Assortment Of Thoughts

• Rings characters discuss Oscar snub. "We will take the statuesss once the Hollywood snobses are dead! Ye-esss, precious!"
• I'm old. I'm adult. I'm all grown up. And it's bloody terrifying. So I've been 18 for almost 10 months now, and these realisations have only just crossed my mind. It's possible I'm a little slow off the mark on this one.

  I need to start a pension fund. How am I supposed to do that without having paid off my student loan? In fact, I've just realised, I don't even have a full student loan to pay off yet. I'm in my first year. That means I've still got another 2 years to go about creating the debt before I can even start paying it off. This is bad. This is really bad. I'd like to forget all about this now, please.

  Anyway, I thought I should share this revelation. I was looking at writers' groups from a link on Neil Gaiman's journal when I saw a particular group entitled "Young Writers' [blah de blah]". Ahah! I thought, this is the place for me. Then I read closer, and low and behold it was for under 18s only. I am bewildered. Apparently I don't count as a 'young' writer. This is perfectly logical, this is perfectly usual practice, I am sure, but it's still a bit of a blow to the system. I don't count as 'young'. I'm going to have to start paying full fare for things any day now. Life can't get much more depressing.

  By the time I've come to terms with being 18, I'll be 19. If I'm lucky. Knowing my sharp up-to-date lifestyle I'll probably be hitting 60 before I even work out I can vote.

• I was thinking about my previous entry about the bbc that also had a side mention of the government's deception of the public with respect to WMDs. I'm curious. Yes, they tried to deceive us. But. Did anyone actually fall for it? Not that it really makes any difference when considering the behaviour, but as a matter of interest. Did anyone genuinely believe Iraq had WMDs in the months leading up to the war there? I can count on one hand the number of people that weren't political figures that were pro-war that I knew at the time. *points to archives* Before I read blogs, doncha know.
• Giant microbes (via D4D). Ebola! Ebola! I want that one! Somebody give me ebola!
• My Two Towers poster has a picture of Barad-Dur on it. A picture of Barad-Dur that is missing the Great Eye. I can't believe I never noticed this before. It's going to annoy me forever now. Granted, the poster also includes Frodo's and Gandalf's head floating in front of an oversized moon with no bodies attached, but for some reason the missing Eye of Sauron is more distressing.
• Apparently we're not building any more railway stations in case too many people use them. Presumably the suggestion is that more people means worse service. Problem solved. Worse service will mean fewer passengers as the situation develops into such that walking the main commuter routes will become the preferable mode of transport, just ahead of tight-rope walking your unravelled small-intestine, and leaving the railways trailing in terms of popularity. With the smaller numbers it will become perfectly viable to have the extra stations. As long as we don't get a government that wants to privatise the pavement we'll be fine. Indeed, the path is already being prepared with a proliferation of little blue signs.
• From Neil Gaiman again, I am delighted to find out that 24 Hour Comics Day is on my birthday. Maybe 19 won't be such a shock after all, it certainly looks like it's going to get a promising start.
• Jack Sparrow/Commodore Norrington. Their love is so true.