Happy New Year!

Well, happy New Year everyone. 2010 is now upon us. What's to happen this year? I can tell you one thing: if it's as exciting as the past two years have been, it's gonna be pretty manic. Kinda ironic, isn't it? I start writing a blog just before my life takes a dramatic turn along a different path. Well, maybe not quite as dramatic as it felt at the time, but still. Since I started blogging, my mum's had cancer, and is now (hopefully) almost fully recovered, though she's still tired etc from the after effects of radio and chemo. My dad's lost his job and still not found a new one. I've finished high school and started a college where I knew the grand total of um, three people, none of whom were in my year. I've also written a lot more than I used to (since Nanowrimo 2007/since getting a computer in my room and as they both happened pretty close together I can't say which exactly I've written way more, or seem to have done, than I had previously), and still managed to carry on reading. I feel like I'm a very different person to when I started this blog. One day, it'll be interesting to read through all my old posts. I wonder when historians will start using blogs as evidence. Looking for widespread discontent about the war in Iraq/Gordon Brown, perhaps? Or looking for reactions to the economic crisis? I doubt they'd find my blog much use. I wonder if any blog would be much use in those respects? They tend to be quite personal, from what I've seen. Maybe I should comment more on the state of the universe? But it just seems a given, almost. Gordon Brown is a nuisance and probably won't last past the next election, when he eventually calls it. But I don't see that any of the other potential leaders we've got are a whole lot better. The problem is, nobody really knows anything about the politicians etc. Sorry about that pause (not that you'd notice...), I just realised that I've gone and ruined my two best brushes because they came out the water and now all the bristles are stuck together. Politicians are just too good at obfuscating the issues at stake. And look at this whole palava over the mentally ill guy who got shot in China for smuggling drugs. I heard a bit of a discussion about it on the radio. This guy was saying that he doesn't agree with the death penalty for anything other than murder, and he doesn't see how anyone else can't agree with that. What?! Isn't smuggling drugs as good as killing someone, just in a slow and highly profitable manner? Oh, I know that the man probably wasn't a high up chap or anything like that, and it won't stop the supply. But a stand has to be made, and if it isn't made at a point that it can be made at, where is it going to be made? If people were not willing to run that risk, because they knew the consequences were severe, then the drugs trade would have to dry up, the bigger fish would be forced to take risks. And the other thing was with regard to his mental illness. Now, I have nothing against the idea that it should be taken into account in court, in regard to determining guilt and in regard to deciding on the sentence. But, if he was so mentally ill and gullible that he cannot possibly have been guilty, and his family quite clearly knew it and wanted it spread about that he was an innocent victim and hadn't the ability to know what he was doing, then why was he travelling on his own? You don't (or at least, generally don't), send young children off on long journeys on their own to countries with dubious human rights records. So why was he allowed to travel by his family? The whole thing does not seem to add up, and the media certainly did not take any of this into account. And they wonder why people are so apathetic when it comes to elections! It's because all concern, all sense, has been worn out of us by the mass media. Anyway, enough of that rant about the stupidity of the media, politics, and sheep-like people in general, this post has the title Happy New Year and is turning into more of a ramble about the state of the world which probably says more about my mental state than anything else.

*Deep breath* Where was I? Oh yes, I'm a different person to when I started this blog, and then I got into an involved discussion about the merits of using blogs as evidence. You have to be even more careful than with a diary, would be my conclusion. At least with diaries, you know it's generally not written to be read, and is more likely to reflect true feelings etc, whereas with a blog, the whole point is that people can read and comment. Which means that it may not even be a true reflection of the person, but rather what they want to put across, what they want other people to read.