This is another one of those blogs where I don't really have something to talk about, so I'm gonna make it a short one.

Just had one of those shifts at work that seemed to have no end. It feels like I have just spent a whole week at Blockbusters and I've got an even longer shift to look forward to tomorrow.

I got in from work in time to see the end of the Italian Job remake. It's one of those really annoying films that are full of gimmicky "cool" characters. Every scene of the film seems to be about showing off the coolness of the cast. Their cool driving skills, their cool safe cracking skills, thier cool computer hacking skills. There is never a moment in these films when it looks like the main characters might lose or get beaten by the bad guy (because they're so damn perfect and brilliant at everything), thus taking away any sense of jeapordy.

But the most interesting thing that myself and my housemate both picked up on as we watched the end of this film was how much money the main characters must have to spend on setting up one of these heists? If you watch heist films like this Italian Job movie or the Oceans Eleven films, to set up one of these complicated heists looks as though it requires a lot of money in the first place so the heroes must be rich bastards when the films already starts and they are just being plain greedy! If these guys are really that smart and have these amazing skills, there must be more cost effective ways for them to make money that involve far less risk and chance of failure than heists as complicated as these ones. But I suppose that's what is supposed to make heist films exciting to watch in the first place.

Something moderately funny (moderately funny?) happened the other night when I went out and missed doing this blog but I forgot to put it in yesterdays blog. It was nothing that amazing. While we were waiting to get into Dusk til Dawn night club a guy who I thought looked indian or pakistani, though my friends reckon he looked mixed race (I wouldn't usually point out a person's ethnicity during an anecdote but this becomes neccesary to the story in a minute), comes up to bouncer (who was black, by the way, I was white, Swpnil who was with me is Indian, and Paddy, Grant and James who were with us are all white, though it is also worth noting that Grant is ginger, which unfortunately makes him the lowest class citizen there (for the record I have nothing against ginger people, they should be entitled to the same rights as the rest of us - except for the right to reproduce (i joke again (not really)))), and starts shouting at him about something. From what I remember I think the bouncer refused the guy or threw him out because he might've been smoking drugs nearby. The guy kept shouting and getting aggresive, but he had a mate with him who kept trying to drag him away. The argument took a slight turn when the guy suddenly shouts to the bouncer "you ain't black! You're white", then after that he kept calling the bouncer a "fake nigger". Then the guy made us all laugh when he starts shouting to the bouncer with all seriousness "I'm twelth black! You fake nigger! I'm more black than you! I'm twelth nigger man!"
This made me feel a little competitive as my nan on my mother's side is mixed race, her father was black and her mother indian. So according to this guy I'm 8th black and actually winning in the "who is the blackest" stakes. Though in some ways the better point this guy was making (without actually meaning to - he was just being a dick) is that being "black" is less a skin colour and more of a frame of mind. At least it should be. I'm not sure if it is because I come from a family that is "ethnically diverse", but for me the distinctions we make between people over the colour of their skin or the country they come from is nothing more than a social construct. The difference is a pigmentation of the skin making it something totally cosmetic and supervicial.

I'm finding it difficult to make my point here without sounding patronising, or stating the obvious. I think what I mean is, is that I refuse to let myself be pigeon holed based on my race and I think we all should. Like whenever you have to fill in an application form for lets say a job, and you get that section that asks you what your ethnic back ground is, from the moment I first saw that years ago I would refuse to fill that section in, sometimes I even would write "does it matter?". It makes me feel really angry.

Forget "i'm proud to be black/white", we're human, that should be enough. Forget patriotism, England's not my home, the Earth is, and what the fuck do we need passports for anyway?! Why should I have to have a form that says where I can and can't live on this planet! This probably sounds stupid to you, but for me I see it the other way around. It's all the strange rules and customs that we live by and take for granted that I think are perverse. I seriously think passports, country borders, and boundries are stupid the same way racists should realise they're beliefs are stupid. I know it's is unrealistic to think that this will change over night but I'm sure one day in the future, history classes will look back on the way we run the world today, and the way we live, and think we were absolutely insane.