I’m the girl that doesn’t care about what people think about me. If you don’t like me that’s your problem not mine. However, to a certain extent can anyone not care that much? I was putting on my make-up this morning when my other half says to me ‘we are only going to the farm shop and your dad’s.’ This makes me think… What if I see someone I know? I can’t be seen looking like I have just rolled out of bed hanging from the night before. Now I have really contradicted myself.
I don’t care what people think but I care about appearances. Does this even make sense? Probably not. It makes me wonder, is this me thinking? Or is it the way the world has taught me to think? After all, in today’s society it’s all about how you look and what you wear isn’t it? Does anyone have their own thoughts any more, or do we think things we are made to think because society tells us it’s right? Take the catwalk for instance; we see all these beautiful models and are left thinking we need to be as skinny as them to look good in clothes. This is when the eating disorders come into play and before we know it we are all playing a role within the same vicious circle. Gone are the days when someone got something on merit and not just because they are hot!
The problem is that it is everywhere now, it’s even in the gym when you go for a work out. Whilst I’m there sweating away my make-up, the girl next to me has caked it on so thick that it really won’t be going anywhere. I’m in my baggy trackies and t-shirt whilst she is in skin tight leggings and a sports bra. Now that is what I call OTT, but heaven forbid she get seen by a cute guy with make-up running down her face. Are we really this vain or is this still society telling us this is the way we should be?
The more I think about this the more I want to pick these girls up and shake some sense into them. It’s time to take a stand. Girls we are beautiful in the ways and shapes we come. You don’t need the next fad diet or extra make-up. People love you for who you are inside not what you look like. So next time you run for the mascara, stop! Take a look in the mirror and think about the things you like about your appearance and personality and help them shine through on a daily basis. After all, when you take away all the so-called important things, does anyone really care if your hair is out of place or if you’re not wearing the latest designs? I doubt it!
There’s a thief in our midst! Ok, that’s not really a shock as it seems like there’s always a thief around these days. But things just seem to get worse. Just when you think that the worst of something has passed it just comes back and slaps you back in the face again. Anyway, I think you might be able to predict some of what comes up this week.
Political Oops of the Week
So Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to give in and now the German taxpayer will be actively funding the broken banks of Europe. I can’t help but think that this will be the decision that everybody regrets in the next five years. Let’s look at it like this. Germany has essentially said that we will save Europe with everything we have. Now, the only way they can do this is by plugging more and more money into it.
It’s nothing but a delusion. What Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t realise is that it’s just deluding the markets because every time German money is plugged into the hole the markets will go up, but the currency is fundamentally flawed. It’s broken and it just eats money and swallows it up. Unlike other currencies that occasionally get hungry, the Euro suffers from perpetual hunger. After what it’s been through no investor will trust it again. It will collapse, and now that Germany has committed herself she will go down with the Euro sooner or later.
Let’s look at the overall logic of the affair. Closer integration and spending got us into this mess in the first place. So what’s the logic to solve the problem? Oh that’s right, more integration and more spending. Yeah, that’ll work.
Oh look it's a vision of Germany in the future.
The Painful…
Lord Wei, the guy who was the guru of David Cameron’s Big Society plan, has marked his return to public life as he just revealed that he wants to encourage new retirees to volunteer and give something back to the community. Ok, he hasn’t said that it’s compulsory or anything like that, it’s not like national service. Now, I can understand that it would be a nice thing to have as some pensioners probably would like to volunteer and do something with their time. But what gets me is that he’s having the audacity to say that pensioners should be giving something back to society.
The contradiction in what Lord Wei is saying is shocking. As part of this Big Society initiative he’s saying that since pensioners have worked for the community all their lives they should now be giving back to the community. How is working your entire life not giving something to society? If anything they should be encouraged to go away and do what they like because they’ve dedicated their lives to society. It just seems so ungrateful and just blatantly wrong.
I don’t have a problem with the fact that he wants to make a service like this available, but what I do have a problem with is the way he’s presenting it. He’s making it sound as if new retirees haven’t given enough and should be made to do more. In other words, he’s basically going for the guilt-trip factor.
…And the Pointless
The pointless, wow, we have something quite weird this week. This week it was aged 46 Nicolas Saunders who was caught by his ex-wife in her bed with her bull mastiff. If you don’t know what a bull mastiff is then we’ve provided you with a picture of one here. And, yes, the father-of-three was naked. He actively called the dog to his room and his wife found him attempting to stick his lightning rod into Sasha’s weather balloon; Sasha is the dog.
He was then arrested and was forced to provide a sperm sample, which, of course, came back as a 100% match to the substance found on Sasha. But Mr. Nicolas Saunders isn’t finished yet. Even despite his humiliation he now has to go back to court for pre-sentencing. I’m curious to know how many years you can possibly get for having sex with your ex-wife’s dog, maybe he can tell us all about it soon?
The So Outrageous that it’s Borderline Hilarious
This is the part that’s incredibly predictable. I’ll just give you one entity to attune you to the subject matter that I’m going to be discussing next. Ready, ok let me just stretch it out, it’s the banks. Yes, the banks are at it again. Corruption, cheating, thieving, and doing it doggy style with the public’s money once again.
Firstly, the banks started by being caught for manipulating interest rates. Although as of this writing it’s only been Barclays that were fined the £290 million the other banks are also under investigation, and the case is expected to cast its net over a number of American banks as well. So expect more fines and more naming and shaming to come after this case.
But it wasn’t over, oh no. Less than 48 hours later they were back in the news because they’ve been caught mis-selling insurance plans to small businesses. Supposedly, these expensive packages were designed to protect small businesses against the impact of changing interest rates. Whilst the packages were perfectly applicable to some businesses, the banks were selling them to companies that didn’t even need them. And they were too complicated to understand so they made sure that nobody would ever know that they were pointless.
And before this we had the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scandal, which was just blatant exploitation. Oh and nobody can forget all the stuff that we had to deal with in 2008 when they almost committed suicide.
What can we do about it though?
The answer is probably nothing as they have a complete and total hold over us. If we upset them then they just move somewhere else. And if that happens then London will turn into a slum.
Anyway, maybe next week won’t be so bleak and irritating after all…
If you take a look at the picture I have provided you just below this paragraph then what would you say about this example of contemporary art? Painted by an eight-year-old, bland and boring, basic and amateurish? I would say all of those things, but what would you say if I told you that someone paid £53.8m for it?
The 'masterpiece' on show.
It’s no joke; somebody broke the record for the highest price ever paid for a piece of contemporary art at auction.
The piece itself was painted by Mark Rothko and is entitled “Orange, Red, Yellow”. And if you look at some of his other work then you will discover that he has made a fortune on the same idea. This is just different shades of colour on a canvas in quite frankly basic and pathetic shapes.
When I want to see art I want to see skill. And that’s what one of the dictionary definitions of art is: “Skilled.” Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, Cezanne, Botticelli, all of these were skilled at what they did. This is an insult to art and this is precisely why many people believe that contemporary art is utter trash. I’m one of these people and I just hope that whoever paid for this realises how stupid he is.
And I know that fans of this are going to try and put people off with their elitist rhetoric about how some people are too stupid to see the true meaning in it. But you can find meanings in anything if you like, it doesn’t make the item you are taking a meaning from art, though.
Take a stereotypical yellow, number two test pencil, with eraser, and here is my meaning for it:
“This pencil demonstrates the transitioning of the past to the modern day as this tool has been transformed from the creative purposes it was once instilled with to the rigid structuring of modern day life. The point is the crowning glory of what can symbolise the pointlessness of the modern educational system and the stifling of creative thought. And, yet, at the same time, the fact that it creates these feelings is a demonstration of artistic genius in itself.”
I could go on, but it demonstrates that you can see a meaning in even the most mundane things.
I’ve also noticed something else quite interesting as well. If we look back to the past, and I mean centuries prior to this one, the skilled were praised. The skilled were praised in a society that was rather primitive. And those skilled artists of today are still incredibly difficult to replicate in our modern age, without the aid of computers. But as we have advanced throughout the ages we have actually opted for more primitive forms of art; and this is what we call contemporary art.
The only thing that is skilled here is the fact that Mark Rothko managed to convince someone to pay that much for something that was most likely painted within a day.
This is nothing but a few colours splashed on to the page in a childlike manner. As we advance further, are artists just going to debase themselves further in a sad attempt to seem different?
That’s something that has always bothered me about the art industry. They are so desperate to move away from mainstream society that they are willing to damage their own art because of it.
This further enhances my view that contemporary art is based off of nothing but connections and who has the most cash. Granted, to an extent, it was always like this. But no artist can succeed with things like this without having powerful and influential connections and lots of money to do the talking.
Mark Rothko kindly letting the world see him work on his next masterpiece to continue a long and worthwhile career.
