What the freckle is a blog?

Hello! :)

Never thought I'd try a blog again. Never as in "it never snows in Brisbane". But I guess I showed me, hehehe...

Actually, I think it's just that we can never really predict what will happen in life. Or a more interesting take on it is that we like being contradictions to ourselves. Surprising? It shouldn't be, with so many examples of it occurring.

I like the number 6. It's my favourite number. I know a lot of people have 7 as there lucky number, and I suppose with religiosity in mind, 7 would be more appropriate, but I've always thought of myself as 1 below the average. Get it? Also, with 6 being the number of man, and me being just a person, it fits.

It actually reminds me of a lecture I had last semester in applied psychology where we were talking about typical superstitions, one of which is the aforementioned "lucky number 7". The lecturer asked people who considered 7 their lucky number to raise their hands. Then he said, "Why do you have lucky numbers?" Burn!

In psychology, we don't believe in luck in the conventional sense, though we do accept an alternative form of luck, which most of you fortunately don't have to know about. Yeah, psychology sucks the fun out of a lot more things, but I'll live with it.

Anyways, I decided to find 6 examples of these contradictions that people act upon or believe in, and I thought were either funny or interesting:

1. Winning the lottery
People obviously enter lotteries, or the business would have died out long ago. But I always like to hear people recount their stories of wins somewhere in the media, and apparently, the common first response is always something along the lines of "I won? No way! That's impossible!"

Do people know that they actually have a chance of winning? It's slim, but not zero, and that is something after all. Assuming people DO know this, then they're just acting stupid when they say that. Assuming people DON'T know this, then they really are stupid, entering a draw they think they have no chance of winning. Either way, this seems to be a common contradiction not limited just to lotteries.

2. Playing chicken with emergency vehicles
I liked the game "playing chicken" until I found out what the premise was. That is, I liked the name, I thought it was something like Harvest Moon, but it turns out it has nothing to do with growing corn and raising chickens. I suppose it's maybe just stupid and dangerous when you do it with regular cars.

But when you decide to take it to the next level by doing it with a fire engine blaring sirens heading on a crash-course path with your vehicle, that's also stupid, dangerous and contradictory. What's different is that you don't really care what the second car usually does in your off-season away from playing chicken, but the fire engine? If you wake up from your afternoon nap to realize your house is on fire, you'd hate to find out that the fire engine that works your district was the one you totaled in yesterday's chicken match. This is a contradiction I was shaking my head at just tonight. Apparently people driving cars are attracted to green traffic lights and lose the ability to find the brake pedal, and "give way to emergency vehicles" sounds like gibberish to them.

3. Low-carb beer
Beer is the devil's spawn. If one of my high school friends was writing this, he'd say "beer causes cancer", I'm sure. To him, chocolate causes cancer. You should've heard what our art teacher said to him, "XXXX, you're the strangest boy... in the nicest possible way."

Anyways, normal beer is bad enough. Alcohol makes you an idiot, turns your liver to stone, gives you this weird illness called a "hangover" and gives people a reason to arrest you or fire you. Then someone decides, "Hmm... increased beer consumption is correlated with decreased fitness. It must be drinking beer that causes them to get fat and lazy." (By now, good statisticians are ROFL) This is, after all, the rationale for low-carb beer.

But, it's not just drinking beer, but the fact that people spend five or six hours a night at a bar drinking, moving only once or twice away from their seat to go to the bathroom. Or the fact that they disengage from practically all physical activity. I'm sure beer with less carbs will do wonders for the increasingly overweight population.

Actually, with a more sarcastic view, low-carb beer actually makes a lot of sense. Seeing as how low-fat, low-sugar and low-salt foods all taste worst than their unhealthy predecessors, it's reasonable to assume that low-carb beer would taste worse than full-carb beer, which would cause people to go "Yuck!" and stop drinking beer, and start doing something else. It could work, for everyone but the beer companies. I would shout for joy if this scenario came true. BTW, I didn't realize this list of contradictions would last this long, sorry in advance.

5. Beautiful stars and dodgy starsigns
People love to check out their starsigns in the paper, in magazines and on the net. They might even follow these to the letter, doing things they wouldn't usually. But in reality, they would never actually look up into the sky to find out which bright dots compose their astrological sign. Being completely unimpressed with stars in the night sky while being mesmerised by vague generic descriptions sounds like worshiping the priests more than worshiping the deity.

Personally? I like looking at stars. I've almost forgotten what starsign I am. The opposite sounds like a major contradiction to me. (I wonder if people really think a star has a pointy shape in real life?)

6. Pennies for thoughts
People (in general) believe themselves to be creative, insightful and ingenious, sometimes. A reason why they wish to preserve some legacy of themselves after death. A nice sentiment, but that contradicts the fact that people refuse to keep a daily record of their thoughts. I heard it recently, that "diaries are a complete waste of time". There are heaps of things I've thought of, forgot to write them down, and lost them. I think I can accuse myself of this contradictory behaviour, and still manage to do it once in a while.

No diary? Can't afford one? Not a problem. Get one of those mini notepads and mini pen/pencil. I used to carry this setup around in high school, and did get laughed at a fair bit, so you've been warned.

Don't want to get laughed at? No pockets? Okay, you're a challenge, but guess what! We have a thing called blogs now! In fact, you're reading one.

Yeah, the contradiction thing was leading just to this. For once, mankind has managed to suppress a contradiction with a clever new invention, that has since been dumbed down a bit, but luckily still retains its original purpose. Everyone knows exactly what to do on a blog, write, post photos, draw squiggles, post up real/imaginary lists of friends/enemies, broadcast copyrighted music...

But not everyone knows what a blog actually is. If you do, imagine for a moment you don't. For two minutes.

Maybe "BLOG" is an acronym?

B-ig
L-ist
O-f
G-roceries

Maybe... not...

B-ombing
L-ocations
O-ver
G-ermany

Well, the World Wars ended a while ago...

Maybe it's a whole word?

BLog... B-Log... like B's Log? Actually, if you've read B's Log, you'll know it's not a B-Log, it's more of an A-Log. Very intellectual.

LOL - if you get it. Puns are among my favourite forms of comedy.

LOL - if you don't get it. I was laughing, that's all I need.

Um... yeah... I couldn't think of anything else.

Anyways, feel free to Wiki it now if you want to know what a "blog" actually stands for.

Technically, this entry took 3 days to write, if anyone's interested. Credits go to the people who helped me think of the topics, the Blogspot address and the motivation to start it.

P.S. I left out point 4 of the 6 contradictions, because this entry is waaaaay too long, hope you noticed it. Also, 4 is an unlucky number for Asians (psyche! there's no such thing as unlucky numbers!)
P.P.S. I can't believe my mom just temporarily came out of her bedroom just to tell me to go to bed. And it's only 1-ish (~bewilderment~)


Till next write --