I went to university at Loughborough. Many a night spent out with friends in town or at the union and no real trouble witnessed or heard of. In the last 6 months there have been rapes, assaults, brutal knife attacks and now someone’s been shot in the university union, on the campus itself. The BBC reports (vaguely) about the university shooting.

I’m sick of this crap. I’m sick of mindless thugs ruining the place, destroying property and lives because their tiny minds know no better. I’m sick of chav doley bastards breaking into our homes, wrecking our cars and fouling the streets with vomit, needles and piss.

The police are clearly ineffective, the education system has failled and public awareness can only reach those who can read and, more importantly, give a damn. What’s next? Martial law? Vigilante groups who will dispense justice in the only way these brutish fools understand? I have no idea, but it’s plain to see for anyone who cares to look that right now, in this age of Big Brother and heightened security, nothing is working. Perhaps the police are too busy chasing imaginary terrorists that they’ve no time for the real problems.

Ironically, my GF and I are in the process of applying for her permanent leave to remain here. As soon as it’s approved, maybe we’ll be applying for permanent leave to remain somewhere else.

(And yes, I’m aware that everywhere has crime, but when a dead-end sleepy town like Loughborough ends up with gunshot victims, it’s time to ask questions. Also, no-one in Australia, Sweden, Switzerland or pretty much anywhere East of here knows what a Chav is, and that can only be a good thing.)

Compare and Contrast

Friday 1136hrs

A brief stutter out of inactivity to bring two lovely links to you. The word for today (And most likely a long time to come and for a long time past…) is Hypocrisy.

First off we have : America weaponising space in an attempt to “Deny adverdaries access to orbit”. I didn’t think anyone owned that, but there you go, obviously the USA thinks it does and has the budget to make that a reality.

Anyhow, skirting around the implications of that article (Which would probably make for a good post in isolation) we get to the second post that highlights the word of the Era… Chinese Anti-Satellite Test.

If you’re a little slow I’m just trying to point out that the media and government would like you to believe that only white men should have spaceships and/or the right to poke their nose, in glorious high res detail, into the lives of people in other countries and/or guide their expensive missiles into hospitals and daycare centres with pinpoint accuracy.

What they’re missing here is that there has been and arms race running all along, it’s just that because “Their Team was winning (Think white, wealthy and wealthy) it didn’t occur to them. The hare has been out in the lead for so long he’s forgotten why that tortoise is following him, or why the tortoise is riding a Segway. A hopped up, supercharged, submersible Segway with offroad wheels, nuclear arms and anti-satellite missiles.

I have no doubt every nation on earth wants to feel safe, and it’s down (unfortunately) to the people in power to ensure that this safety is reached together and in co-operation, rather than in animosity. M.A.D. only keeps you safe so long as no-one pushes the button.

A little peice on (Woe betide me, I hope I am forgiven…) Fox News (See?) was brought to my attention today, regarding the segregation of men and children on aeroplanes.

So, I have an X and a Y chromosome and I’m immediately a kiddie-fiddling paeodophile “Risk Candidate” ? Holy smokes, that makes me want to feed certain board members of certain airlines into the turbine intakes of their precious jets. If I walk up to someone in the street and shout “RAPIST!” they can have me for defamation of character. If I make suggestions about an illigitimate heritage to someone of prominence I’ll be whisked away and no doubt locked up for several years on trumped up and utterly despicable “terror charges”

However, if I’m an airline then it’s perfectly ok to suggest that I’d roger the Cabin Boy or delight in giving Jane a hand down the well whilst Jack lays unconscious at the foot of the hill. Come on, what’s this all about and why, in today’s litigious society, isn’t someone sueing someone else about it? You could get yourself sued for calling a member of cabinet a wanker (Which is an almost certainly not fallacious…) but you can get away scot free supposing that any adult male is a closet paedophile (Which is almost certainly wrong, and exponentially a more serious, demeaning and damaging claim).

Oh boy, angry Den.

On the upside, I’ve acquired a new lens and a new chair, which means my arse no longer hurts and I can finally take photographs of large things without having to move out of the county to do so.

More Transformer Atrocities

Thursday 2345hrs

You can see more of the devastation in this post. Bumblebee is some kind of crappy American muscle car, not a beetle, and none of the robots appear to bear any relation to their other forms, not like the old days when you could see the parts of the Porsche sticking out of Jazz, or the nose cone down the front of Starscream.

It’s taken 20 years for this movie to come to the fore, is it going to be another 20 before we see it done right? *Sigh*. One more chance to relive the childhood dream, dashed.

It’s been quiet. Don’t sue me.

I am a child of the 80’s. I played with transformers. Things that turn into robots, for the uninitiated. You can’t get cooler than that.

However I stumbled on what is, allegedly, a preview of what Optimus Prime will look like in the upcoming 3D Movie. Click for Optimus Concept Art. Errm. Excuse me? What is that steaming pile of $#&* ?

Please viewer, acquaint yourself with the *ACTUAL* Optimus Prime.

What in the name of all things holy were they injecting when they decided to make one of the most iconic toy and cartoon characters ever into some anonymous, unidentifiable mish-mash of non-correlating, disorganised, hopelessly overstyled trash?

Moons ago I stumbled on a transformers render test by an independent artist that I was fooled into thinking was a rendertest from the movie. It shows a white Ultra Magnus cab transforming and, in my opinion, looks outstanding. It also shows a “feasible” transformation from a truck cab onto a properly proportioned and good looking Optimus-style robot.

I say fire the graphics crew on the movie and hire this guy, as his work is miles ahead.

Hopefully the “leaked” artwork is a hoax, and the movie characters will actually look like, you know, their characters. If the new ultra-spikey nonsense junk artwork is for real, then I’m of course going to do nothing constructive, I’ll just whine for a bit. Just sucks, though, as the movie production is making it look like they’re targetting the audeince that would actually rember Transformers “G1″, then spitting in their eyes by producing robots that look like scrapheap challenge accidents. Ahh well.

Net Hilarity

Monday 1422hrs

I bring you a speech by Ted Stevens, a senator for Alaska, eloquently explaining why Net Neutrality is a bad thing. if you don’t understand why this is hillarious, get off the “free” internet and sign up with AOL on the spot. Net Neutrality is Bad for Families.

Net Neutrality

Friday 1638hrs

I’m glad I didn’t waste my time writing a hugely sarcastic peice, biting in to the arses of the moneygrabbing telco monopolies that want to discriminate between internet traffic types so they can set tiered prices for skype, MSN and basic web browsing. I’m glad I didn’t bother to rant on about how that’d make it possible for a government to subvert the masses by adding premium charges to non-aligned news websites and services. I’m glad I didn’t bother, as The Register beat me to it and put it better than I probably could have.

Why Net Neutrality is a Bad Thing. Be warned if you’re not good with sarcasm, have someone sit with you to explain this one.

The New SS

Wednesday 0356hrs

Ok so it’s a little propagandist, but hey, isn’t everything else we usually see on Fox and CNN ? 😉
This little video highlights the abuse of powers held by the US Police and for me highlighted just how scary their damn riot cops look. It’s like the bad guys from some exaggerated sci-fi movie for pity’s sake.
US police in action might be a little over the top with respect to melodramatic production value, but it’s worth spending 5 minutes on, to give you something to think about the next time you see peaceful protests pushed back by the militant arm of your government police.

Just who are they protecting and serving, anyway?