A Modest Supposition
Suppose for a moment that the end of the world won’t take place in our lifetimes.
It’s a bit of a big supposition, isn’t it? On the same sort of scale as “suppose there are ghosts in your fridge” or “suppose Frosty the Snowman’s magical hat fell into the wrong hands and was used to reanimate the embalmed remains of Joseph Stalin”. We seem to have this grudging acceptance that the world as we know it is probably going to end quite soon, or at the very least be plunged into an unspecified dystopian or post-apocalyptic future. What if it’s not going to?
Suppose technology saves us from climate change. Suppose we save ourselves from it. Suppose a series of new innovations revitalise the global economy. Suppose social reform leads the African continent into an era of mechanised transit and industry, bringing wealth and education to all its people. Suppose the quality of life of every social grouping in the world continues to steadily increase for the rest of our lifetimes, and the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren.
Suppose violent conflict continues to decrease; you might not think it to look at the news, but over the course of pretty much any statistically meaningful timeframe you want to measure it, wars are becoming less and less common on a global scale. So is crime, poverty and infant mortality. At 52%, the UK currently has the lowest rate of cancer survival in the developed world. Better than even odds, and if you’re in the other 48%, you’ll still live a longer and more functional life than you would as little as five years ago.
Suppose the world is actually a wonderful and continuously improving place. Suppose the high profile exceptions to this are fed into our congenitally paranoid brains by an exploitative media, which cares too little about representing reality and too much about keeping our attention. Consider this notion on a regular basis, especially when putting your trust in a third party news organisation.
We’re happy to question authority when it tells us what we want to hear, but when given a series of world events which we explicitly don’t want to hear, we just accept it. “Doesn’t surprise me”, we’ll say. The idea of everything going horribly and unavoidably wrong seems to be a bit of a comfort to us, but we all still keep paying pension contributions and having kids. Yet we know where we stand with a ticking time-bomb of a planet, slowly chugging its way to oblivion. It’s a disturbingly nice idea.
Suppose the world isn’t rubbish. You don’t even have to believe it, just play along at home for as long as you can bear to do so. Suppose everything’s going to be alright after all. If we’re so convinced of this handbasket’s inevitable infernal destination, why not pretend otherwise until we get there? It’ll certainly be a less obnoxious attitude to wave under the noses of our fellow passengers. Where’s the harm in it?
Suppose we’re optimistic. What’s the worst that can happen?
Until Next Time…
Do you know any cynics? It wouldn’t surprise me if you did.
Ask a cynic about the cartoons of their childhood and they’ll paint a picture of crass commercial exploit, where glorified 23-minute toy adverts encouraged hyperactive seven year-olds to pester their parents for costly action figures. I, on the other hand, have far rosier memories of carefully woven moral tales, imparting valuable lessons onto impressionable young minds.
Naturally, because we were stupid kids we needed it spelling out for us in 30 second recaps at the end of the episode. Here are a few examples from wholesome furry-thonged action series He-Man.
A cursory look over the contemporary equivalents of these cartoons reveals that although these moral messages still exist, they’re not as prevalent as they once were. Given that you can’t take two steps in any direction these days without standing on another bloody cynic, decrying lax moral fibre and diminishing parental responsibility, you might think our society needs even more of these messages.
I’m inclined to agree, but I don’t see why it should be limited to children’s television. Contemporary media is a subtle artform, and we can’t expect the viewers to take from it what the creative team beind that artform intended. With that in mind, I’d like to see educational messages of all stripes appended to popular television series, briefly summarising what the viewer is supposed to have learned. Naturally, these should be delivered in character by popular cast members.
Imagine, if you will:
House and Dr. Cuddy sit in the lab. They both turn to face the camera and smile.
HOUSE: Hi there. In today’s episode of House, you saw me pressuring an ill mother-to-be to abort the unborn fetus that was killing her.
CUDDY: And me stubbornly resisting this act because of my own history with failed pregnancy.
Both smile again.
HOUSE: In the end, Dr. Cuddy got her way, and only extraordinary luck and my medical brilliance prevented the death of both mother and fetus.
CUDDY: Although the appropriate course of action should have been to abort the child -
HOUSE: Fetus.
CUDDY: - child, House’s insensitivity towards both my feelings and the feelings of the mother spurred me on to make non-objective and dangerous decisions. Although everything turned out alright in the end, real life doesn’t always work like that.
HOUSE: So remember, when influencing life-or-death decisions, don’t let your own emotional baggage impair your judgment.
CUDDY: And be mindful of the feelings of all involved parties, for fear of alienating them. Especially when dealing with sensitive issues.
They exchange glances and smile for the camera once more.
HOUSE: Until next time…
Credits roll.
Or:
Jack Bauer sits in a cargo container, furtively glancing at the entrance, caked in sweat and someone else’s blood. He turns to the camera and flashes a big grin.
JACK: Hi there. In today’s story I threatened to gouge out a terrorist’s eye with a knife unless he revealed vital information. Although I was doing this to safeguard millions of American lives, real life rarely has stakes this high, and even when it does, you still have to reconcile that with whatever ethical boundaries you may have…
Or:
Gil Grisham sits at his desk, studying a cockroach. He puts it down and smiles to the camera.
Gil: Hi. On today’s CSI, you saw me make a rudimentary mathematical error based on an erroneous assumption regarding the specific density of human flesh, which led to the conviction of an innocent man…
Even if they don’t actually tack them on to the end of the episode, even if they just film them and have them as an optional DVD extra, these would be marvellous sanity checks for the overall concept of the show. I for one would find it refreshing and reassuring to know everyone involved, producer and viewer alike, actually took some time to think about how complex issues are being put across for the purpose of entertainment.
I’d also like to see the creative team behind Lost have to come up with a summary of what the viewer is supposed to have learned at the end of each episode. That’ll learn ‘em.
My Name is Rhythm, and I am Going to Get You
Has anyone else noticed how, when a crowd starts clapping along to live music without any encouragement from the performer, they always clap on the offbeat? What’s that about?
I’ll tell you what it’s about: it’s about winding me up. Not me exclusively, of course, but all people of a finickety aural nature. If I look around I’ll see other people in the same situation, hands poised a foot apart with a look of pained confusion on their face. They want to clap along, but are faced with the Dutch choice of either clapping out of time with everyone else or doing it properly and looking like a complete spazz for being different. I’ve taken to sitting on my hands.
At first I thought this phenomenon was unique to the Big Session Folk Festival (officially the Third Whitest Place on Earth, after Oxfordshire and Parliament), but over the past few years I’ve noticed it more and more in a number of different venues, and it utterly beggars belief. There isn’t a more wrong place to clap without arhythmically flailing your hands together at random intervals.
Many years ago at a work Christmas party, I spent the entirety of Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves trying to convey the alien concept of “beat” to a Belgian work colleague. How can you not hear it? How? What’s wrong with you? It’s right there! And there! And there it is again! I’ve just about learned to accept the existence of these people, but I can’t lay all the blame for this offbeat clapping madness at their feet alone.
It’s not that the audience can’t identify the beat, but that they’re clapping exactly out of phase with it. With this in mind, I’d like to propose a theory: people inclined to start clapping to music have no natural sense of rhythm. Everyone else follows suit, either out of politeness or ignorance, and the crowd aggregates the clap to keep time exactly out of sync with where it’s supposed to be.
The solution is quite straightforward. Everyone in the audience wears a set of gloves wirelessly integrated into a system that monitors the drummer’s high hat and bass pedal movements. When these gloves come into contact with each other, they administer an electric shock, the intensity of which is determined by how far away it is from one of the pedals going down. No penalty if you’re bang on the money, a mild irritation if you’re slightly out of step, and blinding agony if you put your hands together at that dreaded perfectly incorrect moment.
Might make applause a little tricky.
Slagging Off Everyone’s Mum
After I’ve finished typing this, I’m going to listen to Human, by The Killers, all the way through for the first time, and I’m going to enjoy it even if the process actually does kill me.
Do you remember enjoying I Kissed a Girl by Kate Perry? The simple hook? The catchy refrain? The naive and quaint whisper of girl-on-girl action? Then everyone and his mum set it as their ringtone, and the bajillionth repetition of Kate’s bi-curious experimentation leads you to wonder if maybe she should have drawn her conclusions by now, and perhaps had them published in a respected lesbonic academic journal.
Or how about Bring Me To Life by Evanescence? I genuinely really liked this song when it first came out. Amy Lee is a stunningly talented vocalist, and if you haven’t rummaged around the grimy floor of the internet for any of their accoustic offerings yet, I strongly recommend you do. I found a lot of their first album to be a bit samey, but they were ultimately redeemed by this one awesome song. Then everyone and his mum played, sang, hummed and whistled it, for about two continuous months, whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself.
This song was literally too good for its own good. Eventually everyone (and his mum) got sick of it. Now people seem to be afraid to express any liking for it outside of an ironic context. It’s been sentenced to serve the same punishment as Barbie Girl and Ebeneezer Goode, both of which have their own merit, but neither of which you’d want as a cellmate.
Now I’ve come across this most recent Killers offering, which actually came out three months ago, but which has only filtered into my hermetically sealed music bubble over the past week, with everyone and his erstwhile mum (and more pertinently my girlfriend, who I may as well share a skull with) singing as much of the chorus as they remember.
This tends to be “are we human, or are we dancers”, repeated ad nauseum, which I’ve now learned isn’t even the actual lyric. I wasn’t aware the two were mutually exclusive, but I’m not one to let a bit of stray set theory ruin my enjoyment of a song. I quite like The Killers. I quite like sausages as well, but if I was forcefed Asda own-brand chipolatas for a week, they’d probably lose their appeal by Tuesday afternoon.
Unlike the other two examples, I haven’t had a chance to just enjoy this one. It’s already winding me up and I haven’t even listened to it. By rights, I should really like this song, and I’ll be mildly gutted if I can objectively assess it as being quite good, but also have an irrational dislike of it caused by half-arsed mass-exposure.
I’m not sure who to blame more: everyone, or his mum.
Masochism Centre Edition
I’m currently looking into building myself a media centre. Media centres aren’t a subject I know a great deal about, and whilst carrying out my research I’ve stumbled across LinuxMCE, a media centre environment which is conceptually awesome. If I set this up, I could (in theory) direct our cable service through it, have it manage suitably-interfaced services in our house (heating, lighting, security), carry out VoIP and video conferencing, and (the bit that I find most impressive) set up thin client terminals on all the other TVs in the house, so I can not only access my media from every room, but also have each simultaneous user’s media follow them wherever they go.
We’re talking proper automated house-of-the-future stuff here. I could phone or email my empty house and get it to turn the lighting and heating on and off, or have Star Trek-style conversations with friends or family anywhere in the world over wall-mounted TVs and monitors in every room in the house. I’d half expect Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons to materialise and start sweeping the floor. Watching the video demo, I can’t help but be impressed and inspired.
But I’m not sure I trust it. I’m not a platform warrior. I’m a fairly competent linux user and employ it as part of my job on a daily basis, but my experience with open source software is that whilst you don’t pay a material value for it, you do end up paying for it in time and expertise. There may be plenty of developers prepared to donate their time to open source projects, but there are woefully few technical authors, or QA testers, or user interface designers, and it shows. The software may perform like a greased weasel on amphetamines, but it’s often as intuitive as a nine-sided brick, and when issues go beyond your own ability to self-support, you have to throw yourself on the mercy of “the community”. That’s not to say it’s bad, just that rather than getting what you pay for, you pay for what you get.
Still, I’m considering giving it a go. All I have to lose is my time, sanity and hair, all of which have long since started disappearing anyway.
Poor Production Values
Ever become obsessed with a song, to the point where it rattles around in your head both night and day, and unless you spend an embarassing amount of time constructing some sort of bastardised creation relating to it, it will continue to haunt you until the day you die?
Nah, me neither.
Savoury Success
I used to be quite fat. Think somewhere between Big Daddy and Winston Churchill, and you’ll have me circa 2004. By eating sensibly and getting more exercise, I’m now somewhere around Adrian Chiles from The One Show. Unfortunately, recent job changes have forced me into the lifestyle of regularly eating out of vending machines, and daily Yorkie Bar fixes have seen me slide back down into gravity’s warm, wobbly caress.
So I started making vaguely sensible packed lunches, and as a result I haven’t had a single Yorkie Bar in about a month. I’ve been having Muller Corners instead. Today I had a flavour called “Vanilla Choco Balls”, and if that doesn’t sound like an interracial gay porn title, I don’t know what does. Anyway, whilst munching away on this, contemplating ethnically diverse adult films for the discerning gentleman, a question occured to me.
Why do you not get savoury Muller Corners?
They’re a delicious culinary accident just waiting to happen. The first idea that sprang to mind was pork scratchings and dripping, which would probably be an experience not entirely unlike fellating a pig, but beyond this are ideas with a bit more mainstream appeal. Croutons and soup, for example. Turkey and gravy. Lemongrass and thai green paste. Crackers and caviar. Cream cheese and biscuits. Miniature sausages and smooth creamy mashed potato. Meaty faggots in a thick curry sauce. Actually, that last one might be a sequel for Vanilla Choco Balls.
The boundaries between sweet and savoury are in dire need of transgression. We have donuts filled with jam, custard and chocolate. Why not mushy peas, dusted with a light sprinkling of salt? Switch off your food format conventions! Turn the edible world on its self-assured and presumptuous head. Beef ice lollies. Fried tempura vegetable cookies. Peppered hash brown bars in a thick tomato coating.
Subverting your food has never been so enjoyable. Or sickening.
The Emperor’s New Tracksuit
It is a sad but unavoidable fact that I am slowly turning into my dad. I nearly watched a documentary on canals last weekend, which should give you some idea of just how far it’s progressed. Once I own a copy of Nat King Cole Sings the Blues, I’ll know the transformation is complete. Until then, I’ll just have to measure the decline by how annoyed I get at young people.
I’ll say that again: young people. I’m 26, have no functional recall of either Black Monday or the Lockerbie Bombing, and the earliest contemporary pop song I can remember hearing is Stevie Wonder’s Part-Time Lover. Young people are getting on my nerves.
Except it’s not young people. It’s a specific young person who was sat over the aisle from me on the train a couple of days ago. Tracksuited and sporting a no-back-and-sides haircut, he was playing a game on his phone with an annoyingly catchy and loud techno/dub soundtrack. I was sorely tempted to go to the woman sitting behind him, politely ask if I could open the window, then lean over the seat, snatch the phone away from him and hurl it to some obscure cranny of the West Midlands rail network.
I don’t just mean I was idly fantasising about doing this. I was seriously weighing up the pros and cons of going through with it. Stepping over the line and becoming a low-level vigilante, combating injustices too trivial for the law to handle. Even Batman had to start somewhere. Once I’d done it I could ad-lib something witty, and the rest of the people in the carriage would cheer and give me a round of applause. I Am Shallow Justice! Cower, antisocial wrongdoers, for your days are numbered.
In the end I decided against it, on the grounds that it would only be polite to ask him to turn it down first, and that would ruin the surprise. He might even actually turn it down once asked, thus smashing all my prejudices about young people in tracksuits. Bizarrely, the fact that he was asian didn’t actually register until I was recalling what happened after the fact.
It comes as no surprise to me that I’m probably considerably more biased against tracksuits and stupid haircuts than I am against young asian people. If you think about it, judging people based on how they dress is entirely defensible. If we willingly telegraph our allegiance to an abstract social grouping by wearing certain clothing, we have to take the rough with the smooth.
It might seem easy for me, someone who habitually dresses either smart-casual or like an off-hours Top Gear presenter, to defend making character judgments based on what people wear, but clean-cut mainstream attire carries its own concerns. I don’t bat an eyelid at someone with facial piercings and a Ramones t-shirt, but what do they think of me? I used to get quite paranoid about this. I wanted to meet their disapproving gazes and say something like “been in any good moshpits lately?” or “I used to have transgressively long hair, y’know”.
The problem I find with telegraphing information like musical tastes, social background or political allegiances through what we wear (or through any broadcast means for that matter) is that this information is no less superficial than any other immediate judgments you can form about people. There’s no uniform for not being an arsehole, and even if there were, we’d all wear it.
I’ll show you something…
The tail-end of November is always a depressing time of year. Shorter days; Christmas anxiety; the icy spectre of death nudging another wooden bead from left to right on the abacus of your mortal existence. It all adds up. As a result, this is the perfect time to talk about the Ralph McTell song Streets of London.
If you’re unfamiliar with it (presumably because you’ve had the good fortune not to be born on planet Earth in the past fifty years) you can find it here. I’m always stunned to discover people who don’t know this song. We sang it during assemblies at primary school, and I didn’t discover it was a commercially released pop track from the 1970s until my teens.
The basic concept behind the song is McTell challenging the listeners’ audacity in thinking their personal problems are of any consequence, what with all the homeless people and old sailors in the world. “How can you tell me that you’re lonely? You privileged bougeosie ponce, with your roof, and your bed, and your passing interaction with functional society. You make me sick!”
It might very well be a contender for the most miserable song ever written, but just to secure its title, I think it needs an extra verse:
Have you seen the kitten
With the terminal diseases
Missing both his back legs
Pulled along on rusty wheels
He’s ground up into dogfood
And then fed to starving orphans
Slaving in the sweatshops
Making clubs for killing seals
I think I’ll write to him and see if he’s interested in revising it.
Bloody Typical
No-nonsense misanthropic curmudgeons are all the rage these days, so it’s just my bloody luck I’m as cheerful and upbeat as I am, isn’t it?
It’s not easy to stay positive in the face of all these people telling you how rubbish the world is, or how much people suck. Or how awesome the world would be if people weren’t such stupid, greedy, careless bastards. Or how brilliant people are when they’re not subject to the choking whims of an uncaring, rubbish world. Make your sodding minds up.
It’s also a little too easy to complain; about the economy, for example, or the establishment, or decaying societal values. Illiteracy, obesity, poverty, injustice, inequality, bigotry of all stripes, the environment, GM food, religion, crime, healthcare, teenage pregnancy and immigration policy are all easy enough subjects for us to roll our eyes at, then shake our heads and mutter about how bloody typical it is. Unspeakable horrors systematically dismantling all we know and love? Tsk. Bloody typical.
It’s a wonder any of us can motivate ourselves to get out of bed in the morning, let alone produce, or even simply admire, works of undeniable merit that benefit the whole of mankind in subtle but profound ways. No, it’s far easier to just be miserable about the whole sorry state of our earthly existence. You should try adopting a more positive outlook on life.
You know, like mine.
