June 2011
hey! i saw you reblogged my photo, of the books, and i saw what you wrote about 95% of people who say they like books have only read that pile alone. I was just wondering if that was a generalisation, 'cause just wanted to say that I do read other books, they were just the ones I had on my desk at the time. My friend had just borrowed the two John Green books and the first Harry Potter and Nineteen Eighty-Four was just near. JUst thought i'd say :) Thanks for the reblog!
I’ve replied to you via your ask box - but yes, it just seemed appropriate at that time. I wasn’t having a dig at anyone personally.
If you ever tell me that you're bored, I will stab you with a shoe.
How can you possibly be bored, living in 2011?
You have an entire Internet of possibilities on which you are complaining, so why not use it? Fine, your social networks aren’t updating or the games website you use hasn’t got anything new, but come on. Do some research, look up something that you’re interested in, find something new. Meet someone new.
Find a book you haven’t read, or one you’ve not read in a long time. Settle in with a hot chocolate and a few biscuits and read a chapter or three. If you’re bored of this world for now, go to another one.
Text people. Make that call you’ve been meaning to make for ages. Get in touch and get talking to people if you want them in your life still.
Watch a film, something you love or something you’ve not seen. Rent a film out and discover a new actor or a new quote you’ve always wanted. Go through a favourite TV series again, see how you feel about it.
Grab some paper and write, get your thoughts down and talk about the things you want to talk about. Make up characters and send them on adventures. Write about your day, your emotions, your life. Or someone else’s. Set yourself challenges.
Or else, get up, go outside and go for a walk, or a drive. Explore the area, walk around and find places you didn’t know about. Find ones you did, and look at them in a different way. Get some air on your lungs and run free. Listen to some music while you do, or just soak up the sounds of the world.
Music. Find something new. That band you keep meaning to check out, that song you half-heard on the radio last night. Listen to old songs, find new emotions in them.
Cook something. Go swimming. Go to the gym. Go to the cinema, by yourself if no one else is free.
Clean your house, find old things you’ve forgotten about and get nostalgic.
You live an impossibly rich life with endless opportunities.
You should be unable to feel boredom.
Go and do something.
Now.
“If God had wanted us to eat fruit, he wouldn’t have invented bacon.”
—
It would be great if one day on Jeremy Kyle there was a normal couple just arguing about what curtains to have.
YES! WHERE CAN I SIGN A PETITION FOR THIS?
“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
—Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (via simply-quotes)
“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
—
"They're Made Out Of Meat" by Terry Bisson
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.”
“Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of meat?”
“Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
“Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“So … what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”
“Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”
“Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they’ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.”
“Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?”
“First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual.”
“We’re supposed to talk to meat.”
“That’s the idea. That’s the message they’re sending out by radio. ‘Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.’ That sort of thing.”
“They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?”
“Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.”
“I thought you just told me they used radio.”
“They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
“Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?”
“Officially or unofficially?”
“Both.”
“Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
“It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?”
“I agree one hundred percent. What’s there to say? ‘Hello, meat. How’s it going?’ But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?”
“Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can’t live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.”
“So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”
“That’s it.”
“Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”
“They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”
“A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s dream.”
“And we marked the entire sector unoccupied.”
“Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?”
“Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.”
“They always come around.”
“And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone …”
the end
Go and see "Life In A Day".
That’s not a suggestion. That is a demand, it’s an order.
One of the most amazing, beautiful, intelligent films that has ever, ever existed.
Go do it.
