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| Thought Fifty-One: 10/05/02 |
| I was thinking of learning sign language. Not that I know anyone who's deaf, but.... it seems like the sort of thing a nice person would do. If I could communicate to disabled people, maybe people would admire and like me. I got discouraged when I saw two people signing to each other on T.V. and they looked really cheesy and risable. Or maybe it's because the people on See Hear! are such bad actors. Anyway, I did some research on the Internet about it, and I found that there isn't much point. There's no international sign language, which I wasn't sure if there was one, but I suppose it would be arrogant to think that there was one, since there's no international spoken language either. But it's worse than that. The British and American sign languages are apparently completely different, even in terms of grammatical structure, even though the two countries share the same spoken language. So learning either would just be pointless. I don't really have any plans to communicate with Americans, or even go to America for any significant amount of time, so I'm unlikely to meet any deaf people. Although apparently the structure of signed American has more in common with the structure of spoken Japanese than English. Since I'm learning Japanese anyway, it wouldn't be too difficult to adapt. |
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| Thought Fifty-Two: 10/05/02 |
| This is the fifty-second Random Thought, but it surprises me that I haven't mentioned smiling in any of them, even though it is something I feel very passionate about. Just about every person I've ever met has told me to smile. Why bother? Why does everybody want me to smile? I'd be happier if they stopped telling me to and making a big deal out of it. Sometimes they say it when I'm not even sad, which proves how little it actually matters whether I show it or not. Anyway, the reason I would not smile would be because I'm sad, so why should I pretend not to be sad when I am? That's just denying my feelings. It shows they don't really care what I do, they just want to seem like they are helping to ease their conscience and look good to everyone else. If they did care, they would ask "What's wrong?" and try to fix the problem. |
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| Thought Fifty-Three: 10/05/02 |
| The most recent Random Thoughts are a reminder that this is just a personal site. They've all been quite boring and the ones put up today are really whinging and probably very boring to read. I wrote them quite late at night, so they have quite high emotional and subjective influence. This Thought is being thought of as I type it onto the site, so I've had a week to calm down since and look at things differently. I was being quite rude and spoilt. Anyway, I'm going to try to stop being that. |
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| Thought Fifty-Four: 10/05/02 |
| In my recent (I say 'recent' but it was actually more than 10 Thoughts ago, or a fortnight, I think) comparison of horses and donkeys (or is it donkies? This spelling is far more amusing) I forgot to mention that donkies don't get beaten up by Millwall supporters. I know this isn't funny, but I had to mention Millwall fans sometime. Idiots. |
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| Thought Fifty-Five: 10/05/02 |
| Despite Billy Connolly's best efforts at self-ridicule, I still can't figure out why on earth they changed the National Lottery to the Lotto. They called it that already in Ireland, but I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to change it. Everyone knows it's the same thing, so it won't draw any more punters. Maybe it's because "Lotto" sounds more cheap and amature-ish than National Lottery, so you naturally assume there's a better chance of winning. However, you naturally assume the prizes will be crapper, so it cancels out. |
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| Thought Fifty-Six: 10/05/02 |
| Phrases to use in front of gullible idiots, so that they think you know what you are talking about: "I thought you were going to kick-flip it" "I think Di Canio/ Sheringham is better when playing deeper." "I thought the riff had a lot of potential, but the baseline ruined it." Or, you could just talk like a P.E. teacher, and everyone will agree with you. |
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| Thought Fifty-Seven: 10/05/02 |
| I'd like it a lot if life were just a training exercise, and everyone has to go through this training before the real thing, and in the real world, everyone is nice to each other, because they've been through this training. |
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| Thought Fifty-Eight: 10/05/02 |
| In China, there is a law that states that each family can have only one child, to prevent the population becoming too large. However, this law does not work in practise, because each family wants to have a son, so some keep having kids, even though they aren't supposed to. There was an exercise in a book that suggested wondering what the implications may be if the law was that each family were allowed to have as many daughters as they wanted, but only one son. I started wondering how the people who have too many children are prosecuted. I have since learned that they are fined and taxed for each extra child they have, but initially I thought the obvious thing to do would be to take the children away and sell them. Here are some of the things that were suggested that children could be sold as: Dog food; moving targets for armed forces to practise on; carrier 'pigeons'; goal posts (multiple children would be needed for this); door stops. There were many more ideas, but I'll leave it at that. |
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| Thought Fifty-Nine: 10/05/02 |
| My R.E. teacher this term is amazing. Not at teaching, but she seems to have an infinite supply of anecdotes to refer to, for any event. Someone in class will say something, and then she will start telling this story that relates to it, that involves her. Her supply of anecdotes must be infinite, because she manages to say one for every sentance someone else says. I'm not complaining, really, I think. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not. They are entertaining stories, especially the one about her being taken to the pub with her dad as punishment for going to the pub and subsequently getting involved in a bar-room brawl with her dad, but is it a good thing to manage to drag a conversation back to oneself all the time? Surely it would get boring after awhile. Are they interesting, or am I too simple-minded to tell if they are or not? It's quite strange, I've been brought up (by T.V.) to believe that talking about yourself all the time is wrong. Oh well. I'm a listening person, anyway, not a talker (having said that, this is the word-y-est Thoughts page ever). |
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| Thought Sixty: 24/05/02 |
| If you see the headline: "EDEXCEL TRIED TO RUIN MY LIFE SAYS AWARD-WINNING COMPUTER GAMES DESIGNER" then that's me. |
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