It’s Over

Today marks the end of NaBloPoMo and I gave a great deal of thought to how I’d like to end the month. When I signed up I wondered if there would really be anything in it for me, especially as I post every day as it is (I see my blog as something to read over your morning coffee every day) and yet it really has given me quite a lot back for putting forward little effort beyond the usual.

Not least of these was the one benefit I thought I might possibly derive from taking part in a contest run by bloggers for bloggers. I did not expect to gain a massive amount of new readers, after all, I suspect my genius will only be appreciated fully once I’ve departed from this mortal coil and people realise that I’m a visionary and an space cowboy rolled into one. You people are simply too stupid to appreciate me.

Yet I decided if I gained but one new reader it would be worth taking part, after all, what exactly did it cost me? I know for certain the lovely Stella does pop by and read the odd post, and I’m incredibly grateful for even that. However I definitely picked up a comment from diamondssapphire and The Mayor both of whom I hope enjoyed their visit(s) here. If you’re another new reader who happened by me thanks to the Randomizer, even if you hate the blog (after all, that only goes to show you lack taste), drop a comment under this post. Even if it’s just to say I suck (you’re wrong).

NaBloPoMo has not only given me readership it’s also given me reading material. I’ve discovered several new blogs thanks to it and it’s practically impossible to keep up with my Google Reader these days (290 unread posts as I type this). Far be it for me to complain, though, I’m always looking for interesting reading material. I’m still looking. If you’ve been good this year perhaps you should ask Santa for a spot on my blogroll?

Although I’m blogging this from the WordPress website because old habits die hard (usually after being beaten, shot and drowned, also known as the Camp X-Ray approach) The Mayor has also introduced me to Flock and so far I’m finding it a rather nice browser. Whether I continue to use it or not remains to be seen but it’s certainly one I feel I could recommend to others. Not only that but he’s given me someone else to follow on Twitter (and we all know how obsessed I am with Twitter).

From the outset I have also been under a self-issued challenge. As a result of SomeGo somewhat misunderstanding my musings on whether my blog posts for NaBloPoMo would come close to NaNoWriMo’s wordcount of 50,000 a new twist on the familiar concepts of both was launched. Over the course of the month I’ve gone from not even considering the word count when making posts to actually letting it dictate. The challenge has been like a Stalin to my Russia (only without the hot tennis players and excellent vodka) or Hitler to my Germany (minus Heidi Klum and sauerkraut).

As a result of this, however, I considered a two-part special on Twitter and I’m thankful (to myself almighty) I did because when I look back on those two posts (and the trifecta) I consider them to be some of the best writing I’ve done. When you factor in how brilliant my writing is on average that means quite a lot, whereas for most of you your “best writing” just means it wasn’t scrawled in crayon. Years from now they will study those three posts as the three greatest works of literature of the 21st century.

Most of you were probably far too intimidated by their greatness to even venture to read them but I suggest you might want to try now (if your head begins to hurt that’s just your brain creaking into gear). Despite your clear lack of appreciation for my amazing insight into Twitter I was actually going to post another review of Twitter clients for Windows today, despite the fact my last review was not that long ago.

This was in large part to try and meet the word count challenge (or rather the updated challenge). In the end I decided that quality must never be slave to quantity. So what if it’s just under 25,000 words rather than just over? To write that much in 30 days of blog posts (rather than a free-flowing novel) is actually a testament to my immense greatness. There’s no room for flowery prose or boredom-inducing paragraphs on a blog. Unless you’re Romi but I sadly lack her intense raw sexual magnetism.

Where a novel provides the odd bit of respite from the need to remain fresh (that’s why editors get paid so much to edit books down to the most interesting elements) on a blog there’s no hiding place. Not least of all a blog that is not niche, one that seeks to do the impossible and cater for everyone (and their dog, but not their cats. We have to draw the line somewhere). I’m proud of myself and that’s all that counts because why would I allow myself to be judged by lesser mortals like you cretinous slobs?

For those of you who follow these things my final count was 24, 761 words.

The Existential Anxiety Scale Test

I find Existentialism fascinating. Of course that makes me a huge nerd but so what? You’re the ones who keep visiting to see what I have to say so that makes me better than you. Know your role. Anyway, what I really love about this test is how it relates so perfectly to today’s stress-fueled world. In particular take a close look at the update at the end of the results.

4 = Angst

	How do you compare?
	Score	Percentile
	0	15
	2	30
	5	50
	8	70
	10	85

The theoric constructs behind this scale and the interpretation i made of it are biased towards existential philosophy and psychology, school of thought to which i personally ascribe, understanding roughly for this the existential belief that human beings are alone in the world. This aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating one’s own values and meanings. We have the power to create because we have the freedom to choose. In making our own choices we assume full responsibility for the results and blame no one but ourselves if the result is less than what was desired.

Existential anxiety has to do with the big questions of life, its meaning and which is our place in it; to the Doctors Good and Good, existential anxiety is about despair, alienation, and emptiness, and there are people who suffer from such feelings, it certainly can be a problem for some of them.
While, as you can see from the norms, the average score on the existential anxiety scale was only 5, but the authors reported that in their sample of 200 people, some scores were as high as 26.

In the past the world was a relatively predictable place. People grew up in stable families, and they had a fairly clear sense of what their roles in the world and society would be. Now we live in a changing world, and a world in which every generation have less common principles to embrace, long have been gone the flower children, the excess of the 80′s, and the already cynical “generation X” from the 90′s. Is this sustained and rapid change in society plus the emergent and evergrowing consumerism that try to cope with the lack of certitude that have made difficult for people to know which is their place in the world, and understand how they fit in.

Existential anxiety can be triggered by abrupt life changes, like the death of someone close to us (persons who have made of being a parent the main reason and sense of their life and then suddenly lose a child), the loss of the self image (for example have made a very important part of our identity our job and suddenly lose it, being the best student and drop our grades, or build our sense of self worth around our physical beauty and see it diminish); in all of these cases besides the obvious pain and inherent difficulties implied in all of these losses, there is a sense of loss of our place in the world.

This scale was constructed for research purpose only and not for clinical diagnosis, if you feel like existential angst is getting the best of you please by all means seek professional help, selfawareness, responsibility and contemplation are healthy and positive, endogenous or severe depression are not, this is not a depression scale, and not every existentialist is depressive, but many depressive people lean towards a quite high score in existentialist anxiety, so if you got a high score in this test take a good look at yourself, the only person who knows how much of this is because you are a highly intellectual and/or cynical but happy person, and how much of this is because you might be suffering of a condition that cause you suffering and can be treated quite effectively if you give yourself the chance of get help, is ultimately, you.

Bottom line: be yourself, live for yourself, be your own person and remember that the control over your own life is ultimately yours, sure being ultimately alone doesnt sound as the most cheery thought, but looking at it the other way around, it also means that you are completely free for build for yourself the life that you want to live, and if you feel like somebody’s puppet, is only because you are allowing it yourself. “stick and stones may break my bones but ….”

p.s: to those curious souls who are wondering how i did in this scale, i scored 4 = Angst.

UPDATE: the sample in which the table of scores was based was taken in the 70′s, with the stats that okcupid allow me to access I can’t build a new score/percentile table, but it seems the tendency of our new generation of young adults is to score much higher in existential anxiety than what the previous generation scored in that time, I think (and this is just an asumption, dont have enough information to be certain) that this tendency will go increasing, being paired with a more educated population, but the fact that studying a career doesn’t guarantee anymore finding a job in the same field, an easier access to information, and therefore more chances to develop awareness and a critical point of view about the state of affairs.

Link: The Existential Anxiety Scale Test written by FloresDelMal on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Edit: In completely unrelated news…

The Blog Ninjas present Mystery Topic Challenge #5! Signups are open until Dec. 2nd when the Mystery Topic will be revealed by the last winner, Scott-O-Rama. You don’t have to register to signup, but you’re missing out on so much more. Besides, don’t you want to be a Blog Ninja?

For more information on what the Mystery Topic Challenge is click HERE.

To signup, click HERE.

Wiki-Wednesday – Kuala Lumpur International Airport

Today’s Wiki-Wednesday, which weighs in at a mammoth 4903 words (despite intense editing), making it the longest post in the short history of Textual Relations by some margin, will be of particular interest to suicide bombers. The information may also be useful to those travelling to Malaysia but I suspect it’s the equivalent of a suicide bomber’s wet dream.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kuala Lumpur International Airport Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur 吉隆玻国际机场
The KLIA control tower and part of the airport

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is one of southeast Asia’s major aviation hubs, along with Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport and Singapore Changi Airport, and Malaysia’s main international airport. It is situated in Sepang district, in the south of the state of Selangor, about 50 km from the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Built at a cost of some US$3.5 billion, KLIA was opened on 27 June 1998. Kuala Lumpur International Airport can handle 35 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo a year. It is currently ranked as 13th busiest airport by international passenger traffic where it has handled 24,129,748 passengers in the year of 2006. In the same year, it is ranked 30th busiest airport by cargo traffic where it has handled 677 446 metric tonnes of cargo.

Entertainment Tonight

It’s been quite a while since I laid into celebrities and since I’ve been attacking everyone else I thought it would remiss of me to leave them out of the firing line. After all it’d be a travesty to deprive them of NaBloPoMo time. Not that I need an excuse, I love a good celebrity roasting (no, that’s not a euphemism) as much as the next man (because celebrity gossip is the height of manliness).

Quite why Amy Winehouse thinks anyone believes that her canceling her remaining 2007 tour dates has anything to do with her husband is beyond me. Apparently she “can’t perform without Blake”. So it’s got nothing to do with drugs then? No, of course not, not Amy. Clearly for me to think “intense emotional strain” is merely record label speak for “she’s been higher than a kite on the top of Mount Everest” is just cynicism.

You may or may not know this but I’ve never much liked Amy. Not only do I think she’s a complete nut case (which isn’t always a bad trait) but she’s an overrated singer. Her voice is so incredibly nasal and it took the immense talents of Mark Ronson to make her sound decent. Note, even he only made her sound decent, God himself couldn’t make her sound good. Yet people talk about her like she’s the second coming.

Speaking of musicians I can’t stand, I find myself more and more disgusted by Kanye West with each passing day. To think I once had respect for him makes me actually question my own sanity. Of course the man is loaded with talent but he is the most self-righteous arrogant man in music today. Just when I thought he couldn’t get any worse (after releasing his book, which is the hallmark of today’s self-aggrandizing celebrity) the man uses the recent death of his mother to settle a lawsuit.

Some may argue that the timing is coincidental but that’s clearly not the case, I mean, even Knievel referenced it in his quotes. Using family tragedy to get sympathy from a legend like Knievel is just the sort of bottom-feeding act we’ve come to expect from Kanye who is becoming less and less distinguishable from his arch nemesis 50 Cent all the time (with the possible exception that his face hasn’t been riddled with bullets…yet)

Moving from two people that repulse me to a man that’s so awesome he makes me, the most red-blooded straight male on the planet, officially God’s Gift To Women (it’s just a pity that they sent it back, “return to sender”) weak at the knees. Many of my female friends often play the game of “I’d turn lesbian for” and let’s face it, most men won’t ever play the male equivalent. Not that I do either, it would be tantamount to coming out of the closet for us men folk. Yet I’m certain if we did one man would win out.

Johnny Depp is not only a rather attractive male (from a purely aesthetic perspective, you understand) but also one of the coolest men on the planet. This is why men everywhere want to be him and women everywhere want to be with him (although I suspect many of the men wouldn’t say no either). Just when you thought the man could not get more perfect he proves you wrong. Most men would consider jewelery a lavish gift. Not Johnny. No, he buys vineyards. I wonder how that went. “Honey, I’m home. I was going to grab some wine to have with dinner but then I just bought the vineyard.”

Unfortunately the little footnote about the woman I hate most in the world (Courtney Love) buying a place in Richmond (which, by the way, is not in Middlesex! I should know, I’m in Middlesex and have a friend in Richmond, which is SURREY) quickly brought my thoughts back to dishing some dirt. Which is fine by me because I read yet further proof that Carson Daly (who I’ve never been able to stand) has proven he’s a massive tool.

Although we never really needed it, we have it, in the form of Daly crossing the picket lines. So far I’ve opted out of writing about the writer’s strike because bloggers far more capable than I, and with far better research to back them up have already done a sterling job. One that immediately springs to mind is iJustine. Put simply the writers aren’t asking for that much. They’re just asking that in view of new media outlets like the internet becoming so popular, they continue to receive fair remuneration.

One could even make a case that they’re underselling themselves. When you see what sort of quality programming is being disrupted by this strike you realise what they contribute. They bring us such great entertainment and all they’re asking for is a fair price for their hard work. As writers ourselves, who value our content, bloggers should feel a sense of affinity with those striking. Daly can claim he’s doing it for his staffers but I just reckon it’s because if his face isn’t on TV enough his head will explode.

Legend has it Daly’s head is actually made of a million Pez tablets and doctors say such an explosion would be sufficient to cure world hunger. If that’s not enough reason to keep him off TV I don’t know what is. I wholeheartedly recommend we replace him with more of Anna Friel on TV instead. Apparently she reckons kissing through plastic is sexy. Given how incredibly hot Friel still is at 31 (did I mention I had a huge crush on her when she was in Brookside?) I’d kiss her through cement if I got the chance.

For a moment there I forgot what I was writing about. The mental image of kissing Anna Friel, albeit through a slab of concrete, was far too distracting. Friel’s most famous kiss (the lesbian scene in Brookside) is actually a great segue into the news that Portia De Rossi feared playing a lesbian on TV. I don’t get it. She’s one of the world’s most famous lesbians. What’s to fear? Now I think about it, given her girlfriend is the rather hideous Ellen DeGeneres, I can imagine she might be worried that her insane girlfriend would be jealous of the immensely foxy Joely Richardson.

Over the last few years a lot of iconic bands have been making comebacks and doing tours, be it the Pixies, Led Zeppelin or the Police. Maybe this is just me but I can’t understand it. Whenever I’ve seen one of these great bands on stage now they just look like a bunch of old men trying to recapture their long-lost youth. It’s like a mid-life crisis for millionaires. All they seem to be doing, to me, is ruining their legacy. Such a shame.

Finally, speaking of shame, England’s shame is in the news again as his girlfriend has decided to move to London to be closer to him. I wonder if sometimes he rolls over in his sleep and calls her “Eva darling”. Perhaps over a late-night candlelight dinner they discuss taking over Europe and wiping out the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals?

NaBloPoMo Challenge

The final stretch of NaBloPoMo is drawing near and I’m still very much short of my word count target. To write 50,000 words worth of blog posts in a month was always going to be challenging, and in many ways I’d argue it was probably a more demanding task than NaNoWriMo. Writing a novel relies more on getting into a flow so the words come easier, whereas a blog is stop-start.

Certainly for me writing fiction tends to bring out my verbose side (my blog is actually succinct by my standards) so I think I’d have little trouble bashing out 50,000 words in a month. I’ll have to spend a year trying to think up a plot and saving it up for next November to enter NaNoWriMo next year and prove it. Which I will. Because I’m great.

Whatever anyone says I set myself the challenge and looking back perhaps it was overly ambitious. In all seriousness I never intended it to be a challenge, I just wondered if I’d get close to 50,000 in a month, but one of the comments gave me the idea to turn into my own personal challenge. I’m glad I did though because NaBloPoMo was nothing beyond my usual blogging as I post every day anyway. Not much challenge in that.

Still, with a few more days left I wonder if I can get close to 25,000. Currently I’ve got roughly 17,000 so that would require 8,000 words in four days. That’s certainly possible. The real challenge will be doing it without boring you all.