The Ebay Haunted Mirror

Joseph Birch, age 20, and Sotiris Charalambous claim to have found an antique  mirror which is said to be haunted by an evil spirit. According to a daily mail article which covered this story, Joseph and his flat mate would wake up in the middle of the night with stabbing pains and “covered in scratch marks”.

This story is relatively spine chilling, despite the fact that it is probably false and a clever marketing strategy designed to attract anyone interested in parapsychology and the supernatural world.

It is in human nature to be curious or even obsess about the supernatural world and what lies beyond death, as the prospect of a dead stop at the end of life goes against the humans struggle to find immortality.

This obsession is easy to take advantage of, clearly, as the bidding price on ebay for this ‘antique’, (a broken mirror found at the back of a skip), started at £100, with a warning attached “whoever buys it deserves to know”.

This story reminded me of the famous “haunted Ebay” painting, by Bill Stoneham, entitled “The Hands Resist Him”. This was a fairly ugly and creepy piece of work, featuring a little boy standing in front of a window where we can see hands pressed against the glass from the darkness.

The rumour behind this painting was that the boy would leave it at night, fleeing from the horror film-like doll which seems to be pointing a gun at him.

This painting, pictured on the left, was sold on Ebay for $1,025, and never heard of again. This clearly demonstrates my point that it probably was a clever marketing strategy which swindled some poor fool for a thousand dollars. 

              The "Haunted Sofa" by the Daywalt Fear Factory

The Harlem Shake

2013’s newest viral video featuring “The Harlem Shake” by Baauer has swarmed the internet like the Bubonic Plague, finally blowing Gangnam style off the map. We can all finally rest assured that the ‘musical’ act of terrorism they call Gangnam style will never be played obsessively on the radio or in night clubs ever again.

This God send by 23 year old Trap artists Harry Rodriguez, more popularly known as Baauer, has reached over 45 million views to date, and counting.

Baauer’s unique and extremely playful style of music, using a genre which is normally related to the ‘conventional’ sinister style of Trap / Crunk / Hip Hop, has been an incredible success and described as “irresistibly appealing” by online music site Pitchfork also seen as the Hipster Bible of music.

 However it seems that his musical talent is not the only thing that we can credit his high success rate to. A video, created by some genius teenagers, of a crowded room of people losing their shit to the song has become a viral internet trend, with Universities, Schools, Public Services and average people all joining in.

The up and coming musical style of trap seems to be making a hit world wide, pioneered by artists such as TNGT and of course Baauer, and possibly near changing the club scene as Dubstep a few years ago. 

In the Video below Baauer briefly talks about the Harlem Shake and his reaction to the sporadic burst of viral videos it seems to have inspired. Harry seems to be a bit uncomfortable in this interview, which I think can be put down the air head interviewer and her extremely obvious flirtatious behavior.

My Top 5 Harlem Shake Videos

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3)

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5)

What the Hell is Ask.Fm?

Following a recent drama which took place on Facebook today about a girl who "bitched" about another girl (are we meant to be shocked?) on www.askfm.com, I’m mortified to see the reaction of about 50 friends and acquaintances / people I actually don’t know.

Status upon status polluted my home page, all commenting on this ‘drama’ which is supposedly news worthy. In protest to this stupidity I refuse to give any examples of what has been said against this unlucky ask.fm user who thought it would be a good idea to insult people on a site which publicly publishes your “secret” answers.

Ask.fm is a website in which you sign up as usual, and are asked questions about yourself such as “who would you first call if you won the lottery?” and “are you the type of person with lots of friends or just a few close ones?”. Once you have answered these questions they are published and ‘friends’ can view the answers anonymously. This may seem like harmless and childish fun, however it is easy to see how these questions, and indeed their answers, can be very damaging depending on the way in which they are answered.

My question is how, in the race for new innovative ideas to create a new form of social networking or indeed, something completely new, are we lowering the bar? Or perhaps we are just facilitating the recreational needs of today’s society. However I find it very sad to think that something as trivial as this is what the public want. As seen on twitter and Facebook, it is clear to see that people give great importance to their daily lives, assuming each time that everyone else / their ‘followers’ will be interested.

I would say mind sets like this are built upon programs which glamorise fame and popularity such as “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex”. Despite the fact that I cannot claim to have never have watched and enjoyed these programs, I do think that they give a bad impression of how to succeed in life. For example, “The Only Way is Essex” portrays the life of young people who have made their success through their ignorance and eccentric / (to an extent) anti social behaviour. This is not how the majority of us will be able to make our name and money in life, but since we aspire to be like them we are convinced of the importance of our own personal lives. Or perhaps we struggle to reach the same level of recognition as these people.

But by giving out personal information like this, we are actually destroying our own privacy and the repercussions can be seen in cases such as the girl who bitched about other girls on ask.fm.

An Interesting Video on Facebook Privacy.

We are living in a time where privacy is almost nonexistent, and the stupidity / slip ups of our past (i.e. our Facebook activity, photos, comments, statuses) will come back to haunt us in the future. It has already been an issue of great concern that employers these days actually check our profiles to judge our character. On the 17^th of October 2012 a man lost his job at Ontario clothing store after posting an offensive comment on Facebook about Amanda Todd. People are even being sued over Facebook and Twitter comments, the internet is no longer a place of freedom and lawlessness; we now have laws in a virtual, almost nonexistent world. Even Obama has administered a law against the editing of a photo which was released of him shooting a shot gun. The internet is clearly going through a change, bringing a new definition to the word “public domain”.

We should all be wary of the long term repercussions when deciding to join needless, trivial sites such as ask.fm, as clearly the negatives will outweigh the positives in the end.

 Spanish / Gibraltarian conflict

There has, for a long time been great tension and dispute between Spain and the proud British independent colony of Gibraltar. Tensions have increased further recently, despite little media coverage in the United Kingdom, due to the regular Spanish incursions into the territorial waters of Gibraltar. The most unnerving case - the unauthorised intrusion of two Spanish Naval vessels, heavily armed with guns, into the territorial waters of Gibraltar on the 10^th of December 2012.

Mr. Stewart told MP’s during an emergency meeting “May I gently remind the house that an illegal incursion into British Gibraltarian sovereign waters is actually, technically and act of war?”

Had Britain been under the same heavy handedness of Thatcher and had the circumstances been similar to that of the Falklands war, those naval vessels, quite possibly, would have met the same fate as the Belgrano in 1971.

The outrage sparked a freedom of information request, revealing that there had been 42 formal written complaints to the Spanish Foreign Affairs Ministry since 2008 regarding similar Spanish incursions.

Intrusion by Spanish fishermen and the Spanish “Guardia Civil” / the Spanish Civil Guard have been a regular occurrence in these past few years; a prime example being on the 31^st of January when the Guardia Civil attempted jurisdiction over a working vessel within Gibraltarian territory – as close as the North Mole.

Pictured to the right is a Gibraltar National Day t shirt which humorously reads"Aqui no se pesca" / "You dont fish here"

The refusal of the Spanish Government recognize Gibraltarian territory is in violation of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, an agreement between countries such as Britain, Spain, France and the Dutch Republic to end the war. Although the treaty does   

not specify heavily on the Gibraltarian right to the surrounding waters, Spain is still in direct violation of the ‘UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’ which states that British Gibraltarian marine territory is 12 nautical miles (22km).

A comment posted in response to a recent article over the issue of soverignty over Gibraltar rightly read: 
"Spain only has the right to question the status of Gibraltar when they give up Ceuta and Melilla (in Morocco). Even if Spain were to give those up, then Gibraltar should still remain British as it's status was established by treaty. The bottom line is that the status quo is working - the people of Gibraltar are happy and the status of Gibraltar will not improve Spain's economic troubles."

Ex Chief Minister Peter Caruana stated that “Spain is subscribed to the treaty, making no reservations whatsoever in relation to Gibraltar. International law makes Spain’s denial of territorial waters in Gibraltar completely unsustainable in law.”

            Daily Mail: Most Recent Spanish Incursion.

Aside from regular incursions, it seems that the Spanish Government is partial to holding up the queue in the border to Spain to extortionate waits. Despite this being petty and an inconvenience to those Gibraltarians who work / have houses in Spain, it is also inconveniencing their own local workers who travel to Gibraltar daily to work and fight the wide spread poverty which can be found in the neighbouring city of “La Linea”.

In an attempt to curb the massive waiting times at the border, the Gibraltarian Government has set up cameras which stream live to the internet on www.frontierqueue.gi.

Being a proud Gibraltarian myself, I am outraged by the pettiness and provoking actions of the Spanish Government in these situations. The colony of Gibraltar is persistently trying to work with the Spanish Government to come to friendly terms, with regular charities to help the neighbouring Spanish city of “La Linea”, which is currently on the verge of Bankruptcy, frequent meetings with Spanish Governments and last but by no means least, providing the city with thousands of jobs. Hopefully one day soon these differences can be put aside and perhaps Spain and Gibraltar may finally work closer together to resolve these issues. 

For those unfamiliar with Gibraltar, there is a brilliantly produced virtual tour below.