What? He’s Back? (I honestly didn’t care)

Hello all 3 people that read this. As you’ve probably not been caring about, I haven’t posted a blog entry in fucking ages! This is because…..

dum dum dum

…I really couldn’t be arsed. It was mainly due to the fact I started doing these 365 Da(v)y(d)s, monthly summaries of last year. It seemed like such a great idea at first and I was enjoying myself. But I have this horrible mentality that the moment I’m ‘forced’ to do something, I immediately hate doing it with a passion. That’s the main reason why I don’t play games like Resident Evil. The whole mentality of playing between save points makes me feel ‘forced’ to play, so I just stop playing. Today I was going to get a book out of the library, but it was on 7 day loan only. Now I knew I could read not only this book, but the book I’m currently reading, easily within the week, but being forced to would mean I’d absolutely hate it. Well back to the blog. So I was feeling very forced to complete each entry, but I also felt that it would be a terrible sin to publish any other blog entries before I completed my 2009 summary, ‘breaking’ the chronological recap of my year. So my blog became covered in digital dust as I tried to recapture the desire to finish my ‘09 recap. In the mean time, half finished blogs on other subjects built up in my drafts column, until today. Today I decided that I just needed to blog what I felt like. I’ve been dying to blog some of my dungeons and dragons exploits because I know at least 1 person who reads this (I’m talking about you Will!) will find that interesting. So sorry if you were remotely interested in my coverage of last year, that’s old news!

So what will be happening in the blogs to come? Well first off, I’m gonna talk more about personal stuff. I don’t really have anywhere to vent that’s as good as here. Secondly, there’ll be more dnd stuff. I’m gonna try my hand at summarising the adventures of my friends party in literary form, along with talking about my design process. And finally, whatever else comes to mind. For example, I’ve started a more conscientious weight loss ‘program’ called ‘Project Lose an Olsen Twin’. Inspired by my favourite Youtuber, Phillip DeFranco, the goal is to lose 65lbs (a little over 4 stone or 30kg) It’s a hell of a big target, but will put me in a much healthier weight bracket (borderline obese/overweight to ideal)
My game plan is the following: walk any distance 30 mins or less on foot, unless raining (I don’t want to get ill), 20 sit ups a night, increasing by 5 sit ups a week minimum, eat less than 1800 calories a day. Fingers crossed this should help me shed some pounds. I’m currently at about 200lb (14.5 stone/90kg), but don’t have any scales atm to keep track of my progress.

I think the next post will be my dnd post, so laters.

A Rant About Christmas

But first, a disclaimer. As a general rule, I love christmas. I've had my depressing festive periods in the past, as has everyone, but usually it rocks, especially last year.
Second Disclaimer, I am not prejudice against any form of religious denomination........But I am getting sick to death of christians at christmas!

Let me explain with some detail about the crux of my argument. Firstly, I am not debating the validity of the hypothesis that a child called, or later known as, Jesus, was born. Whether or not he was the offspring (and yet simultaneously the same entity as) and arbitrary deity is a discussion for another day. But Jesus WAS NOT BORN IN DECEMBER!!!! He was not born in winter, he was born in spring/summer. Common sense would dictate that two thousand years ago, a child born in the winter in the middle east would probably die. Christmas would have originally been celebrated in the middle of the year. But why, you may ask, do we celebrate it in December, on the 25th? Well, it was because the christians decided to do something very sneaky, they decided to cash in on a much more popular PAGAN festival, one known as Yule (and many other names)

Yule falls on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which by the Gregorian Calender, is the 21st of December. Some traditions of Yule included:

• Bringing an evergreen tree into the home so that the life it has through the cold winter months may be passed onto to the household
• Decorating the tree so that the tree nymphs won't be upset for being disturbed.
• Placing candles on the tree to keep said nymphs warm
• Stringing up mistletoe and ivy in honour of the Horned God (the male aspect of the bi-gendered god/goddess, NOT THE DEVIL). The Horned God rules over autumn/winter, then dies and is reborn as the Goddess for spring/summer.
• Honouring the image of the Robin as a messenger of the Horned God
• Taking the last log from the fire and keeping it for next year so there will always be fire wood, a 'Yule Log' you might say.

These all sound mighty familiar don't they? That's because 99% of 'Christ'mas is taken from Yule. I am not for one second arguing for a paganisation or secularisation of xmas, I don't mind christians thinking it's all their idea. What I do mind though is people making christmas ALL ABOUT CHRISTIANITY. I was in the bullring, watching some bangra dancers performing for a children's charity. They weren't doing it for christmas, they were taking advantage of the christmas shopping. But I heard one bigot say "Christmas is about Christians" and this got me so angry. Also on facebook, I've seen groups called "Lets put the Chirst back into Christmas" I for one thought that Christmas was about peace, love and good will to ALL men, whether they're black, white, yellow, christian, Hindu, Pagan, Wicca, Muslim or atheist. Yes, maybe other faiths are to blame for getting 'offended' at 'christian' imagery (Quick list of all the typical christian imagery:

• Star (kinda, stars are also an import pagan imagery as there is the winter star, believed to be the sign of the Horned God)
• Nativity Scene (in all fairness, biggest inaccuracy about xmas, as the bible never says Jesus was born in a stable or anywhere near animals.
• Even the 'angel' on the tree is originally a fairy, a poppet of a tree nymph.

So really, it's more that people are just trying to homogenise everything and the knee jerk reaction is to become bigoted. It's two terrible extremes and I wish everyone would SHUT THE FUCK UP and maybe just go for second "Well, thanks pagans for giving us the christmas we have today"