Another year beckons

GOLD! 

The prospect of the world coming to an end on the 21st December left me with a rather tricky dilemma; do I go and see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey just in case or do I wait until 2016 and just buy the DVD extended version box set once it is available at a reduced price and get maximum value from the experience as I did with Lord of the Rings?

In the end I decided that I would re-read the book and go (re-reading the book being essential so I could see what they had changed you understand). Personally I cannot believe they are going to drag it out over three films, but of course the sight of a horde of gold coins appealed to me.

It was a tough choice but I succumbed to temptation and went for my first experience of 3D cinema since they did away with the red and green glasses. I think that red and green glasses are the way to go, the experience was nowhere near as good as whichever Nightmare on Elm Street it was that I saw back in 1991 in bi-colour spectacles. The advert for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria was the best 3D bit.

It was also my first experience of the VIP box, which will hereafter be a necessity should I venture to the cinema which is I guess an experience I limit to every other year. It reminded me of how comfortable the Odeon was when there was just one screen.

I greatly enjoyed Christmas this year but the presents that teenagers get are unbelievable, literally. One thirteen year old has Facebook that they received three sets of clothing, four holidays and not in Europe, an iPhone 5 and £485.00; now maybe it is just me, but I believe that spending £5,000 on a child for Christmas is just a little excessive. Especially when you send that same child to a States of Jersey free school, where on earth are the priorities of these parents?

This child will never get a job which will be able to sustain a similar lifestyle without a proper eduction but is being given unrealistic expectations, so I think that is going to be one unhappy life; unless of course the child is lying - which I hope is the case since I told my step-daughter that without doubt she was.

Whilst we are on the subject, again I am going to seem like a technological dinosaur but since I have a desktop at home and a desktop at work and my life is essentially based around those two locations why on earth would you spend more than the cost of a desktop on an iPad or iPhone which does everything the desktop does but nowhere near as well. I can understand it if you have a two hour train journey to and from work but what is so urgent anyway that you cannot just wait... surely all your friends on Facebook don't need to know that you have just grazed your knee immediately after you do it?

So people spend £500 on the latest gadget which is going to be completely without value in five years time to do something that can already be done and probably done better, or is completely unnecessary to do at all.

This process of selling us goods of ever decreasing usefulness, in ever decreasing increments of technological advance, which may or may not improve on existing technologies appears to be mirrored in many industries; pharmaceuticals are running out of wonder drugs; banks are running out of ways to de-fraud us and governments are running out of excuses for their incompetence. Creating ever more demand which drives GDP growth by encouraging the slaves to work longer hours to meet the ever increasing demands of ever more spoilt children who will grow up to be unemployable but will expect government to keep on giving.

What was good about Christmas was simply having a whole day without business, after 15 consecutive twelve hours days at the grindstone. I'm not employed so the government graciously allows me to work as and when I wish to - and I love work because I do as I please, when it pleases me to do it. All that effort to earn just one day to spend with the people I wanted to spend it with, eating home cooked food that hasn't been industrially processed. That is in my mind what being an adult is. Providing not only of yourself but the people that you wish to.

It is that which I think is worth working and fighting for, the right to draw happiness from the simple things life with no unexpected adventures.

The world I live in is one crazy place, how is it possible for so many people, to get it all, so wrong? Why do so many people prefer to treat every day as Christmas, to be children and be given free stuff that they have not earnt? Free stuff that I am paying for.

Childhood does not always end at 21 and there are too many children in this world, but then again maybe I have just been reading too much Tolkein, a theme to be continued.