The essence of life is……. Ingredients 200g of the plague, 50g of love, half a chalice of enchanted water, 2 scream’s of fear,nice tea and a mince pie.

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The essence of life is……. Ingredients 200g of the plague, 50g of love, half a chalice of enchanted water, 2 scream’s of fear, leave to rise out of the pretty box labelled social stigmas and enjoy with a nice tea and a mince pie. Yum!

It is amazing how art helps to stimulate the brain; one is sitting here bored out of my mind due to a lack of teacher related plague’s that is keeping them in the school for another day and me on my bed writing this ramble about art.

Art has become so overlooked as a powerful tool to help stimulate the brain. We begin to think about art as a picture with no words but actually it is a million different scenarios, words and worlds in one beautiful colour or stroke of the brush, its amazing how being in the company of this masterpiece (in my opinion) for a mere two minutes has took me to memory’s of places I once regularly thought of, worlds I used to explore in the vastness that is our imaginations. Isn’t it a shame that we begin to loose our imaginations as we get older. I remember times of fighting under the desert sun with a sword so powerful it could sculpture the sky, reshape the moon and redefine the stars and now the only sword I have is the double blade of Gillette fusion to shave away those years! I must admit the bonus to those awful GCSE Maths classes were the endless hours I would stare out the window and look out to the endless green fields and the hope of escape that emulated from the trees in the woods, that one day I would be brave enough to leave this prison the excitement of escaping and becoming whatever I desired. This was a dream that was shattered by the harshness of reality when you had to become a man and plunge through those woods of adolescence and realise that your once favoured pastime of staring out of the window into the never ending blue sky would become the stare of adult whose world has been shattered by the fake dreams he conjured of the world with his mystical, magic powers and the ever changing ability to be who he wants to be, do what he wants to do, only to find that the leaves are again falling from the trees, your praying for rain and the hope that another human becomes unable to go to work so you can begin to regenerate your bank balance into the positive numbers bracket. Thanks to university and these pipe dreams derived from the blue sky from your prison window that it all looks very different now. What a depressing view of life all thanks to ones loss of their imagination and the politics of today’s society which for the past ten years have encouraged us into higher education with the promises of richer fuller lives with endless blue sky’s and warm sandy beaches where you breath a sigh of relief whilst you sip your enchanted water and indulge in the serenity this scene offers you. This brings me back to a quote from my degree,
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation”
What an amazing analogy of life and I do believe that it by far surpasses any interpretation of life I can muster. Looking at this quote by Shakespeare as an unqualified in life 23 year old one can finally begin to agree that life so far is an elaborate hoax, life is an illusion intended to entertain people with money and the higher force that controls our every move, we are like pawns on a chess board and the only way to evolve is to understand, appreciate, respect and fear life itself as even the religion quotes “the lord giveth and the lord taketh away”. I am not a political or religious person but one begins to contemplate the power of these forces in life and they are a force that if you don’t understand, fear and respect them you can become stuck in one of life’s endless roundabouts but fear not the rambler does offer you get out of jail free card. This is that, you can do what you want to do In life, don’t be pigeon holed into societies pretty boxes of which you apparently fit into because of your gender, race and ability, just because some one tells you, you can only achieve this tell them that you can if you really want it get it, but politics is the devils pretty box and he makes it very attractive and alluring with is mirage of blue sky’s and easy street life! Look at Art see the way soaps depict real life, its true but you have the power to make a difference and become everything you want to be, the world might be a stage but it’s a blank canvas for you to regain that mystical, magical sword we once wielded in our childhood imagination and sculpt your future and become the kings and queens of your own chess game when that pawn reaches his destiny at the opponents end of the chess board but its not the end, the truth is out there you just have to know where to begin…..regain your imagination! Its is amazing how one piece of art has provoked a whole ramble and avid readers of which there is two if you include one’s self I could write a lot more! This beautiful piece of art at the begging is rich in colours and tempts you with the fantasy of world’s left to explore and journeys completed. A whole production could be sculpted from this stimulus and provide the most ground breaking, articulated, mystical journey for all to explore and for all to draw their own adventure form. This image shows life in its entirety in my opinion, death, love, past, present, future, life this is the spirit of life that lives in all of us, unique and beautiful and mine was released by Love soppy as it may sound. This image encapsulates what I believe is my essence incorporated through my depiction of this image. It’s hard to believe that ones brain can even begin to contemplate this so early on a Monday, do we all think like this? Or do I have some cancer that prevents normality to be resumed in my highly contaminated brain? I would be nice to begin to see the lighter things in life enjoy the breeze on a sunny day admire the snow falling from your cosy, warm dimly lit living room with out constantly wondering, ok I know why it rains, why does it snow? Why do the elements not allow us to make rain balls and wet angels? And why does it always seem like a good idea to put our nicely toasted hands into the freezing white abyss to then throw it at each other or make a fat man with a carrot or whatever item you may find for a nose….. That is a good question and one should begin to ponder over it with a mince pie and a good old cup of tea. I think tea is brain food and I know at least two people in my life that would agree. I leave you with this we are a nation that is obsessed with reality and we become engrossed in the world that the TV producers, directors and actors deliver to us we get so engrossed we want to become the people we idolise and crave our daily dosage of reality each week but yet fake reality is better than our own we are our own soap and x factor we just don’t need cameras to depict it just Facebook to broadcast it.
Good night out there, whoever and whatever you are!

The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind, 11 letters, Clue, Phil Mitchell, a crack house + the pope. End?

The quick ramble, x100.

Just like the quick crossword in the paper comes the 3rd instalment of The Ramblings of an overactive mind; its easy to digest and probably going to take until lunch time to complete. Actually you gave up on the cross word after spending the longest 5 mins of your life working out that one down is not gammon as it isn't a fish, which may surprise none of you but it surprised me! But again I am the one who has spent endless hours discussing the merits of Julia's theme from EastEnders. To the folks out there who don't watch EastEnders due to its fantastically true to life depiction of the jolly cockneys from the east end of our beloved capital, Julia’s theme is a special musical ending that is given as one of EastEnders highest accolade to an iconic EastEnders character, which is bestowed by the Great British public. Julia is one of the duo who created EastEnders way back in 1985 who unleashed one the most addictively depressing soap to grace BBC 1. EastEnders is a soap that enjoys depicting some of our country's most depressing secrets to grace mankind but unfortunately it all happens in one place. In real life I think no one would move there due to our own insecurities and how easily convinced into believing that a place is cursed. Actually, I must praise EastEnders and silence all the fools out there who believe that it should be taken off air due its unrealistic story-lines. When you have a highly analytical brain, a cup of British tea, a hobnob, (man's favourite biscuit to quote Kay "the marine of the biscuit world") a spare 2 hours and a loving lady or man (not to forget the gay community in this PC day and age) to battle back the tears of extreme boredom you’re on to a winner! These opinionated non-fans of EastEnders, I believe, are very much wrong. How can they say that in real life one community would not suffer so much extreme heartache and sheer bad luck? If one was to look at the news one would find that actually most communities would all suffer most (if not all) of the heartache and bad luck that the residents of sunny Albert square do. When you analyse the story-lines over the past 25 years we have had teen pregnancy; unfortunately to the rest of the world outside of Birmingham, Britain has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, however it has just become more and more accepted over the past decade as sex has become an even bigger influence and the most readily accessible source on the internet, with little to no policing on content, especially in a day and age where 5 year old's are as computer literate as us fashionable 20 somethings! Pregnancy in the older ladies is also an issue we are recently coming across in the media, as we explored Pauline Fowler's late in life pregnancy with Martin. We have had numerous domestic violence story-lines over the past 25 years; even on my own doorstep has there been a case of a married couple with domestic violence issues, and they’re still together! EastEnders has explored many different types of cancers, and unfortunately most of us have known of someone amongst our family or friends to suffer or die from cancer. One of EastEnders’ latest story-lines has been the death of a young girl called Danielle, who was killed in a road accident. This one is particularly close to my heart as 4 years ago my 14 year old sister was killed in road accident involving an articulated lorry, where she suffered severe brain injuries. How people can begin to naively believe that these tragedies don't exist in real life or even that one family has only one tragedy is beyond stupidity. We are more than likely in our lifetime to suffer from one or more unfortunate life events, so we must commend EastEnders' guts in attempting to show the world the evils that lurk around each corner that we are blind to, that you are not the only ones to suffer. We all suffer, and if maybe one day you have to be one of the unfortunate people to have to live with such life changing events, here is a chance to see what help is out there for you and what to expect. Its not just EastEnders that does this, it’s all soaps. Thanks to soaps people have a chance to learn life lessons without actually making the mistake, for instance Brookside taught me never to get involved in hard drugs (I smoked the reefa once, as I was a naive boy!) due to the fantastic portrayal of how drugs ruin people's lives thanks to the Corkhill family. So to all the lucky people out there who have never had to experience suffering, have lead the coveted perfect life, and who want EastEnders off their screens, I think they need to sit down with a biscuit (may I recommend a hobnob, because the outlook is always less bleak with a hobnob or some crack if they have missed this week’s cloudy but throat-slittingly-good episode of EastEnders) and ponder why we watch soaps, maybe one of the reasons is that yes, we have nothing better to watch than a guilt-free look at someone else's life that is moderately worse than ours, but it’s a forum for us to understand real life and to be able love and grieve for a character is an immense achievement to the soap and the actor; to convey believability is one of the hardest tasks in an actor’s job! So don't slate them, rejoice in their ability to make you convey your own feelings, provoke life changing decisions and just entertain you. I’d like to see you try, it’s quite hard! Trust me I’ve been failing at this for quite a few years! Wow, the quickie ramble has turned into James' Times crossword, working out ridiculously hard clues to words that you will never again encounter in your life time! Such as the branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind, 11 letters … any ideas? Eschatology! But maybe this is a naive comment from a fool with half a hobnob, the other floating in my tea like an oaty submarine sailing the seas of PG before embarking on a gutsy (excuse the really bad pun) trip around the islands of buffoonery! To all attempting to read, this I don't have a soap box but I do like stand on one occasionally! Good luck, god bless and you’re going to need a whole lot of hobnob brain food for this one! Now to begin pondering over how we could make a tea and biscuit delivery business work, and if the pope needs a hat cleaner as that sounds like a remarkably good storyline for EastEnders, but first Phil Mitchell needs to introduce the pope to a crack house and convince him the Vatican needs an insurance job pulled on it. Real life folks, real life!

Good night out there, whatever you are!

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. my mind = Speedo’s and Count Duckula.

This has kept me up for endless nights thinking why Twitter is so popular. Now I can understand why Facebook is so popular as it has endless ways of keeping you occupied during those lazy, boring hours of the day, where doing anything that involves thinking of interesting thought provoking statuses and sharing to the world or just your friends, absolutely everything about you and your life. Actually if anyone bothered to come up to me to ask me, I would gladly tell them I am a Pisces and I live in a town called Birmingham. But actually I’m glad that that some people don’t come to me and ask me such questions, because I have been led to believe that talking to some one via a social interaction site, is just as good as talking to them to their face. I seem to have more confidence when speaking to people on Facebook, believing I can’t say anything stupid even though I have a status that clearly says “whoops I just farted on the bus”. With Facebook you eradicate the endless boring and sometimes nauseating conversations such as “what have you been up to today” when really you have nothing more you want to say other than “hello, how are you?” Facebook offers you the chance to be who you want to be, say what you want to say, and speak to who you need to or want to, without the nervous and nauseating meetings in life. But actually it is still a sad way to spend your precious time that we often complain that there is just not enough of in life, but actually if you try and evaluate how you actually spent each hour you may be pleasantly surprised by the amount of time we actually squander, but isn’t it fun! But Twitter really is the lowest ebb of time squandering. Twittering offers the chance to (fanfair sound) tell the world in a limit of 160 words (not precise. I will save that though to analyse for later) what your thinking, doing, going to do, looking forward to and that’s pretty much it, other than commenting on other tweets and follow people who you know or dream of knowing. Just like this blog you must be thinking (if you are insane enough to be reading this) is doing exactly what Twitter and Facebook do but without the limited word count and you would be right! But Twitter really annoys me as probably just like this blog no one will read it but, ha, ha if I were to be a celebrity I would have flocks of tweets and pokes and posts, saying how much u agree with my “James has just gone for a poo” status, and how you love me and enjoy watching my trials and tribulations as whatever character I portray in a soap or film, (whatever you should get the picture). When you actually think about it Twitter and Facebook etc is actually quite clever, and some genius has actually capitalised on something we do everyday. E.g. making friends, gathering friends, talking to friends and simplified it right down to a short sentence of what we want to tell those friends. This is without actually having to go through the ritual of texting or ringing them, seeing if they are free, arranging a date, going there, splashing the cash on and overly expensive tea and cake, only to tell them this short sentence which could be, how they have said or done something to offend you, or just to make them aware your ok, and you enjoyed your holiday. In fact social interaction sites cut out the middle man in the process of meeting up to show your nearest and dearest your holiday snaps. You can actually do it while you enjoy your tea in your favourite mug made to perfection, in your underwear, in your cosy bed, in a matter of minuets you can then reap the picture comments sent to you on your best Speedo pose! It’s ingenious but bloody annoying because you actually didn’t think of capitalising on such common ritual in life.
Well officially my rant is actually over, I believe I sufficiently covered in depth this constant sleep depriving offender that caused me to re-wind my DVD over 11 times last night.

To quote from Count Duckula (I like this quote)
“Goodnight out there, whatever you are”