Children

So once again, the blog went on a bit of hiatus without warning. Sorry about that.

Some real life stuff of the big kind got in the way and pretty much everything, and I mean everything, got wrapped up in a sheet and pushed to one side. It's still wrapped in that sheet, for the record, but things are slowly returning to normal. 

Hopefully the blog will be one of them.

And that is not at all what I want to talk about. Normally when I come back from a hiatus, I will make a mini-post announcing my return and promising a post tomorrow which will appear a week later. Not this time.

Because this time, I have been inspired and actually have a topic I'd like to discuss. 

Babies.

No, I am not about to become a father. That would've been announced with a photo of the sonogram or whatever. However, at the moment, there are suddenly a lot of babies around. One of my best friends has welcomed a little girl into her family and I'm staying at my aunt & uncle's house with my cousin, his partner and their 9 month old girl. So naturally, the topic of babies and whether or not I want to be a father has been on my mind.

The truth is, I think I would be an excellent father. I am good with small children and thanks to nursing, I don't have an issue with bodily fluids. Since my sleeping pattern is shit anyway, I have no problem getting up at all times for feeding, changing, etc. Quite honestly, I have zero problem, save the lack of a girlfriend/wife, with having a baby right now.

But I do not know if I want to become a parent. My body is a genetic time bomb, as many readers know. I don't know if I want to have children, knowing that I might become a burden to them later in life, or even sooner. It might be that I decline rapidly within the next few years. It might be that I don't. I don't know. No one does. But there is always that thought at the back of my mind whenever I see a baby smile at me (and yes, babies always smile at me) which makes me think about having one of my own. 

Anyway, sorry about the downer/deep thoughtful post so soon after returning.

LLAP

I have never really seen the point of April Fool's Day.

I prefer tricking people the other 364 days of the years ;)

Leonard Nimoy has died

Those are words I hoped I would not have to write for many years. Perhaps they would be here or perhaps they would've been on another blogging site. Who knows? The question is mute now anyway. After a short hospital stay, at the age of 83, Leonard Nimoy passed away today. As many fans around the world have and are no doubt doing, I thought I would take a few minutes of my time to write down my feelings on the matter.

Growing up, I was always an outsider. I never really liked or played sports. I had a few but not many friends. In school, I tended to be the quiet child and later, teenager who kept to himself and did his work. Outside of school, I rarely had friends over at home. There wasn't any particular reason for that. I always just enjoyed my own company.

But growing up, there was always Star Trek. Being born in 1988, I missed The Original Series on its first run. I grew up with Jean-Luc Picard, William Riker, Mr Data and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise-D. Naturally, since the series was called "The Next Generation", I figured there was a series before but my knowledge of it was limited to what my parents talked about and the trailers I saw whenever we bought a new Star Trek VHS. 

Then one day, we bought an Original Series VHS. The one containing the first episodes, in fact. And I was widely unimpressed. While I enjoyed knowing more about the characters who had paved the way for my favourites, I didn't especially care about them. 

Until the Balance of Terror. 

Then I saw Spock being singled out by Lt Stiles because he happened to resemble the Romulans. Suddenly, I felt the starts of a connection to Spock. I had been bullied at my primary school, to the extent I was taken out and home schooled, and here it was, happening to someone on Star Trek? 

That began my love of Spock, which over the years evolved and expanded to include a love of Leonard Nimoy himself. When he joined Twitter and started asking if anyone wanted to be an honorary grandchild, I was one of the ones who immediately *screamed* "Yes!". When I first heard his voice on Fringe, I practically squealed with delight and when he saved Chris Pine's Kirk from that giant lobster monster in JJ Abrams' reboot of Star Trek, I slapped my brother's arm with delight so many times I think he still has the bruise.

So it is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to another of my childhood heroes. He lived long and he truly prospered, and that is all we can hope for. Here is his final tweet, posted just days before his death.

And to close, even though it is incredibly cheesy, I will leave with the catchphrase most associated with him.

Live long and prosper

A few posts relating to yesterday's attack in Paris...

So I was on 9Gag today and the sheer number of posts relating to yesterday filled me with pride. Normally I don't post things related to tragedies, because a lot of the time I struggle to deal with them. Killing people is something I will never understand, and killing people in the name of a religion which specifically goes out of its way to say "killing is bad" just further confuses me. But for something like this, I felt the need to. 

So, here are a smattering of my favourites

These are the Dutch Cartoons today. They are all black in memorial. 

This one is my persona favourite 

 And finally, here's some closing words from one of my all time favourite American Presidents.

Live Long and Prosper

I am not a healthy person

I don't mean this in an illness kind of way, though it is also true. I mean this in a fitness kind of way.

Despite my skinny appearance, I know for a fact I am unfit. I get out of breath walking to my friend Jeremy's house, which is barely three tenths of a mile. That's roughly 1584 feet or 618 yards. I eat poorly. My diet consists of very few vegetables compared to a lot of takeaways. 

"So start exercising," I hear you crying. 

"Ha," I laugh back at you, imaginary voices in my head. "If only it were that easy." And this is where my general unfitness turns medical. A big problem for me and my fitness is that I suffer from a little known (but often wished for) symptom called Exercise Intolerance. So while I sit here, gloating over the smug voices in my head, I am also a little stuck at what I can do about my own health.

It's that time of Year where people generally flock to the gym in their thousands with ridiculous phrases like "fit in '15" in their head. I'm not like that. For starters, gym memberships are a little beyond my price range. For another, my nearest gym is a whole 0.6 of a mile away from me. AND there's a hill. So that's always out of the question.

So I took my next best option.

One benefit of having super rare genetic condition (aside from the mutant powers, obviously) is having contacts in the medical world. I have a specialist consultant, his team, a researcher, a specialist sister and a wonderful woman who amounts to a social worker as e-mail contacts. I also happen to have an exercise person.

The year before last (or was it last year) I did an exercise study for her, where I had a tiny incident (my heart stopped a bit too rapidly). Anyway I dropped her an email and she's ringing me next week to talk about what I think I'm capable of doing (Seriously, nearly adult I talk to for longer than 20 minutes ends up becoming over cautious about me - probably in response to my complete lack of cautiousness about my own health). So we'll see how that goes.

So I agreed to do a favour (read: I'm being paid) for a friend.

Then I took a look at what he needs doing and it's like a shit-ton. And he needs it doing by tomorrow. It's also in a field that I have little to no experience in. So tomorrow's going to be an interesting experience for me. 

But I'll keep reminding myself that I can do this. I'll put on my "Good Songs" playlist, wake up at a reasonable time and, since I'm working, I'll actually get dressed and be a respectable adult person, instead of a man-child hiding in an adult body.

And by god, I am adding it to my CV. Because experience, bitch!

Live Long and Prosper!

An opinion

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I love the moving media. Films, television and animation, I love them all. 

But by the same token, there are actors and actresses who can make and break something for me simply by being in it. These people can mean the difference between me seeing something and not. This is not unique. Everyone has them. My friend Jeremy, for example, will generally see something if James Corden is in it. While I have a dislike for him myself, I will still generally not be put off by his presence. 

Having said that, though, I do think that there is usually an exception of one or two film that these actors appear in that the people enjoy. 

(I am excluding cameos. For the sake of this argument, the actor in question has to have a starring role. For roles involving Voice Acting, it again depends on the level of involvement.)

For me, that actor is Will Ferrell. 

I cannot stand him. Elf is a prime example. Elf is innocent enough. It has an entertaining storyline, a good supporting cast and an actress I would extremely cringe-worthy scenes for (I'm looking at you, New Girl) yet I cannot stand Elf because of Ferrell. the Anchorman series is likewise wasted on me, because of him. I simply do not find him funny. I think he is annoying. 

But having said that, I think Stranger Than Fiction is a great film. Ferrell is the main character, and the plot revolves around him being both a real person and a character in Emma Thompson's character's book, in which he will be killed off in the end. I don't know if its because he doesn't play the role with his usual level of hamminess or not but I would go as far as to say I even like Ferrell in this film.

The Lego Movie and Megamind are other examples of this. I think with these, it's because I don't see Ferrell himself (save for the ending of (SPOILERS) TLM). I enjoy him more as a voice over actor, I think. 

In closing, I feel that I have to say that I nothing against Will Ferrell the person. I just don't like him as an actor. 

And to you, my loyal readers, I ask. Is there an actor or actress whose presence in a film would immediately put you off seeing it? Let me know in the comments below

Live Long and Prosper

Conversations with Past me

So for this blog entry, I'm going to try and imagine what pressing questions my 15 year old self would have for me if he was here next to me, and answer them. And to make it easier for some people, I'm going to put the questions in a different font.

Beware, swearing and hormones to follow.

So do you have a girlfriend yet?

No, but we did date a bit in 2014. That has to count for something, right?

Seriously? No girlfriend at all?

Nope, sorry.

Really?

No! New subject please!

I'm very disappointed in you. What about work?

Still unemployed, sorry.

WHAT? No girlfriend and no job? What happened to you, man?

Well, I was a cocky little gobshite who thought he didn't need to revise for his GCSEs and that turned out oh so brilliantly. We're working on both fronts though. Give us time.

Well, this is great. Have we at least travelled anywhere yet?

Actually, we have. We've been up to Scotland plenty of times. It's really-

Scotland?! But we fucking hate Scotland! 

No, we hate someone from Scotland. It took us a long time and actually meeting other people from Scotland to realise we didn't hate the country. And as a result, we've applied that philosophy to the rest of the World as well. We're a lot happier as-

Oh for fuck's sake! Is there anything we do hate?

Chavs.

What the hell are chavs?

Spoilers.

Okay then, so at least we're still a bit weird. So we've no girlfriend and no job. Next you're going to say we never went to Uni.

No, we went to Uni. 

Nice! What did we study?

Nursing.

NURSING?!? What the Hell?!

I know. I was as surprised as you when I applied. But hear me out. I started out with the intention of getting grades to apply for a film course.

That makes sense...

But I actually enjoyed it. The sense of helping people actually made me feel good. 

.....Seriously?

Yup.

So we're qualified as a Nurse now?

Um...

What?

I'll explain later.

Okay... so how come you don't have a girlfriend? Are you gay or something?

*sigh* Looks like this might be a two-part Blog entry....

What's a blog????

Live Long and Prosper