Disney World MADNESS

On Friday I stared directly into the ugly face of humanity and lived to tell the tale.  Let me set the scene:

It was a warm, refreshing evening at Disney World; joyful, excited parents, children, and teenagers became one as they enjoyed together the beautiful firework display put on by the park.  We all watched as Disney imparted his message to the world- “Make a wish, and do as dreamers do, and all your wishes will come true.” Tinkerbell flew overhead, sprinkling us all with magic dust.  The fireworks thundered to their dazzling climax, and left us all realising, for the first time, that we had no idea how we were going to get out of the crowds of people forming around us.  That’s when it became ugly.

We’d accidentally chosen to go to Disneyworld on the one day where the park was open for 24 hours; 6am to 6am.  This was great, we thought, as we’d be able to do the Haunted House ride when it was dark, and I’d get to go to the Enchanted Tiki Room as many times as I wanted.  Nobody, however, including the Disney World staff, had expected that 20,000 people being in the same place at the same time would cause a problem.

For those of you that haven’t been to Disney World, it is set up thus; in the middle lies Cinderella’s castle and a large circular area where people can stand to watch the fireworks and other shows that happen during the day.  Jutting out from this area are roads to other parts of the park, and a large path that goes back down to ‘Main Street’ and the park’s exit.  Because I am not a bird and don’t have a map anymore, I can only give you a rough approximation:

 The trouble arose as a result of every visitor to the park being in exactly the wrong place.  Those families with children for whom the fireworks would be the final event of the day planned ahead and got close to Cinderella’s castle to watch the show.  Those people who had come just in time for the fireworks either from dinner or from other parks and who wanted to go on some more rides afterwards, came later and so were restricted to Main Street.  This meant that after the fireworks, everyone on Main Street wanted to get into the park (blue) and everyone who was already in the park wanted to get out of it (red):

Being British and naturally inclined to queue sensibly and not minding waiting my turn to get anywhere, I was shocked and horrified by the inability of the workers at the park and by the people in the crowd to respond calmly and rationally to the situation.  Everyone panicked; everyone was shouting.  There was no camaraderie or “let’s make the best of this” attitude amongst the people there.  Three main groups of people formed:

1.   Entitled parents who kept making comments like- “my baby is tired, please let me and my baby through” when SEVENTY PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE TRYING TO GET OUT OF THE CROWD HAD TIRED BABIES.

2.   People who, with no regard to anyone’s physical safety, would actively elbow and shove their way through the crowd, even harming small children and older people while doing so; Foofy’s mummy got shoved in the chest and Foofy’s daddy got practically tackled to the ground.

3.   People who were overly sensitive to other people touching them and wanted to start arguments.

We started off halfway up Main Street and then turned left to, what we learned, was an exit that had just been opened up.  We were not going to use the exit, but we would be able to go North to Adventure land once the crowd coming South had cleared.  During this half hour we spent waiting for the people exiting to clear, we saw a woman shouted at by a worker because she tried to escape the crush by climbing over a barrier onto a patch of empty grass while yelling at the worker to "SHUT UP!", three first-aid emergencies (one was especially bad because some people in the crowd pretended to be with the ill woman so that they could squeeze their way out of the crowd before everyone else), and a man who threatened to kill the next person who touched his daughter.  This last man was absolutely justified in saying what he said, seeing as, moments before, somebody had pushed in front of him and practically sat on his little girl sitting in her stroller.

Just as we began to move, I came into contact with a particularly nasty woman who accused me of pushing her forward, when, in fact, Foofy’s bag had just brushed slightly against her bag as we moved into an available space beside her.  I’m not one to judge on appearance but she had the look of someone who was used to shoving herself about to get what she wanted:

“You just PUSHED me!” She said, feigning injury.

“I didn’t push you.” I said calmly.

“We’re ALL GOING TO THE SAME PLACE! YOU MUST HAVE PUSHED ME BECAUSE YOU WERE BEHIND ME AND NOW YOU’RE BESIDE ME!!!!”

I didn’t bother to explain to the woman how crowds work, and that, if you are in a small group of two, like Foofy and I, it is helpful for EVERYONE in the crowd for us to move into spaces when they become available, like one did beside her.  She was in a party of about seven people so they were restricted.

“I didn’t push you.” I repeated.  “I would never push somebody.  I didn’t even touch you.”

She argued more, muttering to the people in her party about how rude I was.

“Are you sure you were pushed?” One of her companions said to her doubtfully.

“Well I didn’t just fall forwards!” She shouted back.

At this point I stopped walking.

“Please go in front of me.” I offered.  She gave me a filthy look.  “No, I’m serious, please go in front of me.” She gave me an even filthier look and carried on walking.  A person behind me helpfully said to me-

“Just ignore her, some people are crazy.”

Damn right.

At this point, the crowd moved more quickly and Foofy and I could escape up to Adventure Land.  By this point my delayed onset fear of people shouting at me had kicked in and I was openly weeping and bad-mouthing Disney World.

“This is a toxic, evil environment!” I cried.  “I can’t believe how RUDE people are! Rude entitled people!!!!”

I sat down on a chair for a bit and cried some more, then Foofy took me to the Enchanted Tiki Room, my favourite ‘ride’, to cheer me up.  By this time, however, the floodgates had opened and everything was setting me off:

We later went to the Haunted House and I was set off once again by the site of a zombie dog that looked too skinny:

  

“IT PROBABLY STARVED TO DEATH!!!!” I yelled at the top of my voice. Foofy tried to reassure me by saying that the dog only looked skinny because it was dead, and that all the ghosts looked like they were having a terribly good time.  I was still crying when I got off the ride- I must have looked like a complete weirdo.

So, in conclusion, though I had a lovely time during the day at Disney World, getting to go on all the Mountain rides with my ‘Fastpasses’, the whole thing was tainted by the dreadful experience of the evening, which is the closest thing to a disaster movie I’ve ever seen in real life; in fact, Foofy’s mummy compared it to a scene from “The Blob.”  I’m amazed nobody was seriously injured.  Shame on you, Disney World, for your lack of crowd-control and allowing that many people to be in the park at one time.  SHAME ON YOU.   

   

The Last Nine Months

It is just over three weeks since the end of my nine month European tour and I have just about scraped the shattered remains of my former self off the literal and figurative stages of Europe in order to write my first real post in AGES.  Once I have found myself again and remembered what funny is, you will hear more from me, but give me time, for I am still delicate.  As an actress, I need to be grateful for every job I get, for they are so sought after, and, in this sense, I am incredibly glad to have done the tour and very flattered and thankful for everyone who made it happen for me.  However, now that the job is over and I can bask in the knowledge that I did my very best, I feel like I've only recently woken up from a very strange dream where I was a completely different person and behaved in very uncharacteristic ways.  It was the same length, and probably just as traumatic as, a pregnancy, and included throwing up and bizarre food cravings: In February and most of March, for example, I lived almost entirely off crisps, mini babybels, and that fake mashed potato you have to pour water into, and every possible combination of the above. 

I do not like the person I was on tour, and it is hard being in the same body as a miserable bitch for nine months; I’m not used to hating myself, so it was a new and unpleasant experience.  It is difficult to describe what exactly made me feel like this, because a lot of the time I really was having a lot of fun, but it was the kind of fun that quickly vanished leaving me feeling a bit empty, like eating a whole tub of jelly beans instead of dinner, which I may or may not have done on the tour at one point.

Probably the most negative part of the experience was the fact that I constantly felt very disconnected from everything going on around me, and that was a large factor in the lack of blog posts; the thought of writing for an audience when all I was doing in my working life was performing for an audience seemed frustrating and exhausting, and caused me to retreat into myself.  On the surface, travelling around 14 different countries and getting applause at the end of every working day should be a very good thing, and I put myself under an enormous amount of pressure to appreciate every moment of it.  Throughout my nine months, I saw some beautiful sites and was immersed in a large number of different cultures.  Driving alongside the alps, for example, was an incredible opportunity and I very much enjoyed it, but it was clear that the scenery seemed to have much more of an effect on other people than on me.  To be polite, I’d always join in with exclamations of ‘wow, yeah that’s awesome’ Before going back to my book or my DS, but if I’m honest, I didn’t really see what the fuss was about.  While I celebrate others’ rights to appreciate things like mountains and blue skies, when I looked out of the window of the van, I couldn’t help but think that it just looked like a postcard, and so something that I’d seen before.  It looked too perfect; too unreal, to actually be real.  My mind couldn’t fathom it, so I just didn’t engage with it.  In contrast, at one point we passed through a field of cows and I got VERY excited.

“Look at those cows!” I said gleefully, “They actually have BELLS on their necks! I mean, you always hear that cows are meant to have bells around their necks, but…wow, actually seeing them?”

The others were baffled.  I was struck with an unfathomable loneliness.  I may even have cried a bit.  I still thought the cows were AWESOME.  I had a similar experience in Brazil- where my companions were looking at the view of the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches from the top of a hill, I was, instead, staring at a collection of ants which I found interesting.

Similarly, on the cruise I did two years ago, we explored the Baltic sea, which is especially nice as it’s usually frozen but very sunny, so the views are amazing.  This was also the cruise where my computer broke.  As I looked out over the front of the boat into a seemingly endless blue ocean, the sunlight made the whole body of water and ice shimmer and glisten; the boat carved its way almost noiselessly through the water and as I stood there, alone in the world but for an ocean and a sky, I was struck dumb by how little I felt by all of this, and how I would much rather have a computer that worked.

This was what visiting all those wonderful cities was like; I knew that I was SUPPOSED to be impressed, but, if anything, the beauty of the landscapes and buildings before me just made me feel empty.  The fact that other people around me kept telling me that I should be in utter awe of what I was seeing somehow made me feel even emptier, as if there was something I was lacking, which caused this vicious circle of emptiness and misery that cheap and delicious German beer only went some way to alleviate.

As a result, all the good, fun things that happened would quickly drift out of my mind, leaving a very negative impression of each city I visited:

Having a cold while everyone else was at a street party drinking free wine was not very fun.

Neither was having a 48 hour IBS attack.

Wandering the streets looking for my hotel which was only two blocks away the whole time.

This hotel (or rather, just my room,) had the slowest internet I've ever experienced.  When I was on tour, the internet became more important than food, warmth or shelter.

I don't know what happened in Munich- it was a combination of PMS, IBS and hearing the news that I wouldn't be seeing Foofy for a month rather than a week, as was originally planned.

Padua in the spring was a very bad place to have a fever; I'm surprised I didn't completely evaporate.

Our very last experience of the tour was almost our last experience on this Earth due to our cab driver apparently having a death wish.

There were some fun moments too, of course, but I can’t help associating the entire experience with feelings of anger, guilt, worry and depression, meaning that now, whenever I see anything that even vaguely represents a European country I visited, particularly Germany, I feel a growing sense of anxiety and have difficulty breathing.  Yesterday, somebody had wurst and sauerkraut for dinner and just the sight of it practically made me weep into my prawns.

I am in America now, however, for the graduation of Foofy; yesterday a puppy ran up to me and literally wet itself with excitement, and you can’t get much better than that really.  Now I have rested myself and got over the trauma of repeatedly having to get up at 6am, having to strip down to my bra in front of a total of more than 100,000 European school children, being spat on and beaten up (part of the play; nothing personal!) several times a week and having to wash my knickers in hotel sinks with the free soap they give you, I am able to look at the positives and muse upon what I have learnt.

I had a lot of fun with my touring pals and I’m sure we’ll get up to many more adventures together, but the experience really taught me how much my weirdo friends from home mean to me and how I probably need to appreciate the people who love the things I love and who think I’m awesome a bit more.  Seeing an Italian sunset is one thing, but playing Settlers of Catan while drinking mojitos and screaming about somebody stealing my 2:1 lumber port is something else entirely.  Some people like drinking good wine outside with conversation.  I prefer drinking cheap Amaretto alone while I write about fictional universes where people fight monsters for a living.  Some people like snow-topped mountains and lakes as still as sheets of glass.  I prefer singing the Act 1 finale of Iolanthe at double speed with 20 other loons while drinking half a bottle of sherry.  Some people like acting on tour; I think, mind I say I think, I kind of prefer singing, teaching and quacking occasionally.  I’m still working this one out though; I certainly haven’t given up on touring just yet.  Perhaps I’ll get the opportunity to re-live the experience with all this knowledge in mind, and perhaps, this time, I may kick ass just a wee bit more.  

Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

I think gay marriage is obviously immoral; it confuses me and makes me angry.  Take this, for example; I can’t look at this picture I drew without finding a rabbit and punching it in the face:

Usually when things make me angry I just keep asserting that they are wrong because my anger has blinded me to common sense, but somebody a bit cleverer than me has managed to sum up exactly why gay marriage is wrong in a religious and secular context, and will hopefully put the minds of gay people to rest.  It is a paper called “Homosexual Marriage, Parenting and Adoption”, by Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, and you can read it here.  

I have even, because I have a lot of time on my hands, attempted to back up some of his main points with arguments of my own, because people who have made the active choice to be gay may not be intelligent enough to read such an excellently-worded paper.

Firstly, Bernheim invites us to consider that not everyone who falls in love is able to marry the object of their affections, and how, because of this, gay people should not expect to get married just because they love each other:

“From the fact that two people love each other it does not follow necessarily that they have the right to be married…for example, a man cannot marry a woman who is already married…likewise, a woman cannot be married to two men on the grounds that she loves both of them and that both want to be her husband.  A father cannot marry his daughter, even if their love is uniquely paternal and filial.”

There is no grey area when it comes to morality, and love is either right or wrong.    The above are examples of wrong love, and you can see exactly why homosexuality has been put in the same bracket: the issues surrounding gay marriage are similar to the issues that might come about in a poly-marriage.  You see, if you are gay, the shame of being such a thing will LITERALLY tear you apart meaning that you will become like two people, so if anyone attempts to marry you, they will actually be marrying two people, which is overly-complicated legally.  What would you do in event of divorce? Death? Insurance? Wills? You didn’t think of that, did you?  It is also very much like the love a father has for his daughter, because all gay people are related to each other and could, among themselves, actually produce genetically abnormal children.  The bond between a father and a daughter is unique, but is also very much like the bond between two adults of the same sex, and for them to begin a sexual or romantic relationship would be a gross misunderstanding of this bond.  Have you ever been married but also quite fancied someone else and thought that you’d like to have the opportunity to marry that person as well? That’s how gay people feel ALL THE TIME. 

The important thing here is to immediately react to more unusual types of love with ‘ick- that’s gross!’ without thinking about why it is gross, and realising that perhaps, it isn’t.  Sometimes the grossness can be logically explained; for example, it is wrong for a human to have sex with a dog because dogs don’t have the mental capacity to understand what they are doing and to take advantage of this is morally questionable.  However, the reasons why some forms of love are just WRONG are not so clear, and rather than examining them closely, it is best to declare them as intrinsically ‘just wrong’ because of the way such things make us feel.  To allow homosexuals to marry would not just affect the homosexuals, but would affect everyone who got married, because the whole concept of marriage would become tainted. Most people in the world feel utterly sick at the thought of haggis, which is why haggis has been made illegal.  It is not just enough for those who don’t like it not to eat it, because the simple fact that haggis exists taints the whole concept of food in general, and may cause millions to starve to death.

Bernheim then goes on to discuss the definition of ‘marriage’, and how homosexual marriages cannot fall under this definition:

“Marriage is not only the recognition of a loving attachment.  It is the institution that articulates the union between man and woman as part of the succession of generations.  It is the establishment of a family…marriage is a fundamental act in the construction and the stability of individuals as well as of society.”

As we all know, the dictionary is sacred, and none of the definitions of any of the words in it have changed since it was first written at the beginning of time, which means that when we make laws, they must be constructed around the definitions of words and the ancient ideas these definitions were based on, rather than on utilitarian ideals of happiness and freedom for all, which may change as society evolves.  This is the reason why black people are still unable to vote in America and have to use separate public transport to white people.  Because marriage, throughout all of history and in every world culture, has been directly connected to religion, the correct definition of what a marriage is will be found in the Bible.  In the Bible, marriage has always involved one man and one woman, not one man and many women, which never occurred at all; not with Abraham, King Solomon, Jacob, or anyone. Because marriage, in all of its mentions in the Bible, is only ever defined as between a man and a woman, we are stuck with this definition now and it must remain un-changing, and that is argument enough to prove that GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG.

Words in the Bible are even more important than other, ordinary words; for example, the Hebrew word for ‘helper’ in reference to Eve’s role in Adam’s life has connotations of importance and power, much like a doctor helps a patient, or how God helped Israel.  The word had such connotations of superiority that the writer made sure to precede it with the word ‘suitable’, implying that Eve was ‘fit for’ Adam, and not above him.  Christians and Jews have held rigidly to this ideal throughout the thousands of years they have read the bible, which is why women have always held an equal place in society to men.  Words, as we know, are not fluid over time and adaptable to people’s individual beliefs and changes in society, but remain fixed, ensuring that humanity remains stifled and trapped by them.

Bernheim then brings up the issue of civil partnerships, and argues that gay people should be satisfied with this rather than insisting on using the word ‘marriage’:

“Even if certain provisions given automatically to the married are not given automatically to those in civil unions, they are nevertheless possible.”

Marriage is a unique experience, and encompasses a deeply sacred and spiritual emotional bond.  I can’t understand why gay people would want to be a part of it, when a ‘civil partnership’ gives them ALL of the same rights (not just some of them), and isn’t cold or clinical-sounding at all.  Gay people don’t really fall in love in the same way that heterosexual people do, so calling their partnership a ‘marriage’ is unnecessary. 

I’m going to take a moment now to explain to those who haven’t read the Bible exactly what it says about the issue: Jesus himself said nothing directly on the subject of gay marriage, but we can ascertain what his views would have been from notable Bible passages.  This one, for example, is often used to defend traditional marriage:

Matthew 19: 3-6- “Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Jesus argues that the only proper form of marriage is between one man and one woman; As we all know, in basic logic, if A is true, B, (where B is consistent with A) cannot also be true, so if marriage is between a man and a woman, this means it cannot be between a man and another man.  The main point of this passage could possibly be interpreted as Jesus objecting to the ending a marriage for frivolous reasons, but seeing as there is only one way of interpreting the Bible, it follows that Jesus was specifically objecting to gay marriage.

Homosexuality is listed as an abominable sin in the Bible, along with things like eating certain foods, planting two crops next to each other and wearing cotton blends.  The heart of Christianity is the sum of all these rules and regulations governing everyday life which have been consistently relevant for thousands of years; it is certainly not found in a throw-away passage like this:

Ephesians 4: 1-16- “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love… Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

Or this:

Galatians 3:28- “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Next, Bernheim brings us onto, perhaps, the most important issue with gay marriage; that is; child-rearing:

“To love a child is one thing; to love a child with a love that provides the necessary structure is another…all the affection in the world will not suffice to produce the basic psychological structures that address the child’s need to know where he comes from.”

We live in a society where only those who are fit to have children are allowed to get married.  To get married, they must present themselves at the ‘Child-Bearing Licensing Office’ and go through months of rigorous physical and psychological testing to make sure that any child they raise will be utterly sane and healthy, after which they get a license and are allowed to get married and try to start making a baby.  Are you blind? If so, then I’m afraid you won’t be allowed to have children because they might get hurt without you noticing.  How about if you want to be a father but you don’t have any legs? This could be a problem as normal boys need to be able to play sport with their fathers.  Have you ever suffered with depression or anxiety? I’m sorry, but your mental diseases may rub off on any children you have, making them depressed and anxious too.  Do you want to raise a child alone? That isn’t allowed either, because children raised in single-parent families are never successful.  I’m not allowed to have a Child-Bearing-License myself because Foofy and I both have tics, and if we were to have a child, it would have tics too, and, since me and Foofy have had utterly miserable lives, it wouldn’t be fair to bring a child into the world for it to have the same life.  It is a very good thing that we have this system in place that only allows for heterosexual, sane, perfectly physically healthy people to get married and have children; it means that we live in a world where no child has ever been negatively affected by the appearance, health, beliefs, or actions of their parents in any way.  I was raised by two heterosexual parents, and I have no insecurities at all, and you only have to read the rest of my blog to see how perfectly sane I am.

“Homosexual parenting is not parenting”

Analytically and semantically, this is true.  You may not know the definition of the word ‘parenthood’, but he goes on to explain:

“Neither marriage nor parenthood has ever been based on the sexuality of individuals but rather on sex itself- that is, on the anthropological distinction between man and woman…The term “parent” is not neutral; it involves a sexual difference.”

The word ‘parent’ is not even recognisable as a singular noun, so any attempt to look up the word in a dictionary simply failed; here are my fruitless attempts:

Cambridge Dictionaries Online: “A mother or father of a person or an animal.”

Websters online: “One that begets or brings forth offspring OR a person who brings up and cares for another.”

Dictionary online: “A father or a mother OR a protector or guardian.”

Oxford Dictionaries: “A person’s father or mother.”

Definitions aside, it has always been an anthropological necessity for there to be both a mother and father raising a child.  I’ve never heard of any tribal societies that raise children a little differently.  Single people who raise children can actually not legally call themselves parents, and it would be insulting to proper child-raising couples if they were to; they are simply ‘a person who lives with a child that has either come out of them or someone they have had sex with.’  This is a much simpler concept than the confusion of calling everyone who loves, nurtures and brings up a child a ‘parent.’

“The association of gay and lesbian parents and future parents has proposed several substitutes for the term “parent” depending on the various functions to be performed:  Stepparent, co-parent, homo-parent, mother to another, biological parent, legal parent, social parent, second parent, etc.  It seems unlikely that a child could manage naturally to find a stable meaning in relation to all such terminologies.”

These are just some of the terms that gay people have invented in order to trick their way into corrupting children; notably ‘biological parent.’  That term was gibberish before gay people began to exist in the 20^th century.  Besides, it is unfair to have to expect children to learn any terminology involving the world around them; children aren’t very adaptable to new things, shown by the fact that it takes them fifteen times longer to become fluent in a new language than an adult.  It is best for every child’s growing-up experience to be identical, as then none of them will face any problems, and the world would be a much better place. 

“The right to a child does not exist.  The desire to have a child in no way establishes the right to have a child, neither for heterosexuals or for homosexuals…(the right to have a child) consists in particular of giving the child a family in which he will have the best chance to have the best life.”

Nobody has the right to have children, which is why, as I have already discussed above, one requires a Child-Bearing-License in order to have one.  When it comes to adoption, although it is obviously wrong for a gay couple to adopt because there have been multiple studies done that show this, because of ‘political correctness’, adoption agencies may feel obliged to allow gay couples to adopt in the fear of being accused of discrimination against gays.  Childless heterosexual couples tend to adopt for a combination of altruistic and personal reasons; perhaps they want to use the love they have for each other to make a stable, happy home for a child, or they might feel that raising a child is an utterly unique experience which would be both rewarding and challenging to them.  However, childless homosexual couples are only selfishly thinking of themselves and their own desires, not considering the health or happiness of the child.  Children raised in gay families would be the target of bullying and discrimination due to their parentage.  Because this bullying is entirely the fault of gay people, it follows that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to have children.  The alternative, which would involve teaching children to accept and love those around us, to celebrate and take joy in the fact that we are all unique and wonderful creatures with our own desires and to allow good, moral agents to live lives free from harm is simply not an option here.

Finally, one subject Bernheim failed to raise in detail was the issue of natural law.  Catholics in particular base their morality on what is naturally in keeping with preserving and protecting the human race, which means that contraception and abortion are definitely immoral.  Homosexual love, sexuality and, most of all, parenting are entirely artificial behaviours that come about through choice and a desire to sin against God.  We know these behaviours are artificial because they certainly don’t exist elsewhere in the animal kingdom, like in the penguin house of Central Park Zoo.  Along with things like noses and breasts and feet and tongues, we have also (quite naturally) been given something called ‘reason’, and we are able to use this to form decisions based on what is right and what is good, rather than relying on our own personal instincts and fears of what is different or unusual.  Through using reason, humanity has created some wonderful things, like Radiohead, iPhones and chips & cheese, but through the learning process, some pretty horrible things have happened too.  Our reason, however, has prevailed and made us look upon the uglier bits of our history as mistakes, and has helped us to understand that just because something was considered to be ‘right’ two thousand years ago, it doesn’t make it right or good now.  However in some cases, such as Gay marriage, it is best to leave reason entirely out of it and do all we can to prevent anything positive coming out of homosexual love, because that is exactly what Jesus would have wanted.   

The truth about Penguins...

I have been rather neglectful of this blog recently due to other writing projects that are taking over my life; I went from having almost life-threatening writer's block in January to writing an average of 5000 words a day.  Call me butter, 'cause I'm on a roll!  Anyway, I'd like to let you all know that I'm still a duck, I'm still singing, and I am, most importantly, alive.

Just before Christmas I discovered something quite amazing called 'Omegle' which is an online chatting service where you can talk to strangers.  To make this easier you can be matched with another stranger and, together, answer a question that has been posed by another user.  After having a rather fruitless argument with a 12-year-old girl about how feminism could be incorporated into Islam for over 45 minutes, I decided to ask some questions of my own.  Some were ignored entirely, but one question I asked got many, and varied, responses:

"What", I asked, "do you hate most about penguins?"

Penguins are, by nature and appearance, loveable, awkward little things, and, apart from a few fish, could never have been said to have caused any harm to anything.  (And who cares about fish anyway? JOKE, I love fish.)

Anyway...I was sure that people could come leaping to their defense, and was rather surprised at the almost violent and sudden reaction I got from most of the strangers.  It seemed that I opened a whole can of worms.  You may notice that a couple of them have been slightly altered with paint- this was because some of the comments made were a little too obscene even for me and rather took away the humour from the rest of what was being said! Having said that, a lot of these people have used quite naughty language that I've kept in, like the F word and stuff, so if you are of a sensitive nature be careful when reading lest your eyes melt out of your sockets in sheer alarm.

Of course, some people didn't care in the least about penguins and were, quite frankly, wasting my time and theirs:

But those people aside, probably the most common reason why people hate penguins is the fact that they are flightless.  I think it's a little unfair to blame this on the birds themselves, but people on the internet are notoriously unreasonable.

Stranger 2 brings up an interesting point here which is shared by, it seems, a fairly large number of people going by some of the other responses.  Have I totally missed the fact that penguins are going to destroy the world? I'd never thought about it before, but perhaps there is something quite menacing about them.  Their cold, dead eyes for a start, and the fact that they kind of fly, but through water, and are all wet and slimy a lot of the time.  I could quite easily imagine an Emperor penguin being the villain in a Bond film, and after initially seeing the new character on screen, I think that the public would accept it completely and forget after a while that there was anything odd about it being there.  Most people, however, were not so much fearful of penguins, but thought that they were a little big for their boots:

Again, I think it is a little unfair for humans to imagine that penguins are stuck up just because they look like they are wearing suits.  Firstly, we have surely learnt by now not to judge others on their appearances, but, more importantly, we don't automatically assume that humans wearing suits are smug either.  I can't imagine being on the London Underground and shouting at all the people going to work- "Look at you all!" I'd say, "You're so smug in your fancy, fancy suits!"  Also, I'm not entirely sure where people get the impression from that penguins think they know everything.  From what I know of penguins, they are perfectly happy making crazy noises, fishing, and mating for life.  There is very little about them for me that constitutes smugness. One pair of strangers seemed to have a whole scheme planned to overthrow them:

I rather like the idea of a newly-wed couple coming home to 101 penguins already in their house- sounds like my perfect life! The idea of monochromacity (if that is a word, which it isn't) came up rather a few times, but I didn't include any of them here because it often dissolved into some rather unnecessary use of quite offensive racial slurs.  In fact, I would have thought that penguins, being monochromatic, would have been looked on as quite trendy and 'hipster' these days.  Those penguins were wearing black and white before it was cool.

I don't quite know why one of the penguins is wearing sunglasses, but it's probably quite sunny in the South Pole sometimes and their eyes may get tired.  I know they have already coped fairly well for thousands of years, but perhaps such a scheme could be introduced for the future.  Some people, it seems, have perfect grounds to hate penguins if what they are saying is true:

There were also quite a few that made utterly no sense whatsoever:

I'm upset that Stranger 2 disconnected here, as I was curious to hear the rest of the story, but this next one, out of all of them, was my personal favourite:

As it transpired, this person thought I was talking about the Penguins American Football team, but at first I found it hilarious that he answered immediately with something so completely random.  I had an image of him sitting at home watching a nature documentary, getting more and more angry as penguin after penguin dived into the sea, until he eventually explodes with rage:

In conclusion, I don't think I've learnt anything in particular about penguins that I didn't know before, but I've certainly learnt that some people are very strange.

Funny things I have seen on my tour

One of the few pleasures I get from travelling round foreign countries is by laughing at foreign things.  This is grossly unfair seeing as I am not nearly as versed in other languages as much as most foreigners are in English, but I don't really care.  Funny things are funny, and I do hope tourists visiting Britain find as much joy in British weirdness as I do when I travel.  Some of these funny things come from misuse of the English language, and some are just there because they are funny.  This is a prime example of both:

Whoever made the tissues is correct; they are, in fact, funny, which is a weird paradox as they wouldn't have been funny if they hadn't been declared to be 'funny.'

Some of the amusing things are apparently just normal things that Germans would find in shops:

I'm not even sure myself why the last one is so funny- I think it's because I can imagine the dog saying- "Ja!" and it would please me greatly if a dog were to say that.  The exclamation mark just adds to the urgency of the golden Labrador's happiness.

A couple of the things aren't German at all, but I just found them hilarious:

The door handle, quite obviously, looks like a very alarmed face which caused me to practically wet myself when I first saw, and the second amused me because I didn't notice the crazy donkey in the background at first and it took me by surprise later.

The next few are things that I just found very WEIRD, yet brilliant:

I am struck, here, by the astounding amount of detail that has gone into re-creating the act of a dog defecating.

This was just an incidence of very poor positioning of a Children's DVD.

There was a whole series of these chicken pictures in one of the hotels we were staying in.  I found it a little disturbing that as well as the chickens wearing business suits and ballgowns, they were accompanied, in each picture, by ACTUAL CHICKENS, one of which, in this case, seems to be intent on dive-bombing the chicken-head humans enjoying their wine.  The whole series was utterly superb.

The following are in English but are still hilarious.

You see that? Outside is 'out of order'- that isn't good at all!

Apologies for the lack of rotation here- I hope the act of turning your head slightly to the left won't put you off my blog for good.  I liked this one because I can't help but notice a slight bitterness to the tone of it, as if they were exhausted with having to deal with air conditioning malfunctions and whenever anyone opens their window a crack loads of alarms and bells start going off and lights flashing crazily and all the staff going mental- "WE WARNED YOU!" They would say, brandishing knives in our faces.  "NOW LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED!!!!"

Flawless logic here!

Why, thank you! I spent almost 2 solid hours chuckling at the over-use of punctuation this person used.  They really want you to take their sacks!

Lastly, here are some of my personal favourites:

Ha ha! Poo.

One day, when I'm old and tired, I'm going to take my husband and my ducks and llamas and we'll settle down in Wankdorf.

There are several things l like about this picture.  Firstly, the exclamation marks designed to stop someone going in, as if without them they would have proceeded anyway and died from shock at the sight of a broken toilet.  Secondly, their decision to include a picture of a toilet as if to further establish in the mind of the reader that it is the TOILET that is broken, not something else, like the door, for example.  Somebody, somewhere, will have gone through the trouble of finding a picture of a toilet and gracefully fading the picture into the white background.  Perhaps this is actually quite an easy thing to do, but it looks like too much effort to me.  Thirdly, the story behind taking this picture is almost funnier than the picture itself.  The first time I went in, I didn't have my camera, so I rushed back to the van to get my phone.  However, when I returned there was a girl in the toilet washing her hands.  Rather than allowing her to think that I had come into the bathroom to take a picture of this sign, I went into a cubicle and gathered a roll of tissue, and pretended to blow my nose for good measure when she looked over at me.  Five painful seconds passed before she left the room and I was able to take the picture, along with losing any shred of dignity that I was still in possession of.

This, we found in Luxembourg, and is probably the best way of describing nuts and crisps I could ever imagine.

I hope you have enjoyed my funnies as much as I have, however I am very much aware that the sophistication of some of these is far above the level that most of my readers are used to, so don't worry if you don't understand all of them.