Pete Ebdon [Dot] Com

So it’s been a while, right? Yeah, I’ve found other stuff to keep me occupied. Now, however, I’d like to say the one word that is taking the internet by storm, in a bad way: Gumblar!

Ok, so this thing is like Swine Flu for the internet, right? Apparently you can get it just by visiting an infected website, and guess what? One of the forums I visit all the time is infected! Yayz! So now I’m running an anti-malware scan to see if it got me as well, and I’m hoping it didn’t. So instead of revising for an exam on Monday I’m being forced to deal with this crap. *sighs* Oh the pain…

Good luck to all the e-Swine Flu sufferers out there, let’s hope somebody comes up with the solution to this so that the pigs don’t exterminate the living and this crap exterminates the internet…

That is all.

Having just mentioned the fact that I have barely posted anything besides a story I found very funny and a “yayz for Brian Michael Bendis” style review of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics since October, and having just read an epic rant by Mick Foley – a legend in his own right in the world of professional wrestling – I figured it was perhaps time for another rant of my own, and this one I’ve been ranting about a lot to actual people recently so I figured what the hell, I’ll rant to e-people as well. And it’s on the subject of Christmas…

Now Christmas is, with the possible exception of my birthday where I don’t need to buy presents in return, without doubt my most favourite time of the year. For me Christmas means good food, good drink, good presents, good company and good television, and it makes me feel like a little kid again when I’m ripping the wrapping paper off of presents that I don’t know about on Christmas morning wondering what could be inside. And yes, like the big kid I am I still, even now, make it a habit to find out what presents I’m getting before Christmas day. I know I’m a spoil sport but dammit, I hate waiting for stuff.

So what could I POSSIBLY have to rant about, right? Simple: the real meaning of Christmas, and why it’s apparently offensive. And no, I’m not talking about that wonderful story that some guy made up a thousand years ago about a “virgin” who got pregnant and blamed it on God. I’m talking about good will and spending time with your family. THAT is what Christmas is all about after all, so why is that offensive? The answer is simple: because people are stupid.

Yes, it’s true, people are dumb as *insert dirty word of your choice here*. See there are two types of people in the world. The first are the type of person who think to themselves that something is somewhat annoying or somewhat offensive to them but who realise that the person who came up with it didn’t do it on purpose and who just put it out of their mind. Then there’s the other type who bitch and whine about whatever it was who has offended them. Now normally I’m type one – hell I’m SO far in to that category that even the things I SHOULD be offended by I normally just brush off, but this time I’m making an exception. See for me there is no religious aspect to Christmas at all. To me Christmas is just a day off from work where you get to eat turkey, drink alcohol, play party games, watch TV and open presents. And as far as I’m concerned THAT is what Christmas is about.

I’m not a religious person in the slightest. I’m not saying that I DON’T believe that there MIGHT be something somewhere that fills in a few blanks, but I don’t believe that there’s this all powerful uber-entity called “God” (or “Jehovah”, and no not Jay-Z) who created the world in six days about 6,000 years ago and who apparently also created false carbon-dated artefacts all across the world to fool the unbelievers. Nor do I believe that this “God”, after a period of time, told a guy named Noah to build a really big ship and put some animals on there who he could flood the entire world, then impregnated a virgin with his child and then let the kid grow up and get killed by man just so that he could “die for our sins”. In fact I can think of about fifty FAIRYTALES that actually sound more logical than that story. For a start if we’re all the children of two people, Adam and Eve, then how the hell do you explain… well… EVERYTHING! But skipping that flaw, Noah had his wife and three sons on the boat, right? So assuming that THAT story is true, did the sons all sleep with their mother to repopulate the Earth or did Noah have some daughters and the sons all slept with them?

The whole thing is just beyond stupid. And the story of Jesus is equally stupid, but alas some people believe it and more power to you. If you’re reading this right now and thinking “yep, he’s going to hell” then please pray tonight for your God to strike me down in the street tomorrow, at least that way he’ll have done something productive with the last six thousand years of his time. The guy made the whole world and then just left us to rot when the first two humans betrayed him, only to come back about 2,000 years ago and impregnate a virgin for kicks? What a wonderful person he is…

Anyway… back to Christmas. I have an on-going joke at the moment that the REAL meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Santa Claus – which, by the way, holds as much merit as anybody else born on that day because even if Jesus DID exist the fact is that according to the stories he wouldn’t have been born on the 25th of December anyway – and was told by somebody a few weeks ago how wrong I was. I laughed it off of course, much as I laughed off the fact that there were people from the Churches in Canterbury standing in the streets shouting about Jesus. Honestly I walked straight past them, as did several THOUSAND other people, and wondered what the hell they were wasting their time for.

But at the end of the day, whatever I want to believe in, I still want to be able to say “Merry Christmas” to people, but apparently that’s not politically correct. It should, apparently, be “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” so as not to offend anybody. Now I suppose if you were Jewish and people kept saying “Merry Christmas” to you it might annoy you, but you could simply say “Happy Hanukkah” back, couldn’t you? And I suppose if you’re a Muslim it might be annoying as well, but then you chose to live in a country that celebrates at this time of year so the solution really is to go somewhere that doesn’t, isn’t it? And considering you follow a religion that tells you to kill everybody who doesn’t believe the things that you believe then really I don’t care about appeasing you.

The real question is if a person who doesn’t believe in ANY of this, who doesn’t believe in Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, Jehovah, Odin or The Easter Bunny, isn’t IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT offended when somebody says “Merry Christmas” or who has to walk past people trying to convert him to one religion or another on a regular basis, then why on earth should anybody else be offended? Why should it be “Happy Holidays” when technically that statement would cover any time of the year? Why should it be “Seasons Greetings”, which you can technically say on June 15th and it still be valid – after all summer is a season, right? Why should one thing be politically correct and another shouldn’t when, at the end of the day, Christmas ISN’T about the birth of some guy named Jesus but rather is about GOOD WILL, spending time with family and being a NICE person? Why must it be ruined by a few cry babies who don’t like the term “Christmas”?

That is all.

There is many things to discuss, and I will get to them in due time, but for now just a small update to tell you my new theory. I have a theory that Santa Claus is in fact part ninja. That is the only way he can get in and out of your house every Christmas without ever being seen!

So this year, when you’re hanging up your stockings and leaving out chocolates, address them to NINJA CLAUS!! You may even get extra presents. Then again you might get a ninja star to the face for discovering his secret…

That is all.

So I turned twenty four on Sunday, and it was a good day indeed. First off, Liverpool beat Chelsea AT FREAKING STAMFORD BRIDGE to go top of the Premier League. A birthday present from the cosmos perhaps? Isn’t the universe nice to think of me? Then I went out with some friends in the evening. I mean it wasn’t the greatest night out ever, but it had some very memorable points. First off, I was refused service in a pub FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!! How awesome is that? And the funniest part? It was because SOMEBODY ELSE didn’t have their ID with them. That is just too funny to me. We were told we couldn’t even stay in the pub because she didn’t have ID, so we were pretty much kicked out of a pub. That’s never happened to me either. She didn’t find it as funny as I did though apparently, and was very upset about it. If you’re reading this Jill, IT WAS DAMN FUCKING FUNNY!! LAUGH ABOUT IT DAMMIT!!

The good times continued from then on with the fun of seeing a few peeps that I haven’t seen for a while and getting to hear about the stories behind such epic mysteries as why Liz hates Russian people and seeing Matt and Mark make gay jokes with one another while Mark promised to take Matt to Paris. Can’t you just imagine them? A Kiwi and a Bear in Paris! It sounds like the worst rom-com ever made!

Based on all of that you’d probably think that being twenty four sounds pretty good, right? Well enter Monday. On Monday I had to relocate from my little annex to the freaking spare room of the house, and that meant packing up two rooms worth of stuff (and we didn’t have anywhere near enough boxes so we had to keep unloading them and then taking them back again to reload) and moving all of that, and all my other much larger belongings (like my bed and fridge freezer, which we couldn’t have moved at all without Matt’s help) in to the much, much, MUCH smaller spare room. “Less than half the size” is how it was described to me last night.

Now that it’s actually done it’s not THAT bad I suppose, but then I’ve yet to try doing ANYTHING in here. I already got told off last night because I moved around too much. My mum put a piece of crappy carpet down on the floor so that my chair wouldn’t make so much noise when I moved around, the problem being now it doesn’t move AT ALL. I can’t play music with any kind of volume at all either because the walls are too thin, hell I can’t even play X-Box 360 at night anymore without keeping my sister awake with the sound from the game (and let’s be honest, what the hell is the point in playing games with the sound turned off? All my headphones have been “borrowed” and never returned by the bastard who made me move in the first place, so I can’t even wear normal headphones, I’d have to use my headset and that’s ok to talk on Skype etc but it’ll be a pain in the ass to wear to play games).

And today, just to make matters even worse, it’s officially confirmed that he-who-shall-not-be-mentioned’s son is a fucking KLEPTOMANIAC! We all knew he stole money from us before – hell he’s stolen just about every penny from every pot that we’ve ever called “savings”, but now that he’s gone through all of that (and more than likely stolen money from the tin that me and my sister pay our rent in to because that’s been KNOWN to have been short before and of course nobody said anything) he’s taken to stealing money directly from people’s purses instead. My mother and sister are both missing money, and the latest incident was in broad fucking daylight while we were all home. One minute he’s watching TV, the next he’s going out and bam, at the same time the magical money fairies have come to my sister’s purse. What an odd coincidence, huh?

Of course nothing will come of it. I can get kicked out of my room after being practically a goddamn saint compared to that little son of a bitch and yet I can guarantee you nothing will happen. He’ll still wake everybody up at 1am coming in to use the toilet WHEN THERE’S A TOILET ABOUT FIVE FOOT FROM HIS BED and nothing will happen. He’ll still eat food and drink the drink that isn’t his and nothing will happen. He’ll still leave his rubbish and dirty plates/cutlery/glasses all over the house and nothing will happen. Nothing ever happens.

I’m sick of it.

Remember how I wrote about being sick of turning the other cheek? I did, of course, do nothing about it. I never do because deep down inside I’m actually a NICE person. And nice people get stepped on. I need more lessons in being evil but I promise you, oh loyal readers, this: I will have my revenge. And when I do? It will be a day to remember.

*insert evil laugh here*

That is all.

I’ve never been so angry in my life.

One of the two I referred to earlier as my “family” came up to my room a little while ago to collect something he printed. Apparently there should have been two pages and only one printed because the printer ran out of paper. The way he asked me why only one page printed was like I’d purposely taken the paper out of the printer. I looked over, saw the big red light on that indicates there was no paper and said it had run out of paper so he grunted and slammed the door shut.

This is a man who got an email from an email account set up for free by me on webhosting bought by me, on a laptop owned by my mother, via an internet connection paid for by my mother, using a wireless network paid for and set up by me, printing on a printer bought by me, using paper bought by me and the ink bought by me, connected to a computer that’s being used as a makeshift print server bought and set up by me in a room that I’m being kicked out of DESPITE PAYING MY RENT UNTIL CHRISTMAS and he has the NERVE to disrespect me like that?

I truly wish I’d cut off the internet earlier. I was so fucking angry I was shaking for about half an hour and finally went down to the house and vented a little of that frustration at my mother, who honestly didn’t deserve it. I am so fucking angry I can’t put it in to words.

That is all (for now).

I’m writing this because I’m trying to find somebody somewhere who can convince me that it’s a good idea to metaphorically “turn the other cheek”. I’m sure there’s somebody who believes in the concept, but me? Well let’s just say I’ve finally had enough.

I don’t want much out of life right now, I really don’t. It’s my birthday on Sunday, which should make it a good day for me. I’ll be twenty four years old and the annoying thing is having gotten to this age that my life seems to be taking giant steps backward. I admit that my future is still bright, and hopefully when I turn twenty five I’ll be able to look back at this and laugh, but my present is somewhat less so.

For the last several years I have provided my “family”, if you can call them that, with internet access, email hosting, website hosting, free printing, free computer support, free technical support with everything they can’t figure out for themselves (nothing that impressive, just things like wiring up the television, setting up computers, setting up the Sky remote control to work with the television etc). I did this not for any gain for myself but because I’m a nice person and I’m willing to share. That’s never really been the case from my so-called “family”.

There’s one member of this “family”, for example, who I have to hide pretty much everything I buy from because he’s likely to steal it. If I want to buy myself a pizza to put in the freezer even if I write my name all over the box I still find that it’ll get eaten. If I buy filling for sandwiches I’ll find that it’s been used before I’ve even got the chance to use it. If I (or my sister) buy cereal it disappears before we can eat it. Hell even the batteries from the remote controls disappear when his run out. This isn’t my idea of living with a family, and yet I’ve never said I word and I’ve always done my bit and provided the aforementioned benefits and now I ask myself why.

I’ve always paid my rent. It may not be that much but it more than pays for the electricity I use and the food that I eat, and when you live with your parents isn’t that really all you should pay for? I know plenty of people who live at home and don’t even provide that.

The way I look at it (and admittedly I may be biased but still) I’ve more than done my part and earned my keep, hell I’ve gone above and beyond what the other members of my family have done, especially the boundary-less kleptomaniac I spoke of earlier. And yet whenever the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan it’s always me who has to suffer for it. This is far from the first time I’ve suffered and until I graduate and move far, far away I very much doubt it will be the last. And yet I’ve always turned the other cheek, I’ve always gotten on with it and I’ve always provided the same benefits. Well that stops now.

The benefits are revoked. No more printing, no more internet access, no more email and webhosting and no more technical support. If they break something they can take it to the computer repair shop and pay the guy £30 just to look at it, I’m done being nice in that regard, but now I ask how far I take this? Do I demand that they pay to move my Sky TV to my new room because I did, after all, pay to have it installed when I moved in? Do I demand my rent returned to me before I even leave this room, after all I did pay for three months. They may be giving me a different room but it’s considerably smaller (and not en-suite) so surely I should be given at least some of that money back before I even walk out the door?

But is that really enough? Why should I just stop there when I can go further? If I’m made to suffer for the actions of other people why should I not inflict suffering on to them? Why should I stand for having to live by one set of rules when others live by a different set? When my batteries run out, why should I pay for new ones? When I want food why should I buy my own? I hold in my hands the power to take revenge oh-so-sweet on the person who’s forcing this change upon me, why should I bite my tongue? Why should I not do unto others as they have done to me? I’m not a Christian, I don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for any of this when I die, I’m just a nice person. I’m considering having that come to an end.

Somebody needs to give me a valid reason to bite my tongue and not give as good as I get. Why should I not respond to insults with insults? Why should I not respond to cheap shots with other cheap shots? Why should I not do exactly what I want to do just as others are allowed? I think it’s time I find out how the other half live…

That is all.

Ok, so this one is going to sound rather selfish to a lot of people but bear with me here, this is a rant about ME versus the world after all, and I’m sure a lot of people are feeling similar things so let’s all group together and be depressed as one.

So this rant begins like this: why is it that the government are such complete assholes?

I ask this question based upon two recent events. Event number one was my just watching of the television. The BBC put together a video package of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and their rise to power in 1997, and several dozen times since where they swore that we wouldn’t return to a system of “boom and bust”, i.e. that the economy would grow steadily and we wouldn’t be experiencing a high followed by a low followed by a high followed by a low followed by a… well, you get the idea.

The presenter then immediately turned to the chancellor and asked him to explain why it was that we were in economic crisis if there would be no boom and bust, and the chancellor, having just watched the video, claimed that they never said there wouldn’t be a downturn. I think the presenter had a more toned down reaction than the one I had in my head, and this is why I’m not on television: I would have laughed and then hit him in the jaw, which is to be fair exactly what that idiot deserves. They promised there’d be no “boom and bust”, and when there’s a bust they claim that they never said there wouldn’t be one?!

Is it just me or are politicians better at keeping a straight face and blatantly lying to the camera than they are at actually doing their jobs? I seriously think that we should take this guy and just kick him out of his job, take away his pension and tell him go queue at the job centre every Friday for his £45 a week just because he’s apparently too stupid to be left in charge of our money. And I mean this with every fibre of my being.

They cocked up, and then they tell us they never said they wouldn’t? WE PAY THEM NOT TO COCK UP!! That’s like paying somebody to fix your car and it breaking down with the exact same problem a few days later and the repair guy telling you “well I never said it wouldn’t break”. In that case of course you can go to court and sue the mechanic for being inept so tell me, can we get together as a country and sue our politicians for the same thing? Of course not, because if we did much like in the “Cash For Honours” scandal, the courts would mysteriously find that even though the government acted wrongly they didn’t actually do anything wrong. Wouldn’t you love to be a politician?

I seriously want to start my own political party. I’ll call it “The Common Sense Party” and will only allow people to join who can look in to the camera and NOT LIE! People would love it and we’d secure 95% of the votes, because not being lied to ALL THE TIME is such a lovely concept.

So is giving money to people for them to spend.

This is my second major gripe with the world at the moment. Every month people are forced to pay taxes to the government, which we assume is spent on things like school teachers, doctors, hospitals, cops, firemen, road works, unemployed people and all the other happy things that keep our worlds ticking over. Right? And I have no problem with that. Hell it’s a great idea, when it works. And every month we’re also forced to pay money to the local councils, which we assume goes to pay for garbage collection and… um… well, they must do something else for us. Those annoying leaflets perhaps? Adverts telling other places how awesome our place is maybe? I’m sure they do something with the money…

The point is however that when we give the councils money in the form of council tax we expect that it goes to make our lives better. We think that by giving the councils this money it helps the world around us tick on. What we don’t expect is to find out that the Kent County Council reportedly have more than ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY MILLION POUNDS saved up in foreign banks.

Let me put that in numbers for you: £170,000,000.

If they have THAT much money saved up, exactly what is it for? Can somebody please email me with a breakdown of what that money is being saved for, and indeed email me with a breakdown of exactly what people who pay their council tax are paying for, because I’m assuming big chunks of the money they get in goes to pay them, and another big chunk goes to Iceland to boost the saving accounts that now no longer exist due to the banks going bankrupt.

Most importantly of all answer me one more thing: WHY IS NOBODY FURIOUS ABOUT THIS BUT ME!? Why is nobody fuming that these people have taken our money and invested it abroad and we’re seeing precisely NOTHING happening because of it? I have a good mind to go and make an appointment at the council tomorrow and ask for a breakdown of what they get in and what they spend out, because I seriously want to know what this money is for. If they have THAT much money saved up, why are we still giving them more? Isn’t that enough for them to give us all a nice break on our council tax, or a refund of some kind in time for Christmas? Wouldn’t that be lovely? But no, somebody somewhere decided that it’s a good idea to have A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY MILLION POUNDS saved up. Thank you whoever you are, I want you in the queue behind the chancellor tomorrow morning at the job centre.

So here’s where this little rant gets selfish, because with people throwing hissy fits and not wanting to lose money and selling off all their shares and the world stock markets crashing (which in itself is just retarded, why are they allowed to mass sell all their shares? Shouldn’t there be some kind of rule to STOP this happening because it’s causing a never ending loop where everybody is going to sell everything and nobody will buy and the stock market will never recover all because a group of idiots would rather have a few extra coins in their piggy banks at home than ride the DOWN part of the stock market having enjoyed the UP part for so long, I bet even with the money going down they still have more than they started with) this means that mortgage prices have gone up and here’s me, a poor little student who hasn’t ever gone crazy, who has only ever borrowed what he knows he can pay back and who has been sensible now suffering alongside everybody else. How is that fair?

They say that life isn’t fair, and boy are they right. Hey “they”, whoever you are, want a job as the guy at the council who makes decisions on spending money or the chancellor? Those jobs should be freeing up pretty soon.

Seriously though, somebody tell me how this is fair. My bank royally screwed me over and haven’t even had the decency to respond to my nice letter I wrote them telling them I was upset that they screwed me over and asking what I can do about it. Apparently whoever read that letter probably realised they had screwed me over and decided to shred it so that nobody else would see. Which sounds pretty much like the banks anyway! If they fuck up, just hide the evidence and eventually everything will be ok. Well that’s how we got where we are. And I know people are losing their houses (hell I might be one of those people soon since my mum and stepdad are struggling to pay the goddamn mortgage, even with increasing my rent and screwing me over) and I feel bad for them, and if it happens to someone I know I have a mattress on which you can sleep, but I want to know why just because OTHER people have fucked up I have to be made to suffer for it! It pisses me off.

And I want to know why my whole family expects me to get a job just to help them out (because apparently the times I’ve helped them out by lending them money in the past have been forgotten – although I’ll admit if it were JUST my mum I were helping I’d try my best since she’s helped me as much as I’ve helped her, but still) when I’ve paid £3,500 to do the final year of my degree, I’m about to be buried in assignments and I’m trying my best not to let the fact that if I don’t do well on said assignments the rest of my life will suffer because I’ll get a lower pass on my degree and thus probably not as good a job affect me as it is, the very LAST thing I need right now is to have to get a job just so I can pay EVEN MORE rent.

All I want from life right now really isn’t much. I don’t want to go on holiday to exotic lands (like my sister, who got herself in debt going to Australia for seven months and now plans to pop over to South Africa in January for a few weeks). I don’t want to buy expensive televisions and gaming systems (well ok I do but I know I can’t afford them). I don’t want to gamble thousands of pounds in the hopes of making thousands more. All I want out of life is to go to University and get a good degree (preferably a 2.1 or a 1st just because my best mate only got a 2.2 and I’d love to get higher because it’d be funny (hey Karl!! *waves*)) and have enough money left over to buy a few pretty things, buy some comics, buy some video games and get drunk occasionally.

But I don’t have enough money for the video games, the pretty things or the getting drunk bits. I do, however, have the money for the comics, so let’s be happy about the small things.

Hell the small things are all there is to be happy about. And if not for the idiots who have power and keep fucking it up for the rest of us right now I’d have an extra £250 to my name because I WOULDN’T have had to borrow it off my mother and sister just to survive back in August, and that would mean I’d have more than just one game that I like and be able to afford a few more fun comics to read and a few nights out to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Thanks HSBC; you total cunts for screwing me out of the £250.

And thanks HMV for screwing me out of £15, for which I shall never use you and your evil stores again.

So yeah, I’m poor but then I’m a student, I’m MEANT to be poor. I’m not meant to have to worry about my parents losing the house in which I live. I’m not meant to have to be pissed off about not being able to get the same finances as other people. I’m meant to get drunk, read comics, play video games and go to lectures. Is that really so much to ask?

Apparently so…

To anyone who read this and was upset that it may not have made total sense I’m sorry, but I needed to vent.

That is all.