The question of who I'd be if I could be anyone in the world (living, dead or fictional) is one of the easiest hypotheticals I can imagine answering. I know a lot of people would have a harder time. They'd be sitting there in their cubicles, worrying about whether the pain in their necks is definitely or almost definitely cancer, weighing up the lives of various Hollywood actors, entrepreneurs and sexual superhumans.
'Is it better to be George Clooney at his current age, time-proof, salt and pepper woman-nip, or Matt Damon, somewhat less attractive but equally rich and presumably more virile? Aaarrgghh!!!!' They'd say. Or perhaps, caught in a philosophical mood, they'd muse:
'What's the ideal amount of money and fame to produce lasting happiness? Ahh, of course, that of T.V.'s David Mitchell. I'm so right.'
But I've bypassed all these difficult and time-consuming ruminations using the blind, unthinking certainty that my brain's first response is the right one. If I could be anyone in the world, living, dead or fictional, I'd be...(drum roll):
Moominpapa. From The Moomins.
Yes, that's right. Moominpapa, doting patriarch of the Moomin family, has the best life in all of Creation. Just spectating on his perfect life is enough to permanently enrich your own. I think the only way to accurately convey the Edenic bliss of Moominpapa's existence is to get you to imagine a day in his life. For immersion, I'll use the second person. That's where you write 'you' a lot. Public school for the win.
The long winter has just passed in Moomin valley. Spring has returned from its travels and the entire country-side sparkles. The stillness of the air, which had made it seem as though time itself had slept through the cold, is just now beginning to move with the throwing back of bedsheets. Snow climbs the frost-paled walls of Moomin house, which is the only large property in several dozen miles of prime real estate.
Moominpapa opens his eyes. He sits up, stretches and yawns. Oh my, he thinks to himself, how cold my head is! And so he climbs free of the blankets which had kept him warm through the fading season, walks sleepily over to the hat-stand and dons his favourite top hat. He feels complete. This is the only piece of clothing that Moominpapa will worry about today, or on any other day. As soon as, years before, he had selected a hat that looked good and fitted his head, he never had to shop for clothes ever again. He's happily nude from the eyebrows down. Think on, reader, think on.
Turning to the just risen Moominmama, a gorgeous specimen, Moominpapa greets her cordially.
'Morning mama, did you sleep well?'
'Yes dear', Moominmama replies, retrieving her handbag from beneath the bed and putting on her apron. 'I wonder if the children are up. Shall I make us some breakfast?'
(I want to pause here to mention that Moominmama, too, is content with only one piece of clothing, her apron. This family's weekends are looking to be pretty damn shopping-free.)
As Moominmama heads downstairs to get breakfast ready, Moominpapa takes the opportunity to open the bedroom windows. It's a little tricky at first because of the frost, but Moominpapa's biceps are no stranger to exertion, what with him having been a SEA-FARING ADVENTURER. That's right, Moominpapa spent his youth sailing the seven seas and amassing ten libraries worth of classic, knock-em-dead yarns. Ever stuck for something interesting to say at parties? Yeah, you are, because you're not Moominpapa.
Sticking his head out into the crisp morning air, Moominpapa surveys his kingdom. Mountains, streams and undulating grasslands as far as the eye can see. To the south, in easy walking distance, the ocean. I want to reiterate the point that Moomin Valley represents a housing developer's blind spot the likes of which can only exist once every few decades. I mean, really, its unbelievable. I don't even want to know what the surrounding land is worth...
Moominpapa heads downstairs to the sound of laughter. His loving son Moomin (and if there's one thing I'll say against Moominpapa, its that choice of name for his only child. It's like me calling my son 'Human') embraces him and asks him whether he wants a slice of toast with jam. Moominpapa chuckles, replies that he does, and takes his toast by the window. There's the smell of fresh coffee in the air. The spring is stretching out around Moomin House in every direction. Boundless potential for adventure, limitless creative fuel for his memoirs. Sniff, Little My, Snorkmaiden and Snuffkin have just arrived, and the house is full of funny names and good cheer.
You know what, I'm gonna stop right there before I get depressed that I'm not Moominpapa. This is not the life of a middle-aged mammalian bipedal hippo-man. It's the life of a king. Let's summarize: Marital felicity. Nudity. No shopping. Loving, non-annoying, non-soul destroying children. A hot spouse (we must assume). A satisfying outlet for literary creativity. No mortgage on a three story house in a million acres of geographical gold. A treasure-trove of cherished memories and an infinite amount to be made because he's fictional and can't die. Good food. Love. A stylin' top hat.
Case. Fucking. Closed.
Note: The above is a series of half-truths based on my excessive love of the Moomins and nostalgia for anything made in 1990 or 91. In reality, I'd be a Frankenstien-like, equal parts hybrid of Ryan Gosling, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen King, John Mayer and Jesus.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Blackout
When I went on Wikipedia today and saw that enormous back-lit 'W' standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the words: 'Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge', I nearly had a panic attack. I had wanted to look up Matt Damon's involvement in the 2008 financial crisis expose 'Inside Job'. Scuttling on over to IMDB to find absolutely nothing made me feel hollow inside.
I am not a lawyer (my bank account agrees). I have neither the time, inclination nor expertise to pour over the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills in search of legal missteps, logical fallacies and unnecessary uses of the word 'hereby'. What follows is mere opinion. Mere as hell.
Sharing information is what people do. We are the only species capable of refining our communications to accurately refer to objects and ideas, and to be able to quickly clarify others' errors in understanding us. We are constantly driven to share, because what we stand to gain is almost unbelievably fantastic. Other people's lives and experiences enrich our own at every turn, whether from the neighbouring street or the neighbouring continent, and whether what they have to offer educates, energises or entertains us, we literally couldn't live without it. As millions of sub-Saharan Africans would tell you if they could, misinformation will kill you.
When new technology comes along that facilitates sharing to a higher degree, it's always going to be tempting for those who gained from the absence of that technology to encourage its prohibition. This is like trying to seal a dam with a cork, because technology will always evolve faster than the ability of anyone, no matter how rich, to mitigate the effects of its earlier stages. Was in in the interests of tribal councils, handsomely backed by bronze-smiths, to heavily tax iron-mines? You bet it was, and no doubt it put bread on a few dozen bronze-smiths' tables for a while. But in the end, everybody lost, because the neighboring tribe came and butchered them all with nice shiny iron. Because I'm ignorant, I had no idea, prior to writing this, whether the bronze or iron ages came first. Finding out took bloody ages. CAN YOU GUESS WHY?!
The SOPA bill proposes banning search engines (by which I mean Google), from including websites that include copyrighted content in search results. Unless they also plan on rigging everyone's homes with CCTV to monitor uses of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, I don't want to imagine how many millions of sites this would take off the banquet table of human productivity. The Chinese government doesn't ban Google searches relating to Tienanmen Square as a display of power. It knows that information changes minds. The absolute worst thing we could do in an era of economic crises, government spending cuts and University fees that seem to be actively seeking to produce a new aristocracy, is to limit the number of new ideas circulating in the minds of the youngest net-savvy generation.
Another insane proposal is to impose fines and a hefty jail sentence on those caught streaming unauthorised content ten times within a six month period. Firstly, if this were to come into effect in Britain, I could expect to lose 480 billion quid and serve 11 life sentences. Secondly, the very fact that they're aiming to make it illegal proves that they have absolutely no way of preventing it from happening. The technology has officially 'saturated'. It has been refined by the markets and by culture into a form that is so easily useable by everyone that it can no longer be controlled. Sorry Mr. Gates, but this is the price you pay for putting a personal computer in every home. This is the sound of progress.
The solution is not to imprison people, ruining their lives and the lives of their families, for taking advantage of something that is readily available to everyone. The solution is to change the game, implementing new systems of compensation for the creators of content that don't rely on people optionally making their lives less enjoyable for fear of imprisonment (see weed). The reason this doesn't, and arguably can't happen, is because the law-makers are beholden to the money-makers, and the money-makers have grown to such awesome stature that they can convincingly argue that the system belongs to them.
Let's take a step back though. Am I saying that stealing is OK? Absolutely not. Stealing is wrong; it always has been and it always will be. People's right to their own property is highly valued in our society, as it should be. Our possessions and productions are a part of who we are. The fruits of our labour feed us, as it were, and where theft is universally recognizable and can be be effectively combated, it should be. But the definition of which of our possessions can be stolen is going to shift, and with increasing speed in the coming decades. In years and cultures gone by, 'stealing' another man's wife was a crime punishable by death. Now, we acknowledge that a wife cannot, in fact, be stolen (not without chloroform, a length of duct-tape and an empty van anyway. Or so I hear...).
In the future, and make no mistake about this, people will transmit movies to each others' brains instantaneously via something which, from our 21st century perspective, is magic. Someone up there will try to have a piece of paper drawn up that says they'll have to go to jail. From the comfort of my own head, I will be staunchly arguing in the negative.
Note: In the above scenario, immortality is invented in about 2070. I take full advantage.
I am not a lawyer (my bank account agrees). I have neither the time, inclination nor expertise to pour over the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills in search of legal missteps, logical fallacies and unnecessary uses of the word 'hereby'. What follows is mere opinion. Mere as hell.
Sharing information is what people do. We are the only species capable of refining our communications to accurately refer to objects and ideas, and to be able to quickly clarify others' errors in understanding us. We are constantly driven to share, because what we stand to gain is almost unbelievably fantastic. Other people's lives and experiences enrich our own at every turn, whether from the neighbouring street or the neighbouring continent, and whether what they have to offer educates, energises or entertains us, we literally couldn't live without it. As millions of sub-Saharan Africans would tell you if they could, misinformation will kill you.
When new technology comes along that facilitates sharing to a higher degree, it's always going to be tempting for those who gained from the absence of that technology to encourage its prohibition. This is like trying to seal a dam with a cork, because technology will always evolve faster than the ability of anyone, no matter how rich, to mitigate the effects of its earlier stages. Was in in the interests of tribal councils, handsomely backed by bronze-smiths, to heavily tax iron-mines? You bet it was, and no doubt it put bread on a few dozen bronze-smiths' tables for a while. But in the end, everybody lost, because the neighboring tribe came and butchered them all with nice shiny iron. Because I'm ignorant, I had no idea, prior to writing this, whether the bronze or iron ages came first. Finding out took bloody ages. CAN YOU GUESS WHY?!
The SOPA bill proposes banning search engines (by which I mean Google), from including websites that include copyrighted content in search results. Unless they also plan on rigging everyone's homes with CCTV to monitor uses of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, I don't want to imagine how many millions of sites this would take off the banquet table of human productivity. The Chinese government doesn't ban Google searches relating to Tienanmen Square as a display of power. It knows that information changes minds. The absolute worst thing we could do in an era of economic crises, government spending cuts and University fees that seem to be actively seeking to produce a new aristocracy, is to limit the number of new ideas circulating in the minds of the youngest net-savvy generation.
Another insane proposal is to impose fines and a hefty jail sentence on those caught streaming unauthorised content ten times within a six month period. Firstly, if this were to come into effect in Britain, I could expect to lose 480 billion quid and serve 11 life sentences. Secondly, the very fact that they're aiming to make it illegal proves that they have absolutely no way of preventing it from happening. The technology has officially 'saturated'. It has been refined by the markets and by culture into a form that is so easily useable by everyone that it can no longer be controlled. Sorry Mr. Gates, but this is the price you pay for putting a personal computer in every home. This is the sound of progress.
The solution is not to imprison people, ruining their lives and the lives of their families, for taking advantage of something that is readily available to everyone. The solution is to change the game, implementing new systems of compensation for the creators of content that don't rely on people optionally making their lives less enjoyable for fear of imprisonment (see weed). The reason this doesn't, and arguably can't happen, is because the law-makers are beholden to the money-makers, and the money-makers have grown to such awesome stature that they can convincingly argue that the system belongs to them.
Let's take a step back though. Am I saying that stealing is OK? Absolutely not. Stealing is wrong; it always has been and it always will be. People's right to their own property is highly valued in our society, as it should be. Our possessions and productions are a part of who we are. The fruits of our labour feed us, as it were, and where theft is universally recognizable and can be be effectively combated, it should be. But the definition of which of our possessions can be stolen is going to shift, and with increasing speed in the coming decades. In years and cultures gone by, 'stealing' another man's wife was a crime punishable by death. Now, we acknowledge that a wife cannot, in fact, be stolen (not without chloroform, a length of duct-tape and an empty van anyway. Or so I hear...).
In the future, and make no mistake about this, people will transmit movies to each others' brains instantaneously via something which, from our 21st century perspective, is magic. Someone up there will try to have a piece of paper drawn up that says they'll have to go to jail. From the comfort of my own head, I will be staunchly arguing in the negative.
Note: In the above scenario, immortality is invented in about 2070. I take full advantage.
Monday, 16 January 2012
Ota's Tale
The village of Mansanu that ringed the bay wherein the Queen of Dice bobbed, tethered to the pier, was one of only three on the whole of Kyad. The other two were named Baraguin and Hol, and of the three villages it was Hol, on the opposite side of the island, that was the largest. That Mansanu was the seat of power in Kyad, and home to Dasai Callan, his wife Morio and their family, was a source of great shame and dishonour for the people of Hol, who had once held that seat themselves. The story of how this transfer of power occurred was told with reverential pride to the children of Mansanu, and with cautionary venom to the children of Hol:
'Over a hundred years ago the Dasai of Kyad was a man named Ota of Hol, and his wife Adalendi had born him five sons in ten years. Ota was not, therefore, lacking a successor to his seat, and in that respect he could rest easy. But Ota had loved his mother dearly, and she had been lost to him in the cruel winds of a storm, one that he had watched toss its fury upon the waves from his window. The body of Kara, mother of Ota, was never found, and Ota had wept for many weeks. Now, Ota was a superstitious man, and whenever he looked out of that window he had stood at when his mother was lost, he believed that he saw her out upon the waves, walking their crests and pining for the shore. And he took it into his mind that his mother's spirit was in need of a body, something made of her own blood that she could enter into and thereby walk once more on the land. And so Ota took it upon himself to sire a daughter for this purpose, and when she was finally born, last of all his children, he saw her both as his daughter and as his mother equally, and loved her twice as much as any other father loved their child.'
'One day there came a young man into Hol on a mission of trade from Mansanu, and he was the son of the best family in that village. Ota came to speak with the young man, along with all his family, and at first sight, his daughter/mother and the man from Mansanu fell deeply in love. Straight away, without even pursuing his trade, the young man asked for Ota's permission to marry his daughter. But this was something Ota could not allow, for to marry his mother to another man would mean that man becoming his father, and his pride was too great for this. And so he sent the young man on his way, though with generous gifts, and took his daughter home.' 'When the young man arrived back in Mansanu, he told his father what had happened.
“Then it is as the Sea-Dragons will, my son.” he said, “There is nothing you can do, nor should.”
Then the young man was angry at his father, and wept for a day and a night. In the morning his mother came in to see him, and he spoke with her about it.
“I love her more than I love the sea, and I love that dearly enough.” he said.
“Then without delay you should concoct a plan to be with her.” said his mother. “True love is not a thing that repeats itself in this life, and it must be seized by strong hands while it lingers.”
And so the young man from Mansanu took his mother's words to heart, and brought his loyal friends together to think of a plan.
“What we will do is this.” he said to everyone there. “We will wait until there is a train of crates being moved between the villages in trade, and then we will hide ourselves in one of them and by doing so come straight into that evil Ota's house.”
Everyone agreed that this was a good plan, and so they went and hid in the darkest places of the woods until, just as the plan said, a train of crates rolled by from Mansanu to Hol. Then they snuck past the guards and hid in the largest of the crates, and after a day and night of travel, came into the cellar of Ota's house.
“Now is our chance.” said the young man, and they crept through the house and into the bedchamber of Ota's daughter/mother. The young man woke her up and said: “I have come to take you back with me to Mansanu, where we can be married and live forever in happiness in the foam of the Sea-Dragons.”
And she said: “It is for the best that you have come, because I love you, and because my father treats me very strangely.” Then everyone snuck out of the house and travelled back through the forests, which was hard going. When they arrived back in Mansanu, everyone there was delighted, and thought it an excellent match. The young man's mother, especially, was very pleased, and lavished much attention on Ota's daughter. But the young man's father was displeased.
“Are you a fool?” he asked in anger. “You have brought war upon us!” Then the young man was ashamed, but his mother came up, and with her arms around both of her men she said:
“Ahh, but your age has blinded you my husband, for in this happy occasion is not just true love, but an opportunity for other gains. Ota's daughter tells me much about her father.”
And then the husband understood, and sent messengers to Hol with letters. In the letters was this: “Give the seat of power to the people of Mansanu, or your daughter/mother will be killed.”
Ota read the letter with tears in his eyes, for he had been stuck between two rocks. For him, the decision was between his power and his life, for what man can live without his mother? And so the seat of power passed to Mansanu, and the loving pair were married as well.'
There are two alternative endings to this story, one affirmative, one retributive. The one told in Mansanu goes:
'Then the Sea-Dragons threw up an almighty cloud of rich foam, and it fell upon the crops and made them grow taller than the trees for three full years.'
But a darker continuation, the reverse of the coin, is told by the bitter descendants of former Dasai Ota and his family, and it goes:
'But the Sea-Dragons, as punishment for destroying a kindly, grieving old man, sent sea-monsters from the deep to ruin the festivities, and they came dressed as men.'
How exactly these monsters from the deep 'ruined the festivities', was never told in detail, and those who are too young too remember that happy day settle for whatever ending they're given. But the older villagers were there on the day that sa Callan and si Morio were married. They all heard the news when Ota, father of Morio and former Dasai of Kyad, drowned himself in grief three days later, in sight of that fateful window. As for the end of the tale, those eldest of the Kyadians know full well that neither magical denouement ever occurred. They tell their grandchildren the tale, happy endings in Mansanu, tragic endings in Hol, because stories are good things, either way, and because magic is worth keeping. But they know that the Sea-Dragons leave their judgement for the long dark.
'Over a hundred years ago the Dasai of Kyad was a man named Ota of Hol, and his wife Adalendi had born him five sons in ten years. Ota was not, therefore, lacking a successor to his seat, and in that respect he could rest easy. But Ota had loved his mother dearly, and she had been lost to him in the cruel winds of a storm, one that he had watched toss its fury upon the waves from his window. The body of Kara, mother of Ota, was never found, and Ota had wept for many weeks. Now, Ota was a superstitious man, and whenever he looked out of that window he had stood at when his mother was lost, he believed that he saw her out upon the waves, walking their crests and pining for the shore. And he took it into his mind that his mother's spirit was in need of a body, something made of her own blood that she could enter into and thereby walk once more on the land. And so Ota took it upon himself to sire a daughter for this purpose, and when she was finally born, last of all his children, he saw her both as his daughter and as his mother equally, and loved her twice as much as any other father loved their child.'
'One day there came a young man into Hol on a mission of trade from Mansanu, and he was the son of the best family in that village. Ota came to speak with the young man, along with all his family, and at first sight, his daughter/mother and the man from Mansanu fell deeply in love. Straight away, without even pursuing his trade, the young man asked for Ota's permission to marry his daughter. But this was something Ota could not allow, for to marry his mother to another man would mean that man becoming his father, and his pride was too great for this. And so he sent the young man on his way, though with generous gifts, and took his daughter home.' 'When the young man arrived back in Mansanu, he told his father what had happened.
“Then it is as the Sea-Dragons will, my son.” he said, “There is nothing you can do, nor should.”
Then the young man was angry at his father, and wept for a day and a night. In the morning his mother came in to see him, and he spoke with her about it.
“I love her more than I love the sea, and I love that dearly enough.” he said.
“Then without delay you should concoct a plan to be with her.” said his mother. “True love is not a thing that repeats itself in this life, and it must be seized by strong hands while it lingers.”
And so the young man from Mansanu took his mother's words to heart, and brought his loyal friends together to think of a plan.
“What we will do is this.” he said to everyone there. “We will wait until there is a train of crates being moved between the villages in trade, and then we will hide ourselves in one of them and by doing so come straight into that evil Ota's house.”
Everyone agreed that this was a good plan, and so they went and hid in the darkest places of the woods until, just as the plan said, a train of crates rolled by from Mansanu to Hol. Then they snuck past the guards and hid in the largest of the crates, and after a day and night of travel, came into the cellar of Ota's house.
“Now is our chance.” said the young man, and they crept through the house and into the bedchamber of Ota's daughter/mother. The young man woke her up and said: “I have come to take you back with me to Mansanu, where we can be married and live forever in happiness in the foam of the Sea-Dragons.”
And she said: “It is for the best that you have come, because I love you, and because my father treats me very strangely.” Then everyone snuck out of the house and travelled back through the forests, which was hard going. When they arrived back in Mansanu, everyone there was delighted, and thought it an excellent match. The young man's mother, especially, was very pleased, and lavished much attention on Ota's daughter. But the young man's father was displeased.
“Are you a fool?” he asked in anger. “You have brought war upon us!” Then the young man was ashamed, but his mother came up, and with her arms around both of her men she said:
“Ahh, but your age has blinded you my husband, for in this happy occasion is not just true love, but an opportunity for other gains. Ota's daughter tells me much about her father.”
And then the husband understood, and sent messengers to Hol with letters. In the letters was this: “Give the seat of power to the people of Mansanu, or your daughter/mother will be killed.”
Ota read the letter with tears in his eyes, for he had been stuck between two rocks. For him, the decision was between his power and his life, for what man can live without his mother? And so the seat of power passed to Mansanu, and the loving pair were married as well.'
There are two alternative endings to this story, one affirmative, one retributive. The one told in Mansanu goes:
'Then the Sea-Dragons threw up an almighty cloud of rich foam, and it fell upon the crops and made them grow taller than the trees for three full years.'
But a darker continuation, the reverse of the coin, is told by the bitter descendants of former Dasai Ota and his family, and it goes:
'But the Sea-Dragons, as punishment for destroying a kindly, grieving old man, sent sea-monsters from the deep to ruin the festivities, and they came dressed as men.'
How exactly these monsters from the deep 'ruined the festivities', was never told in detail, and those who are too young too remember that happy day settle for whatever ending they're given. But the older villagers were there on the day that sa Callan and si Morio were married. They all heard the news when Ota, father of Morio and former Dasai of Kyad, drowned himself in grief three days later, in sight of that fateful window. As for the end of the tale, those eldest of the Kyadians know full well that neither magical denouement ever occurred. They tell their grandchildren the tale, happy endings in Mansanu, tragic endings in Hol, because stories are good things, either way, and because magic is worth keeping. But they know that the Sea-Dragons leave their judgement for the long dark.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Grass-fed Beef
At first glance, this meaty sacrifice to the God of Gibberish went straight over my head. 'Grass-fed beef', went my brain, 'reasonable to the point of mundane'. After all, what else would you give beef? Skittles? Don't make me laugh.
And so, another of poor language's loopholes is ruthlessly exploited for economic gain. This particular one reads: 'people won't notice if you change the noun to one that makes no contextual sense, but means vaguely the same thing'. The effect is much the same in 'drinking a can'. It can't help but suggest that we all have throats made of the rears of bin lorries.
To be fair, butchers have good reason for making the most of this linguistic blind-spot. Let's just admit it, the mental image of two dozen succulent 14,000 oz steaks (in my head they've got googly eyes) glazing in the sun's rays and nibbling a carpet of dew-splashed grass is both mouth-watering and charming. The image of actual cows doing the same may be charming (in a post-cardish kind of way), but it doesn’t titillate the taste buds.
For me, the image of cows in a field provokes a number of emotions and associations, none of which make me any more likely to take a trip to the butchers. 1. Revulsion: cows smell and shit on the floor. 2. Nostalgia: The toy farmyards of youth and any number of bovine cartoon characters. 3. Irritation: My shoes are muddy and the stile is right over the other god-damn side of the field. 4. A vague sense of tiredness: I'm empathetic and I know that somewhere nearby there's a farmer getting up early.
But it's good old-fashioned guilt that gives the food industry its main justification for butchering the written word. I don't want to eat cows. I want to eat pieces of cow on a plate. Anonymous morsels of cow called beef. Nobody ever milked beef. Nobody ever fed it grass. The best thing militant vegetarians could ever do for their cause would be to get legislation passed that enforces far stricter regulations around false advertising. If all restaurants were suddenly obliged to explain what was on your plate without the aid of linguistic subterfuge, we carnivores would all be fucked.
Menu
Starter: The brazed flesh of the Easter Bunny.
Main: A hunk of cow ass, swimming in a river of its own red blood cells. Desert: A million fish eggs.
Bon appetit, murderers.
And so, another of poor language's loopholes is ruthlessly exploited for economic gain. This particular one reads: 'people won't notice if you change the noun to one that makes no contextual sense, but means vaguely the same thing'. The effect is much the same in 'drinking a can'. It can't help but suggest that we all have throats made of the rears of bin lorries.
To be fair, butchers have good reason for making the most of this linguistic blind-spot. Let's just admit it, the mental image of two dozen succulent 14,000 oz steaks (in my head they've got googly eyes) glazing in the sun's rays and nibbling a carpet of dew-splashed grass is both mouth-watering and charming. The image of actual cows doing the same may be charming (in a post-cardish kind of way), but it doesn’t titillate the taste buds.
For me, the image of cows in a field provokes a number of emotions and associations, none of which make me any more likely to take a trip to the butchers. 1. Revulsion: cows smell and shit on the floor. 2. Nostalgia: The toy farmyards of youth and any number of bovine cartoon characters. 3. Irritation: My shoes are muddy and the stile is right over the other god-damn side of the field. 4. A vague sense of tiredness: I'm empathetic and I know that somewhere nearby there's a farmer getting up early.
But it's good old-fashioned guilt that gives the food industry its main justification for butchering the written word. I don't want to eat cows. I want to eat pieces of cow on a plate. Anonymous morsels of cow called beef. Nobody ever milked beef. Nobody ever fed it grass. The best thing militant vegetarians could ever do for their cause would be to get legislation passed that enforces far stricter regulations around false advertising. If all restaurants were suddenly obliged to explain what was on your plate without the aid of linguistic subterfuge, we carnivores would all be fucked.
Menu
Starter: The brazed flesh of the Easter Bunny.
Main: A hunk of cow ass, swimming in a river of its own red blood cells. Desert: A million fish eggs.
Bon appetit, murderers.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
The Room
I am being eaten, almost imperceptibly, by the room. It began on January 1st, as a flaking of skin. I swept the dust from my sheets and lived out the day. On the 23rd, the hairs on my forearms began to blow away on the currents of searching draughts from under the door. They would float in the air in front of me, before twisting off into corners, embedding themselves in hairline fractures in the skirting boards. By the end of the month I was hairless save those on my head, which had sickened to the hospital green of the walls.
On the 5th of March my fingernails fell to the floor while I was putting on a shirt, and a wispy grey mouse with its ribs showing scuttled out from a hole I'd never seen and ate them. After that I would dust off my flaking skin at the entrance to his house, and every day he would take the little pile of me inside. Until that time I could leave the room, but after it I became too dusty and abhorrent to be seen by the people I watched through the window.
On June 17th, my elbows became rusty hinges. I cried oil onto them for the first few days, but after that they were stiff. Sometime in October, my eyes were sucked out by a ghost in the glass as I watched a man and a woman in a tree.
On November 20th, my birthday, the mouse came out of his hole with one of my eyes, and I thanked him and could see again for a time.
Now it is December, and my wheezing heart, the pudding, is being worked away. This dank and desolate space is spreading me over itself ever more thinly. The mouse watches me from his hole.
The mirror long ago melted into the floorboards, but I get the impression that I have become transparent. The New Year looms, and I have come to believe something strange. I think that if another person tried to describe me, they would speak of walls. A ceiling, a floor.
On the 5th of March my fingernails fell to the floor while I was putting on a shirt, and a wispy grey mouse with its ribs showing scuttled out from a hole I'd never seen and ate them. After that I would dust off my flaking skin at the entrance to his house, and every day he would take the little pile of me inside. Until that time I could leave the room, but after it I became too dusty and abhorrent to be seen by the people I watched through the window.
On June 17th, my elbows became rusty hinges. I cried oil onto them for the first few days, but after that they were stiff. Sometime in October, my eyes were sucked out by a ghost in the glass as I watched a man and a woman in a tree.
On November 20th, my birthday, the mouse came out of his hole with one of my eyes, and I thanked him and could see again for a time.
Now it is December, and my wheezing heart, the pudding, is being worked away. This dank and desolate space is spreading me over itself ever more thinly. The mouse watches me from his hole.
The mirror long ago melted into the floorboards, but I get the impression that I have become transparent. The New Year looms, and I have come to believe something strange. I think that if another person tried to describe me, they would speak of walls. A ceiling, a floor.
Friday, 13 January 2012
Totalitarian Bathroom Etiquette
Ladies and gentlemen, a great battle has been lost in the war for equality, and I don't mean Mitt Romney winning New Hampshire (consider the preceding sentence a time-stamp for the foil-wearing space-linguists of two posts ago).
I'm talking, of course, about toilet seats. We really dropped the ball on this one fellas. I don't know which generation is at fault here (I suspect it was the cowardly veterans of World War II, too tired and emotionally scarred to stand up to the matriarchal dictatorships their households had become), but somewhere along the line we all flushed logic into the Atlantic.
Show me a man who has never left the toilet seat up and I'll show you a woman in drag. It's a problem we all face, and I'm not just talking about the Y chromosomes. If anything this is more of a problem for women, as the frustration many women feel seems to lie in the belief, which I admit must be intolerable, that half the population of mankind are rude morons. In order to get to the heart of all this, I'll be speaking in UNVERIFIABLE GENERALISATIONS from this point forward. Anyone who recoils from hard-hitting journalism of this sort should run for cover behind their nearest copy of Well-Evidenced Opinions Quarterly, where I can't get you. Ready?
Women are inherently worse decision-makers!! OK then. On we go.
Let's begin with a bare fact: Many women expect the men in their households to put the toilet seat down after urinating. 'A reasonable request', you might rudely interrupt. After all, every single time a woman uses the toilet, she needs to sit down. 'Its not like with you' they cry, 'with all your standing up and enjoying aiming'. Aiming may well be enjoyable (it is), but that's not the point. If we can safely assume that a man urinates far more often than he does the other thing, then we can also assume he needs the seat UP most of the time. Otherwise he risks committing the far greater and less defensible crime of piss-marking his territory, and if there's one thing we can all agree on its that toilets are for everyone except the very young and very old.
The way I see it, there are four possible scenarios branching off from the initial reprimand:
1. The man completely concedes the point and always, without fail, puts the toilet seat down. 'Great', you might rudely interrupt for a second time. But it's not great, because this amounts to the man almost always having to touch the dirty toilet seat, and the woman never, ever having to. In this scenario, the man is reduced to a kind of toilet elf, constantly predicting his Mrs Claus's next visit and never giving a thought to the fact the HE might be the next one to use the toilet, thereby making more work for himself.
2. The man never puts the seat down. Now this scenario would require a man of a certain mould, large in stature, probably a Conservative, who cares not a jot for his wife's mental health. While fairer in terms of the work involved (although with slight advantage to the man when a no.2 is in order), this isn't a viable option because it amounts to a breakdown of communication. Divorce looms like a giant, 50's father.
3. The man puts the seat down WHEN HE REMEMBERS. All sorts of problems with this one. The woman's annoyance at each failure to follow orders multiplies exponentially. To her, each subsequent act of insubordination is either an inexplicable failure of cognition (understandably, women can't relate to forgetting to put the seat down; the possibility of doing so is already nil by the time they've sat down), or an evil ploy to cling on to patriarchy via the only form of expression it has left: snarky passive-aggressive toilet seat power-plays. In truth, men will always forget to put the seat down because a) it's really hard to remember to act against your own self-interest, and b) as any good liberal child-rearer will tell you, the fear of punishment alone is rarely enough to alter bad behaviour. We need to know WHY what we're doing is wrong!
4. Scenario 4, for me, is utopia: The man retains the option NOT to put the seat down, but does put it down now and again as a simple act of kindness. Like a mint on a hotel pillow. What a wonderful system this would be: everyone could use the toilet in their own special way, taking liberating responsibility for the up or downness of the seat on a per-use basis. Heaven.
Realistically, we're all pretty much doomed to Scenario 3. As much as I love Scenario 4, it's probably going to go the way of most utopias, to the graveyard of dreams. Ah! But what of secret scenario number 5 (which isn't a secret as much as it is a result of poor planning)?! In the near-mythical Scenario 5 (I can barely believe I'm going suggest this even as a pie-in-the-sky theory) WOMEN would be reprimanded, on site, for leaving the toilet seat DOWN! Sweet, hand-sanitized revenge!
I am literally more likely to become Prime Minister, or a dragon, than Scenario 5 is to reach committee.
I'm talking, of course, about toilet seats. We really dropped the ball on this one fellas. I don't know which generation is at fault here (I suspect it was the cowardly veterans of World War II, too tired and emotionally scarred to stand up to the matriarchal dictatorships their households had become), but somewhere along the line we all flushed logic into the Atlantic.
Show me a man who has never left the toilet seat up and I'll show you a woman in drag. It's a problem we all face, and I'm not just talking about the Y chromosomes. If anything this is more of a problem for women, as the frustration many women feel seems to lie in the belief, which I admit must be intolerable, that half the population of mankind are rude morons. In order to get to the heart of all this, I'll be speaking in UNVERIFIABLE GENERALISATIONS from this point forward. Anyone who recoils from hard-hitting journalism of this sort should run for cover behind their nearest copy of Well-Evidenced Opinions Quarterly, where I can't get you. Ready?
Women are inherently worse decision-makers!! OK then. On we go.
Let's begin with a bare fact: Many women expect the men in their households to put the toilet seat down after urinating. 'A reasonable request', you might rudely interrupt. After all, every single time a woman uses the toilet, she needs to sit down. 'Its not like with you' they cry, 'with all your standing up and enjoying aiming'. Aiming may well be enjoyable (it is), but that's not the point. If we can safely assume that a man urinates far more often than he does the other thing, then we can also assume he needs the seat UP most of the time. Otherwise he risks committing the far greater and less defensible crime of piss-marking his territory, and if there's one thing we can all agree on its that toilets are for everyone except the very young and very old.
The way I see it, there are four possible scenarios branching off from the initial reprimand:
1. The man completely concedes the point and always, without fail, puts the toilet seat down. 'Great', you might rudely interrupt for a second time. But it's not great, because this amounts to the man almost always having to touch the dirty toilet seat, and the woman never, ever having to. In this scenario, the man is reduced to a kind of toilet elf, constantly predicting his Mrs Claus's next visit and never giving a thought to the fact the HE might be the next one to use the toilet, thereby making more work for himself.
2. The man never puts the seat down. Now this scenario would require a man of a certain mould, large in stature, probably a Conservative, who cares not a jot for his wife's mental health. While fairer in terms of the work involved (although with slight advantage to the man when a no.2 is in order), this isn't a viable option because it amounts to a breakdown of communication. Divorce looms like a giant, 50's father.
3. The man puts the seat down WHEN HE REMEMBERS. All sorts of problems with this one. The woman's annoyance at each failure to follow orders multiplies exponentially. To her, each subsequent act of insubordination is either an inexplicable failure of cognition (understandably, women can't relate to forgetting to put the seat down; the possibility of doing so is already nil by the time they've sat down), or an evil ploy to cling on to patriarchy via the only form of expression it has left: snarky passive-aggressive toilet seat power-plays. In truth, men will always forget to put the seat down because a) it's really hard to remember to act against your own self-interest, and b) as any good liberal child-rearer will tell you, the fear of punishment alone is rarely enough to alter bad behaviour. We need to know WHY what we're doing is wrong!
4. Scenario 4, for me, is utopia: The man retains the option NOT to put the seat down, but does put it down now and again as a simple act of kindness. Like a mint on a hotel pillow. What a wonderful system this would be: everyone could use the toilet in their own special way, taking liberating responsibility for the up or downness of the seat on a per-use basis. Heaven.
Realistically, we're all pretty much doomed to Scenario 3. As much as I love Scenario 4, it's probably going to go the way of most utopias, to the graveyard of dreams. Ah! But what of secret scenario number 5 (which isn't a secret as much as it is a result of poor planning)?! In the near-mythical Scenario 5 (I can barely believe I'm going suggest this even as a pie-in-the-sky theory) WOMEN would be reprimanded, on site, for leaving the toilet seat DOWN! Sweet, hand-sanitized revenge!
I am literally more likely to become Prime Minister, or a dragon, than Scenario 5 is to reach committee.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Counting Calories
I’ve never been very good at maths. The closest I’ve come to doing algebra since GCSE is in typing XXX into Google, so it works in my favour that calculating calories only involves working with numbers in the very low thousands.
It’s an unavoidable fact that all of us living in 21st century have mirrors in our homes. I can’t help but lament this turn of events. Before the advent of the compulsory bathroom mirror, you would only ever have seen yourself in still pools or, if you were an Eskimo, glaciers, meaning that the sheer data you’d have about your own day-to-day appearance would have been quite limited. I think most of us could do with a little less data. That freckle on the underside of your left peck isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the attractive woman at the bar’s indecision.
But there we have it. Mirrors are everywhere and, apart from foiling the best-laid plans of ghosts and axe murderers, their main job is to make us all feel flabby. And their damn good at it, because they have science on their side. Stupid, always-has-to-have-the-last-word-science, with its photons and wavelengths and facts.
I’ve been counting calories for a week now, and I’ve lost two pounds. It’s actually enormously satisfying to see a weekly loss, and I’d recommend this underrated technique to anyone looking to give mirrors and science what for. I know exactly how many cans of cider (four), bars of chocolate (five), and piled-high plates of pan-Asian cuisine (zero you twat) I can afford to cram into my food-hole to maintain my current rate of concession to mirrors. And knowledge, as they say, is power.
In exactly seven weeks, I’ll be a somewhat thinner man. Perhaps I’ll even shave, safe in the knowledge that my chin will be just that. Until then, I’ll find other ways to shut my ego up. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve just remembered that there’s a small mirror near the toilet in my girlfriend’s house which, angled just so, provides a rather flattering framed shot of my junk.
It’s an unavoidable fact that all of us living in 21st century have mirrors in our homes. I can’t help but lament this turn of events. Before the advent of the compulsory bathroom mirror, you would only ever have seen yourself in still pools or, if you were an Eskimo, glaciers, meaning that the sheer data you’d have about your own day-to-day appearance would have been quite limited. I think most of us could do with a little less data. That freckle on the underside of your left peck isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the attractive woman at the bar’s indecision.
But there we have it. Mirrors are everywhere and, apart from foiling the best-laid plans of ghosts and axe murderers, their main job is to make us all feel flabby. And their damn good at it, because they have science on their side. Stupid, always-has-to-have-the-last-word-science, with its photons and wavelengths and facts.
I’ve been counting calories for a week now, and I’ve lost two pounds. It’s actually enormously satisfying to see a weekly loss, and I’d recommend this underrated technique to anyone looking to give mirrors and science what for. I know exactly how many cans of cider (four), bars of chocolate (five), and piled-high plates of pan-Asian cuisine (zero you twat) I can afford to cram into my food-hole to maintain my current rate of concession to mirrors. And knowledge, as they say, is power.
In exactly seven weeks, I’ll be a somewhat thinner man. Perhaps I’ll even shave, safe in the knowledge that my chin will be just that. Until then, I’ll find other ways to shut my ego up. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve just remembered that there’s a small mirror near the toilet in my girlfriend’s house which, angled just so, provides a rather flattering framed shot of my junk.
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
'Hereby'
I hereby ('hereby', like 'forthwith' and 'notwithstanding', are magic words, spells if you like, that we use to distract ourselves from the strong likelihood that we are all, even at our shiniest, both fallible and mortal. Lawyers are particularly fond of these archaic incantations because, as Arthur C. Clarke definitely said: “any sufficiently powdered-wigsy piece of writing is indistinguishable ...from biblical revelation”) pledge to write at least one thing worth reading in this space every day, for the foreseeable future.
Well, now that we've firmly established that this is absolutely going to happen (skeptics should refer back to that bit where I said 'hereby'), I'll elaborate in order to fill the word count I'm about to tell you about. In an effort to one day have a statue erected of me in a choice London location (perhaps on top of that big, unused column) I'm going to try and write between 300-500 words worth of sentences and paragraphs every day. It really is important that they have sentences and paragraphs, because otherwise the the foil-wearing space linguists of the future will find it difficult to tell how clever I was. Another feature of my work is going to be the tiresome use of parentheses (I like parentheses because they save me having to filter out thoughts that, while distantly related to the sentences they've barged in on, are at best estranged ninth cousins after an inheritance they don't deserve).
I'll be writing on a wide array of topics, from the inane (whether the shit of horses or bulls is funnier) to the 'basically inane but I did think think for a minute that maybe it was a bit less inane than it definitely was'. As I have to do this every single day (remember 'hereby') expect lots of reviews of things that aren't new enough to need reviewing, ruminations on current events that really suffer from the fact that I don't read newspapers, and water-damaged boxes of budget creative writing. Such as you might buy in Lidl. Poems called Love and Death, or Emotion-shaped Minimalist Pathos Treats in Sugared Salt Water, that sort of thing. I'll also be posting everything on my freshly dusted blog (in this, the blog version of the text, this sentence is superfluous!), because Facebook is stingy (as it turns out, it isn't).
Well, now that we've firmly established that this is absolutely going to happen (skeptics should refer back to that bit where I said 'hereby'), I'll elaborate in order to fill the word count I'm about to tell you about. In an effort to one day have a statue erected of me in a choice London location (perhaps on top of that big, unused column) I'm going to try and write between 300-500 words worth of sentences and paragraphs every day. It really is important that they have sentences and paragraphs, because otherwise the the foil-wearing space linguists of the future will find it difficult to tell how clever I was. Another feature of my work is going to be the tiresome use of parentheses (I like parentheses because they save me having to filter out thoughts that, while distantly related to the sentences they've barged in on, are at best estranged ninth cousins after an inheritance they don't deserve).
I'll be writing on a wide array of topics, from the inane (whether the shit of horses or bulls is funnier) to the 'basically inane but I did think think for a minute that maybe it was a bit less inane than it definitely was'. As I have to do this every single day (remember 'hereby') expect lots of reviews of things that aren't new enough to need reviewing, ruminations on current events that really suffer from the fact that I don't read newspapers, and water-damaged boxes of budget creative writing. Such as you might buy in Lidl. Poems called Love and Death, or Emotion-shaped Minimalist Pathos Treats in Sugared Salt Water, that sort of thing. I'll also be posting everything on my freshly dusted blog (in this, the blog version of the text, this sentence is superfluous!), because Facebook is stingy (as it turns out, it isn't).
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