powers that be as if my decision is somehow their fault. I, too, become scared. Regularly. However, unless it can be shown that it is not my doing that I became scared, it was very likely my own fault and not that of someone else. Unless my parents or fiancé attempt to bring me up high and make me look down…that’s definitely their fault.

Even better than this is the assumption that because it was shown before 9pm, or is labelled as a kids' movie, it's going to be all sunshine and roses. I must ask, in what universe? I'm not that person that every parent hates, telling you how to parent while not having a damn clue, I've just told my three-year-old to stop dragging a plastic spoon across the floor. I'm that one you don't like because I refuse to protect you from your own mistakes. Kids films are scary sometimes [Read: a lot. Thank you, Disney]. They have scenes that are most definitely not suitable for children. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnamFerzNvw

That's Pinocchio. Film scares me more than a “family” movie should, to the point where I have told my son’s father that if he wants to show this to our son, he’s on his own. This scene in particular scares me. It is one of two Disney movies I steadfastly refuse to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_MVU7NQkGE

This is Aladdin, where a guy gets swallowed whole by a freaking sand-cave monster thing. That's not necessarily kid appropriate viewing, and that's in the first five minutes of the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1VvWAVg9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKlr_dE7u9U

The first video is a Top Ten Disney Villain Deaths. The second one is a Top Ten Scariest Disney moments, both originally posted by WatchMojo.com. These videos scratch the surface. I can promise you that any children's film you watch will have dark and scary moments in it, purely because you cannot make a full-length movie of someone pulling sunshine, flowers and glitter, however I’m sure one day someone studio executive will give it a good go. But your little one is still going to watch Frozen right? Not-child-friendly moments of this include the alienation of Anna, the idea that Elsa is responsible for Anna turning into a block of ice and Hans leaving Anna to die in a room because if he lies, he can become King of Arendelle.

Wow, Anna really got the short straw in this movie.

What about the Lion King, the Frozen of the 90s where the protagonist's father is murdered by his own brother and said murderous brother is then eaten alive (quite literally) by hyenas? All these movies and the many more examples I can think of from the top of my head almost lead me to this impression that my fellow parents of young children are okay with allowing them to watch things like this because it’s Disney, but the moment it becomes any other movie outlet, it’s terrible and should be put on blast.

I saw someone on Facebook say that Channel Five themselves are at fault because showing a film on Easter Sunday because bunnies is odd logic. It is...and it would be if it were accurate. Channel Five were doing a Greatest Animated Films countdown, it had nothing to do with Easter unless the standard religious-turned-Hallmark holiday thing that mainstream media has become had anything to do with the countdown.

I understand that parents want to protect their children. I am, after all, a parent. However, I cannot, and likely will never fathom the idea that it’s somehow not my fault that the programme I allowed my child to watch scared him is anyone’s fault but mine.

Of course, I am not immune. My son is terrified of the incinerator scene in Toy Story Three and yet it is one of his favourite movies. Kids, huh?

We Cremated You Today

And I long for you to appear,
After losing your way across the star-riddled skies
To carry you home.

I cherish my loss,
To remind me
That life is unkind at the best of times...

Brace yourself, 'cause I think I'm coming for you. Look up to the sky.

Home could be anywhere, when I'm holding you...
-"Adieu" - Enter Shikari

They cremated you today, in the West Chapel at Daldowie Crematorium in Uddingston. I watched from a few rows behind as your parents, two blood siblings and the ex-girlfriend who later became your sister wept in the messiest mixuture of heartache, grief and sorrow that I've ever come to witness. I've witnessed it a couple of times in the last two and a half weeks...the longest two and a half weeks of their lives...and they still have the rest to go.

They cremated you today.

I won't pretend that we were best friends. I won't pretend that we were close. I won't pretend that despire that, despite my various failed attempts to keep in contact with you as we are the generation of social media...the thought that the last time I saw you alive was 2009 has blurred my keyboard. The tears have started again. The young man that I was once close to...who I would play with, fight with, love unconditionally and - more than anything - wanted to be your friend...he's not here. It's days like this where I wish I still held even the smallest shred of religious belief. Today, I just wanted to look at the cross above your coffin and hope the man in the sky they hold it for existed in my head and heart. It doesn't. I can't change that. Just...today, I suppose it would have been a small comfort.

They cremated you today.

Your dad's accident didn't stop him. Your grandfather's poor health didn't stop him either. Your brother, your uncle (my father), and two of your friends carried you into the little hall, laying you on the...I don't even know what it's called. The thing that would later take you through a little metal door to be cremated and your ashes placed in an urn. That's how much you meant to those two men. You remember your dad's accident in the high winds, right? He got his back brace off last week. Your brother's girlfriend says the scar on his head reminds her of the Pepsi logo. She's also scared of it. How did a member of our family get a partner with a weak stomach?! I'm sorry, I keep sidetracking when I'm trying to talk to you. But your dad was told he shouldn't carry you when his brace was removed...he did it anyway. He is part of the reason you ever came into the world, and though it is not the order of things, he wanted to see you out of it...be there for you as he had always been. Your - our - grandfather...well, we both know how his health has been for at least six years. That's...that's how much you mean to them. Their health wasn't a contributing factor to their wishes. You would probably have told your father where to go and I wouldn't have blamed you...but you know what dads are like. Your father mightn't be my blood. but his temperament certainly makes him just like my father. Though I must admit, your father and brother...somewhere around the 5'5-8 mark(?) allowing for one's loss of inch after the accident carrying you with granddad and my father and your two friends, all at least 5'11, was quite the sight to see. It amused us all, and would have done to you too.

They cremated you today.

Only one person talked about the tragic loss of life; the priest. I don't know if you knew him, ever met him...I don't know what your beliefs were like, if you went to chapel on a Sunday or if you believed in a God at all. It was a strange affair. This man, speaking matter of factly about the youbg man who loved his life and all within it, who mentioned stories but never really said anything about them. He mentioned you once fought off someone who was bullying your sister and your efforts saw you get a black eye. How you ran into a wall playing basketball and broke your toe in two places. But that was all he said...there was nothing about the valiant young boy that you were, who did what any big brother would do for his younger siblings. There was nothing about the young boy, later young man, who didn't complain about any injury unless it was important. I know your parents and siblings would have been unable...I doubt our shared grandparents or your father's parents would have been up to it either...I guess it's just the selfish part of me wanting something more personal for you, a one of a kind that I will miss so much.

You would have laughed at your parents' choice to play "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift. You would have laughed with your siblings, cousins and friends. I doubt you would have hid from the shame of that being made public, as Taylor Swift is no longer considered a "guilty pleasure", though I cannot see the appeal personally. Even if she were...it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would do. You never hid who you were, what you liked, what you didn't like. I know you would have laughed as we all did, simply because it doesn't seem like something particularly appropriate for a funeral.

We went to a little place near the M74 for the wake. I sat with your blood siblings. Talked and laughed with them. I don't even remember what we talked about. I remember the older sister walked away to speak to others while your brother and his girlfriend spoke to my siblings and I. Largely, other than being reminded of something that sets us all apart from many families in that we do not call our father "dad" and honestly, I don't think we ever have, I don't remember what we talked about. I remember much laughter though. It felt good to be around them again. It's a pity that it was your death that brought it about. We would have loved your company for the conversation.

They cremated you today.

Typing that sentence over and over again...it's almost as if I'm trying to convince myself that it's real. For almost three weeks, I've been living in this denial that you are still here...that I can go to that little house in the east end of Glasgow, ring the bell with my own son in arm and see you. Something I'd never done before...that I'd been meaning to do. That now, I'll never get to. And that is going to eat at me for the rest of my life.

It's a little like how I'm writing this. Why am I writing it? You're never going to see it, and it's addressed to you. The only logic I can think of is that it's some kind of therapy, though if you can tell me what kind of therapy causes you to cry at least six times you're doing better than I am!

I should close this. I don't know how. There's so much I want to say to you. So much I want to tell you. Like I want to know how we were in similar social groups as teenagers but never saw each other. I showed a picture of you to a friend who then told me she'd kissed you in the Cathouse unders. A story I always took with a pinch of salt, though, considering she liked to kiss people. The number of teenage boys with fringes like yours was alarming in 2006!

That and more. So much more that I'll never be able to tell you. I know you had a good life, and that's what's important. It's not about me, though it would seem that it is from this letter. Though it is my letter to you. So if I'm wrong, and there is an afterlife...have a ball up there.

Sleep well, Michael.

I love you.

Facebook Messenger & Other Social Apps

So, as you may have guessed, this blog post is intended to be about the supposedly controversial Facebook Messenger app, which has been available for quite some time, but has, at least recently, caused quite a storm for all the "wrong" reasons.

Conceived in the 1980s and born in the 1990s, I am a child born into a world where technology develops faster than a child in the womb. As are a great many of the people I know, who are up to a few years older than me. The technology that we take for granted is simply astounding. Desktop computers that aren't big and bulky and take up a full room. Laptops, tablets, smartphones, games consoles that don't give you obvious pixels. I could go on, but you get the idea. Even non-smartphones, but tring to find a person my age without one somewhat resembles a wild goose chase. A mobile that more resembles a 3310 is something you would associate more with the pensioner who might never be able to use anything more complicated.

With all this, I would like to be believe that more of these people have a bit of common sense about them when it comes to the applications that we download onto these smartphones, or to a computer that runs the latest Windows and Apple Operating Systems. But it appears that this has not been the case and it makes me want to bash my head off a wall and scream in rage at how...ridiculous some people can be.

Recently, Facebook made their messenger app for Facebook compulsory for users to read their messages. This in itself, I'll admit, is annoying, There was nothing wrong with the in-app access to messages. There are plenty of people who agree with me, I remember seeing the posts on Facebook. But it didn't stop at people's overall annoyance at the changeover. It got silly. So, if you would look below, here are a couple of reasons that people have been freaking out over Facebook Messenger:

• It requires access to photographs
• It has access to your phone numbers
• It requires access to your microphone
• It violates your privacy
• It can send messages without your consent
• Read call logs without consent
• Can take photographs and videos without consent
• Charges for calls and text messages

I'll be honest, I read this list and I want to laugh. I want to laugh until I'm blue in the face and unable to breathe from the sheer hysteria that the Internet has caused yet again without due cause.

What I'm going to do is dispel these myths by using this thing that the Internet and modern technology as a whole has dispelled from the minds of many people; common sense. I'll also be using basic privacy laws such as  the Data Protection Act 1998.

The  first thing I'm going to dispel is photographs and videos. I'd say it makes my head itch, but it applies to all of them so there isn't much point. Supposedly, Facebook Messenger is a bad thing because it needs access to your camera, videos and photographs, and with this access, can take these things without your consent, presumably in some sort of Big Brother fashion that's probably going to get sent off to Facebook HQ to tell Zuckerberg and his cronies what we're getting up to.

Do you get just how....daft that sounds? And if you don't, you're probably part of the problem. Or you believe absolutely everythig your read on the Internet. And it maks my head hurt. It makes the heads of others hurt too.

^This is me on my 24th birthday, after being attacked with cold water by my Guides.

This is a printscreen of my computer, time is BST.

This is a conversation on WhatsApp with my Brazilian friend, Rod.

This what comes up when you open the "photo" button on Facebook's mobile app.

What's the difference between these and Facebook Messenger? The answer is none. My computer, from which I uploaded all of these (eventually), requires access to my photographs in order to upload them to this blog and to anything else I choose to upload them to, like Facebook. These apps on social media; Facebook, Kik, WhatsApp, Skype, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and so many more all require access to your photographs to send them to the person you want to send them to. So why is it that it's okay for these apps to have access to your photos and videos, but not these other ones? How do you know that these other apps aren't doing the exact same thing you're accusing Facebook Messenger of? Because you trust them more? Why would you trust one more than the other? They all do the same thing, and Facebook and WhatsApp are owned by the same company. So I guess I'm just really accused as to why one app would be paying Big Brother when the others don't or wouldn't.

These apps need access to your photographs so that it knows where to send the picture. Not because it wants to have CCTV all over you to know what you get up to and what's important in your life. Then again, Facebook and Instagram  already give you an idea of what everyone and their mother is interested in. If you looked on mine, you would find gay rights, the odd Scottish Referendum thing, pictures of my child and general ranting and raving about a whole load of things that make me happy or annoy me. Funnily enough, this was going to be a Facebook status. If you look on the pages of someone you might not know, you can learn plenty about them simply by what photographs they upload. But you're okay with letting the world see your photographs for anyone who cares to see, but not to send a picture privately because someone managed to scaremonger you out of it.

Data Protection prohibits social media's ability to do anything without your consent, and these companies make far too much money to run the risk of losing it and their livelihoods. What Facebook Messenger is, is nothing more than a standard social media application. It requires access to photos, videos, your camera and your microphone to to function properly.

Let's take Skype as an example. We all know what Skype is, right? It's that IM service that allows you to call people all over the world, free of charge, so long as you both are registered with them. How would Skype operate if it had no access t a microphone? Exactly, it wouldn't. You can't have a phone call without some kind of receiver, which is what the microphone on Skype is. If there's no receiver, there's no conversation.

The same applies with Facebook messenger. How does one send an audio message without being able to access a microphone? And how does this necessity somehow then equate to yet more breaking of the Data Protection Act? Maybe I'm weird, but I can't see that connection.

(Side note: as typing this, an advert for Malteasers Teasers came on the television. Which features a Skype call. I was amused by this)

In either case, it completely and utterly baffles me how people are saying that one social application as different attributes for what it can and cannot do when Facebook controls a rather hefty portion of the social media market. For example, Facebook itself is the second biggest social media platform in the world, second only to Google +.

TANGENT WARNING!
Speaking of Google, if I had to choose between the guys who run Google and Mark Zuckerberg to be scared of playing Big Brother, I'd pick Google, simply based of how much of your personal data they have on you, an what you store there. Google contains but is not exclusive to:

• A blogging site (the one I'm using right now)
• An email service
• A social network
• A cloud service called Google Docs/Drive
• A map service

You get the drift. And Google does not violate Data Protection. This is despite you putting a lot of what is widely regarded as sensitive information, such as your phone number, into your Google account, which you need in order to access emails, the social network and Docs. Yet you're trying to tell me I should be concerned for my safety over this piddly messenger application?

BACK TO NORMAL!

The whole argument of Big Brother is stupid. I'm sorry, but it is. If you're going to freak out because one application supposedly can access your photographs and videos, then you'd be as well to delete your entire social media from your phone and computer. They all do the same things. There is no difference, and the fact Facebook has had to actually come out and speak out about whether or not Messenger is any different to any other social application? My head hurts thinking about it.

I suppose I covered the microphone bit with the photographs, so I won't beat that dead horse any longer. But that doesn't answer all the "questions and fears" people have in their heads for no reason whatsoever.

There are no privacy violations in the Facebook Messenger Application.

I cannot stress this enough. When people say that these things violate your privacy, you're proving why I believe that the three computer laws should be a compulsory piece of high school education. The Data Protection Act (1998), Computer Misuse Act (1990) and Freedom of Information Act (2000). Okay, the last two apply less in this capacity, but still. These laws are important  in so many areas of life and should be taught to all teenagers.

The Data Protection Act means that only certain figures can access your information without prior consent. This generally is restricted only to law enforcement and prospective employers when doing a background check on you. Anything that gets out there, goes out with your consent. That spam email you got? You'll have not opted out of selected third party emails. That's not the fault of Mecca Bingo or whatever else you use in your spare time. It's your own doing for not declaring you didn't want those emails in the first place. And if you did opt out, then you probably know someone who just wants to keep their targets up. It's almost impossible from a legal standpoint to actually give out someone's email address and phone number without consent. That friend with your phone number isn't actually breaking the law when using information they have to hand, which just so happens to be your phone number.

And what privacy is violated, exactly? All these apps are designed to do is show you a conversation with a friend or a creep, and access things that you allow  it to access. It isn't doing anything it shouldn't. When I was in high school, my computing studies teacher once told us the best way to describe a computer is a "smart idiot". It knows how to do all these things, but it won't do it without first being guided into it. It can't type out a text message to your mother to tell her you'll be there in fifteen minutes without you actually typing it into the message box. It can't even get into the text messages without you showing it where to go. So how does something that can't do the simplest of things without you telling it to, steal your privacy without your knowledge? It doesn't make any sense.

And the smart idiot analogy applies to sending messages without your consent. I really, genuinely, don't get this. It's the same logic as above. Your smartphone is a miniature computer. So how would it send a message without your knowledge? It can't. The only way that it could is if your smartphone gets a virus, and that is entirely possible. But without that, it can't send those messages that you're claiming it can't.

The thing that really baffles me isit can read your call logs. If someone wants to explain how that's the case, then go ahead. I don't see it, and as such I am unable to tell you how it's impossible, other than the fact your call logs are not related in any way, shape or form to your messenger service. Yes, Facebook syncs your contacts to your phone book, but that doesn't allow it to see that your called your partner at 11.45am on the 15th of August. The idea is ludicrous, and I can only imagine that it was spawned by someone who really, really doesn't want you to use this application, and as such, any social media platform. After all, if one can do it, why can't all of them? Are you suddenly going to stop using WhatsApp, which requires  phone numbers in order to send messages? It can't access your logs either.

The only thing I'm not going to argue is it charging for calls and text messages. It does. But the thing is, I don't understand why you would do that to begin with. If you're using Facebook Messenger, why would you then want to send  texts to that person? The logic baffles me, but that comes through Facebook and not the user themselves. And you can call that person? Right, fine, but why don't you just put that person's phone number in your phone book and call them from there? Would that not make a little bit more sense? Or am I just a little old for my age, and can't see the logic in that at all?

I went back up to my first set of bullet points to see if there was anything that I missed. And looking through the list, I can't help but shake my head as much as I just did at the guy on the tv show I'm half-watching as I write this. It honestly baffles me how people will believe everything they read on the Internet without doing a bit of research on it before jumping to conclusions that this supposedly bad thing is as bad, evil or whatever other adjective with negative connotations that they want to throw at it. Now don't get me wrong, I have been guilty of jumping to conclusions in the past. I'm not a saint that way. But 99 times out of 100, I will have done my homework. And this situation requires little homework. All it requires is a little bit of sense with computer knowledge and the laws of computing which apply to social media. And maybe the picture below!

Okay, less the picture beside it bit in this case, but it doesn't change the point. Would you believe that Abraham Lincoln said this when the Internet didn't exist until over 100 years later? It's this meme that proves my point, and I am a massive, massive fan of it for that reason.

I'm not saying you should use Facebook Messenger. I dislike the app, but not for reasons above, and those reasons are my own that I am not in a position to share them with you. But what I am going to tell you is that you should not refuse to use it for its supposedly illegal activities that, with a bit of thinking, it doesn't actually do. There isn't anything to say that the charging for phone calls and text messaging is illegal, however. At least to my knowledge. As far as I'm aware, they're well within their rights to do that as many gaming apps are allowed to charge you for things to help you with the game.

I;d say these are my two cents, aimed at helping  to alleviate some of the tension that runs with this application, while showing that it is no different from a host of other apps that you can download, and any other social media in existence. It doesn't do anything you don't tell it, there is no Big Brother conspiracy surrounding it, and, really, the whole thing is just silly, and likely concocted by someone who hates Facebook.

Anyway, I'm finished here. And this is the first time in a long time I've actually finished a post. Thank you for reading, and if anything I have said is offensive, I can only apologise for that. Please, people who have read this, take the time to do a bit of homework before jumping to conclusions.

Thank you once again for reading, and I'll catch ya later.

Excuse Me While I Smash My Head Off A Wall...

At my own goddamned stupidity.

And hopefully for once I'll actually finish and post one of these things.

But anyway.

I guess I'll start off with an apology. And I owe two people that. Those people are two men who I consider myself to be quite close to. Their names are Mark Horton and Johni Millar (Johni particularly, as it was he who bore the brunt of my outburst). And myapology is for somethign stupid, and that I maybe did overreact to. Of course, I didn't see it that way at the time, and maybe to a point, I still regard it as proportional (with my overly-emotional/female head on that screams woe is me and nothing is every really my fault. Or there is no such thing as an overreaction. I'm not sure.)

But anyway.

I owe them that, as as well as seeing it here (or at least, that's the plan), they will receive it in person, assuming I am awake when either of them are online. The joys of the boyfriend saying he'll be over at stupid o'clock in the morning, completely forgetting his girlfriend does like her sleep quite a bit! Or at least as close to in person as we can get, considering Johni is 180 miles away and just west of Leeds, West Yorkshire, and Johni is closer to 4000 miles away in Inman, South Carolina. I'd give a direction towards the nearest main city, but the nearest one I can think of straight from the top of my head is Charlotte, North Carolina and I don't know how far away that is. But anyway, I keep getting off the subject.

What happened on Saturday morning is an accumulation of things that have been building up on and off for years. In this case, following a conversation with Johni on MSN while he spoke to Mark on Skype (at about 7am GMT), the following took place.


Emma. Come Break Me Down said
I love Mark to bits, but being able to predict that this is going to annoy him is getting ridiculous.
I guess I'll go disappear off the face of the Earth for another few days. Since it's starting to look like I can't do anything else properly.


Dante the Iguana said
Emma, chill.

This is the final two excerpts of the conversation, the final piece being an offline message as I had set myself as offline after my final message. You see, what had happened was that in a game the three of us play, and most of the people who read this will know what that game is. What happened was on Twitter, where one of Mark's characters said something, one of mine disagreed and an debate over the entire point my own character was attempting to make occurred. I maintain now that my character was righ in her argument, but I will not explain that argument or what took place unless someone thinks it's a good idea. As this went on, it occurred to me that Mark would not like this. And I was told that this was the case. Which brought on the first half of what I said to Johni.

The second half was brought on by something that dawned on me a few moments later. When (at least in my opinion), I seem to be quite good at getting on people's nerves, and that it would be a better idea if I just disappeared again, as I have been doing fairly frequently recently in order to spend time with Steven, my boyfriend. So in my annoyance with myself and the fact I felt like once again I could not do anything right, I just logged off and stayed off the radar.

Was it an overreaction? Probably. Knowing my luck anyway. I'm not the best person in the world at having a reaction that could be considered "in proportion" with the situation. But here's the thing, this has been going on for years, and I have blown up like this before. I am not proud of it, and I am not using it as an excuse. However, it just happens that this feeling is a primary feature in my life.

It's not because I want it to be. That's the last thing I want. I don't like going off on my friends all the time. But the issue is an old one, and one that stems from school. As quite a lot of people are aware, I was bullied very heavily in school, right up until I was fifteen. And in bullying, the victim is often made to feel like they are not worth the paper that their birth certificate is written on, and that all they do is annoy people and you are generally unwanted. Or at least, that's what happened to me. Especially when in primary school and the two or three people who I could see outside of school hours preferred to spend their time with the other classmates or arguing with you as well. So it's quite deep rooted. And it carried on through school...and to a point, has always carried on. Quite often in my day to day life, I feel like I have to force myself to be heard. It isn't a lot of fun.

Of course, now I have something of a backbone. But the trouble is, my proverbial vertebrae are not made of carbon, much like diamonds. It is made of glass, and glass is very easy to break. Or sometimes, with age and strain, it just collapses. And I guess that's what happened. It was something stupid, but when it feels quite frequently like you have to push and push to be seen in the crowd, and when you re seenm you are seen for the wrong reasons...

I was told I had annoyed no one, and I try to believe that. But I don't. And I don't ask for people to show sympathy, I don't want it.

I just owe two friends an apology and an explanation for acting like a complete tool 37 hours ago.

Mark, Johni, I apologise from the bottom of my heart for acting like a complete and utter moron. I love you both dearly.

<3

SOPA And PIPA: What Is It, And How It Can Affect You

Hello there.


Now, for those that are not aware, I like to consider myself something of a geek. I like computers and things to do with them. I read up on a lot of computer-related things. Partially because I like to keep up with the times, and partially because when things like this come up, I can do something like this with it and not sound like some sort of uneducated fool. And while I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, uneducated is not something I will ever allow myself to be.


As a lot of people are aware, the popularly used, open-sourced "dictionary" Wikipedia has shut down its English section today, from 5am, Wednesday 18 January until 5am, Thursday 19 January, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act that are currently being forced through US Congress (for those that were not aware of the longhand, SOPA and PIPA). Now, I said US Congress because that is where is it is going to be passed through. But that doesn't mean that it's only going to affect our friends and fellow humans 3000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Not by a long shot.

 






What you can see above are the pages used by popular open-source websites DamnLOL and Wikipedia for the next 24 hours or so, going against the SOPA and PIPA legislation. But before I go into why they have done this, allow me to tell you what the acts actually do.


Stop Online Piracy Act


This should, really speak for itself. Online Piracy related to things like Youtube, where people upload music videos by their favourite artists, be it in the form of an official video, a video with the lyrics on screen, or variosu other things including copyrighted material. It also relates to people who use Google, Yahoo, or the search engine of their choice to take images from the web of anything they like. Now, please, if you could, raise your hand if you have never watched a music video on Youtube, or saved a picture you found on Google or Photobucket. Raise your hand (for those who know how to use Photoshop) if you have never used images you have taken from the web and created something from it. Like this:

I didn't make this by the way, I nabbed it from Photobucket. If anyone's unsure, it's the characters from Twilight with the faces of characters from True Blood. And I must say, Stephen Moyer suits Robert Pattison's hair!


Now raise your hand if you have never gone onto websites like mp3skull, beemp3 or 4shared to download music. There should not be a single hand in the air. Because the fact is, even if you have just gone onto Youtube to watch the video for "Please Don't Stop The Music" by Rihanna (the reason I've chosen that song is because the official video was once the most viewed video on Youtube), you have caught yourself under this. Now, before anyone starts, I'm pretty well aware of the highly-annoying VEVO Channels, in which in order to watch a video you have to sit through a 30-second advertisement that has nothing to do with the video you are trying to watch (I love my rock and metal music, so when you're trying to listen to something that makes you want to headbang and deal with 30 seconds of crappy, cheesy advertisement jingles is just beyond annoying). But the reason those exist is that someone is forced to foot the massive bill the Youtube faces every month. Because when you click those videos, Youtube gets paid.


But that's beside the point. I'm aware that record companies and artists have taken these steps. But with so few people buying music these days, including the use of iTunes, it falls into the same category. Universal, Roadrunner, EMI, Sony...these guys do not make money if you're sitting blasting a song from Youtube. And let's be fair, that's what they want. Your goddamned money.


Wikipedia has gotten involved in this because, should the legislation be passed, it is going to take sites like Wikipedia, DamnLOL, ICanHazCheezeburger, Youtube, and everything else that you can add to, with it. And let's be fair here, we don't live in the Dark Ages of the Internet anymore (about fifteen years ago), where the only thing you could do was sit in an AOL chat room and think nothing of the fact the dude might not be twelve years old and live halfway across town, and instead might be a peadophile wanting to get into your pants. On a selflish note for you and I, this means that the Internet would become the place it used to be. Do your homework, play the games that you were restricted to playing, maybe sit in a dodgy chat room that crashed every five minutes and disconnect again. We don't live in that age anymore. For all we claim that we have nothign to do on the Internet, without these sites, we actually don't have anything to do. Do you read FanFiction? Do you go ontp Youtube? Do you use websites where the point is to make you laugh? Yes. You do. Maybe not to all of these, but you do. So you are back at square one.


"This Does Not Affect Me, I'm Not American"


With all due respect, please remove your head from your fornicating rectum. Yes. It does. Allow me to explain a little more clearly (and possibly get my ass sued by the American government for the use of images that I "pirated" off Google)

 
 

 

 

 

These are some of the most visited websites in the world, and I shouldn't have to tell you what any of them are. These websites make up most people's lives, or did at one time or another (many Microsoft websites, such as live.com and microsoft.com were there, but they're all pretty well connected with MSN.com) Most of these websites will be taken down if SOPA & PIPA go through. And what do you do then? Please, tell me.


It's already started.


Who's heard of MegaUpload?


I'll admit to having used it at one point. A few days ago, MegaUpload all but disappeared thanks to a "DNS Takedown Request" - which is really the government in a country saying "screw you, take it down or we're going to sue you for every last penny you have", making it unavailable in a number of countries, which I'm pretty sure included the United Kingdom. Law enforcement got involved and declared it a "rogue site". But it's not just about "rogue sites". But now I start to reiterate myself.


It's at this point some smart-ass will leave a comment along the lines of "move the servers to Japan or something, and block the sites in the States". Well, honestly, you can't even do that.


It costs a lot of money to shift all these servers halfway across the planet. We don't live in a world where everything is wireless. All our data on Facebook is still stored in many, many huge towers in an office in the USA. So if you get all that done, you still need to create the firewalls in the USA to stop Americans getting onto these websites. Which would be pointless, for where there's a hole in a security system, a hacker will find their way through it. The Leonardo DiCaprio move "Catch Me If You Can" is based on a true story. The guys in the MI5, the FBI, even some of the fraud investigators? They've been caught doing it. They know their ins and outs. But where they fill a hole, there's another one they missed.


SOPA & PIPA, are, essentially, designed to stop you doing what you want on the Internet. Hell, it's more than likely out to stop you using the Internet, end of discussion. Why? Because this blog is my intellectual property. Because my Facebook, with photographs of me and my friends, are my intellectual property if I am in them or was taking them because I had a hand in creating the shot. The videos on my Youtube account were created by me. It's easy for someone to steal them. We already have laws in place for copyright protection. We don't need this as well.


I live in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Almost four thousand miles away from Washington District County, United States of America. But if this goes through, I can - and probably will - lose everything I have on the Internet. And so will you. The Internet is not a country-specific thing.


Do you still feel unaffected?

Look Who Joined The Bandwagon

Well, would ya look at that! Looks like I finally joined the bandwagon known as Blogspot. And considering how much I bloody write, it took long enough, didn't it? :P


Anyway, I'm still partially unsure about why I'm doing this. Probably should have started this at new year, when it would have given me something to do, right? Well, yeah. Probably but I don't think like that, do I now?


Anyway, most of the time what you'll find here is a lot of random musings that take longer than the average Facebook status to write out, or a rant on Twitter that takes about ten minutes to read. Failing that, there'll be a bunch of random things posted up that mean nothing to no one. Myself included in that list. Or drawings. or random short stories or something. I need as many outlets for my overactive imagination after all.


Anyway, here's some random things about me, a lot of which are going to need explained in a bit more detail than what meets the eye.


My name is Emma Leigh McCluskey, and I am a 21 year old nutshell from Glasgow, in the UK. But I prefer to be called Scottish as opposed to British. And the idiots that can't get the fact that Scotland isn't a part of England out of their heads piss me off more than anything else in this world. Honestly. It's like calling a New Zealander Australian, or a Canadian/Mexican, American. Or a Brazilian Argentinian. Or the other way around, I'm not sure which one is more likely to get you a slap across the face. I'll need to check that one with Chris D and Rodrigo. Just in case. But the point is, if you insist on calling me British, that's fine. Call me English on the other hand and the slap you get across your face is well and truly deserved.


The reason that this blog has been entitled "Diary of a Nutshell" is because Blonde Nuthsell is a nickname that I was given at the age of about fifteen, around the time of my first romantic relationships. I was called a bombshell, but made a joke that it should not apply because I was underage, thus Nutshell came about. And even though I'm now over the age of consent, the name stuck so here we are. It's also about the only name I ever got given that did, outside of my real name of course :P


I love smilies, and use them frequently. My favourites are :), :(, =D, XD and >.>, all used at *mostly* appropriate times, and I have been told on more than one occasion that the >.> face actually is used in my facial expressions. Which I'm not sure is weird or funny. You decide.


I'm a bit...eccentric at best. Flat out fucking weird at worst. What you gonna do about it? You can't do anything about it, and I'm perfectly happy like that. So yeah. Meet me in real life and you'll no doubt see a lot of random twitching, face pulling and hear a lot of random noises. I can't help it.


I'm a stickler for spelling and grammar. People who cannot take five minutes to learn the difference between "two", "to" and "too", or "were", "where" and "wear" need to be shot. Also when is appropriate to use "who" and "whom", and various other things like that. And I don't care if it's scientifically proven that if "yuo tpye lkie tihs, yuo can siltl raed it bcesuae the lsat and fsrit lteres are in the crorcet pacels". It gives me a goddamn seizure to read, and nearly gave me a heart attack to write. I don't mind dyslexics, they've got an excuse till they don't give the help that they are offered, in which case, Hell mend them because it's there for a reason. And I can't say anything if English isn't your first language, and your first isn't something like German, which is supposedly a similar langauge. It's a hard as hell language to learn with the million different grammar rules (a bit like French then!)


I just have a thing against people who can't spell. And I have a thing against autocorrect on iPhones for the same reason.


I have an addiction to writing. I swear, if I'm not up till 6/7am, or later, talking to the fiancé, I'm scribbling something with someone in Google Docs. That thing is my best friend. I hate writing on my own. Not because I can't, but because I prefer to work with other people. Which is weird, because I can often be a bit of a loner in work.


Speaking of work, after being off for...twelve days, I think, I finally get to go back. And I'm not gonna lie, I've been looking forward to this for months. Not because I want to work, but because work will actually provide me with a little bit of entertainment. Hopefully. Besides, it's better than sitting around the house, hoping that something will come up that gets me out of the house for a few hours. Which will now raise a lot of questions, such as what about my finance? Well, that'd be okay if we didn't live across five times zones and three thousand miles. But either way.


With that, I feel like I have ranted on enough, and must start making preparations to get my ass back to the grind in two hours.


God help me...