Okay, for those of you that don't know, Modern 'Art' gets on my nerves. Well, it doesn't just get on my nerves, it really grates. A lot.

What I dislike about Modern 'Art' is that it's just so pretentious. The artists who create the pieces often (not always, granted, but a good percentage of the time) are so far up their own backsides about how deep, meaningful and retrospective their work apparently is. It's not; get over yourselves.

I also think it's a con; let's take a look at the artist I dislike the most; Tracey Emin.

Tracey Emin, on her website, is selling this for £375:

Beautiful Girl II, Tracy Emin.

Now, that is a lot of money by anyone's standards. And for what? A, frankly, ugly etching/maths-book doodle. I'd rather keep the money, thanks.
I could understand paying a lot of money for, say, a Picasso piece or one of Monet's more abstract pieces. Personally, I don't like Picasso or Monet very much. However, I can see the attraction; their art shows at least some level of skill, thought and effort. So, even if I don't personally like it, I can appreciate the effort, time and skill that's gone into making the piece. Looking at the majority of Emin's work, I simply can't see that any of it has really had any time (or skill) put into it.
Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that Emin is a very capable artist and does have a high level of artistic ability, but I also feel it's greatly wasted in the pretentious wasteland of Modern 'Art'.

So (I went a bit off-topic) back to the idea that it's a con; £375 for an ugly 10 minute etching. Well, that speaks volumes itself. Doesn't it?

To quote my Dad, "I'm not sure with Modern Art who's conning who." - in essence, is it the artist conning the critic about how great their art is, or the critics conning the general public (into paying to see the pieces of 'art').

I also really dislike the elitism in Modern Art, and how you have to be a great interlectual to appreciate it; I'd rather a pretty painting that can be admired for it's prettiness rather than the deeper meaning; why did the artist paint those leaves green? Was it to convey a sense of his jealousy towards nature, and how free and unrestricted she grows? Unlikely. It was probably just spring when he painted it.
Another thing with Modern Art, and society in general actually, is the overuse of the word "contempory" - I hear it so much that it can't stand it now. Contemporary this, contemporary that; I think someone needs to look at a theasaurus. Having said that, I can't really find any other words that fit the same as contemporary, but they should still stop using it so much.

This is the end of my Modern Art Rant #1.
Thank you for your patience.

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Having just watched that KONY 2012 video and within 5 minutes posting it on my blog* I then did a little more research into the Invisible Children (IC) Non-Government Organisation (NGO).

Before I go any further, I want to clarify a few things:

• I am not "anti-charity" nor do I support any of the crimes that Joseph Kony has commited.
• I support what the KONY 2012 campaign stands for. 
• I do not support violence.
• I am a little sceptical of IC and the TRI campaign, but am not straight-out against it.

With those things in mind, I shall continue.

Firstly, I want to explain my thoughts on the KONY 2012 video. Please watch it before you read any further.
The video starts off with a strange little bit about an "idea" and an "experiment" - although this is basically not even touched upon until right at the very end.
So it sounds fantastic, but holds little or no relevance. This is especially noticeable when directed towards the "experiment" notation; as far as I can see, it makes no sense. What is the experiment? I'm sure that video/social-media campaigns have been done before. Quite a lot, in fact.

Then there is a whole lot about one of the campaign's founders' son: Gavin.
I think this section is an attempt to engage with the Western family-man. It doesn't work especially well.. Not for me, at least.
I've got to be honest, I have no idea why it doesn't work. I just find that showing a video of his wife(?) having a ceserean and claiming that "every child is born this way" is a little naive. But, a minor detail I'm sure you'll agree.
Having said that the "look at my child, isn't he just wonderful; support my campaign!" marketing wasn't doing it for me, there were two things that stood out for me.
One was absolutely terrible and the other, I thought, was rather good.

I'll start with the good part first, since I like to be in chronological order.

If you go 6 or 7 minutes into the video there is a part where the boy, Gavin, is sat at a table, with the camera on the otherside.
The father is behind the camera.
He starts off asking various questions to his son about the work he does, and the son replies "You stop the bad guys" - or something akin to that. 
Following that, to try and highlight Joseph Kony's "invisible" nature, the question is put the to boy:
"Who are the bad guys?"
"Umm... [long pause] the Star Wars people!"

Now, that is not related to the campaign much at all, but I think its very good since it makes the boy seem more innocent. Whereas before, and I may very well be wrong in this, it felt very much as if Gavin had been told what to say; or at least hinted at what they wanted him to say.

That is the nature of video marketing, of course, so they've not done anything bad, its just a bit of a false-show. Well, to me it seems like it.

And the bad part. During this police-questioning style interview with the boy (at 9:50 if you want to follow along) he hands him a picture of the bad guy; Joseph Kony.
Although, as I have said before, there is nothing wrong with it. The way it is filmed really seems very very staged. I don't like it.
I don't want to be reviewing it like its a block-buster, so I wont go on about the film too much more, however I think you have to watch the video critically.

I want to now shed some light on Invisible Children, Inc. - the NGO that is running the KONY 2012 campaign.

After I watched the video, I did a bit more research into the organisation, and came across two websites that are really worth looking at:

• Visible Children
• Wronging Rights

Both of those say similar things, and there are numerous other places that say the same thing.
I'm going to take a few quotes from those sites which show the shady nature of IC, Inc. - which is the biggest arguement against the KONY 2012 campaign.

"Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again."

"Only 32% went to direct services"

 "... much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production"

"Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited."

"The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces"

Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them..."

"... People supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away."

- VisibleChildren.tumblr.com, Grant Oyston.

"[Invisible Children, Inc.] is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale Political science professor."

"[IC, Inc. has] been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards."

 "[IC, Inc.] won’t let their financials be independently audited."

"By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go towards actually helping anyone. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization..."

"The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention."

- TheDailyWhat

 I could honestly give you far more than that. They (IC, Inc.) are not as good as they appear.
I have nothing against people supporting it, but they'd be fools and idiots to think that one day of postering New York and Washington is going to do anything.

I also dispair of the people that just pass on the video without studying and researching into it more. I honestly think that the last quote by TheDailyWhat is probably the best summary of all.

"The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention."

If you're interesting in a bit of your own research, don't just take my and countless others' word for it, here is a link to the Financial Statements for Invisible Children, Inc. 

Here are further links, for more reading:

• Foreign Affairs
• Chris Blattman
• Charity Navigator

Oh, and here is a picture of Invisible Children's founders "posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People's Liberation Army" - which has been accused of raping a looting.

*This is really just my public text-based blog and "long-form" blog. See the side bar for some of my others.

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I'm going to let the video speak for itself.

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If you know me, or follow any of my other blogs, you may be aware that my cat (Nellie) is diabetic. Quite a lot so, in fact.

For the past.. 4, maybe 5 months, we've been giving her twice-daily injections of insulin. One in the morning, one in the evening.

Hypoglycaemia is where the blood sugar (glucose) levels drop too low. Not to be confused with hyperglycaemia, where the blood sugar goes too high.

Being diabetic basically means that Nellie's body cannot regulate its own blood sugar levels. To stop it from getting too high, we inject her with insulin twice a day, before she has her food.
It is vital that she has her insulin, then is given food; she doesn't need to eat it all at once though. This helps ensure that her blood sugar stays stable and doesn't fluctuate too much, and especially doesn't get too low after insulin.

Today though, I have the day off college because of exams. I got up at about 10:00am, and was downstairs by 10:30am or so.
Nellie's insulin is injected at 7:00am and 7:00pm, so Mum does it before she goes off to work. Usually she'll do it in the evening as well, but I'll do it if she's not back before then.

Anyway, onto the story:

When I got downstairs, Nellie was sitting on the mat outside by the backdoor, so the latest she could've gone out was about 8:00am when my Dad left for work, so she must've been outside for 2 hours or so, at least. 
Her food is inside.

I'm sure you've worked out the problem already. Insulin injected, but no (or little) food.
I opened the door and Nellie got up, rather weakly and came inside.. Well, she got about 3ft inside and stopped.
She was really weak, shaking (twitching) and quite unresponsive. Eyes dialated, even on a really bright morning.

She's gone low before, and got a bit twitchy, so I gave her some food and made sure she'd eaten something at least. That was fine.
This time, she was really weak. Very twitchy, like small convulsions. She kept nearly falling over and just about steadying herself. Her tail was dragging along the floor.

I tried to get her to eat something, and she just stood looking at the food, completely unaware or uninterested; its hard to tell.

I was getting worried by this point, maybe just beginning to panic. I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong, but its difficult to rationalise when you're worried and starting to panic.

She wandered off to towards the living room and she was walking into things, bumping them, slipping on the wooden floor and very unsure.
When she got to the living room, she fell over onto the carpet and just lay her head down. 

I was really panicking at this point. I tried to get her to eat something, and she really didn't want it. She was barely responding and twitching horribly. Her breathing was very laboured, and she herself looked scared.
You might laugh, "you can't tell if a cat is scared.. "
Well I'm telling you I can, Nellie at any rate. I've known Nellie all my life; seriously. I was about.. 2 or 3 when we got her, so I don't remember a time without her around. 
Her tail was thumping the floor slightly, for that was all she could really do. Her tail had "puffed up" - something that happens when she's afraid or intimidated, to make herself look bigger and thus deter any preaditors. Its a primal thing, I guess. 
Anyway, Nellie was scared, I was panicking. Its not looking good.

One of the fastest ways to get some sugar into a cat is to rub honey onto their gums. So I found the nearest jar of honey, and rubbed some honey onto her gums. 
Thankfully, she started licking her mouth. So once she'd stopped licking, I rubbed a bit more on. 

Having this honey seemed to really perk her up, although maybe not because of the sugar. She was still twitchy and weak, but she was interested. I grabbed her bowl of food and put it down infront of her, and to my relief she started eating it.

She only ate a little bit, and lay down again. Still looking not great, so I got the honey and rubbed some more in her mouth. She started licking my finger before I'd put it in her mouth, so I let her and made her eat something again.

This time, she didn't stop until she'd pretty much eaten all of her food.. Then she curled up on a chair after a bit.
I put the TV on and did a bit of work, all the time checking she was still okay.

She's still there now, asleep, but I keep waking her up every so often to check. She's meowing again and its okay.

That was really scary, and its kinda shaken me a bit.. I sometimes forget how quickly she can go from being fine to being dangerously close to the end.
I keep thinking about how different that could've been.. What if.. What if I hadn't let her in, or hadn't noticed? What if I was just a few minutes too late, or we didn't have any honey? 
Its not a healthy thought, I'll tell you that.

Will. 

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Comments on, or comments off? It seems everyone has their own opinion, and some seem to get rather animated about it, as well.

I've recently been following Matt Gemmell's blog (which is very good, if you're interested) and a lot of his posts have been related to the ever-lasting argument for and against comments on blogs.

Personally, I don't have comments.
Not because I don't care about my (few) readers, or that I've got some "holier-than-thou" attitude, I'm just not bothered about it, at all.
That is, I really love to hear from my readers, but I don't really want 2 (maximum 3) sentence replies; I want long-form, well thought out and considered responses. And you'd be a fool to think comments provided that.

I should also mention that this is a new blog (well, I'm not new to blogging as such, but this blog is new) so I doubt many people read it anyway. As well as that, there simply isn't much to read about yet, thus, not much to comment about.
However, this is primarily a place for me to put my thoughts down on paper. Not paper, but you know what I mean.
Being what it is, a lot of my posts simply don't require comments. If you've not yet seen my "About" section, you might not know, but I run a few photography blog(s) - most are my own photographs.
A photography blog is definitely different to what I'd call a "standard blog" - one that is mostly text-based posts.
This brings me nicely to the point I've been struggling to get to for the last 10 minutes or so.
Matt Gemmell says in his post "Comments Commentary":

That brings me to the purpose of a blog, or your view of what a blog should be. For me, “blog” implies:

• A website
• Primarily text
• Updated periodically
• Probably with an element of personal reflection and an individual voice

I agree with 3/4 of that.
Its got to be a website. Du'h.
Updated periodically; fair enough.
Personal reflection and an individual voice. Sure, it's your space.

What I don't agree with is the "primarily text" bit.
Actually, maybe agree isn't the right word. Because he isn't saying that that is the be-all-and-end-all of blog defintions, thats just what it is to him. So, I'd question it, more than argue.
Primarily is the key-word, sure, it can be a bit of everything. But when discussing whether you think you should have comments on or off, you really must be sure of what the purpose of your (by "your" I mean the wider reader, not specifically the quoted above) blog is. 

My photography blogs are for photographs. They're portfolios, albums, memories, art. They don't need comments.
Matt is the same, he doesn't want short-form answers. He, like me, would rather better considered responses, in long-form.

The comments-on-warrior John C. Welch obviously feels that commenting his a part of his blog - infact, his comments and commenting are perfect examples of why not to have them. And that's fine. He can have comments if he wants.
Others feel that they don't need or want them. That's also fine.

It's just a bit of a non-argument in my opinion, I just don't see why its even being argued; opinions are just that, opinions. 
And saying that raises another point entirely, but I'm going to stop there for now.

In summary, I'm going to sit on the face; comment if you want, comment if you don't, and be done with it all. Its getting rather boring.

Will.

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Sometimes, the college frustrates me. 
Frustrates me beyond belief..

I have two lessons; first thing at 8:45am. Then one at 3:10pm.
So, not wanting to hang about for 5 hours or so, I went home. 

When I got the bus back into college for my lesson at 3:10pm.. Turns out our teacher isn't in today. Thanks a lot. I just wasted two hours and potentially £3.60 (I have a card, so didn't actually pay, but if I didn't I'd have to have paid) to turn up to college, and then go home 10 minutes later.

I wouldn't mind, but it takes half an hour for the bus to get there. I left at 2:15pm, and then got back at 4:00pm. I could've done without wasting nearly two hours of my day getting on and off a bus.

I'm very tempted to say something to my tutor. Just because this seems to happen so much, and always on a Thursday.

I'm thinking a strongly worded email.. But then, can I be bothered?

Will. 

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This is the first post; let's see what happens.

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