Twittering the Twatting Tweeters

After being a fair advocate of Twitter over the last few years, with an over zealous followers drive - I've recently grown bored of the latest social media 'fad', and I wouldn't be surprised if many more followed suit in the next 2-3 years.
It's only come about recently due to my boredom seeing girls crying for attention constantly with their tweets which attracts the attention of brain dead teenage boys and weird old men. It's with the constant equivelant of having the most boring and predictable drinking game "I Have Never" appear on my Timeline basically daily. I think I need to shift my following age up a decade or two.

Anyway, that's not really what this is about, as Twitter still has some perks which means I'll never de-activate or go off it entirely as I still find the varied social commentary from my followers fascinating. There is ALWAYS a split opinion about everything, which is great, specially seeing the actual reasoning for things, some educated well thought out opinions vs the moronic vs the outright bonkers is always something to grab my attention.

The most recent one that half prompted this was last night's Brit Awards 2013. A pretty silly affair but I still watched it out of interest, as I'm a massive fan of music and always will be so I'm not going to become overly opionionated on an awards ceremony, who cares - don't watch it if you're not interested, but it was a pretty alright couple of hours to see what's going on musically - specially when it became increasingly apparent that a certain few of my followers must live their lives ONLY listening to Top 10 chart music or whatever the latest commercial fad is.

Immediately this got me thinking, as once more EVERYTHING has two sides to it, most notably was the category for "British Breakdthrough Act", a fairly strong category of talent with Alt-J, Ben Howard, Jake Bugg, Rita Ora & Jessie Ware - with it hard to pick a winner considering the success of every individual there (I was very late to the Alt-J party, but really like their sound), with Ben Howard being an incredibly worthy winner. Could we be universally happy with this? You'd think - but no - a couple of people (no names, or else there'd be too much pointing and laughing) shocked/outraged/upset/confused that Rita Ora didn't win!
What.
Now if they'd said Jake, or Alt-J I could understand, but seriously Rita Ora? She's a fun music sounding woman, with a fairly promiscuous personal life - I get it, she's a bit 'crazy' but down to earth and makes chart music. But it only takes a quick glance at Wikipedia to see that she only wrote about 2-3 of the tracks on her own album!! Whilst just about everyone else in the category wrote all their own music, course they did, they are artists blowing up on pure talent, whilst she is someone that basically became famous for signing with Hov's Roc Nation, and with a backing from arguably one of the world's biggest artists - it's pretty hard to fail (Though Jay Electronica is trying REALLY hard), specially when her smash ft Tinie Tempah was written by Drake. Couple that with good looks and an easy comparison to worldstar Rihanna and it's never going to fail really is it. But does that make talent? No. It does not, sorry.
I tried to make the point to these people that Rita Ora whilst undoubtedly has been a success this past 12-18 months, she doesn't have half the talent of any of the other artists in the category - so tell me who was more deserving of the award? Equally it was really nice to see that simply being the biggest chart success doesn't guarantee wins at these fairly silly award shows. For once talent won through (I know it has before, I'm being pedantic to make a point) and it was good to see.

There's a couple other awards you could say the same thing about, Frank Ocean winning Best International Male was a great thing, especially if it opens up his music to even more, though I'd be very surprised if many people didn't know who he was by now - but you can bet most don't know he's part of the very weird West Coast OFWGKTA movement (even though he was placed there by the record label/manager, he's not childhood friends or anything like the others, he'll leave soon enough). Or Lana Del Ray winning Best International Female, who is a very worthy winner - whilst someone still exclaimed they had never heard of her so Rihanna should have won.

I'm not saying these people are wrong in their opinion and views, it's just they seem so closed minded - they've been to a Rita Ora concert and she was good, so she must be a worthy winner for everything because they've never heard of Ben Howard. I think the positive from these awards and stuff is that it MIGHT open a few minds which isn't a bad thing at all, please go and listen to a few tracks on Youtub and then judge if they shouldn't have been winning these awards.

So I think these polar oppositve views that will always exist on Twitter will always hold my interest, and whilst I like to try and educate to an extent, or post silly videos, or moan or whatever, there is always an end game - and the day I feel I can't offer anything to anything or take something away from Twitter is the day that I'll do the annoying 'de-activate' but unlike most, I won't be coming back.

Is Everything Not Better When Drunk?!

This is more of a statement than a question. It is. Pretty factual. Until you go past that 'happy drunk' stage and descend into whatever your particular SUPER DRUNK trait is... such as crying uncontrollably, or vommiting profusely wherever you are, or getting very offensive/rude, or basically looking to fight, or getting very dark indeed. Or in one case on my birthday, all of the above...at the same time...
But until you reach this extremes things are pretty damn cool.

I'm going to do something I've never done before either, and link some YT clips below of something I stumbled across a while back, totally forgot about, then came across them again today when it was announced that Drunk History is coming back, with Will Farrell at the helm. There's not alot to it, basically rogues get OFF THEIR FACE and then tell random events in history. It is re-enacted with top actors, who even lip sync the drunken fools throughout. It's so simple yet genius. And if you've never seen heard of it before, I implore you to check this out....great no?

and my fav so far...

Though this comes close! I like when she lays down AND has a drink

But of course ALWAYS drink in moderation, and not like this...

Fuck it have one more because they are brilliant! And this guy drank Absinthe.

I don't really fancy writing much about this topic, as I'll end up getting all deep and introspective - and this is meant to be fun! I might try and post more with funny things I find online which you've all probably seen months ago, at least pretend it's new so I don't feel like such a loser!

Ps good luck with everyone having a dry January! I was tempted but then got drunk on the 4th. More fool me!

Enjoy

2013 Is A Coming!

Not written in here for a little bit so thought I should whack something up before we make it into 2013! Can't  say it'll be anything worth reading though!

So before we start, another pet peeve of mine is certainly Twitter/FB related and it's all this bloody moaning about the past year and saying how the new one is going to be a fresh start etc. It's bollocks. I'm fairly sure you're the same people who say the same thing every year. It's ridiculous, like just because we're in a new year you get some kind of new lust for life or something. No. Nothing changes, it's just the same as it was, except maybe a few people get a bit more drive. But I'm fairly sure you'll be the same fuckers moaning again at the end of 2013 saying bring on 2014! Sort it out.

It's not just the annoying cliché which is what pisses me off, it's what actually caused you to feel so sorry for yourself. As that's what it is, self pity, however you choose to dress it up. Oh has your 2012 left you utterly penniless, with no hope, maybe some loved ones passing away, and an incurable illness? Because if it's none of the previous, then it's really not been that bad a year. You're clearly still doing well enough to fucking Tweet in the first place! Imagine being in a 3rd World Country? Imagine being genuinely less well off? Being homeless and in a shelter, or your partner of 20 years plus passing away. THAT is something you can feel hard done by about - without a doubt, and I wouldn't dream of even questioning it. But it's not that. You're spoilt, and you moan about the smallest things. It's such a shame that people don't understand how lucky they are!
One of my followers said this earlier, I won't name and shame because I think she's a lovely girl who is very upbeat usually and I enjoy her tweets but today she basically said "Apart from all the nice holidays and getting a great job 2012 has been a shit year, bring on 2013!"
That utterly sums up my point. Look at that, how lucky is that person - I didn't have any holidays this year but I've not and won't complain at all. Unemployment is a horrible issue in this country, with so many people struggling to get ANY work. By my reckoning, 2012 has been a great year.

I think you get my point. Hopefully some of you share this pet peeve also.

So New Years Resolutions, who's doing them? I've never ever even considered one because I think it's bollocks. I quit smoking when I wanted to, and weaned myself off of them over 6 months, and I did that randomly in the middle of the year. It's willpower and I don't need some bullshit resolution to make me do it! However, this year I'm going to be a hypocrite and do one!
What is it? It's actually to give more/do more for charity. I've decided simply by being able to write this blog in my flat with my lovely wi fi with my central heating watching tv etc, that I'm already so lucky that doing some more for charity isn't very tricky and won't bankrupt me!
I've already begun by changing my work salary stuff, so that I automatically donate a small amount each month to a charity of my choice AND I helped paint a youth centre climbing hall thing for disabled kids which I found hard work but really rewarding. So I'm going to do more this year, donating and volunteering when I can. If anyone else is thinking the same or maybe after reading this, feels the same, let me know! :-)

Anyway, enough of this - I'm going to stop now and wish you all a Happy New Year, a great 2013, and let's hope it's better than 2012 ;-)

Dan