One of my writing goals is called ‘other’. That might be confusing. I suppose a more accurate phrase would be ‘free choice.’ The following is what I do…
The first thing I need is a random number. I could just ask Google but instead I use playing cards. The number cards are taken at face value. The picture cards, including ace, are 15.
I draw a card, if I was doing it now it would be a four.(Diamonds if you’re interested but it is irrelevant.) Then I go to the fourth spot in my writing list. Actually there are more layers to it than that but I want to limit how much I bore you.
When ‘other’ came up this time I decided I would work on this blog post. On other occasions it might be something else.
The main focus of my writing is my novel. The whole point of taking a sabbatical is to get it done. It is currently at 99 pages. There are another 77 pages that need to be edited and checked.
I’ve mentioned before that I am using a Freewrite for my first drafts and it has been invaluable. There are a lot of spelling errors but it still helps to get the words down.
This blog post will be rather random. I could very well make that observation again and again as I do these. The idea is 500 ~words and then stop. But you knew that as it is the title of the post. It will be stream of consciousness so it will shift gears in unpredictable ways – even to me.
Did you see Eurovision? It was an interesting event this year. To me it seemed more calm than usual. I have to say though no songs stood out to me – in either direction as good or bad. There was, for example, a completely forgettable song called “Unforgettable.”
The UK entry was terrible.
One thing I find especially fascinating about Eurovision is the voting. I don’t just mean for this year I mean in general. The voting is complicated. All you really need to know is that half the votes come from a jury of experts and the other half come from the public.
The jury votes are announced one-by-one by a representative from each country. It doesn’t take long to see that the eventual winner is going to come down to one of two countries.
I would have expected the votes to be more evenly spaced out. If each country puts their best. (They do not.) Then it might be expected that another country would agree with that assessment. Thus, at the end, the votes would be fairly evenly spaced. This never happens. This year the winning song got 36 times as many votes as the song at the bottom of the table.
I wonder if there is a lesson in all of this. I don’t know I am just a blogger. However it has to be said, or at least I want to say it, that the European continent ( more or less) seems to be in agreement on the subject of music.
It is rare that my favorite wins however most of the time I can at least see why they won. This year I am not sure I had a favourite.
I went off on this subject for longer in the original draft and now seem to have come to a natural end. Still I have words below this so I might as well see what else can be written.
I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one. Mark Twain
It would seem that the rest of what I wrote back on the 15th is all waffle. Mark Twain was right. Making stuff shorter actually takes longer. It is illogical but it is also true. I could go on and give you some bad metaphors involving Swedish meatballs and their Welsh equivalent. (Google it) However I believe I will cut off the post at this point. See you next time.
I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.
We are just four weeks away from a general election here in the United Kingdom.
Whenever an election comes up I always have the thought that this time it will work – the new government will be so much better than the old one – a new era of prosperity will begin – the government will be loved by all. Well that’s rather over egging the pudding but it is the general sense of it. The annoying truth is that governments are all much of a muchness.
You should still vote.
You might be thinking that all the parties are the same.
You should still vote.
It could be that you simply don’t believe any of them. It could simply be that the party you like has no chance of winning – well they certainly won’t if people don’t vote.
Can I use history to appeal to you? I’m a white heterosexual man – so I’m aware of my privileged position. For women the right to vote was a long battle. Here is a link to a Wikipedia page on the subject. People have been denied the vote, across the world now, for race, religion, social class, and no doubt a multitude of other reasons. Unfortunately humans are very good at prejudice.
There is another option. It sounds strange but you could try a spoit ballot. This is when a ballot is invalidated for some reason. Click on the link to learn more. This is useful in a roundabout sort of way. It shows, unlike not going to the polling station at all, that you want to participate in the election but that you don’t like any candidate.
Voter turnout is always fairly low. If people spoiled the ballot instead of not bothering to vote it would show that people are interested and want to participate but they feel cut off from politicians. As it stands not bothering just shows the population as apathetic and, to be frank, you can’t really complain about MPs if you didn’t vote.
I told myself that I wasn’t going to post the following but I feel I must. Please don’t vote for UKIP. It is frequently accused of racism and its ideas tend to be based on lies. You can read all about at via this The Huffington Post. One UKIP donor said that women shouldn’t wear trousers this is beyond ridiculous! The main issue of UKIP is the EU. They believe it is undemocratic and not in our best interest. What is rather laughable is that their candidates often don’t even show up to vote!
I hope you will look at these articles but you should, of course, come to your own conclusions.
So please vote in four weeks time.
Voting is supposed to be private so I won’t declare it here. I also haven’t decided yet.
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Finally I wanted to share this little titbit from Stargate SG-1
Senator Kinsey
Oh please, given the chance half of
all American citizens won’t even vote
and the half that do vote are too stupid
to know what they’re doing.
Colonel O’Neill
Which explains how you got elected.
Unstable Orbit 