The Mission

Just a short post.

Having been watching quite a few documentaries recently, mostly based around America in the last ten years or so, I have come to see the hidden agenda behind alot of these programs. Some, of course, are fine and present a mostly balanced view where at all possible. There are, however, quite a few that present only their information and often pretty much everything connected with it even vaguely. One example recently ran something like this: “Darwin wrote ‘Origins Of The Species’. This was picked up by the Eugenics movement. They created Social Darwinism. Therefore, Darwin was a Eugenicist with the group who want to take over the world”. This sort of stodgey logic is presented as fact, with little information to back it up. Indeed, atleast one documentary along these lines was entirely created around this method: Present one or two basic facts, imply their link with a third or fourth without any evidence and then present it as the truth. There is then little consideration of any alternative. Often, this is presented as counter-evidence to apparent reality, or against what is often refered to as propaganda. Indeed, it is often suggested that the main-stream news services are effectivly propaganda machines to hide the truth these individuals (and it is usually an individual) have uncovered.

And this is the problem with conspiracy-based documentaries. Others present, though certainly a one-sided view, documented facts and evidence for either side and to back up their theories. The conspiracy theories only really present their own propaganda, a mission-statement of what they want us (the viewer) to do. It is often refered to in terms of war; “We must combat…” and the subject of their film as a dictator, spreading a cause that would benefit only their own personal power.

For a cynic, this is always somewhat believable, and often evidence is quite compelling despite being circumstantial in nature. However, the lack of objectivity and real presentation of something approaching fact is a major obsticle and any important information contained in the film is often then ignored or discredited by the director/creator’s approach. Their, often quite valid, mission will continue to fail with these methods. Anything suspected of being a ‘conspiracy-theory’ inevitably winds up being ignored from the point at which it becomes apparent that it is more of a personal rant than a true documentary.

~Captain Bellamy

Trying To Find The Ghost Again

Having vaguely given it up for the last year or so, through lack of inspiration and a general apathy towards pretty much everything, I have once again started to get the creeping feeling that I should be writing again. Having posted two pieces in the last 6 months, or there abouts, I will happily admit to neglecting this aspect of my life. However, now my degree and university career is over (I passed, with a 2.2 if anyone is curious) my thoughts turn to what on earth I’m going to do next. The current plan is to work some basic little job (a bar, currently) and try to work out what will happen.

Writing seems, along with everything else, a relatively viable option for my long-term survival. But having neglected it for quite some time, I’m very much unsure as to how to get back into it, or even what to write. The problem with most online ‘Art’ sites, like deviantArt.com is that you never really get a true critique. There is no way to establish actual skill or proficiency. For all I know, I could be a dreadful wordsmith who should leave it well alone. I therefore cannot rely on it as the only method of making a living. Compared to anything else I have the option of doing, it is relatively minor, despite being amongst the most tempting.

So. I will almost certainly return to writing, gladly even. But it’s importance is something I have to ascertain over the next year or so. I have several writery friends who know something of the business, and seem to be doing well working around a primary job of some description. And that’s about it really. Just something I had to set down in words in front of me, rather than round and about my mind without really resolving. Something the Philosophy has taught me, things make alot more sense once they’ve been pinned down in front of you – in fact, I recommend it as a way to help your thought process.

Anyway, that be all. Forgive me these self-indulgent moments.

~Capn. Bellamy

Morality Of Men

Men, meaning humanity. Based on recent discussions with several friends, I think this view-point on a more general sort of morality should be more publicly exercised. Ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ applied to people, for whatever reason, are often extremely ego-centric, based on warped ideas of morality that don’t really make sense. This often occurs in the more “I do this and it must be bad, therefore I must be a bad person” style of self-doubt, as far as I can tel, and really does need to be sorted out to some degree.

 

People sometimes hurt each other, most commonly by accident, unknowingly, by using the wrong words or the wrong phrases at the wrong time.

This does not make you a bad person. For the simple reason that you will never ever know all the complicated, tiny and intricate details of a person’s life and consciousness, it cannot be bad for this kind of accidental circumstance to occur. Of course, it is not a nice thing to do, even accidentally, but there is generally never any evil intent behind such actions. It is the equivalent of asking a vegan if they’d like bacon, if you have no idea that said person is a vegan (please excuse the sightly bizarre metaphor).

 

Some people, of course, set out to explicitly hurt people using things they know will hurt them. Again, they’re probably not a bad person; just angry or experiencing some other overpowering emotion that means they want to hurt someone, probably because they think it’ll make them feel better. This usually exploits some tiny perceived weakness in a human being’s natural emotional armor. Often it takes the form of the accidental phrase, employed with malicious intent. This is a bad action. Not a bad person.

 

 The few actually bad people around quite often don’t have such a close group of  friends that they know all the exploitable details, quite often being merely lose acquaintances with the person or people they intend to hurt. And so they lash out at others through fear, jealousy and anger, using crude phrases and obvious avenues of attack or merely physical violence. They aways purposefully wish to hurt other people (though often merely at a subconscious level) , to take something from them to revenge the fact that said bad person has nobody and nothing compared to the people he see’s around him.

 

Some of these bad people may be allowed some kind of mercy, if their brand of nastiness is the fault of previous hurts and ills committed against them, particularly during childhood. If one has no real social ability or idea of what is damaging to other people and so fits into the description above, due to a horrible past or the influences of terrible parents and so on, then it is possible that they themselves are not truly bad; just products of their upbringing. Such people can either recognise this in themselves and so set out to change how they are or work against the negatives in their past, or slip further into the ‘bad’ paradigm presented. They can be classified dependant on their actions.

 

Of course, this presentation of basic morality could be wildly off the mark; it is just the setting out of a few ideas, and Morality is an extremely changeable concept that I hesitate to solidly classify. As it stands, I hope these rough statements help someone, at some level.

 

~Captain Bellamy

Forever Metal

I shall try, very hard, not to spend too much time on this site ranting about modern/’pop’ music. Because everyone has already heard it, from a thousand jaded fans of something different. Instead, there needs to be more explanations of exactly why we’re fanatical about something else entirely.

Over the past two or three decades, and really ever since it became a recognised genre, heavy metal music has been abused and hated by press and general public alike. Blaimed for murders, high school shootings, suicides and the moral corruption of each generation. This is mainly because it’s a very easy target. The starters of such condemnation see violent album covers, harsh or brutal lyrics and then hear the guitar and vocal styles common amongst the genre and take away a certain image of its fans and what the music can do to people from that.

I cannot deny that Metal does not occasionally make people violent, particularly at live gigs, but it certainly does not automatically give you a reason to kill your fellow human beings or take your own life. The best advice I have ever seen on how to approach Metal is readily available on the wikihow website; ignore the vocals if you find the content offensive, and concentrate on the intricate melodies, complex and wonderful rhythm and the way in which improvisation and freedom of musical expression is incorporated into it.

Heavy metal fans are amongst the most defensive about their beloved music, and rightly so. To really move into the realms of cliché, nobody really understands us. For most, at first glance the music is just a lot of noise and screaming and the fans appear to be a sub-human tribe of idiots. And this is as far as many will ever get into the genre. Good luck to them and their rather bland outlook. This post, even, is a defense of a genre that I hold close to my heart, though really I shouldn’t feel the need to write it.

Metal is not all about death and killing, as some newspapers and stereotypes would have you believe. Mostly it encompasses the emotional spectrum, from love to hate to happiness and greed. It is one of the few music genres where it is possible to find songs about absolutely everything. Politics and philosophy are often explored in great depth and a whole ideology has risen from the Sweden and Norway versions of the Black/Death Metal sub-genres (Black/Death/Grind refer to playing styles, not content).

Most of all, to the majority of bands and fans, Metal means freedom. You are free to act pretty much as you wish, dress as you wish, listen to what you wish and believe in what you wish. There are few people in the metal community who will ever judge you without reason, unless band politics are involved, and there is little reason to judge anyone else. It is an escape from the plastic, fashion-obsessed and above all boring ‘mainstream‘ popularity contest that comprises daily life for hundreds of thousands of teenagers and adults into something far more multi-dimensional and interesting.

If metal is not for you, there is little anyone can do to change your mind, and perhaps as a whole we metal-heads should stop trying to do so. But we’d really prefer it if you stopped judging us for listening to what we do, look at the genre without using any tired stereotypes and form a true opinion of it all….And maybe try some Slayer.

Black Sam~

Loans, Bankrolls, Student Fees

The cost of going to a University in England is currently quite high. A standard three-year course will require a minimum loan of around £11,000. And that’s if your family is rich enough to pay your accommodation and so on for you. After three years at university, renting on and off campus, I personally will be around £21,000 in debt to the Student Loans company. For a 21-year-old, this is a bit extreme. And because my university – The University Of Kent, Canterbury – is not necessarily the most prestigious, my degree might not necessarily mean anything at all to most employers (There will be a later blog post/rant on this topic).

As it stands, I am quite happy to pay the alloted amounts if it means a university education, a degree and the potential for a slightly more high-end job at some point down the road of life. I expect this money to go towards my professors, and the department of which I am a part. Fairly reasonable, yes? A debt of such magnitude to a learned institution perhaps should mean I have some control over where my money goes, or at least some reassurance that it will be spent on things helpful to my continued education.

However, after two years, I find myself constantly surprised at the amount of things the university can find to waste my valuable cash on. With the constant threat of a raise in tuition fees (Because more debt is what this country needs), the University of Kent has spent around £10,000 redesigning their student card. A small, buisness-card sized piece of plastic that we have to pay for anyway. I’ve seen the old card (they brought the new one in at the start of my first year) and the differences are both small and relatively pointless.

More recently, the university has built a new arts and drama building. This I have utterly no issue with, that department was consigned to a never-ending run-around of classrooms and back lots before the new building was created. However, with the apparent financial failure of one of their more oddly situated bars, the university has taken it upon itself to completely redesign, remarketed and relaunch said bar. Having used this bar for a number of events over the last year, I can honestly say that it didn’t need any kind of redesign or refurbishment. It appeared to be in much better condition than the majority of the other campus bars. It just so happens to be above the big and only campus club…

So, needless to say, nobody ever really bothers with the bar. This still does not suggest that it needs a refit and redesign…just a better advertising campaign and maybe a reduction in drinks prices. Only two societies have ever really used this bar, because nobody knows it’s available as a venue or that it is in fact quite a pleasant bar to drink in. But no,  instead my and several other thousand students cash goes in an attempt to put new life into something that doesn’t quite need it.

To put this waste into perspective, my university was considering firing a good  85% of bio-science staff earlier in the year, until a massive student campaign stopped it, due to lack of funds.

Please, and this goes out to every university everywhere, stop wasting our money. We pay you one hell of alot every year, and the large majority of us will now be in some kind of financial trouble for a good portion of our remaining lives. So, spend our money wisely.

~Black Sam

Big Peg, Big Hole?

Today, for the first time, my LARP group set up our 20ft by 20ft ex-army tent. And when I say ex-army, this thing had been through atleast one war by the look of it. This is going to be our In Character tent for the group. Pretty much just means we can sit around something proper come a big event like Maelstrom rather than be set to wander the IC area for 3 or 4 days. Helpful, certainly. However, right now it’s camoflage-green. And it took us 2 hours of squabling and no instruction manual at all to get it up. Not bad for £300 or so.

Over the coming months (and before/after pictures may appear) it shall undergo something of an epic transformation from ex-military to a tent fit for high fantasy roleplay. As horrificaly ”geeky” as LARP sounds and really very much is, one hell of alot of work goes into creating everything from costume, to basic kit, to something as simple as getting a tent to look right. Our group has around four months or so until our first event. And bar one of us, we’re all LARP virgins. This should be interesting.

On the other hand, our group now contains around three badgers. No, I’m not kidding. Not real badgers of course, but the facepaint-and-mask variety for this occaision, though I suspect this may be something of a dissapointment to some of you. I myself am going as a human. Very little effort involved, I just have to appear drunk for the majority of the time to show off my character’s alcoholism. Not particularly hard for a stereotypically itinerant student to achieve. Despite the four month time proposed by the group leader (the LARP savvy one), we meet up weekly now to arrange backstories, costume creation and loans. It’s all oddly time consuming for something that sounds rather basic. However, LARP equipment and costume, including armour and foam/latex weapons, is very expensive indeed. My rather basic starting kit is so far running to a total of about £400. And I’m sticking with basic items. So any efforts of self-creation are all for the greater good of our wallets.

But then, what would I have to spend the student loans on?

Black Sam~

A Return To Port

Right, I will admit right off that I’m dead bored. And for some reason, becoming more interested in mixed media than I previously have been. I’m even using twitter now, for some peculiar reason. Nothing in particular has changed since I first decided to begin this blog, other than obviously my obsessive need to update things. I’m half tempted to return to product or music review, or just rambling rants where the mood takes me, we’ll have to see. Piracy is still a rather large obsession, I’m afraid that’s not going away.

Having recently become interested in LARP, there should be some newer elements to this blog past the basic reviews and so on. I know LARP is a very, very stereotypically ‘geeky’  activity, and I can see why, but I assure you all that I do in fact have social skills and do not spend any time at all on World of Warcraft. It just looks like an interesting/fun passtime…sitting in a field in costume with a group of friends, occasionally hitting people with foam weapons. Soo, LARP event reviews, information for the uninitiated and observations will most likely be forthcoming. I’ll also be getting back into gaming come Friday, so expect some game-based rants.

Arrr!

Black Sam~