What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?

OK you may have noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently lately. It's not that the novelty of having a blog has worn off. In fact I'm liking it a lot more than I anticipated. However I am a natural procrastinator, and even more so when it comes to writing, so I've decided to try an experiment where I just start typing and see what comes out. So apologies in advance if the quality of my writing declines rapidly, but at least you'll have something new to read! I'm also going to try to post shorter entries more often so it won't seem like such a daunting task starting a new post, but I also tend to ramble once I start so we'll see how that works out too!

The Power Is Yours!

This week there was a viral Facebook campaign trying to get everyone to change their profile picture to a cartoon from their childhood to increase awareness of child abuse. While I thought the reason for the campaign was pretty lame, I did think it was fun seeing all the cartoons popping up and bringing back memories so I opted for Captain Planet and the Planeteers on my profile.

This inevitably got the theme song stuck in my head, and it got me thinking about the impact of enviromentalism on recent generations. I remember growing up learning about the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, and global warming. And then there was climate change and carbon footprints. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel guilty for throwing away something recyclable or boiling a full kettle of water for one cup of tea. But what's really sad is that it doesn't feel like we're any closer to changing our behaviour en masse and actually doing something to reverse the damage we're doing. Seems like we're all just waiting for everyone else to make a change because we can't see the point if it's just us.

However on a lighter note, the end of the world has made for some excellent music. I was driving into work today listening to the new Disturbed album "Asylum" when I realised "Another Way To Die" is about the environment (which I wouldn't expect from a band like Disturbed so it shows how wide reaching this issue is). I also love the opening song on Rise Against's "Appeal To Reason" called "Collapse (Post-Amerika)". Its lyrics are full of such vivid imagery as "When our rivers run dry and our crops cease to grow" and "When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke". The catchy chorus and power chords don't hurt either.

Sidenote: I found it particularly amusing that the Daily Mail accused the Facebook campaign of being a smoke screen for paedophiles, so typical of them!

People are actually reading this!

I didn't think I'd care if anyone was reading my blog, but I just found the stats page and I can already tell it will become my new obsession! I was pleasantly surprised to find that 29 people have already viewed my blog in the first day! Initially, I wondered how so many people had found it, but then I remembered I'd posted a link on facebook. However I've only had 4 friends talk to me about it and I'm assuming one of the viewers is me, so that leaves 24 people stalking me secretly on facebook! Good to know I'm more popular than I thought, or at least people will look at anything if you post a link to it on facebook!

All the good blog names are taken!

I just spent the last 30 minutes looking for a blog name that wasn't taken. I originally wanted "God Is In The TV" since media reviews will feature quite heavily here and it's a bit more clever than "Media Addict", "Media Junkie", "TV Junkie", "TV Addict", "Square Eyes", or "Media Blog" (all taken), in fact the name "All The Good Blog Names Are Taken" has even been used! And here I thought I was a pretty original person! Oh well, "This Will Be My Year" will have to do, I like the Semisonic reference and it works pretty well as a general journal style blog without a main theme, what do you think? Any better ideas?