Listless

Since I'm off for about three weeks starting tomorrow, I thought I'd leave you a few parting thoughts that have been rebounding about in my head for a couple of days. In no particular order:

Discontinued Cub Scout badges
-Warmongering
-Trenchbuilding
-Theivery
-Pillaging
-Winemaking
-Ale drinking
-Jousting
-Espionage
-Wilderness exploration
-Detonation
-Field surgery
-Artillery
-Embalming
-Time travel
-Wolftaming

Things I dislike about my parents
-They never park in car parks
-They are going deaf
-And subsequently repeat everything they say
-They have irrational plans
-And have an aversion to top of the range products, even when they can afford them
-They make suggestive jokes at randomly chosen inappropriate scenarios

Extreme sports that should be given Olympic status
-Water Polo...with Sharks!
-Ultimate Razor Frisbee
-Hand Grenade Rugby
-Landmine Golf
-Clay Fighter-Jet Shooting
-Formula One (Tank league)
-Bear baiting
-Cage bull fighting
-Chainsaw fencing

Happy Hiker

I'm back, only to leave again in three weeks time. Miss me yet? I thought you would, but don't start crying just yet - you might shortcircuit the keyboard with the flood of tears and electrocute yourself, and then I'd have blood on my hands and there would be a whole kerfuffle and nobody wants that.

Anyone who has ever carried a third of their bodyweight over Jacob's Ladder, I salute you. It's bloody hard! The Peak District is gloriously beuatiful, stunning beyond words. It is, perhaps, the most English place in the world; it has rain, hills, grey clouds, uneducated people and mills. It lacks the blasted moors of Yorkshire or the haunting steppes of the Scottish highlands, but Derbyshire's undulating dales, faerie woods and limestone screes are nontheless gorgeous. And, although in my mind it does not even begin to contend with the dramatic vistas that greet the eye in the Lake District, it is completely unspoiled and unknown. Maybe it is because it is without the gleaming tarns and noble mountains, that it is more pretty - because the tourist trade, that rampant beast that eats and spits out landscapes, hasn't reared its greedy head. The image to the right is of myself, claiming the mountain for the glory of Her Majesty's Empire. God save the Queen!

Admittedly it is not really a mountain, just a hill with a good name, Losehill Pike. The next picture, of the Lotschenpass in Oberland, Switzerland - now that's a mountain. The pass stretches over the glacier, just under the Balmhorn and the Hockenhorn. When they have "horn" on the end it means they're EXTREME. With a capital"X". I'm quite the hiker, I'll concede. I look a lot like those Hikers or Campers from the original Pokémon games - the ones that always had Rock pokémon. Except I never used Rock types and if I had a real life Pokémon, it would be Charmander. Or Squirtle, or Pikachu - the rest are, quite frankly, useless. Actually the Ghosts are snazzy but useless against psychics. Oh dear god I'm nerdy.

So I'm off to Lanzarote on thursday, which means no bloggy blog for long time, though you can still read my Jukebox blog, which attempts to review the iTunes Free Single of the Week, however in doing this I have inadvertently given myself a deadline - just like a proper journalist. And in true proffessional style, I have missed it. There's two reviews waiting to be written, though I've done all my research (meticulously detailed on post-it notes) and all that is needed is a vital injection of willpower.

That's got me thinking; Willpower would be a great name for a drug, and one that would really confuse teachers too. How could they encourage highschool students to study and work hard if they have to publically condemn willpower at the same time? Seriously, the drug barons in this world should go to some marketing classes or something - they could really improve their profits with some careful product differentiation ("Crack" is hardly an appetising brand name now is it?). And on that bombshell, I'll be seeing you.

Wordvomit

I've started helping out down at my old scout centre. This isn't a good turn in the true Scouting spirit, as it's part of my Duke of Edinburgh Service; I'm only in it for the award. Selfish me.

Anyway, who knew children could be so intimidating? Apparently my plimsolls made me look like I was wearing a trampy suit: always a compliment. Although I am tempted to take the fashion advice of eight-year old boys (trend-aware as they are), the Topman Stylemail reassured me that I did not look like a homeless person from the 1970's. When I played hockey to even the numbers of the teams, it resembled that scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke and his ragtag band of teenage miscreants bring down the AT-ATs (yeah, I know the names of the walker-thingies). Only this time, it was kids with hockey sticks hitting me in the legs - even when I didn't have the puck. Now let's face it, I am no metallic behemoth. I'm probably only a foot, maybe more, bigger than these children and as far as I know, my face does not resemble some fairytale monster.

I'm sitting in the gloriously air conditioned Drop-In centre at college doing writing this blog, listening to Regina Spektor - listen to her because she's great. Admittedly it's not very hot today but I'm still glad not to be courting with the sunshine because over the last couple of days, flirting with the ol' solar radiation has not fared well for Sam's skin. The last week or so I have been thankful not to be in college because the majority of Aquinas is not a shady oasis and therefore I like many others would have doubtlessly morphed into a desiccated hulk of salty brine-soaked t-shirt-and-jeans combo.

As soon as I downloaded (the legality is up for debate) roughly eight albums worth of new music, I realised that it was going to take me a very long time to properly get through it all. So far, I've decided that La Roux is a brilliant amalgamation of synth-laden pop and strangley tuneful banshee wailing from Elly Jackson. We will wait for judgement on Daniel Merriweather, White Lies and Little Boots' respective outpourings, but preliminary scans are looking promising.

Cosmic Capitalism

On saturday last I went my first day of the summer wearing just a t-shirt. Like many other innocent victims of radiaton rape, I was sunburnt.

There's something about the British sun that deceives you; we inherently trust it and think we don't need suncream. But our Sol is a fickle one, readers. It warms us with fuzzy golden rays and seduces us into taking off our jumpers and coats and when we are at our weakest it slowly frazzles us. Little do we know that the sun, although seen by many as a reliable source of friendly "solar" energy, is actually our most deadly and insidious enemy. This is why I am launching the Say No To Sun campaign.

For years the Sun has been trying to slowly burn mankind out of existence. He may give us light, but since the brilliance of human ingenuity invented the lightbulb this jealous star has been trying to destroy us! The sun will not stop until every man, woman and child on Earth has been slo-cooked. Liberals may want us to befriend the Sun and "listen to his problems". However, what these whishy-washy fools fail to realise is that the Sun's plotting is simply a result of his being out of touch. I know it is cruel, but the inevitable demise of our Sun is simply a result of market forces. It happens to everyone; Enron, Woolworths and General Motors are all businesses who have failed to keep up with the times. Like Woolworths the Sun attempts to cater for everyone, offering heat, light AND free electricity. Well, great citizens, it is time to put an end to this government-funded debacle and allow the free market to take over! Only by living in a meritocratic society can civilisation ascend to greatness. Democracy is for wimps! And the Sun, ladies and gentlemen, is just a symptom of a greater evil.

An evil that we have encountered before. Our reliable sources, whose anonimity is retained to ensure their safety, have revealed to us that the Sun has socialist tendencies. Although it may shock weaker hearts out there, our mysterious benefactor is actually a Red! We must halt the sinister designs of this shadowy (no pun intended) foe before COMMUNIST SPACE MOTHS descend on us for our delicious electric light. It's a Hot War out there and its about to get hotter. We must become independant of our stellar overlord before he roasts us all! The end is coming and only a grassroots revolution will stop it; the Say No To Sun campaign proposes nothing less than an apocolyptic missile assualt on the Sun's stronghold in the Milky Way with every nuclear warhead on Earth being launched at the fiery heart of our 1,000,000 degrees-Celsius enemy.

But we need your help to make the left-wing cowards in government to listen. They would probably say "let's send a diplomatic envoy" or "maybe if we conserved our resources the Sun would not attack us". However, these are the same people who endorse PC madness and health-and-safety fascism in our schools and places of work, who restrict our freedom to set off fireworks horizontally or leave dogs in hot cars on a summer's day: exactly the sort of people who collaborated with the Nazis! We don't need to think because we have guns! If we have learnt anything from the expenses scandal, it's that the Sun and his allies all have their snouts in the cosmic trough! People of Britain, we have to lead the fight against stars. British light for British people!

If you want to join the war against natural sunlight, donate to the cause now! 10% of your annual income buys 0.1% of a flight-ready space rocket! Go to http://www.notinoursolarsystem.com/ or call 0886-SUN NO MORE. And remember, it's not only reds under the bed you need worry about, because now there's reds overhead!