50 Years of sparkling skies and a militaristic condiment (and 5 Years of Internet Sketching)

50 years ago an Pop Art icon was released to an expecting public - The Beatles eighth studio album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although the music was a sign of the band's move to psychedelia, leading to many musicologists to suggest that this was the world's earliest concept album, what was more memorable is the cover.

Created by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth from a drawing by Paul McCartney, art-directed by Robert Fraser and photographed by Michael Cooper at an extravagant cost of nearly £3,000, the resulting collage has become (according to author Ian Inglis) "a guidebook to the cultural topography of the decade" that is the 1960s.

It's inner sleeve art was done by Dutch design collective and band The Fool. Originally The Beatles wanted them to make a psychedelic front cover for the album, but art dealer Robert Fraser persuaded them not to and suggested Peter Blake to do the cover instead. Included with the album were a bonus gift of a cut-out sheet made by Blake and Haworth that features -

• a postcard-sized portrait of Sgt. Pepper (based on a statue from Lennon's house that was used on the front cover).
• a fake moustache
• two sets of sergeant stripes
• two lapel badges 
• and a stand-up cut-out of the band in their uniforms

The album is also noted for what happened on its back. It was the first album to have its songs lyrics written on the back, so you no longer have to guess what John Lennon was saying by placing your ear close to the speaker. (although it made no difference in the task of interpreting them for any meaning what so ever). 

It didn't take long for the world to recognise Blake and Haworth's genius. The cover won a Grammy that same year for Best Album Cover, Graphics Art.

Since then the cover has become so iconic it has led to a number of parodies and remakes, including...

• Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention's parody inside art on their 1968 We're Only in It for the Money album.
• This MAD magazine cover from 2002.
• The "heroes and heroines of the 21st century" SLC Pepper mural in Salt Lake City, painted in 2004 by Jann Haworth to address the imbalance of race and gender in the original.
• And this one that was made to commemorate the famous people who died in 2016.

Oh, and my tribute to the album's 50th anniversary 

(which also happens to be the same year as this blog's 5th anniversary (two birds with one stone)).

Hope you like it. It took ages to make!

The past few months have been .... (I can't find the right words) for me.

I hope next year things get better. 

Happy "I survived winter" celebrations everyone.

(I don't want a society that forces me to say "Merry Christmas" to everyone. 

Its become boring and its become hatred fuel to a biggest bunch of killjoys of our time.

I want a choice in December. 

I don't want a world full of broken robots that say "Merry Christmas"

each time they sense a person walk pass them. 

I want variety.

And I think most people (the people who don't bother voting or ranting online) feel the same too.

Don't let those killjoys win their imaginary non-existant "war."

UPDATE - A post about how this tribute was made featuring a list of who's in it can be accessed by clicking .... 

HERE

My August on eBay

It’s another month and time for another mandatory monthly post. A lot has happened to me in the past month. Apart from my first days as an amateur art teacher and my long list of home improvements (which mostly involve building bookcases I bought from B&Q and moving A LOT of books), the 5th August 2017 will be remembered as the day of a significant milestone in my life … the day I first bought something on eBay.

Friends and regular readers will know that I have a thing for technology. I am fascinated by human ingenuity in all its guises. Gadgets, buildings, magic tricks, cons, works of art, special effects, music, movies, you name it. If a human made it, I’m interested.

This is why I’m kind of annoyed by some who believe the pyramids were built by aliens, and not fellow humans. Such thinking sells our species short, in the same way a lot of men claim the credit of work by women over the years. Maybe that’s why they are not many female conspiracy theorists and “flat-earthers.” Although I could be wrong about that, due to the stereotype (and a stereotype that is rarely bashed by the PC police, for some reason.).

Anyway, I find technology interesting. And not just the new stuff you find on sale
I find older technology more interesting, due to what people managed I to do with the limitations of their day. It’s not a surprise that high number of videos I watch on YouTube are of the subject of old devices and technology. I am a regular viewer of a number of channels that deal with this subject (Tech Moan, 8-bit Guy, Oddity Archive, Nostalgia Nerd, the teardown videos on the EEV Blog and Lazy Game Reviews, to name a few).

I find their videos easier to digest than dull technical text in old books, which makes researching for my computer book much easier (and fun).

For years (maybe since I discovered that book) I had always had the curious itch to take things apart to see inside them. I have always taken apart ballpoint pens because of this. Since then I have taken apart a few flashlights, two calculators, a radio cassette player, a VCR and (recently) my dad’s old PC from the mid-1990s.

For years I have developed ideas involving tinkering with such old devices, even using them in works of art. And in August 2017 the first step in those ideas becoming reality was made. On 5th August 2017, I bought my first piece of vintage technology on eBay… a typewriter.

(I actually bought an old Pentax SLR camera a while earlier through Amazon, but I call the typewriter purchase more significant because it was bought directly through eBay, starting the habit in bidding for other pieces of old technology. You be amazed at the price some people were selling stuff you might think be worth much more, especially as “job lots.”)

For a rough idea about the pricing of collectable things (and how things can change over time), watch this video from The 8-Bit Guy….

Are apple iBook laptops collector's items yet?

  - 8-Bit Guy (2015)

His last point is one reason for my “madness.” This stuff my not stay that cheap for long. What may have been dirty cheap years ago could now be fetching prices of over $100… or even more.

By the time of this publication I have amassed a small collection of devices from the late-20th century. This includes….

• A few cameras
• Two 1980s VCRs (which are surprisingly big!)
• A Super 8 movie projector (as seen above)
• A Psion II pocket organiser from 1986
• And a Mini Disc player.

For now, I’m going to stop using eBay for the time being, before I bankrupt myself and fill my home with old devices that have not much resale value to most people. My collect contains enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while.

So, why do it? Seeing pictures and videos of old things is one thing, but having examples I can play with is something else. Remember asking for an amazing toy you saw in a shop or on TV and asking your parents to get it for you and they say “no,” because it’s too expensive? Same thing here. And asides, how many can say they have in their procession a Betamax video recorder?

Holiday Madness

It was summer 2017. My mother wanted to take my nephew somewhere for a holiday (or vacation, for the Americans reading this). I thought about one day going to London to see the Science Museum. She used this as an excuse for a trip to London for the three of us.

She asked a couple of parents while my nephew was in his swimming club about holidays and how to arrange them. One day she came to my place to get me to book the hotel and flight (They suggested flying there as it was fast, allowing extra time in London.). I struggled. Found a hotel and booked a room, but finding a flight was a nightmare. London has 4-5 airports, with Heathrow been the most well-known. Naturally, we tried to get a flight to there. In the end, she went to a travel agent and had the holiday arranged there … six days before departure!

Because of her various hospital appointments there was only one window for the trip. But to me it was too soon. A lot of pressures at my end made the idea of going on a plane for the first time in ten years too stressful. Just two days before the trip I told my mother I was not able to go. But she still wanted to take my nephew on a trip so they went there without me. They had a good time.

But here’s the thing – why do we do this? Why do many of us (every year) go through the stress of finding brochures, trips to photo booths and filling out forms for passports, looking up price-comparison websites, buying new swimsuits, arranging taxis to take us to airports or harbours in hours where milkmen and yokai roam the streets, and getting legally-sanctioned harassed by guys in uniform because of a half-empty bottle of water that use to contain over 100ml of liquid? Why all this annual collective madness every summer (and winter, for the skiing)?

To be honest with you, I don’t find holidays that interesting. I find them mostly as an inconvenience rather than a pleasure. I really don’t like high temperatures. I don’t sunbath. I don’t dance in discos. I rarely eat exotic food. In fact, the only thing I mostly do while on holiday is draw or write stuff – mostly in the shelter of my hotel room/cabin/tent/caravan. I could have just stayed at home and done the same things, but other people insist I should “go out and explore.” Although the odd experience has been great, such as Disneyland, but if I had a teleporter I would use it instead of going through the hassle of navigating to an airport, have my luggage inspected by strangers in uniform that actually give you the image of exploding planes instead of safe flying and arranging a place to sleep when I get there. I know some will say “the journey is the best part of the trip than the destination,” and I agree with you, especially when it comes as a narrative device in fiction. But really, have you ever had to look up the timetables for flights to and from London?

I have been like this since I was a child and that is not going to change anytime soon.

So why do we “go on holiday?”

With what happened recently with London I have been thinking about all this.

I think one major component in our collective need to travel is to do with “social bragging.” For a long time in history long-distance travel was hard … and expensive. Naturally (until recently), only the rich could afford to take such long trips for non-essential reasons, like sketching the ruins in Greece and Rome or shooting a wild tiger for its fur and bragging rights at the hunting lodge. Even though today a plane ticket from the UK to Spain can cost as little as a large family’s weekly groceries the act of travelling a long distance for pleasure still has a whiff of snobbery about it, even if the destination is basically alternative version of home where the climate is different.

But, of course, this snobbery has evolved over the years. Back in the 18^th century Londoners would have considered going to Bristol exotic. But as transport technology improved, so did our ambitions to travel further form home. In 1900, going to Paris from London was a challenge, making the city a desirable location for holidays. Paris still is a desirable location for a trip. Any grand tour of Europe demands at least one stop in the city. But its desirability has fallen since the Channel Tunnel made the trip to it a simple one-hour train ride from London. The Mediterranean also went through this. Until the 1960s the only English-speaking people going there were rich people, artists, and the occasional journalist. Since the package holiday opened up the Med to many the only true way an Englishman can show off about going there is buying a second home there (although Brexit may make such things harder in the future). During my lifetime travelling from Europe to America or the Far-East became more affordable. As a child, I went to Florida a few times to go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. If I had been born a decade earlier such adventures would have been just out of reach of my dad’s salary. Now I may consider going to Tokyo one day - within the next decade or so.

It was a factor in my mother’s decision to take my nephew to London. His friends have gone on holidays to various places, including Florida (where she plans to take him in 2018), and she thought he was been deprived of something if he didn’t go somewhere. She was taking me on holidays almost every summer at his age, but her ill health in the past decade or so has prevented that. This trip to London was his first proper vacation (He has been on two-to-three-day coach trips to England and a week in a caravan park before, by the way.).

But there is another factor in our desire to travel. And it’s one that most people would say if you asked why they do it – to get away from it all and try something new. Today many of us can expect to live past 70 years (antibiotic-resistant bacteria permitting) and our world is a big place full of interesting things and sensory experiences, like big canyons, underwater light shows, and feats of achievement that have made people think “There is no ways humans can build that on their own back then. They must have had aliens to help them.” It is considered a massive shame for a creature that has a capacity to wonder to be denied the chance to explore such a large sensory-scape. In fact, it can be considered a crime to do just that.

Just over a century or so ago, not many of our ancestors had that chance. Most spent their shorter lives mostly within the same dozen square miles. Many things prevented them from doing so than just the cost of travel. Today they are still things that prevent us from travelling, but the cost of travel shouldn’t be. The only things that should prevent one from travelling are bureaucracy and politics … and diseases.

Because of what happened I made a brave decision – I plan to go to London …. by plane 

… on my own!!!

November 2017 addition

I just found this interesting video from 1979, featuring the voice of John Cleese....

Monty Python - Away from it all (1979)

My Recent Situlation

In the past two months they has been a noticed lack of new content on this blog. That is because of recent events in my life.

Back in December my father passed away. As anyone who has lost someone will know, when someone dies you tend to reevaluate your life to compare your life so far to the life of the person who passed away. And if you had a life that didn't exactly look "great" right now compared to the life of that dead person then you tend to feel pretty low. You may feel unaccomplished. It,s natural to do so, especially if that person happens to be a relative that appeared to have done a lot in one's life.

In March an aunt passed away. She wasn't that well known to me, but her death did awake feelings I had for my dad. I attended her funeral. Then an uncle of mine passed away. One I was quite close to (but not as close has I was to this one). Of course I attended his funeral. Then another relative passed away. An more obscure one. Didn't attend funeral. And then other aunt passed away. I had four relations die within two months. By May I had reevaluated my life too many times to be considered healthy. Admittedly, on the day when I was told about the last death I experienced the most severe bout of depression I had ever had. IT WAS AWFUL! I couldn't be bothered to watch TV! That is not normal for me.

I may have had some form of depression before this. Probably since my graduation in 2012. But this year's deaths in the family have pushed it to an extreme. So extreme that in April I was prescribed an anti-depressant. The leaflet that came with the tablets did say that it will get worse before it gets better - and they were right. That day in May was horrible. Fortunately, my mood improved soon after. In fact, since taking the tablets I have become more assertive. I am more eager to do things than before.

Recently I drew another pokehuman. A friend of my nephew asked for an Eevee.

And a parent has commissioned me help teach her kids how to draw.

What an interesting challenge.

20 Years of Printed Empathic Magic

20 years ago something happened that changed the world - a book was published. A book (to begin with) no one expected to have such an impact. In fact, the very idea that such a book could have such a cultural impact in the time it was published seemed laughable.

But it did, which was a good thing for the author. She spent years writing it, while raising a young child while on welfare. No one (not even her) could have predicted that within a few years of publishing that book, she'll become one of the richest authors in the world, becoming one of the great "rags to riches" stories of our time and (for the number of publishers who turned down the book) a cautionary tale in the history of business, along with similar ones involving The Beatles, Trivial Pursuit, and Chester Carlson's idea for a device that can copy documents in seconds.

Of course, I am talking about Harry Potter, the boy wizard that has given millions of children (and adults) fanatical joy.

Before I'll continue, I know some readers will be disappointed by my short tribute here. that is because...

1. I am not THAT into Harry Potter. (I have seen the movies and read a bit of the books and that's it.)
2. The experience of making my massive tribute to Pokémon last year has put me off the idea of doing such detailed well-researched tributes for a while.

So I got little to say about it, except that the books (from 2001) have spawned a franchise, featuring films, a theme park or two, a stage play, and countless toys. So "Is it worth the hype?"

"It's worth any amount of hype to get children to read again, and in these kind of numbers. And to have that kind of passion about sitting down in a corner turning pages of a book, instead of, you know, pressing on computer keys all the time and just playing PlayStations." - Alan Rickman, on HARDtalk just before the release of the first Harry Potter film (2001)

What made Harry Potter's massive (and fast) success a surprise to everyone back in 1997 was that back then everyone was thinking that kids were losing the ability to read books, because they were playing video games. In the year that Grand Theft Auto was introduced (and Pikachu was sending kids to hospital by epileptic seizure) if you read a tabloid you would have found stories with headlines that say "Video Games Linked to Illiteracy in Children" or "How Can We Make Kids Read Again?" The usual "this new thing is against the old order of things" nonsense. If the journalists who wrote such nonsense and actually listened to the gamers they talked to (and thought about there own experiences with media) they would find that people usually don't care what medium a story is told in... as long as the story is engaging. If a story is engaging for someone that person will endure anything to experience it all. This is why some will endure hours in the rain to see an outdoor performance. This is why many millions will stop what what their doing to watch a TV show every day or week. And this is why many kids back in 1997 played video games ... because they hadn't found a book worth reading ... let.
They were few new works of fiction in print that were very engaging for English-speaking children in the 1990s. This could be because Roald Dahl (my favourite author as a child) died back in 1990, creating a massive void in the new culture generator. With years of no one successfully filling in this void (and shelves full of new books that were not that engaging), much of the book publishing industry was thinking that there was little money in children's books. And with video games becoming a multi-million dollar industry (and the coming of the Internet), it seemed that the days of the book were numbered....

....Then Harry Potter came along.

The students of Hogwarts (and the battle against "he shall not be named") has had a huge impact on the world. Not only it has created the sport of Quidditch, the Harry Potter fictional universe has also revitalised the market for children's fantasy fiction. Last year was a great year for the market in the UK alone (despite a fall in ebook sales).

"...industry executives said the rise in children’s book sales was down to the wide range of choice, as well as fears among parents that their children are spending too much time using online social media and instead try to steer them towards traditional long-format reading.

“Parents have a general wish to see their children read print rather than spend too much time attached to their phone,” said Richard Charkin, executive director at Bloomsbury, publishers of the Harry Potter books. “There’s a slight fear of social media going on and people are saying ‘let’s get back to basics’.” " - Financial Times, 27th April 2017

And this was something people were noting even before the movies were made.... 

"In 1999, Harry Potter helped increase hardcover sales by more then 10%, and paperback sales by over 20%. The increase isn't made up only of Harry Potter books themselves, either--booksellers have noted an increased interest in other fantasy and in novels for children in general (For more on that phenomenon, see "The Harry Potter Halo" in the July 19, 1999 Publishers Weekly). And only eleven of the top 20 hardcover bestsellers in the PW list for 1999 were tied to a movie or TV show--thanks in part to Harry (April 10, 2000 issue). Things look good for the industry, but will this last?" - http://www.underdown.org/sales.htm

 Yes, it did.

But the true legacy of Harry Potter isn't just in increased sales in books in the age of digital competition. Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally. 

But before I reveal why so, I got to address here the many people of fundamentally-christian faith who have branded J.K.'s work as "the work of the devil." Its easy to see why they would without actually reading them for themselves. Just the idea of a book about a kid learning to do witchcraft is enough to get them angry, especially if it becomes very popular. Even today they are some who still brand Harry as evil, but in 2017 these people are not only christian of the fundamental sense. They also share another trait ... they have voted for Donald Trump. 

Many of you may think that this is because of their battle of words on Twitter. But that's the lazy answer. The true answer that only few actually are even aware of is what I said earlier.

"Hogwarts' magic has also had a bewitching effect on the very brains of the people who read them ... literally"

In 2016 a study published in PS: Political Science & Politics showed that after reading one Harry Potter book readers approval rating for Donald Trump fell by 2-3 points. And "for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump by 18 points out of 100."

This is the main reason why people who brand Harry "evil" should be afraid of the books. They teach children, not witchcraft, but ideas of tolerance and the evils of prejudice. 

This study also revealed something else. The measurable fall of Donald's approval rating only happened to people who read a Harry Potter book. When it looked at people who watched the movies their approval of Trump pretty much remained the same. This reveals something interesting....

Reading changes your brain. 

For most of human history, people learned about their world by looking at scenes. Because of this our rains have developed specialised parts to process sound and vision. This is why movies and music have such primitive cultural power. 

Reading, on the other hand, is a skill humans only required relatively recently, so our brain aren't naturally wired to read text. Instead of a single part doing all the work, your brain uses multiple parts to process the series of symbols you see into words and concepts you understand. This results in a form of synesthesia.

For example, if I were to write the word DOG just now, did the image of a dog just enter your mind? What about YELLOW. Did that colour just flash in your visual eye? And what about BARK. Did you just imaginary hear a dog bark just now? 

This is why literature is considered the most powerful of mediums. This is why poets are considered as great as politicians in history, by changing the minds of millions.

"Politics is shaped by people. And people, sometimes, are shaped by the fiction they read," - Mohsin Hamid The New York Times, 2015

This is how Harry Potter truly changed the world. It has fundamentally made a generation of kids more emphatic to others. No wonder Donald hates Harry.

40 Years of May the 4ths

This year is the 40th anniversary of Star Wars.

As today is Star Wars day you'll imagine that me (someone who has spent years writing a history of Pokémon) would be doing something interesting for this significant milestone....

But, I won't.

I don't care about Star Wars.

I have barely watched the original trilogy on TV.

That fact alone shows how interested I am in this franchise.

And that won't be changing any time soon.

In fact, when Star Wars celebrates its 50th anniversary, I'll just say the same thing.

Have a nice May 4th everyone.

A lot of annaverseries today

Today a number of things celebrate their annaversery. Three of them are...

• Gurren Largann
• The Teletubbies
• And the Pokémon anime 

(Sorry I missed the deadline). 

A Meaty Question About The Future

It's the end of March and I have neglected my blogging obligations of posting something once a month. It's not my fault that two relatives died in the past month and my health is not 100%.

Fortunately for me an interesting topic was twirling in my mind recently that I thought interesting enough to write something about. But I have to warn you....

THE FOLLOWING POST WILL TALK ABOUT A SUBJECT THAT SOME WILL FIND SHOCKING AND DISGUSTING .... 

THE REASONS FOR YOUR DISGUST IS THE VERY TOPIC I AM TALKING ABOUT HERE.... ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE BRITISH

I HAVE WARNED YOU ALREADY. 

IF YOU STILL WANT TO BROWSE THE WEB WITHOUT READING ANYTHING CONTROVERSIAL AND CHALLENGING 

READ SOMETHING ELSE NOW!

If you are someone who has no trouble reading such blog posts, continue reading....

(You are the audience I am after here.)

But for those (who some call "snow flakes") who are still continuing reading this wondering what is the subject of this post.... let me start it with an imaginary scenario....

Imagine that you are a Pokémon trainer who owns an Eevee.... who has gotten lost in the mountains during wintery conditions. You find a cave as shelter and managed to make a fire. 

You are hungry.

It's been days since you last had any food.

Because of conditions there is no forms of editable plant available.

You got a knife and fire.

You must have worked it out by now (from the title and the long extended "trigger warning" alone).

If not, let me put it in words I will not like to say to someone at all....

In a life-or-death situation ...

are you willing to kill something if not doing so meant certain death for you?

In other words, are you willing to eat Eevee?

Yelp, this post is about the activity of consuming the flesh from dead animals in the form of (what we call linguistically to separate it from its bloody origins so that we are not thinking about it when eating said flesh) "meat."

The subject entered my mind recently because of a recently released documentary called Carnage: Swallowing The Past. It is a documentary made in a peaceful future, where veganism has become universal, that looks back to the meat-eating habits of 20th and 21st century, and how this future came to be. It is a great film to watch, if you don't mind the occasional slaughter scene that PETA has an endless supply of.

And it got me thinking about the subject of meat. Familiar readers will know that I have a thing for human ingenuity. How we have turned raw materials from the Earth into useful tools. And food is one of those "useful tools." So I do have the knowledge to know how all the components that make a up a McDonald's Happy Meal (including the toy and the cardboard box it comes in) are made and put together in the form of a corporate-sponsored childhood memory (and what memories those giveaways were to me, including a few of those gold-plated Pokémon cards from Burger King (Take that Mc! I am not a sheep who goes tot he same place for substance again ad again. It depends on where I am when its lunch time, suckers.)).

In short, I know where burgers come from. I don't need to taught by a preacher to megaphone it down my ears how gruesome the process is. And let, I still eat a burger anyway (I was in KFC yesterday, if you were going to ask.). So why do I still eat meat, despite knowing of the suffering the animals that made it go through (in their final moments, if you consider the "free range" variety)? 

I can narrow it down to three things.....

1. The distance from slaughterhouse to burger joint.
2. The cultural habits of the western lifestyle.
3. Autistic people tend to be "fussy eaters" due to there overacting senses.

That last one only applies to a small number of people. (And I bet many "meat is murder" preachers aren't aware of this small number of "fussy eaters." They may be aware of autism, but not the "fussy eating" bit.) 

But the rest can apply to most meat eaters worldwide. Now, the distance from sight of slaughter isn't the biggest problem when it comes to converting carnivores. They are places in the world where people do regularly go out and hunt for food or raise animals for personal slaughter later. Yes, they are people in isolated places that still regularly do the same thing our cavemen ancestors once did a long time ago before farming was invented, allowing us to distant ourselves from the providers of food, blinding us form the process. These people have no qualms about it because they are use to it, after doing it a million times. So, I'm afraid to say that (in a world where we are accustomed to seeing people been shot in the head in movies (and on the news)) showing footage of a cow been shot in the head won't convert many TV viewers. 

The real reason that vegetarianism (let alone veganism) has been a fringe lifestyle is because the practise of eating meat has been so the norm in the west that most people don't second-think about it. It seems to have always been that way, to them. And it doesn't help that meat happens to be very rich form of nutrients (especially when cooked).

Also we have culturally segregated the animal kingdom. Because we see ourselves as "intelligent" over the rest of the "dumb" animals we see ourselves as separate from nature, so therefore free to do whatever we like it it and her fellow inhabitants. We can determine the fate of species just by calling it a "pet" or "meat" (a game which should make a thought-provoking arcade machine) And, as I said in this previous post,  I think it's an "idea that has truly done more damage to Earth than any other manmade invention."

And burgers are more damaging to Earth than just that. According to this article a single cheese burger has the carbon footprint of somewhere between 3.6-6.1 kg (gases have mass remember). Doesn't sound much, until you remember how many burgers are eaten around the world.That same article suggests that if every American stopped eating burgers for one year, the US can remove the equivalent of (at least) 6.5 million Hummer H3s off their collective carbon footprint. So, if cheese burgers alone can do that amount of damage, imagine what all those hot dogs, buffalo wings, KFC buckets, steaks and Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys are doing too. 

Some may be wondering why burgers create such large amounts of CO2 (apart from the methane coming off the cows)? The basic reason for the high environmental cost is simple ... raising an animal requires a lot of resources. According to this article, producing one pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water. The same weight in wheat (in comparison) only requires 132 gallons. In other words, the amount of water used in the growing and making the bun (and some salad) in the burger is chicken feed compared to the amount used to raise the cow to make the lump of grilled mince in the middle... And that figure doubles if you consider dairy cows, so the situation gets worse if you decide to have it served with a slice of solidified gone-off milk. (Yelp, that's what cheese is.)

With so much resources needed to make it, its no wonder meat has become a big factor to consider in the fate of the future of the Earth. 

In hindsight, 2013 was a significant year in our relationship with meat. A relationship that is changing for the better. Three things happened that year that'll have huge significance historically in the future.

1. Traces of horse flesh were found in meat products marketed as "beef."

This food scare caused a stir in Europe, especially to the British, who love horses so much that the idea of eating one was so appalling that one woman I heard phone in on the radio at the time saying that she would rather move to another country than live in a Britain that did allow it. I'm amazed that Carnage didn't reference this incident. But it did reference BSE, so I can forgive Simon Amstell for that. 

2. The first burger made of meat grown in a lab was cooked.

This is very promising idea. I do hope it takes off in the future, otherwise the transition to a post-meat world is going to be much harder. 

3. That year's Oktoberfest offered vegan dishes for the first time.

The fact that a festival famous for displaying and consuming large amounts of meat has done that is a sign of big trend that is happening right now.... the rise of veganism. 

This increase in interest in veganism is a coming together of multiple cultural forces mostly relating to the environment. For one thing the price of meat is increasing. Would this make many reduce their meat-eating habit? Probably, if this trend continues. But a much bigger factor would be this - in 2015 the World Heath Organisation declared processed meats as a carcinogen. If history is to go by, 50 years from now the sight of someone eating a hot-dog in a cinema will be looked at in the same way we now look at that same cinema patron smoking a cigar. 50 years earlier that same guy would have been a normal unquestionable sight in cinemas. No one then thought inhaling the smoke from burnt leaves was an alien thing for humans to do. And then the reports came in linking it to lung cancer and (slowly) the sight of tobacco smoke disappeared in public spaces. Could the sight of eating meat follow the same fate? To be honest, I don't know. Unlike cigarettes, the eating of animal flesh is normal in nature. Maybe the eating of meat may become an occasional treat in the future. Or maybe we will dodge it altogether with lab-grown meat (unless that proves to cause cancer too). 

Whatever happens, the future depicted in Carnage definitely looks like a future worth living for. Maybe veganism may be a key to making the world depicted in Pokémon possible (except for the possible genetic engineer).

But the question remains - In a life-or-death situation would you eat an Eevee?

In fact, would you eat a Magikarp? 

Or a Politoed (Silver League Network's "favourite" Pokémon)?

Or any listed in this video?

In fact, any Pokémon that is made of flesh. 

(come on, who would be able to eat a Geodude? Chuck Norris?)

In fact, what if this happened in the real world.

What if the future turned out bad. Mad-Maxy. 

All the supermarkets have been ransacked. And so has all the food depots and the farms. 

You are alone in the wild lands with a knife (a survivor's best friend).

You are hungry. You not eaten for days. 

You see a horse wondering about on a clearing. 

It may be wild or it ran away from his former owner. Who knows. 

But one thing is certain, you are hungry. 

Would you eat a horse?

Act of Cultural Vandalism - A twist in the Snickers

I had the idea of this very recently. One internet meme that I have seen a few times on my Facebook feed has been one of these...

For those who are not familiar, they are a reference of a series of TV ads for Snickers that started in 2010. Below is the first one ever, featuring Betty White... playing American Football!

First "Not yourself" Snickers ad, 

featuring Betty White (2010)

The still used in the memes above come from this version, starring Joan Collins.

Snickers ad, featuring Joan Collins (2012)

They are many memes based on these ads, but the one I have been seeing feature a certain red-head....

And its from this version where I got the idea for my version of this meme.....

I await your praise (and anger) in the comments.

(But please read the ad's disclaimer before you do so.)

By the way, I have plans for another Snickers ad.

I won't say any more....

My New Phone

And now... another meaningless post made to give the impression that I'm still alive. Busy with other things. But don't worry, normal service will assume... eventually.

Until then let me tell you about my new phone. 2017 is turning out to be my busiest year. So much so I made a big decision ... I need to get a new mobile phone.

I can explain my decision by showing you a picture of my previous phone... a Nokia E5.

My Nokia E5

(excuse the tiger wallpaper)

Purchased from the Carphone Warehouse in December 2010 this phone has served me well. At the time I bought it touchscreen-based smartphones were still relatively new, so they were still phones physical keypads and keyboards (like Blackberrys and my old Nokia) on sale. I wanted a phone with keyboard, as I found texting with a traditional keypad annoying. It also had a 5 megapixel camera (which I have used a lot, because you only need a minimum of 4 megapixels for print quality images) and had internet connectivity through 3G. 

Some of you may be asking why didn't I upgrade earlier? I mean, I bought it in 2010. Why didn't I get a new phone until 2017? The answer is simple.... Do you know what goes into making such devices? Have you ever taken one apart and seen all that plastic and exotic metals?

Blackberry Curve 8520 tear-down 

from Visual Dictionary (2011)

Making a phone requires a lot of energy and a number of materials from all over the world, including lithium for its battery. They are (basically) nearly inseparable "toxic" piles of gold and silver leaf. And it doesn't help that many are made to have a lifespan of just a year or so (if you could afford to buy the latest model every year or so). 

According to this article, if I had thrown away my Nokia when most people would have done, I would have added a few extra grams to the 1.3 million tonne British share of the 48.9 million tonnes of e-waste that was generated worldwide in 2012. (And it said that this will increase by over 60 tonnes by 2017). 

I am not most people. I have kept my phone going as long as possible. Although it was dropped a couple of times in its life it still worked (even with a crack in one corner of the casing). 

However, this year proved to the point that it was time to upgrade. You see the Nokia was able to access the web wirelessly and I was able to use that function for a year or so after buying it.... until it stopped doing so and gave the excuse of "insufficient memory." I didn't know at the time that my Nokia only had 256 MB of RAM. This amount of RAM was typical for a phone at the time, but if I knew at the time, I would have been disappointed, because (at the same time) the RAM in laptops were in the Gigabytes! 256 MB was considered "a lot" in desktop computers in the year 2000. My phone had the same amount of memory as a high-spec Power Mac G4 from 2000. I know some of you will not have encountered this problem with your phones at the time, but many did. The many who quickly loaded them with apps and media. Although I didn't do this with my phone, the functions I used on it (web serving, GPS, a few word docs and the occasional YouTube clip (in the first year at least) used up a lot of meg. By 2013 I was no longer able to serve the web or use GPS on it, due to "insufficient memory." After that, the only things I was using my Nokia for were to call, text, note down what manga and movies I bought and take pictures. This was okay... until now.

As my work for NAS involves a lot of e-mailing and travelling about it was become more apparent that I needed access to e-mail on the go. And the only way I could do that was by getting a new phone. 

I was hesitant to do so to begin with, because phones with keyboards have disappeared. Almost all phones now have touchscreens. Could I get use to using a touch screen to type text? Turns out I could. After all, I have had a tablet for a while now.

So I saved up a bit of dole and (last week) looked around a Carphone Warehouse, inquired about transitioning my SIM card from a 3G to a 4G device (turns out you can without changing your pay as you go deal), and bought my self a new touchscreen smart phone - a Samsung Galaxy A5.

My tablet was a Samsung, so a friend suggested that I should get a Samsung so I could pair them up. But I know some of you are going to point out the battery problem their Galaxy Note 7 was having last year. Am I worried about it happening to my phone? No, because its an A5, not a Note 7. Also, the similar sounding S7 model cost over £500! (the A5 only cost about £350. I had the money to go that far.) 

Why I choose the A5 (apart from the price)? It's not because it has a 16 megapixels camera (front and back). Its not because of its Octa-Core 1.9 GHz processor. And its not because of its 256 GB of internal storage (which is great). What really sold it to me was this - it has 3 GB of RAM! That's more than enough for a PC to be able to edit video. As our wireless networks improve (and our web pages take up as much memory as Doom!) our phones need such RAM to cope with our web habits. And by buying the A5, I have insured myself for the next couple of years.

I was wise to wait until now to buy a touchscreen smart phone. The smart don't buy new tech when its brand new. they wait a while until the early kinks are worked out and the price drops. 

When Apple introduced the first iPhone back in 2007 it was unlike any mobile phone on the market. It set the template for future phones. But it wasn't perfect. It's processor was under-clocked to less than half a Gigahert. It only had a rare-facing 2 megapixel camera. It had only 128 MB of RAM, a 3.5-in screen with 320×480 resolution and no 3G connectivity (you were highly dependent on Wi-Fi, as 2G was never going to cut it). Plus the screen got scratched and broken easily, the battery was crap and there was no app store (until a year later). And all that originally retailed for $599 (which was later dropped to $399 angering people who bought it earlier).

Almost ten years later phones (including my Samsung) are way better now. The screen is made of tougher stuff, Batteries can last a day (if you are a light user) and when you need a charge they are now many ways to do so, even without wires. Cameras with over 10 megapixels are the norm. We can now watch movies in HD on them without the use of Wi-Fi (depending where you are). And it will continue to get better. 

But, for now, my Samsung Galaxy A5 will do me fine. For the past week I have been getting use to using it. And boy I have found it very useful indeed. Thanks to this phone I can access my e-mail and Facebook without using my laptop! But I'll still use my laptop regularly, as typing long blog posts (like this one) are a strain on the fingers if you use a small touchscreen. 

Wow! This post turned out longer than expected. And I included pictures as well. Excellent. I'm on a roll!

An Important Announcement

Due to various distractions (including my dad dying and the start of my stand-up comedy career) work on the Pokemon special has been delayed hugely. When work began on it, I hoped to have all this done by July 2016 (until the lock-out happened). "Part 1" was finally published on August 31. "Part 2" is near completion. "Part 3" and more will take long to finish (if I get around to it). So today (as the first post for 2017 I will declare that the final deadline for everything in my 20th anniversary special will be April 1st 2017 (hopefully).