My Dad...

Dear Reader.

My dad finished his job today (did I mention that?) he's getting a new job Vicaring in a different parish and all this week we kept saying "you see James you really had a wonderful life" (Its an "It's a Wonderful Life" reference! Shame on you for not knowing!) because everywhere he's been there have been people thanking him for how he's helped them and help them turn their life around and sometimes it was for things he'd almost forgotten about, tiny little things he's just turned up at right moment for and he's just done his job. That's the weirdest thing about my dads job because as a vicar you kind of float in and out of people's lives whenever they meet a cross road. So you're there for weddings and deaths and births and suicide attempts and messy divorces. So sometimes my dad ends up doing the service that becomes important to someone and helps them because you say the right thing to help them through what they're feeling or he ends up doing youth work and helping people then or doing a school assembly that brings people to a different life. A good vicar will be in the background of everyone's life changing moments but almost always like a ghost.
But with my dad its kind of bigger than that he seems to have been in the background of almost every comity in the Calder Valley so there seems to be hundreds of things where he was there with the little suggestion that drove things through or the little idea that someone else took up and changed things and got all the credit for. My dad effected so many lives in so many ways that essentially when the time came for his leaving party it felt like everyone in the village turned up.

I understand why my dad enjoys his job and I admire him for it, but there is no way I would ever want to be a vicar because you seem to just have to know what to do and then you do it.

He'll be missed at Crag and Mytholmroyd but he needs to go find another part of the world to change. I hope they're ready for him...

Weird things that happen on the YouTube.

Dear Reader

I have been watching allot of YouTube series recently and there are a couple of things that I've descorvered which kind of show that the worlds allot weirder than we once thought it was.

the first one is DJ Paige Railstone. Now you may be wondering why this is worthy of mention since its just some artist trying to advertise her work pretty normal but it quickly gets weirder when you find out that the existence of DJ Paige Railstone, from her music career to her personal history to her appearance and personality, is entirely made up. She is a myth made up by "The Vlogbrothers" after they wondered if they could convince the internet that she existed, so they gave her a Facebook account and a fan page and a twitter account and all the usual stuff that musicians have to sell their music and essentially asked everyone who subscribed (commonly known as Nerdfighters) to Google it as often as possible, to the extent that at one point if you typed in "Paige" you would get her on auto fill (now you have to do "Paige r" but its still impressive).

It doesn't stop there after that their subscribers started posting on YouTube. Some just talking about her some posting their music in her name some claiming they've been to one of her gigs and some, where, like this video (which gets 10/10 for both creepiness and impressiveness), they actually claim to be her.

To Quote John Green "Allot of people have been asking me if she's made up, and they've asked whether she's real. We did make her up, but that doesn't mean she's not real."

Either way it does show the power of mass internet subscription. From the Nerdfighter's charitable apeal to making Google auto fill give the word "awesome" whenever you type in the question "is Hank Green..." (the other vlogbrother) to even calling a human being into existence, the masses have the power. (DFTBA!)

the next weird thing is this that two very separate Vloggers (Bryarly Bishop and Charlie of Charlieissocoollike)are now dating and apropriately after a year they both announced it to their subscribers.

Which is lovely because they seem to be such lovely people, they have so much in common and they're both really lucky to have found someone where you kind of just feel that they are the male and female versions of each other (I tried to make that not sound weird but that's how it is). But anyway the weird thing about it is how it feels for the subscribers. Because for me at least, before Charlie posted about her I didn't know about her Vlogg existed at all so it very much feels like the two great crowds of subscribers are now meeting for the first time. And it kind of feels like they're two super defensive parents meeting the new partner and their family at the same time. We're all very happy that Charlie has found love but we're kind of scrutinising her and thinking "if you hurt him! You will pay!" Which, if you think about it is REALLY weird, because I've never met either of them!

The last one is just Genius! There have been a series of someone funny reads "fifty shades of grey" videos but this is the best! The thing is when I heard about it I laughed because I could imagine what a horrible sound it would be but when I got to it, I discovered it was exactly how I imagined it and weirder. Frankly I'm putting it here because I just want everyone in the world to know of its existence (much better than fricking Gangnam Style anyway). I would pay so much money for him to read the entire book.

By the way Reader the reason why I was away for so long was frankly because there are far too many page views on that post I did on ginger people and I worry you only look because its got that picture of Amy Pond which kind of depresses me.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!

Venomous

Dear Reader.

Okay, so, a while ago I posted this poem by Tanya Davis called "How to be Alone" and because I've recently just returned to University and I'm a bit of a sap I've been watching it more often than usual. So I was on YouTube flicking through the comments (there was my first mistake) and they were pretty tame and positive as a whole for a YouTube stream as you would kind of expect for this kind of video. Lots of people said it was really good and it helped them and stuff. But then I found this.

Comment

I found this right after my husband passed and it helped me

be ok with been alone. I'd never been totally alone before.

Thanks for helping me thru it.

Reply

You don’t know how it is to be alone, Try being alone all your life and then act like your alone. Other than that, you haven’t experienced shit

Do you ever come across a comment where you absolutely understand where that person's hatred comes from but you still hate that their hatred exists? Because you can just feel how all that loneliness has just fermented into this almost beautifully venomous ball of anger, hatred and jealousy. 

Because, though it might never comes to this, sometimes in your darkest moments you do hear the way people complain about their lives and just think "you have nothing to complain about".

If you really think about it this isn't a very far off mutation of the phrase 

"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

isn't it? The problem with this is you're never going to meet anyone who has consistently experienced both so both sides are always going to think they have it worse. The people who have never loved at all, have never loved and lost and vice versa (does that make sense? Anyway). At the very least its better to have loved and lost because at least then you know you're capable of finding someone to love and who loves you in return. At least you know you're not broken and there's hope for some kind of love in the future. Where as at some point lonely people just start to think there must be something wrong with them.