Well, I’m actually able to write a post up! I’ve been disabled due to my eyes watering like a sprinkler system decommissioned by a box of C4 . . .I’ve barely been able to use or do anything at all for the past two days, I’ve had to stay at home, in bed, with my hand by my side like a wild west fight, waiting to quickly draw a tissue the moment my nose tries any funny business.

In fact the other day I made use of my iPod’s VoiceOver feature, basically the iPod tells you what you’re tapping on, when you open up mail it can read you the most recent mail messages, problem is it gives you no directions, you just have to randomly tap your finger on the screen in various locations until you hear the app or item that you’re after . . . very time consuming . . . and typing is a pain in the asssss. . .sssassin’s creed . . . 2 . . . good game uh, yeah anyways!

This post really isn’t going on the topic I’d hoped it to . . .

What I want to talk about in this post, is something I noticed probably two weeks ago, and it really bugs me. I call it Skillzial Discrimination . . . (Pronounced [skillz][ee][al]) I had to make up a word, because both social discrimination and racial discrimination have a “cial” word in their favour. So what am I talking/writing about? What is Skillzial Discrimination?

Everyone has different skills, talents, hobbies, and it doesn’t need to be explained to you by some pimple-faced blogger like me, it should have been covered in your pre-school education package, around the time they were teaching you your a b c’s they also taught you that everyone is better at some things than others. Jeff over there is good at maths, Michael is good at cricket, and Bingo the dog is good at running.

B-I-NGO! B-I-NGO! B-I-NGO! AND BINGO WAS HIS NAME O! Anyone remember that song?

But basically they told us that, although such and such may be better than us at one thing, we are better than such and such at another thing. I guess to make us feel better about not being as clever as the smart wonder-kid of the class, every class has ’em, the ones capable of doing just about anything . . . surprisingly I’m not making a reference to myself here . . . well, sort-of an ironic twist. The first school I went to there was a kid in my Grade 4 class that was doing Grade 8 algebra, I wasn’t the clever one of the class, and I certainly wasn’t sitting in second place either. When I moved down south, to a new school, I was then appointed the title of class know-it-all. I don’t know if the standard of education in the south just sucks, thereby meaning that the low-end of the up-end is the up-end of the low-end (that actually makes sense), or perhaps the drive south somehow made me cleverer, which is unlikely due to my choice of the word ‘cleverer’ in this sentence . . . maybe I was smarter than I thought in the first place . . . Whoah, just realised that I’ve basically started a biography . . . no no no . . . let’s get back to the main point of this post.

“But basically they told us that, although such and such may be better than us at one thing, we are better than such and such at another thing”

We’ll go from here . . . What this post is really meant to be attacking is the opinionated banter made about different skills and hobbies. For example! Someone who plays football in a team is considered more highly than someone who just casually plays football, someone who plays video games is considered less than someone who plays rugby, (this is generally, I know a lot of people that’d consider the video gamer higher than the rugby player) but the biggest line that I want to mention to show what I mean is this.

Someone who plays football, and is really good at it, playing for years, when someone brings it up in discussion it’s along the lines of, “You’re great, how long have you been playing for?” or “Your pro, what team do you go for?”

But someone like me, who makes videos, designs graphics, writes blog posts, the comment made to me would be along the lines of, “You have way, way too much time on your hands.”

I’ve never heard someone say to a football or basketball player, or anyone who plays sport, that they obviously have “too much time on their hands” when to get as skilled as they are, probably spent entire days at a time throwing a basketball at a  hoop or kicking a ball around. This never comes into it, but yet when people see the videos and things I produce digitally, I’m told without hesitation that I “have too much time on my hands” and that I “need to get out more.”

What makes your skill any better than mine? I don’t think that kicking a ball round all day is a waste of time, nor is throwing a basketball at a hoop all day, I’m not that arrogant (pfffft), but for people to consider my talents the effect of “too much time” then they should take a step back and realise that any talent, no matter what you do, is the result of “too much time.” The phrase “too much time on your hands” seems like it’s disregarding your activity, it’s saying it’s a waste of time. Why is it that all these sports geeks (Definition of geek: “A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest” thereby stating I can add ‘sports’ to the beginning.) think that making movies or writing stories is a waste of time?

What gets me even more, is the fact that, the people that say I have “too much time on my hands”, don’t even play a sport! They have no activities or hobbies other than going on Facebook when they get home or going shopping, and they tell me that I’m the one with large amounts of spare time!?

In my opinion, SPARE TIME is time that IS SPARE . . . IN OTHERWORDS IT’S NOT BEING USED. SO IF I’M SPENDING MY SPARE TIME MAKING MOVIES . . . THEN IT’S NOT SPARE TIME IS IT? (ALL CAPS RAGE?)

But my opinion doesn’t matter here, because the definition of spare time is apparently: “time available for hobbies and other activities that you enjoy” . . . which actually doesn’t change my point at all . . . when you’re playing football or whatever it is, that is your spare time . . . unless you don’t enjoy it . . . in which case it’s a forced activity . . . or school. = )

Anyways.

Chow,

Ben

(P.S. Don’t expect the 7 day marathon I was talking about! Later my minions! Later!)