Off the top of my head...

I'm back.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:49:40 +0200

It's been a while, Blog.co.uk. I lost interest for a while. But recently things had set me thinking again. There's a lot on my mind and I need somewhere to vent it.

I'm beginning to think I'm a little screwed in the head. I have a friend, going through a really tough separation, and the only thing I can think to say is "Dude, why did you give her your TV?" Maybe it's just a lack of experience, or a teenage mentality, but I feel that I'm incapable of empathy or even sensitivity.

Hehe. It's ironic that the format bar at the top of this editor is telling me I'm 'FUKD'

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The story of my life.

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 21:29:01 +0200

I'm back, but I've been thinking a lot about stuff lately, so I'm doing something a tad different. Food for thought, maybe.

-the story of my life-

Forgive me if I seem like an attention-seeking whiny teenager, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and want to share it with those of you who don't necessarily know much about me.

On the twentieth of August, nineteen-ninety, I was brought into the world and named Samuel Paul Down.

I was (and still am) living in a christian household, and spent two happy years at a local day nursery. Then, I went to school, and all hell broke loose. From three weeks in, my lisp, strange teeth, and physical inferiority (last to be picked.. ever) made me an instant target for a particularly troubled group of children (my mother knew their mothers, I found out later on)

One boy just didn't stop. For seven years, I was taunted, isolated, hurt and stolen from. And there was always the followers, the guys who jumped on the bandwagon. I was completely hindered from developing any real friendships, or indeed social skills. The school were supposedly blind of this obvious fact. My social life, at the age of ten, was non-existent. I would sit against a wall, out of the way of everybody else, and blindly hope that no-one would find a reason to bother me.

Then, I found myself on the floor with a paramedic staring over me. Wow, turns out I have epilepsy. Oh joy. At the same hospital visit, I was diagnosed with dyspraxia, a disorder that extremely hinders co-ordination and
organisation. I was relieved, in a way, to finally find out why I was always picked last, why I was looked down at by my classmates. But this brought a fresh wave of reasons to taunt me, too. I had a writing slope for the

last year at primary school. Naturally, an object of fun to all those less favoured towards me. Which, at this point, was just about everybody.

By the end of year six /start of year seven, I was a paranoid emotional wreck with huge abandonment issues, and would break out in tears if I was held back after school (without prior notice), or the person I was supposed to meet wasn't there.

Enter the secondary school. Same problems, just bigger and worse. The laptop I recieved in year eight didn't help. Now I was the unathletic, geeky mong with the laptop. Well, that broke within a year , what with schoolkids kicking my bag, as they do. The student support service at the school were useless, instead of punishing those who had caused me the pain and greif, told me to stay out of their way.

Year nine. What with my laptop broke, some bright spark decided to get me a writing slope again. But this was worse. I had a slanted booster seat to reconfigure my posture. I was fourteen years old, and I had a writing slope and a booster seat. I was forced to carry it round, thus reducing my social life to zero, what with everyone taking the piss, and me still crying at the drop of a hat.

That summer, between year nine and year ten, I went to a Christian holiday camp, which I previously hated because I never made any friends there (no social skills, remember). But this year was different. I met some great people, made some awesome friends, restored my faith in humanity and boosted my social confidence through the roof.

Equipped with this new found confidence, I entered my GCSE course. Same school, same people, same problems. The only difference is, I didn't care anymore. The short holiday had permanetly altered my psyche. I stuck through it, I ignored everything that wasn't a kind word, and I got right back up when I hit the floor. However, I still had a huge stigma associated with me. This limited my friends to the three people who could actually see past the rumours and lies (and some shameful truths) and see who I really was.

I passed my GCSE's with an ALICE score of 5.0 (C). Since entering college, the stigma dissapeared. I made some great friends, and my social circle went from three to thirty in two days, and to a hundred in a month. Even the people who bullied me constantly in secondary school weren't being assholes. It's like the whole school grew up in six weeks. And remember the first guy, back at the start of the post? Five years apart changed his perspectives a lot. He's an awesome guy.

So, despite some trouble with my courses (namely: they suck) I'm perfectly happy. I have awesome friends, very little enemies, and I've been invited out more in the past month than in the whole of my life before college.

I'm writing this, however, becuase the one person outside my family who has seen all I've just described has asked me the million-pound question:

How am I still smiling?

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A stream of consciousness - Part eleven

Wed, 30 May 2007 22:48:32 +0200

Belief is the strongest force on the planet. It can start wars, enconflicts and break apart nations. It can make some things seem more important than anything else, and others look like the scum of the earth. Of course, I'm mostly referring to religion. But it goes deeper than that. Everyone needs something to beleive in, or we might as well fall over and die now. If we don't believe in anything, or we believe something negative (about ourselves, or others) there's nothing to strive for, nothing to aim for. For example, I believe I'm going to fail my politics exam, whether I revise or not. I believe college isn't for me, not just the subjects I chose. But I beleive that I can make something out of myself. I believe that there's something in my brain I can use, along with my hands, to do someting amazing. I want to do something with my hands, because I've been doing a lot of manual labour recently, and I've enjoyed every second of it. Except it's repetetive, it doesn't engage the intellect that I know I have. So I decided to have a bash at opening my laptop. And that, I enjoyed thoroughly. Just working like that, working out where everything went, and which bits did what, and the processor itself was a huge point of interest. I mean, there's more processing power than eighteen thousand calculators in one single proccessor chip, and there's over a dozen of those. I find that sort of thing absolutely amazing, and would like to work with that kind of stuff. I'm repeating myself, I think.

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Sorry guys

Tue, 29 May 2007 23:05:00 +0200

But I'm really tired, and my head hurts. I can't write anything tonight.

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A stream of consciousness - Part ten

Mon, 28 May 2007 21:02:00 +0200

Speaking of darkness, here is a truly memorable quote from 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince': "It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more" This is, in fact, ingrained on my memory becuase it's a favourite of my sisters'(who recently started writing here: http://letitgo.blog.co.uk/ ). Although it does make sense, I don't entirely agree with it. I'm more inclined to believe that it is our perceptions of the death and darkness, and what lies within, is what we fear. This metaphor goes for all aspects of life, whether you're a troubled teenager afraid of the 'darkness' of real life, or if you're facing a close death and are trying to comprehend what life would be like without that person. Even when facing your own death, I can imagine that you would be afraid of waht you percieve as darkness beyond this life, if you indeed do believe in an afterlife. But please, if anyone reading is on death's door (forgive the mannerism), correct me if I'm wrong. I'm wrong quite a lot nowadays. Sometimes I know I'm wrong, and I'm just debating for the sake of it. Sometimes, I'm corrected. Sometimes, I know I'm right, and that the person 'correcting' me is wrong. But I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. As long as you know you're right, it doesn't matter what anybody else says. And that's another view I hold for every situation, that it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, or believes they know.

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A stream of consciousness - Part nine

Sun, 27 May 2007 23:48:25 +0200

You see, I have a naturally inquisitive mind, about almost everything, but mostly just mechanics. And, like I said, I don't mean motors, or engines, it's all really simple. I'd like to find out how it all works together to create something that can do more things at the same time than I can in three days. For example, I spent the last three hours up to my elbows in laptop parts, just because I wanted to fit a new RAM card and got sidetracked by the power block (which seems to be broken anyhow). So I guess diagnostics and repair is the best option for me, as I can't design for joke. Jokes can be seen as just a form of entertainment. I think it runs deeper that that, at least with some people. I've found that some people will make a joke to deal with a tense, shocking or saddening situation. Some people simply appear happy to hide depression. I personally just block it all out. I don't let it get too me, and I don't store any anger. This is mostly because I don't harbour any anger towards anybody. Not my parents, not my friends, not even my enemies. It wasn't like that at one point though. It would all get to me, I would harbor anger, and it would build up to the point of no return. And at this point, bad things happened. But mostly to me, I used to be a crying, emotional wreck. I eventually learnt to block it out and rise above it all. Now, the results are plain to see. But I can't judge these results. It's up to other people to confirm my self-image. A lot of people, I have found, have a really negative self-image, and a really low self-esteem. At one point, I did. And I can understand why, having been through most of it myself. But what I don't understand is why none of these people even try to pull themselves out of it when everyone around them is doing all they can to bring their confidence right up. Do they enjoy hating themselves? I know I didn't. And I knew I had to stop. I learnt to ignore everybody, to a point where one of my friends suggested I was arrogant and self-ingnorant. It was at this point that everybody else pointed out that considering what I'd been through, it's strengh of character that keeps me from falling into tears again. And those days, when I would fall down crying in the playground, were the darkest days of my life.

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A stream of conciousness - Part eight

Sat, 26 May 2007 22:34:40 +0200

'Cream Crackered' is cockney rhyming slang for knackered (for those not familiar, cokney rhyming slang is a slang used by london gangs some time ago that involved replacing nouns and verbs with rhyming counterparts). That was a really amazing language, and it worked for so long until a dictionary was sold to the authorities. That's something police won't do anymore, buy information. Well, at least not in england. If it can be used as evidence in court, it will simply be seized. Which, to be fair, I have no problem with it it puts away one more murderer or rapist away for good. But our prisons are overcrowded, so these people are released under parole way too early. There's even talks of using prison ships. Personally, I think they should chain em' all up in bright orange boiler suits and have them splitting rocks by the side of the motorway. Forget human rights, anybody who willingly takes people's lives away doesn't deserve any. If you could see the look on my face as I write this, you'd understand I'm deadly serious. And that's the problem with the internet, you can't read text in the same way you can read a person. You can't hear the tone of someone's voice, and emotions cannot be emulated, no matter how many of these you put into your writing. Now 'writing'; that's a generic term used often on the internet (hell, I've used it just now) when, infact, we don't write a thing. Writing suggest using a pen and paper. I'm using a lot of highly sophisticated circuitry, from the input devices in the keyboard and resulting in the output of text on the screen. I've always wanted to know how a CRT monitor works. In fact, I've always wanted to know how everything electromechanical works. Lamps, heaters and motors are all quite simple. But Laser printers systems? Television sets? I've been looking for something to do, and it's right in front of me.

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A stream of consciousness - Part seven

Mon, 21 May 2007 21:38:03 +0200

The internet term 'post' is a tad strange. Posting is the act of sending something to someone. This is (hopefully) being read by a great number of people, so not being 'posted' exactly. I would say it's more like a public notice, but it's not notifying anything to anyone. And Myspace just ruined 'bulletin' for me. So, I guess posting is the right word, near enough. I guess I should stop picking at the little things, but that's what I do. I should be some kind of critic, I can find fault in anything if I want to. I'm also perfectly capable of enjoying the film/food/show. Like Dr.Who, for example. The writing is crap in this series, but the casting is so well done that the actors can rise above the bad writing to make it a three-quarter way decent programme to watch. Especially David Tenant, he's by far the best doctor ever. My Doctor annoys me. All she ever prescibes are crappy homeopathic medicines, which don't work. Not even for pain relief. Antibiotics are a 'last resort', and a good night's rest will fix anything, apparently. Which is utter crap. I once slept for sixteen hours, and still felt as crappy as I did when I went to sleep. Speaking of sleep, I'm knackered.

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A stream of consciousness - Part six

Sat, 19 May 2007 21:20:09 +0200

Love is weird. Most emotional entaglements I've managed to get out of just by thinking through it. I'm sixteen, I can't be bothered with love and relationships. But some are different. Some take years to get over, some rise again, some burn fiercely like a beacon in the night. It's these that drag you forward, the things that drive you towards the day when that one chance appears to make a decision that could change your life. Life? That makes me wonder. Why are we alive? Why is anything alive? What is the point of existance at all? I guess everybody's heard this all before, and it's a tiring subject, so I won't bore you. Boredom is something that occurs often to me, what with revision and all, and especially now my parents have hidden my playstation. But it's not so bad, since I know where they put it. And I worked out exactly where they put it from listening to the sounds upstairs, when Dad was hiding it. There was the slow thumps of him walking up the stairs, the creak of the floor in the landing, the soft sigh of the bedroom door opening. The discreet rustle of the bedclothes sealed it though. They hid it in the skirts around the double bed. I have an incredibly acute sense of hearing, which is strange, since I have had bad problems with hearing in the past. It's a firm belief of mine that we should not look to the past, or indeed plan for the future. We should live for the day, the moment. You can't do anything about your past, and you don't know if the sun will still rise tommorow. I just relish every moment, and take as much joy from the situation as possible. I guess this makes me seem wierd to people, how I can still be smiling after what I've been through, and how I can not worry about what the future holds. Which, apparently, is and untimely death for then human race at the hands of global warming. Meh. Two hundred thousand years ago, Britain was covered in ice. Two hundred thousand years before that, we were covered in volcanoes, the average temperature being 60 degrees celcius. So what if were heating up a little? The planet's weather system has completely changed countless times in the history of the earth, and concepts such as the 'greenhouse effect' have only been around for forty years, at the most. The planet is just taking it's natural course, like it has many times in the long history of this planet. Speaking of long, this post is pretty huge.

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A stream of consciousness - Part five

Fri, 18 May 2007 20:19:05 +0200

Some would say I'm never doing anything useful. My mother, for example. I'm a constant failure in her perfect world. Utopia is another word for a perfect world, and a strange one it is. 'Utopia'. Where the hell did that come from? Latin? Greek? Well, I can't be bothered to learn a second language. Learning is a problem for me, I can't seem to take anything in, and hold it in the right place. I know the stuff, just not who, or what it's linked to. For this reason, I shall fail most of my exams. Except sociology. For some reason that I cannot possibly fathom, that subject just kinda clicks. Like light switches, the kind that use electricity. I'm applying for an apprenticeship in electrical installation, to start in September. Mostly becuase I like electricity, and want to know more about the way it's put to use practically. I want to use it practically, to use my hands. Because these hands can do more than just write. But my parents don't seem to accept that. Acedemic education is the only way forward, apparently. Just like Nazi Germany was hitler's 'way forward', in the context that it doesn't work for me. It works for a whole lot of other people, but not for me. I'm sorry if this blog's a little angsty, It's just I had a huge fight with my parents. Angst is a strange word. It's not quie emo, but it's almost there. I guess angst is depressive about real stuff like war and politics, not just crying over love, like emo. Love is another strange thing. I myself have fallen in love.

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A stream of consciousness - Part four

Thu, 17 May 2007 20:55:01 +0200

Cannibals are weird too. Why in god's name would you want to eat each other? Like tarantulas, and their mate. The female spider eats the male spider. And why? Probably some ingrained superiority complex. Or maybe the guy just left the toilet seat up. And what is it with that? It's a toilet seat. It takes half a second to flip the lid down and sit on it. Women are lazy. Either that, or it's all about looks. A toilet isn't a pretty item. It's not a fasion statement, it doesn't say anything about your character. So why would it need to look better? If not lazy, women sure are confusing. But then again, I get confused easily. I know a few girls who'd say the same thing about the entire male sub-species. But I'm different. I get confused more easily than most. I guess that's why I'm failing in college. Some would say I'm failing at life. Utter crap, says I. Failing is not falling on your face; it's not getting back up. I can't remember who said that, but someone did. Memory is another problem for me. I can remember tiny insignificant details, like the colour of a friend's laces on the eleventh of March (flourescent pink, By the way) but I can't for the life of me remember where I put my keys. Keys, I've found, are used in a lot of analogies and mannerisms. The key to life, the key to success, and suchlike. But it got me thinking; what's the point of a key, without a door, or even a lock for that matter? Surely, a key on it's own is useless. You can wave and shout about 'the key to success' all you want, but if the door to success ain't there, you ain't going anywhere. You've got to find that opportunity first. Finding things, yet another problem of mine. It's all well and good knowing I've lost it, but if I can't find the damned thing, It isn't doing anything useful. MOst of the time, I don't do anything useful.

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A stream of consciousness - Part three

Wed, 16 May 2007 22:19:05 +0200

Tin foil is cool. I mean, to use a simpsons quote, "it's like a living mirror!". And it's so versatile, it can be used for cooking, craft, hell I've even made a costume out of it before. I'm going to a costume disco pretty soon, with a heroes and villians theme. I'm gonna be a ringwraith, with a costume so well-made you can't see my face. Not because I don't want people to see my face, but because it would be cool to not have anyone know who I was. Even better, not to even have my colleagues know who I am. You know, sometimes I feel I don't know who I am at all. I think they call that an 'identity crisis'. I mean, I know who I am, and what my name is, but can never figure out my place in society, what my purpose is in this world, and where I truly fit in. Some things will never truly fit in. Like A round peg in a circular hole. Becuase, provided the bottom of the round peg has a surface area equivalent to the surface area of the top of the piece cut out to form the square hole, the circumference of the round peg will prevent the peg from fitting in the hole. A lot of things in this world don't fit. Like, for example, work. I'm trying to squeeze my work in between my social life, and the events are so close together that something has to give, sometime. At some point, my entire diary is just gonna be a mess. Like spilt food. Spilt food annoys me, especially after stepping in it. The feeling of cold spagetti seeping inbetween your bare toes is to much to bear. Bears are awesome, because of the sheer power given to them by their genetic make-up. Quite clever as well. Have you ever seen one hunt? Fox hunting was banned in England a few years back. I'm of mixed opinions of this. It's not a nice sport. it's one of the most vicious acts of cruelty I have had the misfortune to ever encounter. On the other hand, it seems that now the foxes have been allowed to breed, they have more and more found there way into the cities, into people's gardens. There have even been somne cases of direct attacks on children and small pets. So I don't know where I stand. Unlike abortion. I'm pro-choice, A child's not living until it has a heartbeat of it's own. While it's still an embryo, its no more living than the clumps of cells that fall from you skin every day. A common known fact is that skin makes up 67% of the dust we breathe in. So technically, we're all cannibals.

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A stream of consciousness - Part two

Tue, 15 May 2007 22:10:39 +0200

Technically, I do have a job, just it's only sessional support work. The pay's good, (damn good for a 16 year old) but I don't get that much work, unlike most people, who work almost 24/7. I've never understood why someone could do that to themselves, how they could put themselves through such punishment just to get money. When I get a full-time job, I hope I enjoy it, if only just a little. Because fun is the esscence of life, it's what we live for, save up for. So I guess that's why people work so much, so they can have fun later on. Take holidays (vacations for you americans out there) for example. Everyone saves up to make a holiday the best it can be. Becuase that's what the human race strives to do, make things the best they can be. Now look at Hitler. Sure, he was wrong in the head, and he killed a lot of people, and I don't condone that, but he had the urge to strive for perfection, the urge that we all have, the urge within every living being. He is a prime example of that urge taking over. Of a man driven insane by his own psychology. Insanity is another sensitive issue. I work with children with special needs, and I've noticed a lot of people call them 'insane'. Insanity, my friends, is caused by a distortion of the mind, a hidden agenda, an idea implanted in childhood just waiting for it's chance to wreak some havok with in those poor people's minds. The way I see it, children, and indeed adults with special needs, have a completely different problem. Hell, I wouldn't even call it a problem. It's nothing psychological. They are completely normal people, bound by a single gene that makes them some of the most amazing in the world. Think of how many people you know who will have bowed down,, even killed themselves if they had been under the pressure and predjudice they face everyday. This topic is depressing me. Something else depressing is the fact that I had an exam today, and I swear the stress made me ill, although I knew I'd done alright. Something to do with 'post-stressful event...stress' I felt so sick I had to go home (shame, eh? what with those lovely politics lessons ;]), and was feeling really bad. Even Killzone didn't do much for it. Then I noticed a package. For me. A package. For me.As you may be able to tell, this rarely happens. Especially when the franking is marked 'canada'. So I ripped it open, and found the t-shirt I'd won from www.splitreason.com about two months ago, and completely forgot about it. Needless to say, it made my day. I'm wearing the t-shirt right now. It's an iPod parody. 'iFrag'. I laughed. I remember when I first saw an iPod. My immediate impression was 'how in hell do they fit all 2000 cd's in that? And then 'OO shiny' Shiny things are fun. Especially tin foil.

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A stream of consciousness - Part one

Tue, 15 May 2007 21:46:33 +0200

Hey, I'm sam. I'm 6', about 9 stone and I'm sixteen. Ask my friends, they could probably tell you more. 'Cos that's the thing about friends, they can show a person for more, or less than they think they are. Which is a sorry state of affairs really, if we can't self-reflect well enough to know who we really are. Refelction, which takes me to mirrors. As is my understanding, mirrors are polished glass on a black backing. However, if black absorbs all light, how does a mirror reflect anything? It just doesn't work, if you think about it. Thinking is one of my favourite pastimes, it really passes the time. I can think about anything, I just have trouble making coherent messages out of that thought. You see, I have a disorder called dyspraxia. It's like dyslexia, but not. It makes some of my thought processes a bit slower than most. For example, my friends are now answering before me if someone asks about my dyspraxia. It also slows down my writing, hence why I'd like to use a keyboard in exams. I did a test last tuesday, to determine wether I could do this. I still haven't got the results back. I got an exam today, sociology. Man that's gonna suck. You know what else sucks? The fact that I just bought three games (FFVIII, DMC, and Killzone). All awesome, but I can't decide which one to play the most. Playing? Monopoly is a fun game to play, if not a bit long-winded. I like 'go for broke' myself, where you have to spend, gamble away or lose all your money in some way or another. And on that note, I have no money. Becuase I have no money, I need to stop playing on the intarwebs and go get ready for college, so I can not fail, and get a job.

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