Institutionalised Economic Repression

Economic repression is when people are forced to take on financial shackles in order to progress in society. For instance, if someone wants a house of their own they must take out a mortgage; if a person wants a university degree they invariably require a student loan. But once they have these things, their opportunities for doing what they want with their lives are significantly curtailed as they have to devote a large proportion of their time towards repaying those huge debts. This form of repression then becomes institutionalised when everyone simply takes it for granted as being 'the only way things are so you may as well just get used to it'. People are blinded to possible ideological alternatives and allow themselves to be shepherded by the greedy, the manipulative and the corrupt. It bothers me a great deal that I appear to be one of the only people in the whole world able to see this clearly; which is why I write about it now, in the extremely vain hope that one day somebody else will read this and understand.

Word of the day

Eunoia.
Not only is it the shortest word in the English language to include all five vowels, but its meaning is 'beautiful thinking'.

Irony For The Unintelligent

The band James have just revealed the sleeve design for their upcoming album release; it features a baby playing with some toy building blocks and a gun. It refers to a recent incident in the good ol' US of A where a ten-month old child was legitimately granted a firearms certificate! The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK have banned this design from being featured on any billboards for fear that it may encourage younger people to use guns...What?! I ask you, how do these authority figures in the ASA get superior positions of employment with mighty powers of censorship when they can't even understand the use of irony? To anyone with more than three brain cells to knock together it's clear that the James album is anti-guns and is in fact mocking the ridiculously liberal (or should that be right-wing Republican) American gun laws. And exactly how stupid are the British youth in the twenty-first century meant to be? Does the ASA truly believe that gun crime originates or is vitally encouraged by billboard promotions? The contradictory madness of society never ceases to amaze me: while pacifist James fans listen to the pleasantly inspirational tunes and consider an ironic front cover that they weren't allowed to see advertised beforehand, they can be secure in the knowledge that a ten-month old child somewhere in America may grow up one day and become a little bit unbalanced by perpetual social repression just in time for him to shoot up a school and blame it on people who will refuse to listen; because that's how gun crime really originates.

Word Of The Day

Iconoclast.

Beards, anyone?

I have recently tried to grow a beard. My god, the hysteria. As I work in an office, numerous people have been chastising me for looking unprofessional or messy. Even though I have blonde hair and it takes me slightly longer to go from the stubble stage to the beard stage than it would for most people, I still found it difficult to comprehend why my work colleagues had such an issue with it. Since when was facial hair a social sign of negativity. Apparently, with the air of vagrancy that I was demonstrating, I may as well have taken off my tie and wrapped it around my forehead! To the people in the world who care so much about public appearance rather than the individual personality underneath, I simply say, "Pay more attention to your own lives and stop concerning yourself with mine, I truly have better things to be thinking about."