Celebrity Influence

     So I thought I posted this, I wrote it and published it a few months ago but since I'm using the app it doesn't always publish and I don't notice that unless I look at the post again which I really don't usually do but I was bored so I did and happened to notice this, so here goes.

     I don't listen to pop much, some pop from the 60's and 70's but nothing much. I can name a few modern celebrities but honestly I just don't care about them. They're just people who get famous on minimal amount of talent and a lot of money, usually. I'm not saying this is always the case at all, some celebrities are, in fact, amazingly talented, I would name one but I don't know really. What pisses me off about celebrities is that some, not all, just a few, of them use their fame to influence people to have their views like Beiber about the abortion thing (see my rant about him) and various others who, again, I can't name. People like One Direction, for example, are pretty harmless as far as I know, they're just a boy band who are completely manufactured for the media of teenage girls between about 10 and 20 y/o. I'm not saying that only celebrities like these do it, in sure loads of great bands out there who try to force their ideas upon their fans. So, sure this might just be me whining about pop culture again but these celebrities are always being filmed or photographed so they should try be somewhat responsible with what they say. I very much doubt that there are all that many grunge bands or punk bands with as big a following as, say, Beiber or 1D do. This mainly because the media is only interested in these pop artists who bring in a lot of money for them. I dunno, I guess that's me now, please remember that I'm sick so if this isn't very coherent it might because of that.

    Ruska

6am Rant About Bieber

     First off, I'm sorry I haven't written in ages, we've just moved house and all I've been doing is unpacking and obsessively watching this TV show all the time. So that's my excuses over and done with, let's get on with something vaguely more interesting. I just decided now that I'm going to do a thing on Justin Bieber and it's probably going to shit because it's six in the morning and I've been up all night watching stupid shit online. I watched a really nice film actually, 'Come On Eileen' but anyway.
     I very, very strongly dislike Justin Bieber, just to get that out there, not for his music or anything like that. His music isn't particularly good but it doesn't make him deservant (I really hope that's a real word) of my disdain. I don't like him because of his stupidity, there are so many things he's done that are just ridiculously stupid and also he basically brainwashes his fans to think what he thinks, he's against abortion (which makes me like him even less) but fine have stupid views if you want but don't use your fame to make people adopt your views he said, I'm not sure of the exact quote but it was something like this, "I'm against abortion so my fans should be too" that's just nasty because a lot of his fans are very influential teenage girls who would believe anything he says, I'm done with that now though, it's not quite what I wanted to write about today.
     I wanted to write about his fans, probably the most dangerous fan base around at the moment. I mean One Direction are mostly harmless there's been no big scandals about them or their fans as far as I know ('cept the fact that one of them likes older women but who cares). Justin Bieber on the other hand has had drug scandals, which to be honest I really don't care about. It's his fans reaction to them, I'm going to presume you heard of 'cut for bieber' probably the stupidest, no scratch that, most certainly the stupidest thing I've seen done, these girls (majority girls anyway) decided that ''Ooh, I'm going to help Justin through his 'tough' times by cutting myself and posting pictures to Twitter and Facebook." Firstly I don't understand why this is supposed to help Bieber through his drug addiction or whatever it is. Presuming he knows about this whole 'cut for Bieber' thing it's really just putting huge pressure on him not to fuck up. I mean if you were his age wanting to have fun or whatever it is he wants from it imagine having the pressure of knowing if you do get a little bit, just for the laugh or something and people find out, thousands of teenagers will harm themselves. So there's this to go against the fans and there is so much more. There's the ridiculous jealousy they have of him visiting people. He visited someone who was dying of cancer or something like that and loads of his fans were outraged that he visited her not them, likewise when he visited the Anne Frank Huis he got girls saying that 'why does she get a visit she isn't even that special' (him writing in the guest book that Anne Frank would've been a belieber is a whole other story). I'm not going to go on because honestly he's not worth the time, I can't even be arsed to edit this, I'll do a quick spell check and then I'm posting.
     I'm tired and cranky right now so it may well be that when I wake up a bit more later in the day I'll take this down or something, I dunno. Weronika hasn't been on for ages either, I don't know her reasons for it, probably more interesting than mine but I haven't really talked to her in the last few weeks, she's busy with Poland and I'm getting into loads of bad moods because I'm spending the majority of my day sitting on my laptop avoiding leaving my room because I know I'll get given out to for being on the laptop while I should be unpacking so I'm fairly stuck in my room full of boxes right now. So yeah, sorry about this shit stuff, I felt pissed and needed to get it out somehow. (You have no idea how many times I misspelled Bieber in this thing)
     Anyways, ciao,
     Ruska

Abortion

      To start I'm going to warn you that this is going to be a rant and now, just in case you don't know what's going on in Ireland with abortion at the moment, I'll give you a little bit of background so you might understand what you're reading. About 21 years ago, in 1992, there was a fourteen year old girl who had been raped and gotten pregnant from it, she wanted an abortion but as it was illegal in Ireland then (still is) planned to go to the UK to get one, once this was discovered she was forced to stay in the country by the judge. She had a miscarriage a short while later but it started a huge appeal for the change in the constitution regarding abortion. She was referred to as X for the duration of the trial to keep her privacy and it became known as, 'The X Case'. There were a few proposed changes to the constitution which didn't get through, so eventually this died out and was almost forgotten about. Last year it was the 20th, I suppose you could call it, anniversary of The X Case, sometime in February as far as I can remember. There were demonstrations about this then and vague plans to do more. A few months later, late October, a young woman died as she wasn't able to have an abortion after she was told that the foetus was not viable (going to be born dead), but they could not perform an abortion under Irish Law as the foetus' heart was still beating. She was in excruciating pain for the following three days, she was to weak to travel to England and was refused an abortion although she was constantly begging for one. After her death the movement began again, for a few months there was a demonstration every Wednesday and a march every Saturday. It eventually started to fade, not completely it was just less thought or talked about. There were still protests occasionally, not all the time but fairly regularly. Wow, and I haven't even started my rant yet. If you wanna know more, Google it. Oh and also, the people who are against abortion are 'Pro-Life' and people for it are 'Pro-Choice'. 
     Today was the annual Youth Defense march (Pro-Life) where they get people from everywhere in Ireland and bring them to Dublin for free for this big protest (they've got loads of American cash behind them). This year it was a bit of a big deal because of the whole Savita Halappanavar thing (the woman who died). They were marching down from Parnell Square to the Dail (the Irish parliament building) or something like that. Wherever it is they were going they went down O'Connell Street which was lined with people like me, holding placards, banners or, in my case, a spray-painted Irish flag, yelling at them as they passed, now I don't understand why abortion  has any affect on them as a majority of the crowd were well past the age for having children. So basically I spent two hours yelling "Pro-Life is a lie, you don't care if women die" and "Shame" and just booing old nuns and priests and other elderly people (as well as a few younger ones). This wouldn't have been too bad if they hadn't brought so many children with them. These children hadn't a clue why they were there or why they were being shouted at by thousands of people, it must have been a traumatic experience for them and, if I had been their position at that age, it would certainly bring on nightmares and things like that. Some of the kids didn't really mind it but a few were really obviously affected by this. There was this one little boy, about five years old, who was on the verge of tears and trying to pull out of the march but his dad wouldn't let him even though he was absolutely terrified, I mean I understand you want to prove your point but how could you make your son go through something like that which will very possible haunt him for years to come just to prove some stupid bloody point that doesn't even make all that much sense. So there was the scumbag parents who, to be honest, didn't treat their children very well. As well as this, the second my mother turned her back on me for just a second, to talk to someone this old woman, well into her nineties, came over to me, grabbed my wrist and told me that I have no hope in life, when my mum noticed her she told her to "stay the fuck away from my daughter" among other things. I think it's because I'm young and there weren't really very many people who brought their kids on the pro-choice side of things but about half the nuns that passed me said a pray for me or blessed me, maybe the think that my "soul" can still be "saved". Too bad for them. I respect not wanting to get an abortion and think that it should be up to you, not to the church or the state which at the moment it is. I understand that if your religion says that abortions shouldn't be had you may feel obliged to follow this but it does not mean that you have the right stop people from doing what you want with yourself. Every year there are thousands going there because it's impossible to get an abortion without breaking the law here. You risk 14 years in jail if you get an illegal abortion in Ireland. Rape is only 7 years, why the fuck is abortion double that? It's illogical, old-fashioned and disgusting that there are so many people out there trying their hardest to take away the rights of the woman, the right for health obviously doesn't come to mind. Presuming the bill will pass it'll still be practically impossible to get an abortion here due to the restrictions set out by the bill. It has to be a life threatening reason, something has gone wrong and the mother will die if there's no abortion or something along the lines of that. If the mother is
suicidal and under the risk of killing herself she needs to get four psychiatrists to say that she should get an abortion as well as three doctors, this is ridiculous as it is but some psychiatrists have said that if a pregnant woman is suicidal and wants an abortion they will be forced to sign themselves into a mental institution for the duration of their pregnancy. FORCED. I presume court cases can be taken against this but if your genuinely suicidal you don't want to go to court, you're more likely to just get a backstreet abortion or commit suicide, neither of these are good, backstreet abortions are illegal and dangerous and suicide is, well, suicide. I think I may have been somewhat repetitive there, but I just needed to get that out of my system. I was going to apologize here at the end in case I insulted anyone but then I realized that I really don't care if I insulted you with my views, they are mine, after all. I am going to apologize to Weronika though because I'm fairly sure I swore in there once or twice, so yeah, sorry 'bout that.
     Cya,
     Ruska

                      This is the picture of Savita released into the press with the story of her death last October.