I deleted my Twitter account today. I deleted my Facebook account early this week so I suppose it has been coming, but I didn't see it coming. I had been merrily tweeting away just minutes before, in fact.
But I have, for a number of years now, earnestly been telling everyone who listens that I think Twitter has become something of a social problem and I'm pleased that I've finally demonstrated any kind of moral backbone. If I'm completely honest, I had only been maintaining my Twitter account because I had joined the VENERABLE MICROBLOGGING™ SITE in February 2007 and as such was something of an early adopter. It made me feel like an internet wizard.
When it came to the crunch, it was all Andrea Leadsom's fault.
Earlier in the morning I'd tweeted that Andrea Leadsom is a daft moo. John Dobson, who is well worth following if you are one of the BRAINWASHED SHEEPLE still on Twitter, replied "but... she's... a mother", which if you ask me was a pretty ribald comeback.
I replied that I had not implied she wasn't my moral superior, merely stating that she was a [lots of swearwords] moo. This obviously triggered a mechanism deep within the bowels of the Twitter engine. Irregardless of the fact I had at no point tagged Andrea Leadsom (the daft moo) anywhere, nor referenced her in the specific tweet that Twitter took umbrage at, I was naughty stepped for 12 hours.
Hmm, I thought. This seems punitive, considering that earlier this week Twitter had let Leave.EU tweet a bundle of hideous racism without so much as a query. I concluded that Twitter was, finally, broken beyond repair.
Andrea Leadsom IS a daft moo. Swearing is wrong.
So, I finally gave Twitter what it has wanted from me for 12 long years - my mobile phone number - so that I could delete the offending tweet and be redeemed, welcomed back into the bosom of society once again. But! It was my cunning plan. As soon as I was back into my unlocked account, I FUCKIN' DEACTIVATED IT! Woof. Game, set and match to me.
So anyway, that's why I'm not on Twitter any more. Or Facebook. Actually, there are different reasons for my leaving Facebook which I will not trouble you with, but needless to say I was right about that, too. If my parting has caused you unimaginable grief, you can still find me here, on Instagram or you can email me using the email address you will find on this very site.
If I like you enough, maybe we'll even become WhatsApp buddies? (Yeah, right)
My only regret is that almost everyone who actually wants to be party to this information will never see it, because I can't tweet it out. Still, I figure if you're not clever enough to have found it anyway, I almost certainly didn't want to talk to you.
This is why I fear no backlash from Andrea Leadsom, who is a daft moo.
Showing posts with label Gritty psychological action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gritty psychological action. Show all posts
Friday, 11 October 2019
Wednesday, 22 March 2017
England fan fiction
As one of the voices on the venerable white horse of internet football broadcasting that is the Twohundredpercent Podcast, I have had to do some unusual things. A while ago, when we were thinking of ideas for our subscriber special podcast, we wondered about doing some football fan fiction. That would be a stupid idea, we thought. Well, it most certainly was: so stupid, in fact, that we hastily abandoned the concept and retired to our den to smoke our pipes and suck a thoughtful tooth.
But with today being the day of Gareth Southgate's first game since he was officially installed as the England team's full-time manager - and with that very eventuality being the subject of the fan fiction that I had written - I rashly promised that I would put the piece up on my website. Here it is.
The team coach crackled its way up the hotel's circular gravel driveway, dodging peacocks and Polish gardeners. This was not the usual salubrious countryside retreat where the England team would convene before a Wembley fixture, but the more modest confines of the Hertford Ramada Jarvis. It was the choice of the squad's new permanent manager, Gareth Southgate, keen to stamp his own identity on proceedings. "What's this place, gaffer?", asked a concerned Theo Walcott. "Is this where we're staying? Do they have archery?". "Yes, do they have archery?" chimed Daniel Sturridge, nervously fingering the carbon fibre carry case of his bow.
"There's no archery, there's no pool table, there isn't even a golf course," came Southgate's terse reply. "But they do have excellent conference facilities and there's a love tester machine in the corner of the bar". "Can we use the love tester machine, boss?", Joe Hart asked. "No you may not. No you may not." came Southgate's reply.
Southgate had been both the most outstanding and indeed only candidate for the position of England manager after the hurried dismissal of Sam Allardyce, whose downfall had been so swift that there remained a slice of gala pie and a jar of pickled onions the drawer of the desk in the manager's office at Lancaster Gate. Southgate had established his credentials with his even-handed and successful stewardship of the England Under-21 team, as well as with his willingness to do his own typing. No England manager had ever been so thoroughly proficient with Microsoft Office.
"We're beginning a new era, so we're in a new place," explained Southgate as the team gathered in the hotel lobby. "We're here to concentrate, to work and deliver for the country and I want you to bear in mind that all of my decisions have been taken towards that end". The players shuffled about nervously, some even going as far to remove their headphones so that they could better listen to their new manager. Southgate reached into his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of immaculately typed A4 paper, which he placed on the table.
"Here are your new room assignments. Many of you will find that you have been given a new international roommate but do not be alarmed. In time, I want you to get to know one another as closely as you do your clubmates, this is my hope and my expectation". The players lurched forward as one, curious to examine the list and pair off into their new units. Many of the players were now grouped by their position, an attempt to help foster a greater understanding both on and off the field."Right, you have your rooms. You've got an hour of free time before hot yoga, so get yourselves settled in," Southgate announced. "And no sloping off to Kyle Walker's room. We all know what goes on in there". Kyle Walker put down the joint he was skinning and made a face.
The team's captain, Wayne Rooney, stepped forward. "I'm not on the list, gaffer. Where do I go?". "I was wondering when you'd ask that, Wayne. You'll be with me", said Southgate. The receptionist, who had been carefully pretending not to listen to any of this, suddenly let out a loud fart with shock.
Three hours later, the players were all back in their rooms. Gareth helped Wayne to peel back his sweaty leotard. "Blimey", said Rooney, "if I'd known that yoga was going to be quite that strenuous I wouldn't have eaten that third Turducken!". The two men chuckled good-naturedly until Gareth Southgate's face froze. "Wait, you've eaten three Turduckens? Today?". "Only a joke, gaffer, only a joke," said Wayne reassuringly, hurriedly kicking a wishbone underneath the Welsh dresser. The two men were now in their white hotel bathrobes and a lengthy silence developed. A minute or two passed before Wayne was the first to speak. "Why did you want me to room with you, gaffer? I've been in football a long time and I've never heard of a player being roommates with the manager". "Wayne, I needed to try and get inside of you," Southgate explained. "Get inside your mind, try and understand what makes you tick. You're still a young man with a lot to offer this team. I need to try and understand why it isn't happening for you on the pitch at the moment. Are you happy at home?"
Wayne Rooney exhaled deeply. "It's been tough, gaffer. My wife has got nipples like walnuts. The actual kernels of walnuts. The nut meats. Its hard to put it out of my mind. Increasingly, I find that during the course of games my mind has started to wander. All I can see are table after tressle table of coffee cakes at a Women's Institute summer fair". Southgate put an arm around Rooney's now bare shoulder. "Wayne, I'm going to tell you something that I have never told anyone outside of my family before. In the autumn of 1996, my marriage nearly ended. My wife couldn't get past the fact that it turns out my cumface is exactly the same as the face I pulled when I missed that penalty in the shootout at Euro 96."
Both men were now in tears. "Football exposes the rawest of emotions, Wayne. It is the root of its success as a sport, but it is also why it puts such a strain on the people who play it. Do you know that Denis Law is only 35 years old?" "That explains why he's got so many Ocean Colour Scene albums in his CD rack," sniffed Rooney. "I had wondered".
"Ultimately Wayne, you can't get through this crazy life inside professional football without the outlet of family. So if your wife has got walnut tits and you make three hundred grand a week, there's an obvious solution. But you need to communicate". Southgate now, too, was completely naked.
Rooney studied the pattern on the carpet intently for a minute or more before he looked up again. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Shell suits spontaneously combusting in the skips outside Deepdale. I watched shadow stripes glitter in the floodlights at Ashton Gate. I've done a shit in the dressing room toilet at Goodison Park that they still can't get to go down. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. It's time to play."
"I've cum on the floor", said Southgate, pulling the exact face he made when he missed that penalty in the shootout at Euro 96.
Don't @ me.
But with today being the day of Gareth Southgate's first game since he was officially installed as the England team's full-time manager - and with that very eventuality being the subject of the fan fiction that I had written - I rashly promised that I would put the piece up on my website. Here it is.
The team coach crackled its way up the hotel's circular gravel driveway, dodging peacocks and Polish gardeners. This was not the usual salubrious countryside retreat where the England team would convene before a Wembley fixture, but the more modest confines of the Hertford Ramada Jarvis. It was the choice of the squad's new permanent manager, Gareth Southgate, keen to stamp his own identity on proceedings. "What's this place, gaffer?", asked a concerned Theo Walcott. "Is this where we're staying? Do they have archery?". "Yes, do they have archery?" chimed Daniel Sturridge, nervously fingering the carbon fibre carry case of his bow.
"There's no archery, there's no pool table, there isn't even a golf course," came Southgate's terse reply. "But they do have excellent conference facilities and there's a love tester machine in the corner of the bar". "Can we use the love tester machine, boss?", Joe Hart asked. "No you may not. No you may not." came Southgate's reply.
Southgate had been both the most outstanding and indeed only candidate for the position of England manager after the hurried dismissal of Sam Allardyce, whose downfall had been so swift that there remained a slice of gala pie and a jar of pickled onions the drawer of the desk in the manager's office at Lancaster Gate. Southgate had established his credentials with his even-handed and successful stewardship of the England Under-21 team, as well as with his willingness to do his own typing. No England manager had ever been so thoroughly proficient with Microsoft Office.
"We're beginning a new era, so we're in a new place," explained Southgate as the team gathered in the hotel lobby. "We're here to concentrate, to work and deliver for the country and I want you to bear in mind that all of my decisions have been taken towards that end". The players shuffled about nervously, some even going as far to remove their headphones so that they could better listen to their new manager. Southgate reached into his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of immaculately typed A4 paper, which he placed on the table.
"Here are your new room assignments. Many of you will find that you have been given a new international roommate but do not be alarmed. In time, I want you to get to know one another as closely as you do your clubmates, this is my hope and my expectation". The players lurched forward as one, curious to examine the list and pair off into their new units. Many of the players were now grouped by their position, an attempt to help foster a greater understanding both on and off the field."Right, you have your rooms. You've got an hour of free time before hot yoga, so get yourselves settled in," Southgate announced. "And no sloping off to Kyle Walker's room. We all know what goes on in there". Kyle Walker put down the joint he was skinning and made a face.
The team's captain, Wayne Rooney, stepped forward. "I'm not on the list, gaffer. Where do I go?". "I was wondering when you'd ask that, Wayne. You'll be with me", said Southgate. The receptionist, who had been carefully pretending not to listen to any of this, suddenly let out a loud fart with shock.
Three hours later, the players were all back in their rooms. Gareth helped Wayne to peel back his sweaty leotard. "Blimey", said Rooney, "if I'd known that yoga was going to be quite that strenuous I wouldn't have eaten that third Turducken!". The two men chuckled good-naturedly until Gareth Southgate's face froze. "Wait, you've eaten three Turduckens? Today?". "Only a joke, gaffer, only a joke," said Wayne reassuringly, hurriedly kicking a wishbone underneath the Welsh dresser. The two men were now in their white hotel bathrobes and a lengthy silence developed. A minute or two passed before Wayne was the first to speak. "Why did you want me to room with you, gaffer? I've been in football a long time and I've never heard of a player being roommates with the manager". "Wayne, I needed to try and get inside of you," Southgate explained. "Get inside your mind, try and understand what makes you tick. You're still a young man with a lot to offer this team. I need to try and understand why it isn't happening for you on the pitch at the moment. Are you happy at home?"
Wayne Rooney exhaled deeply. "It's been tough, gaffer. My wife has got nipples like walnuts. The actual kernels of walnuts. The nut meats. Its hard to put it out of my mind. Increasingly, I find that during the course of games my mind has started to wander. All I can see are table after tressle table of coffee cakes at a Women's Institute summer fair". Southgate put an arm around Rooney's now bare shoulder. "Wayne, I'm going to tell you something that I have never told anyone outside of my family before. In the autumn of 1996, my marriage nearly ended. My wife couldn't get past the fact that it turns out my cumface is exactly the same as the face I pulled when I missed that penalty in the shootout at Euro 96."
Both men were now in tears. "Football exposes the rawest of emotions, Wayne. It is the root of its success as a sport, but it is also why it puts such a strain on the people who play it. Do you know that Denis Law is only 35 years old?" "That explains why he's got so many Ocean Colour Scene albums in his CD rack," sniffed Rooney. "I had wondered".
"Ultimately Wayne, you can't get through this crazy life inside professional football without the outlet of family. So if your wife has got walnut tits and you make three hundred grand a week, there's an obvious solution. But you need to communicate". Southgate now, too, was completely naked.
Rooney studied the pattern on the carpet intently for a minute or more before he looked up again. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Shell suits spontaneously combusting in the skips outside Deepdale. I watched shadow stripes glitter in the floodlights at Ashton Gate. I've done a shit in the dressing room toilet at Goodison Park that they still can't get to go down. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. It's time to play."
"I've cum on the floor", said Southgate, pulling the exact face he made when he missed that penalty in the shootout at Euro 96.
Don't @ me.
Monday, 4 May 2015
The continuing disenfranchisement of E. Carter (aged 35)
No-one cares who you are going to vote for. Or why.
So, here's who I am going to vote for and why. In 2010, as I had in 2001 and 2005, I voted for the Liberal Democrats. They seemed like a nice bunch. But, it turns out, they are not a nice bunch at all. Putting aside for one moment my dark suspicions that they have perhaps always been the Diet Conservatives, they have facilitated the worst government since the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in the 1970s.
I live in the safest of the safe Conservative seats. The last MP who did not represent the Tories that our constituency returned to Westminster was a fish who had not quite evolved the full capacity to live on dry land, back when the Earth was just a ball of molten rock hurtling through space shortly after the Big Bang. You could argue, then, that it doesn't matter who I voted for. But tell that to my conscience. One day British politics may change or, more likely, my address will and the Liberal Democrats will need my vote. They will never get it. Not in this lifetime.
So, to 2015. My political convictions have not changed in the last five years, although my understanding of political realities have taken something of a kicking. What I want above all other things is for a change of this wretched, awful government. Learning to love Ed Miliband has been the answer.
Again, safest of safe Conservative seats. It doesn't particularly matter who I vote for on a local or national level, the way the British electoral system works. So it all boils down to conscience again. Last night I realised that I cannot, despite earnestly believing that I would until yesterday, vote for the Labour Party in 2015.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ed Miliband is like every other politician in the world, where expediency and the desire for power rather than principle is the sole guide to their actions. But his hard line denial and refusal to try and work with the SNP seems to me to suggest that he is willing to let the Conservatives get back in to Downing Street again based on nothing but principle and vainglorious pride.
This is not just the Conservatives bolstered by the stinking Liberal Democrats, either, but the Conservatives with help from the vile UKIP and venal Democratic Unionist Party. It would be the worst coalition since the one George W. Bush built to go and rain death on Iraq in 2003 and this time, the blood (hopefully only figuratively speaking) would be on Ed Miliband's hands.
I like Ed Miliband. I admire him. I think he would be a good Prime Minister and I hope that by this time next week he will have been given an opportunity to prove it. But above all, I would like to be able to vote for him and his party again in the future. If I vote Labour in 2015 and his intransigence leads to five more wretched years of Conservative government (and we really ain't seen NOTHING yet) then, after last time, it would be more than my conscience and I could possibly bear. So this is why I am going to be voting for the Green Party on Thursday morning.
So, here's who I am going to vote for and why. In 2010, as I had in 2001 and 2005, I voted for the Liberal Democrats. They seemed like a nice bunch. But, it turns out, they are not a nice bunch at all. Putting aside for one moment my dark suspicions that they have perhaps always been the Diet Conservatives, they have facilitated the worst government since the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in the 1970s.
I live in the safest of the safe Conservative seats. The last MP who did not represent the Tories that our constituency returned to Westminster was a fish who had not quite evolved the full capacity to live on dry land, back when the Earth was just a ball of molten rock hurtling through space shortly after the Big Bang. You could argue, then, that it doesn't matter who I voted for. But tell that to my conscience. One day British politics may change or, more likely, my address will and the Liberal Democrats will need my vote. They will never get it. Not in this lifetime.
So, to 2015. My political convictions have not changed in the last five years, although my understanding of political realities have taken something of a kicking. What I want above all other things is for a change of this wretched, awful government. Learning to love Ed Miliband has been the answer.
 |
| Ed Miliband: everyone should vote for this man or no-one should |
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ed Miliband is like every other politician in the world, where expediency and the desire for power rather than principle is the sole guide to their actions. But his hard line denial and refusal to try and work with the SNP seems to me to suggest that he is willing to let the Conservatives get back in to Downing Street again based on nothing but principle and vainglorious pride.
This is not just the Conservatives bolstered by the stinking Liberal Democrats, either, but the Conservatives with help from the vile UKIP and venal Democratic Unionist Party. It would be the worst coalition since the one George W. Bush built to go and rain death on Iraq in 2003 and this time, the blood (hopefully only figuratively speaking) would be on Ed Miliband's hands.
I like Ed Miliband. I admire him. I think he would be a good Prime Minister and I hope that by this time next week he will have been given an opportunity to prove it. But above all, I would like to be able to vote for him and his party again in the future. If I vote Labour in 2015 and his intransigence leads to five more wretched years of Conservative government (and we really ain't seen NOTHING yet) then, after last time, it would be more than my conscience and I could possibly bear. So this is why I am going to be voting for the Green Party on Thursday morning.
Friday, 25 January 2013
How clenched was my anus?
I don't get many comments on my blog. This is my blog, that you are reading now. A very respectable number of people read it every day, mind you. Especially, you know, considering. But I don't get many comments. I can only assume this is because you all agree with me. Which is reasonable, I suppose.
But yesterday I got a comment which was a brilliant comment because it made me think. Me! Imagine that. It was with regard to my ongoing series of disaster film reviews which, as regular readers will know, are chipping away at my already parlous state of mental well-being. It was from Jessica and I think it bears quotation in full:
I know this isn't what you intended with this project, and it might not be lulz-y, but I want to hear more about the anxiety being ratcheted up by watching disaster movies.This is some pretty thought-provoking stuff. I'd not considered it at all. But it is true: horror films don't make me freak--the--hell--out at all. In fact, I'm wracking my brains trying to think of a horror film that does. I can only really point to one: An American Werewolf In London. But therein lies a story: in the early days of home video recorders, my grandparents got American Werewolf In London to watch and popped it on when I was in the room. I was probably four or five years old, and in a hazy childhood evening fug of doze. But sufficient amounts of it obviously seeped in to do some really very significant damage to the wiring of my brain. To this day, when I see this film it does me very serious damage. The only thing that comes close, and for similar reasons, is The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town from The Two Ronnies.
You watch horror movies. I know this because I've watched at least one with you. Can you put your finger on why the disaster movies are freaking you out in a way horror doesn't? Is it just because the threat feels more 'real'? And if that's it, then do crime movies bother you? Because street violence is more of a real threat than zombies or nuclear holocaust.
I love horror but have very specific things that I won't watch, because they pull me out of a cathartic, pretend, safe terror and into a real-life terror. Disaster movies seem to be pulling you into a real-life terror. Just wondering if you've thought of why.
So there we go. Nearly thirty-three years and only two traumatic horror film experiences. And in both cases, there are extenuating circumstances: one from deep-seated childhood psychological trauma caused by dimwit grandparents (it would have been their 59th wedding anniversary today, incidentally), the other caused by being a complete bloody idiot.
What's going on, then? I've had to wrack my (brilliant, brilliant) brain to try and figure it out. Because it's not just monsters and zombies and aliens that populate the horror canon: the most devastating horror films of all are the ones that deal with real life situations. Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, for example, are both easily within the realms of possibility. Indeed, they are both based on the same real-life case. Here the enemy is the dark parts of the human psyche, and the extent to which they reside within us or within the people that we meet every day. That is surely a more terrifying thought than asteroid strikes or nuclear wars - which tend to be, by their very nature, once-in-a-lifetime (although no-times-in-a-lifetime remains my preferred frequency) events?
And yet, the pursing of my ringpiece says otherwise. I'd drop everything right now to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre again. But I'd need to be dragged, Ludovico Technique-style, to watch Threads. (On a related tangent, I also find A Clockwork Orange a far more disturbing film to watch than any horror movie.) So, what gives?
 |
| Me, watching When The Wind Blows, yesterday |
My explanation is as follows: horror films are about death. Our innate, primal, fear of death. But disaster movies are not. They are about life, or rather, survival. And dying is easy. It is living that is hard. Which is to say, hard enough as it is. It's why I have tried (and failed, incidentally) to eliminate any film where literally everybody on Earth dies at the end from my list of disaster movies. There's a resolution to them. They're not the ones that stay with you.
The films that have, to be perfectly blunt, really fucked me up so far have been Threads, Special Bulletin, and When The Wind Blows, as well as The Day After, which I have watched but not yet reviewed. These films are terrifying because people survive. But they live on in such stark, reduced circumstances. And we leave them at such an early part in their new story. That's when it weedles its way inside your imagination. That's when you start to try and imagine how you'd cope and what you would do. There's the killer. A film that gets inside your mind will be the one that chips away at your sense of self and burrow under your onion layers. It's why you can happily watch Die Hard and then go to work the next day in a high-rise building, but if you instead watch Targets you'll only dare to poke your head outside your hidey hole if you've put a saucepan on it.
When The Wind Blows was the worst. Along with Special Bulletin it had novelty on its side, as I'd not seen either before. But there was more to it than that. It seemed so local to me (it was), so relevant and realistic. It threw me into a day of depression. I was really very affected and upset by the whole thing, much more so than an 80-minute film should have any right to make me. But it's not the those eighty minutes that are the problem. It's the hours and days after. I've not yet found a horror film that continues to scare me, make me think or make me jump, after it has played out. And there's the difference.
Monday, 7 January 2013
I lose it
Blogging is a noble activity in many ways, unless your blog is about fucking kids. Mine isn't. One thing that it is about is watching and writing about the top 100 disaster movies list that my friend and blogging colleague 5ollyington Meatburger have made. I did the first post of this series yesterday. You may have already read it. You may have already read it and killed yourself. This means I only have 99 more to do, which is pretty good news for me because doing the first one revealed a number of worrying signs that this project is going to cause me to have a complete and massive nervous breakdown.
Yesterday, I was writing up my post during the film. This is because I didn't want to forget any of my more insightful and ribald thoughts, but also because film is quite boring. I gave it 5 out of 10, or 10th May in numerological language. As I wrote this pithy and hilarious denouement, on the screen there was all sort of bad stuff happening. Solar stuff. Mooses on fire, the whole works. Suddenly all the tiny, fragmented pieces of information that pass for my intellect crystallised in a sudden terrifying moment of realisation. A solar maximum is expected in 2013. Could it be that the events I was seeing depicted on the screen could happen on May 10th and I'd just predicted it with my review of Knowing?
I did a Google search, just in case any such event was expected on the 10th of May this year. My thought was, if they were I would change my score to a 6 out of 10. Not only does this demonstrate a mind completely unprepared for the kind of emotional assault watching a disaster movie every 3.65 days is likely to impart, but also that I am a flaky and unreliable reviewer, prepared to change his carefully thought-out ratings at the merest prophetic or eschatological concern. You don't get this problem with Barry Norman.
I fear that I am beyond saving. However, this is no reason why I shouldn't continue in my project. And I'm doing Threads next, what could possibly go wrong?
Yesterday, I was writing up my post during the film. This is because I didn't want to forget any of my more insightful and ribald thoughts, but also because film is quite boring. I gave it 5 out of 10, or 10th May in numerological language. As I wrote this pithy and hilarious denouement, on the screen there was all sort of bad stuff happening. Solar stuff. Mooses on fire, the whole works. Suddenly all the tiny, fragmented pieces of information that pass for my intellect crystallised in a sudden terrifying moment of realisation. A solar maximum is expected in 2013. Could it be that the events I was seeing depicted on the screen could happen on May 10th and I'd just predicted it with my review of Knowing?
 |
| The Sun: sitting up there, waiting to kill us all, the big hydrogen and helium bastard |
I did a Google search, just in case any such event was expected on the 10th of May this year. My thought was, if they were I would change my score to a 6 out of 10. Not only does this demonstrate a mind completely unprepared for the kind of emotional assault watching a disaster movie every 3.65 days is likely to impart, but also that I am a flaky and unreliable reviewer, prepared to change his carefully thought-out ratings at the merest prophetic or eschatological concern. You don't get this problem with Barry Norman.
I fear that I am beyond saving. However, this is no reason why I shouldn't continue in my project. And I'm doing Threads next, what could possibly go wrong?
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
A child's Christmas ruined by marital infidelity
It's Christmas and so everyone's new favourite pastime is engaging in a ceaselessly circular and completely insoluble debate regarding the identity of the best Christmas film (it's It's A Wonderful Life). Fortunately, music has spared itself this fate by the release of A Christmas Gift For You in 1963. On 22nd November 1963 to be precise, the day of the Kennedy assassination. It is, was and ever shall be the ultimate festive selection and anybody who says otherwise is mistaken. It's as simple as that, for once.
Which is not to say that it is not without fault or should be immune from further analysis. For a start, the album's auteur is of course Phil Spector, one of the human race's most unassailable gitcaptains. A genuinely nasty piece of work, a hateful and spiteful man and one for whom pointing out he's a mole-faced bald-headed twat seems oddly unsatisfying when one considers all the deeper personality flaws that could be picked on instead.
Secondly, it is an album filled with songs which have unfortunately inviting lyrics for dirty minded people. Phil Spector's output is full of these. The Crystals' And Then He Kissed Me would be incomplete without the addition of "... on the tits", but drawing us in on a celebration of Christmas is particularly unseemly and unfortunate.
In fact, the worst offender is the song which I want to talk about in more detail. Thirdly and most damningly is the inconsistencies that run rife through I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by The Ronettes. Let's get it out of the way early: it is a particularly filthy song. I saw mommy sucking Santa off, underneath the mistletoe last night. I saw mommy tickle Santa's balls. I could go on. But these are small potatoes when compared to the bigger picture.
The song itself was not written by The Ronettes or Phil Spector but by Tommie Connor, a British songwriter who was operational during the middle of the 20th Century. The original recording of it was by Jimmy Boyd in 1952. Boyd was 13 years old at the time, and therein lies the whole problem with the song. It is a song written from the child's perspective. An excited child on Christmas Eve sneaks out of bed and down onto the stairs to see if they can catch a peek at some of the magic of the season happening. What he sees, of course, is made clear by the title of the song.
The problem is the lines, "oh what a laugh it would have been/ if Daddy had only seen/ Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night". I presume that these were put in as a knowing reference for any parents listening. Of course we all know that it is daddy dressed up as Santa Claus. Ho ho ho. However, it doesn't so much break the fourth wall as drive a reindeer-pulled sleigh through it. The child doesn't know this. What he sees is Father Christmas in flagrante with his mother, the filthy whore. So quite why he would think it would be such a big laugh I do not know. Had this happened to me during my childhood, it would have ruined my Christmas completely. Oh no, my parents are going to get a divorce. I'm going to be one of those children with a single parent and then spend the weekends with the other one walking round a goose park being told how much I'm loved. Fuck's sake.
Maybe he thinks it's a step in the right direction? Maybe his father is a rather staid and boring man, an office drone. Maybe he thinks having Father Christmas be his new dad would be a much more exciting and fulfilling life? Of course, it could be that his father is an abuser. Take that, dad! Mommy is kissing Santa Claus!
The other possibility is that the child hates Father Christmas and has secretly always wanted to watched him get decked. This child's bedroom is full of mouse traps and crossbows on a hair trigger. One way or another, Father Christmas is going to get fucked up tonight. He's not leaving this house in one piece, that's for damn sure. Whichever is the correct reading of it, what is undeniable is that this child is either deeply psychologically disturbed, or is about to be. Is that really what we want to be dwelling on at the festive season?
Which is not to say that it is not without fault or should be immune from further analysis. For a start, the album's auteur is of course Phil Spector, one of the human race's most unassailable gitcaptains. A genuinely nasty piece of work, a hateful and spiteful man and one for whom pointing out he's a mole-faced bald-headed twat seems oddly unsatisfying when one considers all the deeper personality flaws that could be picked on instead.
Secondly, it is an album filled with songs which have unfortunately inviting lyrics for dirty minded people. Phil Spector's output is full of these. The Crystals' And Then He Kissed Me would be incomplete without the addition of "... on the tits", but drawing us in on a celebration of Christmas is particularly unseemly and unfortunate.
In fact, the worst offender is the song which I want to talk about in more detail. Thirdly and most damningly is the inconsistencies that run rife through I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by The Ronettes. Let's get it out of the way early: it is a particularly filthy song. I saw mommy sucking Santa off, underneath the mistletoe last night. I saw mommy tickle Santa's balls. I could go on. But these are small potatoes when compared to the bigger picture.
The song itself was not written by The Ronettes or Phil Spector but by Tommie Connor, a British songwriter who was operational during the middle of the 20th Century. The original recording of it was by Jimmy Boyd in 1952. Boyd was 13 years old at the time, and therein lies the whole problem with the song. It is a song written from the child's perspective. An excited child on Christmas Eve sneaks out of bed and down onto the stairs to see if they can catch a peek at some of the magic of the season happening. What he sees, of course, is made clear by the title of the song.
The problem is the lines, "oh what a laugh it would have been/ if Daddy had only seen/ Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night". I presume that these were put in as a knowing reference for any parents listening. Of course we all know that it is daddy dressed up as Santa Claus. Ho ho ho. However, it doesn't so much break the fourth wall as drive a reindeer-pulled sleigh through it. The child doesn't know this. What he sees is Father Christmas in flagrante with his mother, the filthy whore. So quite why he would think it would be such a big laugh I do not know. Had this happened to me during my childhood, it would have ruined my Christmas completely. Oh no, my parents are going to get a divorce. I'm going to be one of those children with a single parent and then spend the weekends with the other one walking round a goose park being told how much I'm loved. Fuck's sake.
Maybe he thinks it's a step in the right direction? Maybe his father is a rather staid and boring man, an office drone. Maybe he thinks having Father Christmas be his new dad would be a much more exciting and fulfilling life? Of course, it could be that his father is an abuser. Take that, dad! Mommy is kissing Santa Claus!
The other possibility is that the child hates Father Christmas and has secretly always wanted to watched him get decked. This child's bedroom is full of mouse traps and crossbows on a hair trigger. One way or another, Father Christmas is going to get fucked up tonight. He's not leaving this house in one piece, that's for damn sure. Whichever is the correct reading of it, what is undeniable is that this child is either deeply psychologically disturbed, or is about to be. Is that really what we want to be dwelling on at the festive season?
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| Father Christmas: who is your mother to resist, eh? The filthy harlot |
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Dog problems
I've become a dog owner by mistake. I'm looking after my girlfriend's dog for two-and-a-half weeks. He is a very nice dog and very well behaved. Naturally, then, he's driving me nuts. I've never had a pet dog before, so all of this is something of a voyage of discovery for me, although I was already aware of the fact that I was nuts.
I always thought that the whole concept of there being dog people and cat people was probably an over-simplification. But actually, it isn't. The demands of a pet dog and a pet cat are such polar opposites that it's surprising that there are any similarities at all. There are, of course. Both dogs and cats are cute and loveable and like a fuss and a play. Both dogs and cats eat food that stinks out of tin cans. And both of them watch you eat your food with an intensity that makes it clear that they kind of wish they didn't. However, after a week of looking after a mutt I now believe that people who prefer dogs to cats must have a chromosome missing.
It is a truism emblazoned on a million bumper stickers that a dog has a master while a cat has a servant, and I think this is the root cause of the difficulties that I'm experiencing. I'm tending to deal with this canine interloper as if it is some kind of firefighting operation. My key concerns are to make sure he gets out to do his excretions and therefore doesn't park anything in the house, and that he doesn't bark because people as highly-strung as I am don't take very kindly to such malarky. It's fairly easy to see why I don't feel that I'm getting very much out of this experience other than a headache. Instead of enjoying it I am largely treating him as if scientists had finally managed to graft working legs onto a piping bag filled with turds.
Although prepared for a few dog things, I'd not factored in quite how much talking in the street dog ownership entails. I spend half of the day in a dialogue with this dog, for at least an hour of which I am in public. They like it, need it and want it. I speak to cats, too, but I've never found it met with anything other than thinly-veiled contempt. I kind of miss that.
And there's the rub: ultimately, cats hate you. They want you to feed them and then leave them be, which is a mission statement not dissimilar to my own. Dogs love you unconditionally all day long, and that freaks me out. But though I am a grouchy bastard with a heart of stone, I am also a creature of logic and reason and logic and reason tell me that this unconditional love means that the dog has no intention of ruining my day. He'd not even have dreamt of it, nor could he even conceive of a way he might go about doing so (dogs are thick). Therefore, if he has ruined my day it can only because I have allowed him to. So the onus is on him to adapt to a new pace of day-to-day life, and on me to be less of a fanny.
There is no prize for guessing which of these is likely to happen first, by the way. Shut up.
I always thought that the whole concept of there being dog people and cat people was probably an over-simplification. But actually, it isn't. The demands of a pet dog and a pet cat are such polar opposites that it's surprising that there are any similarities at all. There are, of course. Both dogs and cats are cute and loveable and like a fuss and a play. Both dogs and cats eat food that stinks out of tin cans. And both of them watch you eat your food with an intensity that makes it clear that they kind of wish they didn't. However, after a week of looking after a mutt I now believe that people who prefer dogs to cats must have a chromosome missing.
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| A dog, yesterday |
It is a truism emblazoned on a million bumper stickers that a dog has a master while a cat has a servant, and I think this is the root cause of the difficulties that I'm experiencing. I'm tending to deal with this canine interloper as if it is some kind of firefighting operation. My key concerns are to make sure he gets out to do his excretions and therefore doesn't park anything in the house, and that he doesn't bark because people as highly-strung as I am don't take very kindly to such malarky. It's fairly easy to see why I don't feel that I'm getting very much out of this experience other than a headache. Instead of enjoying it I am largely treating him as if scientists had finally managed to graft working legs onto a piping bag filled with turds.
Although prepared for a few dog things, I'd not factored in quite how much talking in the street dog ownership entails. I spend half of the day in a dialogue with this dog, for at least an hour of which I am in public. They like it, need it and want it. I speak to cats, too, but I've never found it met with anything other than thinly-veiled contempt. I kind of miss that.
And there's the rub: ultimately, cats hate you. They want you to feed them and then leave them be, which is a mission statement not dissimilar to my own. Dogs love you unconditionally all day long, and that freaks me out. But though I am a grouchy bastard with a heart of stone, I am also a creature of logic and reason and logic and reason tell me that this unconditional love means that the dog has no intention of ruining my day. He'd not even have dreamt of it, nor could he even conceive of a way he might go about doing so (dogs are thick). Therefore, if he has ruined my day it can only because I have allowed him to. So the onus is on him to adapt to a new pace of day-to-day life, and on me to be less of a fanny.
There is no prize for guessing which of these is likely to happen first, by the way. Shut up.
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
I'm not pulling a face, it's just my face
Yesterday for some completely inexplicable reason my girlfriend was sat in bed on her laptop applying for jobs or some such madness. So, because I am a grown-up, I sat there with my book drawing in my book. I got my book last November at Boring 2011, as part of the pack that all attendees received. It was a plain, old school lined exercise book, ostensibly for making notes in. But as it - along with a black ballpoint pen and some badges - was the only thing in the pack that you couldn't eat, I still have it. You probably remember it from late last year and early this year, as I used it to do a lot of the illustrations for my blog posts on the subject of films.
After my girlfriend had finished trying to find herself a new career and a better life or some similar insane nonsense, she picked up my book and had a look through it to see all the pictures I had done. At one stage she turned to this lion and said "oh look, it's doing your face".
I did not know what she meant, so I said "what do you mean? I don't know what you mean", or words to that effect. She explained that a lot of my pictures of sentient beings - or of things that I had gifted with sentience for the purposes of a cheap joke about washing machines or robots or tumble dryers - had my facial expressions. "A lot of you comes out in your drawings", she patiently explained.
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| Me, yesterday |
I am quite excited about this. First of all it is a reminder that I am a sentient being, which I often forget about in the numbing fug of nothing that is my life. But secondly and more importantly, it's something that I have never done on purpose. I am not one of these artists who study their face in the mirror trying to find TRUTH (or PIMPLES). I just go with what looks right on the page. So without knowing it, I am managing to reflect myself back at me with my own arm.
A neat trick. Although not one without its concerning aspects, as you will now observe.
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| Running the full gamut of emotions from "hmm" to "oh blimey" |
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| Screw you guys, I'm going home |
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Non-explosive Tupperware box disrupts Olympics
The British newspapers are up in arms today. Well, the red tops are at least. This is always a good sign. Firstly, it means there's no actual news to report, which is a good thing for scaredy cats like me. Secondly it is a sure sign that no English footballers are currently cheating on their wives, which should help them concentrate on their preparations for the European Championships next month.
The issue is that, during a security exercise, a policeman successfully smuggled a dummy bomb into the London Olympic Park. In this world of terror-threats and religious fundamentalism, this is a great concern. Particularly for The Sun on Sunday, who are always keen to distract people from any of the numerous terrible things that their parent company has done.
I love news stories like this. They are designed to cause panic and outrage. In so doing, they prove the futility of both of those emotions. They are snap reactions, devoid of any reason or perspective. If you really analyse anything deeply and properly, panic and outrage should quickly dissipate. If they don't, you are probably in trouble. But even so, having a brain clouded by either is unlikely to be a constructive platform for action.
In days past, I would panic myself up into a tree over silly things like this. Luckily, over the years I have learnt to be both more analytical personally and more cynical of the motives of the news media. Sorry, the news media. But you did kind of bring this on yourselves.
The whole point of exercises is that they are supposed to discover flaws, so that when the actual thing is in progress it won't happen again. Maybe if News International's hacks had practised not tapping phones and not rooting through celebrities' bins more often, their current and future troubles would be significantly smaller. Furthermore, it was a dummy bomb. I don't know about you, but you're welcome to smuggle as many dummy bombs as you like into anywhere. You can smuggle some into my anus, as long as I'm not breathing out at the time. Go nuts. Give your children some dummy bombs to play with. Feed a few to your dog. What I'm actually concerned about is real bombs.
Of course, this will all seem very silly come July and Usain Bolt's attempt at defending his 100 metre sprint crown is waylaid as he trips over a lunchbox full of Blu-tak and batteries, hurled onto the track by a mischievous urban terrorist. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
It always helps to put your trust in the people who are in charge of these things, after all. The fact is, whether you want to believe it or not - and whether the press want us to believe it or not - they know what they're doing better than we do. And even if they don't, thinking that they do is a nice warm feeling, although I may just have wet myself.
Personally, I'd be more offended if someone tried to smuggle a copy of The Sun, or Rupert Murdoch, into the Olympic Park.
The issue is that, during a security exercise, a policeman successfully smuggled a dummy bomb into the London Olympic Park. In this world of terror-threats and religious fundamentalism, this is a great concern. Particularly for The Sun on Sunday, who are always keen to distract people from any of the numerous terrible things that their parent company has done.
I love news stories like this. They are designed to cause panic and outrage. In so doing, they prove the futility of both of those emotions. They are snap reactions, devoid of any reason or perspective. If you really analyse anything deeply and properly, panic and outrage should quickly dissipate. If they don't, you are probably in trouble. But even so, having a brain clouded by either is unlikely to be a constructive platform for action.
In days past, I would panic myself up into a tree over silly things like this. Luckily, over the years I have learnt to be both more analytical personally and more cynical of the motives of the news media. Sorry, the news media. But you did kind of bring this on yourselves.
The whole point of exercises is that they are supposed to discover flaws, so that when the actual thing is in progress it won't happen again. Maybe if News International's hacks had practised not tapping phones and not rooting through celebrities' bins more often, their current and future troubles would be significantly smaller. Furthermore, it was a dummy bomb. I don't know about you, but you're welcome to smuggle as many dummy bombs as you like into anywhere. You can smuggle some into my anus, as long as I'm not breathing out at the time. Go nuts. Give your children some dummy bombs to play with. Feed a few to your dog. What I'm actually concerned about is real bombs.
Of course, this will all seem very silly come July and Usain Bolt's attempt at defending his 100 metre sprint crown is waylaid as he trips over a lunchbox full of Blu-tak and batteries, hurled onto the track by a mischievous urban terrorist. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
It always helps to put your trust in the people who are in charge of these things, after all. The fact is, whether you want to believe it or not - and whether the press want us to believe it or not - they know what they're doing better than we do. And even if they don't, thinking that they do is a nice warm feeling, although I may just have wet myself.
Personally, I'd be more offended if someone tried to smuggle a copy of The Sun, or Rupert Murdoch, into the Olympic Park.
Monday, 5 March 2012
These are the good times
Friday 2nd March 2012, a date which will live in infamy. It was a day that nothing changed but everything did. The weekend which followed saw me as low as I have ever been in my life. Today sees my efforts to try and restart myself in the face of the new because I have to.
My mum got ill at the end of 2009. Having never had any breathing difficulties before, suddenly she found herself out of breath at the merest physical exertion. A trip to the doctor and a chest x-ray later discovered that she had fluid on the lung. This is really never a good sign.
On Christmas Eve 2009 she had over a litre of fluid drained from her chest. Although she was back home for Christmas, by New Year she was back in hospital for a similar procedure. By this stage it was pretty clear that all was very much not well. At the beginning of January 2010, it was confirmed that she had cancer. A particularly elusive cancer, mind you: it wasn't actually discovered until the middle of April after a chest operation at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. The diagnosis was not good, the prognosis likewise. Mesothelioma, an incurable but "treatable" condition.
Almost two years have passed since then. That in itself is pretty good going. The fact that my mum has actually been, if not bouncing around with health, then pretty much entirely able to function normally even more so. But last Friday was the day that we all knew was coming, the day that the doctors at the Royal Marsden said that there was nothing more they could do, treatment wise.
Given that I knew that this day had to come eventually, I am pretty stunned as to how badly it has affected me. Stunned, too, as to the sort of livable paradigm that I had gladly entered into whereby a nameless, faceless doctor would fill my mother up with snake oil, moonbeams and rat poison every week. As if that was just the new way of things, when the real new way of things has been with us since the start of 2010.
But a lot of the flamboyant black cloud of gloom is due mainly to the fact I know I have to snap out of it, for everyone's sake. So far, life is not all that different. The sun comes up and my mum wakes up and everyone does their best to make it in one piece to the end of another day. That is what we all do, ultimately, whether or not we are aware of what is killing us. No good - for anyone - can possibly come of me suddenly starting to act differently, or worse, rolling myself up tightly into a hedgehog ball and withdrawing from all family or social life, a self-defence mechanism whereby I figured if I don't speak to or see or spend any time with my mum then it will hurt me less. Which is, truthfully and completely shamefully, what I was doing yesterday.
None of us know how much longer my mum has to live. She has very wisely steered well clear of the old TV show cliché of wanting to know how many weeks or months or years or days or hours she has to go. No good can come from getting into that mindset. No-one knows how much longer they have left. I could die today. So could you. Or we could both laugh about how I suggested we might both die today in a blog post I wrote 75 years ago one day in a pissy rest home. The important thing is just to make the best of everything. That is all anyone can do.
The worst part of this is actually knowing that I am right. Right, right here. That my deeds now need to match my sage words and thoughts. That is the hardest part. Harder than knowing that my mum probably won't be around for much longer. Because I know that I will be alright. That is credit to her. I now need to be a credit to her for however long it is she has left.
And frankly I am terrified. I've not cried yet. I've not really felt anything yet. I don't know if I've got anything left to give. I hope that I will come out of this pleasantly surprised in myself and proud. In fact, I know I will. But I'm not looking forward to it, because it is going to hurt.
My mum got ill at the end of 2009. Having never had any breathing difficulties before, suddenly she found herself out of breath at the merest physical exertion. A trip to the doctor and a chest x-ray later discovered that she had fluid on the lung. This is really never a good sign.
On Christmas Eve 2009 she had over a litre of fluid drained from her chest. Although she was back home for Christmas, by New Year she was back in hospital for a similar procedure. By this stage it was pretty clear that all was very much not well. At the beginning of January 2010, it was confirmed that she had cancer. A particularly elusive cancer, mind you: it wasn't actually discovered until the middle of April after a chest operation at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. The diagnosis was not good, the prognosis likewise. Mesothelioma, an incurable but "treatable" condition.
Good times
These are the good times
Leave your cares behind
These are the good times
Almost two years have passed since then. That in itself is pretty good going. The fact that my mum has actually been, if not bouncing around with health, then pretty much entirely able to function normally even more so. But last Friday was the day that we all knew was coming, the day that the doctors at the Royal Marsden said that there was nothing more they could do, treatment wise.
Good times
These are the good times
Our new state of mind
These are the good times
Given that I knew that this day had to come eventually, I am pretty stunned as to how badly it has affected me. Stunned, too, as to the sort of livable paradigm that I had gladly entered into whereby a nameless, faceless doctor would fill my mother up with snake oil, moonbeams and rat poison every week. As if that was just the new way of things, when the real new way of things has been with us since the start of 2010.
But a lot of the flamboyant black cloud of gloom is due mainly to the fact I know I have to snap out of it, for everyone's sake. So far, life is not all that different. The sun comes up and my mum wakes up and everyone does their best to make it in one piece to the end of another day. That is what we all do, ultimately, whether or not we are aware of what is killing us. No good - for anyone - can possibly come of me suddenly starting to act differently, or worse, rolling myself up tightly into a hedgehog ball and withdrawing from all family or social life, a self-defence mechanism whereby I figured if I don't speak to or see or spend any time with my mum then it will hurt me less. Which is, truthfully and completely shamefully, what I was doing yesterday.
A rumour has it that
It's getting late
Time marches on
Just can't wait
None of us know how much longer my mum has to live. She has very wisely steered well clear of the old TV show cliché of wanting to know how many weeks or months or years or days or hours she has to go. No good can come from getting into that mindset. No-one knows how much longer they have left. I could die today. So could you. Or we could both laugh about how I suggested we might both die today in a blog post I wrote 75 years ago one day in a pissy rest home. The important thing is just to make the best of everything. That is all anyone can do.
The worst part of this is actually knowing that I am right. Right, right here. That my deeds now need to match my sage words and thoughts. That is the hardest part. Harder than knowing that my mum probably won't be around for much longer. Because I know that I will be alright. That is credit to her. I now need to be a credit to her for however long it is she has left.
The clock keeps turning
Why hesitate
You silly fool
You can't change your fate
And frankly I am terrified. I've not cried yet. I've not really felt anything yet. I don't know if I've got anything left to give. I hope that I will come out of this pleasantly surprised in myself and proud. In fact, I know I will. But I'm not looking forward to it, because it is going to hurt.
Good times
These are the good times.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Immaculate levels of stress
Hello. I sort of don't want to be the kind of person who says LOOK AT ME, HERE I AM but at the same time I've been updating this blog with the kind of regularity that old-time Dotfans will have been barely able to believe and I suppose I just wanted to give people a heads-up that this may not be the case for a while.
Basically, there's a lot of stuff going on in my life at the moment. Some of it is nice things and the sort of stuff that if I were talking to you I would probably point upwards to indicate their positive aspect. Others are horrible things which are making me not want to bother looking when I cross the road and, if I were talking to you, I'd probably point downwards to indicate their negative aspect. Sadly, there's very little going on in the middle.
I like the middle. It's the nice squishy inoffensive bit which is classic Dotcountry. However, the world has currently decided that I am not allowed to occupy such hallowed ground and as such I am quite a knotted up and stressed little bunny at the moment. I lurch from happiness to unhappiness without much respite and I am therefore fairly desperate to cling onto anything which makes me feel nice and average. All unnecessary sources of stress need to be vanquished.
This is where we come to this blog. I've started to feel a bit like it owns me. Every day I wake up and think, "oh god, I need to put something on my blog" rather than enjoying it. Every day I look at the stats and wonder, "what can I do to get more hits tomorrow?" These are the two single worst reasons for doing a blog which is basically supposed to be fun for me and hopefully fun for you to read as well.
In days of old when I was bold (and a TOTAL self-sabotaging cretin), I would just delete the whole thing in a fit of madness. Luckily, I'm not the kind of man to make the same mistake four or five fucking times. However, I am going to try and only update for the forseeable future when I really want to, rather than trying to do it every day. So that's the reason why the pace is slowing down, and this is the post I will link you to when you tweet or email me to ask why I've not updated the site for 18 hours or suchlike. And as you read it I will probably be crying and thinking about blocking you.
Right? Good.
Basically, there's a lot of stuff going on in my life at the moment. Some of it is nice things and the sort of stuff that if I were talking to you I would probably point upwards to indicate their positive aspect. Others are horrible things which are making me not want to bother looking when I cross the road and, if I were talking to you, I'd probably point downwards to indicate their negative aspect. Sadly, there's very little going on in the middle.
I like the middle. It's the nice squishy inoffensive bit which is classic Dotcountry. However, the world has currently decided that I am not allowed to occupy such hallowed ground and as such I am quite a knotted up and stressed little bunny at the moment. I lurch from happiness to unhappiness without much respite and I am therefore fairly desperate to cling onto anything which makes me feel nice and average. All unnecessary sources of stress need to be vanquished.
This is where we come to this blog. I've started to feel a bit like it owns me. Every day I wake up and think, "oh god, I need to put something on my blog" rather than enjoying it. Every day I look at the stats and wonder, "what can I do to get more hits tomorrow?" These are the two single worst reasons for doing a blog which is basically supposed to be fun for me and hopefully fun for you to read as well.
In days of old when I was bold (and a TOTAL self-sabotaging cretin), I would just delete the whole thing in a fit of madness. Luckily, I'm not the kind of man to make the same mistake four or five fucking times. However, I am going to try and only update for the forseeable future when I really want to, rather than trying to do it every day. So that's the reason why the pace is slowing down, and this is the post I will link you to when you tweet or email me to ask why I've not updated the site for 18 hours or suchlike. And as you read it I will probably be crying and thinking about blocking you.
Right? Good.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Face your pathetic fears
In which your hero watches The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town to exorcise 20 years' worth of demons and it doesn't go so well.
As a child, there was one part of the week that I really didn't particularly care for, and it was the 8-odd minutes that we spent watching The Two Ronnies whilst their ongoing The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town (first broadcast in 1976) was on. I was terrified of it. Literally rigid with fear. To this day, even seeing little clips of it gives me the shivers. I think that it is genuinely evil.
I'm nothing if not a contrary old bird, though, and I have to admit that a lot of the visual style and themes of The Phantom Raspberry Blower have led me to a lifelong love of studying the Jack the Ripper case and other dark history, as well as a broader love of historical documentaries. I think that it is genuinely true to say that without spending an hour of my life in a state of cataplexy watching the Phantom, I would not be so interested in them.
Watching and reading about Jack the Ripper scares me, too. Which is daft, since as a 31-year old male artist living in 2012 by the coast in West Sussex, I am significantly outside his target group of female prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888. Dafter still: Jack the Ripper scares me because it reminds me of The Phantom Raspberry Blower.
On Twitter today, my friend posted a link to a full playlist of the 8 episodes which made up the near future science-fiction strand The Worm That Turned, also from a later series of The Two Ronnies, on YouTube. This, in something of a running theme, also scared me as a child. But it reminded me of the Phantom, and knowing that he too would be lurking on YouTube somewhere that it could be a good time to face my fears.
Like The Worm That Turned, The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town was made up of eight episodes of about 8 minutes duration. It was written by Spike Milligan, as some indication as to the level of lunacy that was the target of the series, rather than a gritty psychological terror. So yesterday evening I did some Googling and then watched it.
Well, almost all of it. I watched the first 6 episodes - which I think have stood the test of time reasonably well, aside from some grindingly cheap casually racist and anti-Semitic jokes, which I increasingly find festoon much of Milligan's work - but then I went to the kitchen to get a drink. Seeing that dark corridor to my right brought it all back. I was a petrified child again. I could feel my heart beating in my ears.
I had sort of hoped that this blog post would end in my personal redemption and I would rise like a moronic phoenix from the ashes of my own gormlessness. Predictably, however, it ended in me hiding in a well-lit room, too scared to go back outside of it. I may yet try and watch the remaining 20 minutes of the series and achieve some sort of closure (or some sort of seisure). But seeing as I seem to recall the final part of it terrified me to the point that I had screaming nightmares for the rest of the week, I don't hold out much hope.
Honestly, BBC... you were still making new episodes of The Two Ronnies until 1987. What on earth were you doing, repeating stuff from 1976 in the late 1980s? So in a way it's your fault.
 |
| A sight simply bound to send me to the lavatory |
I'm nothing if not a contrary old bird, though, and I have to admit that a lot of the visual style and themes of The Phantom Raspberry Blower have led me to a lifelong love of studying the Jack the Ripper case and other dark history, as well as a broader love of historical documentaries. I think that it is genuinely true to say that without spending an hour of my life in a state of cataplexy watching the Phantom, I would not be so interested in them.
Watching and reading about Jack the Ripper scares me, too. Which is daft, since as a 31-year old male artist living in 2012 by the coast in West Sussex, I am significantly outside his target group of female prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888. Dafter still: Jack the Ripper scares me because it reminds me of The Phantom Raspberry Blower.
On Twitter today, my friend posted a link to a full playlist of the 8 episodes which made up the near future science-fiction strand The Worm That Turned, also from a later series of The Two Ronnies, on YouTube. This, in something of a running theme, also scared me as a child. But it reminded me of the Phantom, and knowing that he too would be lurking on YouTube somewhere that it could be a good time to face my fears.
Like The Worm That Turned, The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town was made up of eight episodes of about 8 minutes duration. It was written by Spike Milligan, as some indication as to the level of lunacy that was the target of the series, rather than a gritty psychological terror. So yesterday evening I did some Googling and then watched it.
Well, almost all of it. I watched the first 6 episodes - which I think have stood the test of time reasonably well, aside from some grindingly cheap casually racist and anti-Semitic jokes, which I increasingly find festoon much of Milligan's work - but then I went to the kitchen to get a drink. Seeing that dark corridor to my right brought it all back. I was a petrified child again. I could feel my heart beating in my ears.
 |
| Me, yesterday |
Honestly, BBC... you were still making new episodes of The Two Ronnies until 1987. What on earth were you doing, repeating stuff from 1976 in the late 1980s? So in a way it's your fault.
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Dangerous times in east London's Benelux magazine collecting community
Did you know that the first ever edition of Private Eye magazine is worth £1 million? It is also small, the size of a Mr. Men book. However, when money like that is involved, you know that magazine collecting Dutch gangsters won't be far behind.
My source of information was a former Belgian track athlete, whose family had emigrated from the Belgian Congo in the 1950s. He was in Whitechapel in hot pursuit of the magazine, which he was planning to acquire from the less financially-aware and then sell at auction. However, he was not that familiar with the mean streets of London's east end. This is where I come in.
Thanks to my intimate knowledge of the Jack the Ripper case, I was the ideal candidate. Especially seeing as I never do any bloody work and therefore wasn't busy. We tracked down the volume in a small shop (I am not sure where exactly, in reality I don't know London from the arse end of a donkey) but that was where our trouble started, as well-organised Dutch gangsters and magazine enthusiasts descended upon us on high-performance motorcycles. They knew exactly what they were looking for.
Fortunately, perhaps the last remaining broadsheet copy of The Independent was lying discarded on the pavement, principally because London is a filthy hole that needs cleaning (vote Ken Livingstone, folks). Concealing the valuable magazine within the newspaper I was able to saunter away unsuspected.
We crossed the river and went to my Belgian contact's riverside flat in Thamesmead. It was a strange issue of Private Eye. Although smaller format, it retained much of the modern day structure: political journalism followed by more satirical pieces. However, vast swathes of the back of the issue were dedicated to a multiple page Garfield comic strip adventure set at the Battle of Rourke's Drift. Luckily for me, my decisive action was rewarded by my Belgian partner, who agreed that without my quick thinking the magazine would have been lost to the Dutch - many of whom were trying to phone us to pinpoint our location - and agreed I should receive 75% of the proceeds from selling the magazine at auction.
The risk, of course, was that we would again have to head out onto the streets away from the safety of our hideout to get the sales process in motion. Good fortune struck again, however, and I woke up before I had to go through any of that. Although my pillow was gone.
My source of information was a former Belgian track athlete, whose family had emigrated from the Belgian Congo in the 1950s. He was in Whitechapel in hot pursuit of the magazine, which he was planning to acquire from the less financially-aware and then sell at auction. However, he was not that familiar with the mean streets of London's east end. This is where I come in.
Thanks to my intimate knowledge of the Jack the Ripper case, I was the ideal candidate. Especially seeing as I never do any bloody work and therefore wasn't busy. We tracked down the volume in a small shop (I am not sure where exactly, in reality I don't know London from the arse end of a donkey) but that was where our trouble started, as well-organised Dutch gangsters and magazine enthusiasts descended upon us on high-performance motorcycles. They knew exactly what they were looking for.
Fortunately, perhaps the last remaining broadsheet copy of The Independent was lying discarded on the pavement, principally because London is a filthy hole that needs cleaning (vote Ken Livingstone, folks). Concealing the valuable magazine within the newspaper I was able to saunter away unsuspected.
We crossed the river and went to my Belgian contact's riverside flat in Thamesmead. It was a strange issue of Private Eye. Although smaller format, it retained much of the modern day structure: political journalism followed by more satirical pieces. However, vast swathes of the back of the issue were dedicated to a multiple page Garfield comic strip adventure set at the Battle of Rourke's Drift. Luckily for me, my decisive action was rewarded by my Belgian partner, who agreed that without my quick thinking the magazine would have been lost to the Dutch - many of whom were trying to phone us to pinpoint our location - and agreed I should receive 75% of the proceeds from selling the magazine at auction.
The risk, of course, was that we would again have to head out onto the streets away from the safety of our hideout to get the sales process in motion. Good fortune struck again, however, and I woke up before I had to go through any of that. Although my pillow was gone.
Sunday, 25 December 2011
Happy Christmas
Hello blog. Blog is a bit like a diary really. I tell it all sorts of things and sometimes forget that other people can - and indeed are encouraged to - read it. Never completely though. There's always that thing in the back of your mind urging caution.
I'm an old stager of social networking. I've never really been an early adopter of anything before but this time I have been. Kind of accidentally, and a lot of the people I know are far more seasoned campaigners than me. But I've pretty much seen it all now, as I've mentioned here several times before. One of the consequences of this is that I'm possessed of a fairly firm set of principles and guidelines about what I will and will not post.
I am now particularly drunk thanks to whomsoever it was who invented the red grape. But my principles are so unshakeable so I'm not going to start whiffling on about my specific personal business now. Interestingly I have no such foibles about discussing (in some depth) the parlous state of my mental health. Maybe I know that, really, that's all just make-believe and hooey. I imagine that most people who will read this will know me and will maybe know what I'm talking about anyway.
This Christmas Day could well prove to be a highly significant one for a number of reasons. I've been very determined to enjoy the whole holiday season - to the point where, in fact, I've even worried about not doing so, dissecting the whole experience bit-by-bit in my head to try and decide if I'm doing it RIGHT. But after lunch today, full of meat and brassicas and wine and Christmas, I sat (lay, heaving) down on the sofa and just thought about stuff. I felt such great waves of gratitude at my good fortune to have such wonderful people around me in my life that I almost wept. I felt truly happy.
I hope you have all felt truly happy this Christmas.
I'm an old stager of social networking. I've never really been an early adopter of anything before but this time I have been. Kind of accidentally, and a lot of the people I know are far more seasoned campaigners than me. But I've pretty much seen it all now, as I've mentioned here several times before. One of the consequences of this is that I'm possessed of a fairly firm set of principles and guidelines about what I will and will not post.
I am now particularly drunk thanks to whomsoever it was who invented the red grape. But my principles are so unshakeable so I'm not going to start whiffling on about my specific personal business now. Interestingly I have no such foibles about discussing (in some depth) the parlous state of my mental health. Maybe I know that, really, that's all just make-believe and hooey. I imagine that most people who will read this will know me and will maybe know what I'm talking about anyway.
This Christmas Day could well prove to be a highly significant one for a number of reasons. I've been very determined to enjoy the whole holiday season - to the point where, in fact, I've even worried about not doing so, dissecting the whole experience bit-by-bit in my head to try and decide if I'm doing it RIGHT. But after lunch today, full of meat and brassicas and wine and Christmas, I sat (lay, heaving) down on the sofa and just thought about stuff. I felt such great waves of gratitude at my good fortune to have such wonderful people around me in my life that I almost wept. I felt truly happy.
I hope you have all felt truly happy this Christmas.
Monday, 19 December 2011
2011: accentuate the positive
All year I've been complaining about the shitty year I've had. This is my right as an Englishman. It's also been a complete waste of my time. Trouble is, I've started to believe my own propaganda. Last week I got some bad news. Personal stuff, you'd not be interested. But the point is, it stopped me from blundering blindly along, bemoaning my misfortune over the last 12 months. It's been alright. It's actually been better than alright, it's taught me about being a human being.
What I will take from 2011 is that you don't need unendingly positive things to happen to you for them to be positive experiences. In fact, much of what has happened to me has ultimately led to stress, worry and sadness. I've lost a grandparent who was a significant part of my upbringing. I've lost my cat who had been part of my life for over half of it. Friends have moved away, moved on, moved up. And there's nothing but the prospect of more to come. But that's OK because 2011 has taught me I'm equal to it.
In fact, 2011 has taught me that I can be better than it. I've never made more new friends in a year as an adult as I have in the last 12 months. And that's not through things falling into my lap. It's been because I've put myself out there to do it. I risked rejection to do it but ultimately didn't encounter any. It's been a learning experience, and like any learning experience I'm not there yet. I have been slow to adjust to all the new things. This will get better and I will be better in 2012. I've been a good friend, a new friend, an old friend and I'm afraid to say, a bad friend in 2011. Not bad for any other reason than blindspots, laziness and not realising all the things I could and should have done.
There are a couple of people who I feel I've treated particularly shabbily and I'll be trying to redress that balance and keep it redressed next year.
But like everything else that has come out of 2011, although I don't feel good about having done that, I'm not feeling good about it for good reasons, positive reasons. I'm not beating myself to a pulp in a corner over some perceived internal failing. I let myself slip, I recognised it and learnt from it.
2011 has been really tough going, but I've got through it and I'm a better person because of it. And it's not just me thinking that, independent adjudicators have confirmed it. Which is particularly pleasing to me. 2012 promises to be the hardest year of my life. But I'll get through that as well.
What I will take from 2011 is that you don't need unendingly positive things to happen to you for them to be positive experiences. In fact, much of what has happened to me has ultimately led to stress, worry and sadness. I've lost a grandparent who was a significant part of my upbringing. I've lost my cat who had been part of my life for over half of it. Friends have moved away, moved on, moved up. And there's nothing but the prospect of more to come. But that's OK because 2011 has taught me I'm equal to it.
In fact, 2011 has taught me that I can be better than it. I've never made more new friends in a year as an adult as I have in the last 12 months. And that's not through things falling into my lap. It's been because I've put myself out there to do it. I risked rejection to do it but ultimately didn't encounter any. It's been a learning experience, and like any learning experience I'm not there yet. I have been slow to adjust to all the new things. This will get better and I will be better in 2012. I've been a good friend, a new friend, an old friend and I'm afraid to say, a bad friend in 2011. Not bad for any other reason than blindspots, laziness and not realising all the things I could and should have done.
There are a couple of people who I feel I've treated particularly shabbily and I'll be trying to redress that balance and keep it redressed next year.
But like everything else that has come out of 2011, although I don't feel good about having done that, I'm not feeling good about it for good reasons, positive reasons. I'm not beating myself to a pulp in a corner over some perceived internal failing. I let myself slip, I recognised it and learnt from it.
2011 has been really tough going, but I've got through it and I'm a better person because of it. And it's not just me thinking that, independent adjudicators have confirmed it. Which is particularly pleasing to me. 2012 promises to be the hardest year of my life. But I'll get through that as well.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
This was written down in the United States
"Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto
They're ridin' down the line
Fixin’ everybody’s troubles
Everybody’s ’cept mine
Somebody musta told ’em
That I was doin’ fine"Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Blues
Everybody likes to be nice and helpful. It's a good feeling to help someone out, or even feel that you've done your best to try. Of course, even if the problems are very similar to your own, solving them - even helping to solve them - is a very different proposition. This week I've been doing a bit of troubleshootin' and shoulderwork myself. I feel good about that. But it's made me realise I'm a hypocrite if I then don't also try and address the same things in myself.
I've been thinking a lot about counselling recently, mainly due to my friend Nina's brilliant new blog on the subject which I have mentioned here before, but also because a number of my friends have told me about their positive experiences of it in the past year or so. Not only have I heard about their positive experiences, I have also seen and felt its beneficial effects in them.
I've had experiences of counselling in the past, but they've all been negative and unhelpful. I'm sure as much of the failures were my fault as they were the fault of the people involved. Nevertheless, failures they were. The most recent of these was in 2002, which as mathematics professors everywhere will be able to tell you is nearly 10 years ago. A person can change a lot in ten years, especially if 10 years ago you were 22 years old and as such thought you knew everything. These days I'm far less dismissive of anything, knowing full well that things have a way of coming back round in circles and if you're too cocky, of biting you on the arse.
My concern is that it will be too difficult to find the right person. I know that the right counsellor or right approach is out there for me somewhere, or rather, that is what I now choose to believe. It's not a friend you want. I want someone outside of that, someone who can ask and be told things that I'd not necessarily be comfortable sharing with people I know. However, I also want them to be someone who I feel I can trust, whom I respect and someone who actually cares.
Like a friend.
I hope this guardian angel exists out there somewhere, because I think I owe it to myself to try and find them in 2012. Even if only to address my impossibly high expectations of people and of things.
Friday, 18 November 2011
On firefighting
Twitter is a dangerous place for me to be really. With only 140 characters available, getting your point across can sometimes be tricky. Reading between the lines is often imperative. It's unfortunate, then, that this is a skill I really don't possess.
Yesterday my timeline was full of gloom. It was a gloomnami. Having just come out of a big spangly gloom myself, I thought that this was just typical. "Why can't everyone be cheerful at the same time?", I pondered.
When this was pointed out again to me this morning by my friend, it gave me pause for thought. I think that I do spend an awful lot of time taking care of making sure everyone I care about is happy rather than do it for myself. I suppose I have always done it, and assumed that everyone was doing the same thing. It's a characteristic I have inherited from my mother, whose frankly mind-boggling altruism (of course) drives me mad. "Why don't you just take care of yourself first?", I wail, continuing a proud human tradition of being most annoyed by the characteristics in others that are most damning of yourself.
Thing is, wanting the people you love to be happy isn't a particularly bad characteristic. There are worse ones. Racism, farting on all the cans in a supermarket or wiping your bum on the curtains are but three examples. However, when the same people I am trying to cheer are at the same time worried about whether I am happy, it's somewhat counterproductive.
"Don't worry about me" is something of a mantra of mine. And I always mean it. But I wouldn't say I've ever been particularly happy at any point in my life thus far. Neutral is about as high as I pitch for. Maybe it's time for me to worry about me a little bit more. If only because it will give other people one less thing to worry about. And then they'll feel happier.
Friday, 11 November 2011
Folie à deuxmund
I am not dotmund. Obviously, posting this as dotmund on a blog called "dotmund" doesn't help my cause. Perhaps you found this post by clicking a link posted by dotmund on Twitter. Or via my profile on b3ta.com or on Flickr (both dotmund, in case you'd not guessed by now). But still. Dotmund is not me, either. Not all of me. I don't think so, anyway.
Which isn't to say I wouldn't like to be dotmund. A lot of people like him. He's a bit of a character. Sometimes he says funny things, interesting things. Sometimes he says provocative things, or draws a picture that people enjoy. Dotmund very much exists, but I am not him.
I wish I knew who I was. I don't really understand people, you see. I feel very alone and alienated when I'm around them. But I am quite intelligent, so I've grown adept at blending in. I can talk to people on more or less any subject in more or less any situation. My ability to bluff my way through being a human is a necessity for me, as my greatest fear is being found out.
I suppose dotmund came in as a sort of caricatured version of bits of me I thought would appeal to people. But he's not really me. That is to say, he is but he shouldn't be everything I am. There is a symbiosis in our relationship, of course. Neither of us could exist without the other. Increasingly, however, I worry that my role in this has come down to the bare essentials - breathing, eating, keeping everything in order until the next time dotmund is required - because that's the person people want to see. When I die, I suspect dotmund will be the name on my tombstone. I can't blame anyone for that. But he's not me. I hope he's not me. Or rather, I hope the bits of me he is aren't all there is.
I don't even know who I am any more. Like, I wouldn't even know how to introduce myself to someone. I have so many names these days. Like a well-loved pet. Maybe that's what I am. What I do know is that as soon as someone says "you may know him as dotmund" eyes light up and I get to play at being dotmund for a while.
But I'm not him. I kind of wish I could remember who I really am. But at the same time I'm scared to in case I find that there's nothing there any more.
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Read something else
The keen-eyed among you will have noticed a distinct improvement in the overall quality and tone of my blog in the last couple of days, because I've not been writing it. So as not to spoil my batting average, here's another of my occasional round ups of better things to read than stuff I write.
Firstly, long-time sidebar dweller (and as such someone you should already be familiar with), Jessica Harby now has a website for all of her art. You need to see this, because she is really good.
Another long term inmate from my Friends section is Betsy, who now has more blogs than she does legs. This latest one isn't about diabetes or horrible disfigurement, though. It's about other things. Last night's post about stress is properly brilliant and deserves to be read and read again.
My friend Andy, meanwhile, has turned his back on boring old British snacks in favour of the increasingly broad and exciting array of foreign snacks on British shelves as well as any contraband smuggled in on planes hidden down people's trousers. Marvel as a man whose diet used to be 90% vinegar and peas now chows down on a Knoppers.
Last weekend I spent a hugely enjoyable Saturday evening with Bob Manning and his lovely family in his garden, setting fire to things and throwing them up in the air. Luckily it was Bonfire Night and no-one noticed. Bob is raising awareness about and money for MS by getting musicians to record cover versions of the song he wrote, Washington Parks. You can find out all about it here.
I mentioned I See A Beautiful Future last week, but I'm going to do it again, both because I think it's developing into a really fantastic site and also today it's got a song on it and everything.
If you'd prefer to just gawp at something in wonder, my friend Lolly - who the memory champions reading will no doubt remember wrote Wednesday's post about her favourite albums - has finished uploading her photographs from her American road trip between LA and Las Vegas last month. She is an amazing photographer, so these are amazing photographs.
Finally, I have to admit defeat and confess that this last link is something I did write. However, it's worth checking out the rest of the blog as well, because it gets a lot better after that. Mental Spaghetti.
While we're all about me (boo) here's a handy guide I made to some aspects of Twitter etiquette which are seemingly being forgotten or gleefully ignored. By dicks.
Friday, 4 November 2011
On the impossibility of communicating using communications technology
I'm no good at communicating with people via the communications technology. Not properly anyway. The astute amongst you will already have noticed that there's an irony to this statement. But bear with me.
I'm not an old stager in many things, but on the internet I am getting there. It all began back in the mists of 2003 on October 28th, when I joined B3ta. I've seen some things since then, I can tell you. More importantly I've been active non-stop ever since on all kinds of forums, messageboards, blogs and whatever the hell sort of thing Twitter is. I've seen stuff come and go. Nothing can happen within an online community these days which doesn't leave me raising a weary but amused eyebrow and just carrying on.
One of the effects that all this time on the internet has had - and beyond a shadow of a doubt its most positive one - is the number of new friends I have made. You can't hide forever on the internet. The real you will always come out eventually. It's a great way to get to know people.
Ironically, however, it can be more of a hindrance than a help once you turn that pixelly friend into a flesh and blood one. For me personally, at least. Language is vague. Words can be imprecise. Non-verbal communication, general mood and tone are so important, frighteningly so, in fact. Even the good old-fashioned telephone pulls up short, and of course there are new ways to keep in touch being devised every single day. Each one of them is a tiger trap for the likes of me. There's just no substitute for being there. I find that it can be pretty hard to always keep pace. Which is a sugar-coated way of saying that I go insane.
Twitter, email, mesageboards and even instant messenger are one-way conversations. You have your say and then you wait. And wait and wait, sometimes. People go away, they have technical problems, other things might come up. They may just not want to talk. Whatever happens, it's talking by installments. Moods change, situations change, and the person who gets back to you may be in a very different mindset to the one you initially communicated with. And, of course, the reverse is true.
I'm not an old stager in many things, but on the internet I am getting there. It all began back in the mists of 2003 on October 28th, when I joined B3ta. I've seen some things since then, I can tell you. More importantly I've been active non-stop ever since on all kinds of forums, messageboards, blogs and whatever the hell sort of thing Twitter is. I've seen stuff come and go. Nothing can happen within an online community these days which doesn't leave me raising a weary but amused eyebrow and just carrying on.
One of the effects that all this time on the internet has had - and beyond a shadow of a doubt its most positive one - is the number of new friends I have made. You can't hide forever on the internet. The real you will always come out eventually. It's a great way to get to know people.
Ironically, however, it can be more of a hindrance than a help once you turn that pixelly friend into a flesh and blood one. For me personally, at least. Language is vague. Words can be imprecise. Non-verbal communication, general mood and tone are so important, frighteningly so, in fact. Even the good old-fashioned telephone pulls up short, and of course there are new ways to keep in touch being devised every single day. Each one of them is a tiger trap for the likes of me. There's just no substitute for being there. I find that it can be pretty hard to always keep pace. Which is a sugar-coated way of saying that I go insane.
Twitter, email, mesageboards and even instant messenger are one-way conversations. You have your say and then you wait. And wait and wait, sometimes. People go away, they have technical problems, other things might come up. They may just not want to talk. Whatever happens, it's talking by installments. Moods change, situations change, and the person who gets back to you may be in a very different mindset to the one you initially communicated with. And, of course, the reverse is true.
Conflict resolution has never been a strong suit with me. But this pathological desire I have to make sure everything is alright RIGHT THIS SECOND is spectacularly ill-suited to the online world. Imagine a caveman hammering away relentlessly with a bone on a rock trying to make it be what he wants it to be and you've pretty much pictured the way I go about trying to "solve" or "cure" things online. And of course, it's about as effective. Actually, no, it's LESS effective, because neither the bone or the rock are going to feel it or end up getting hurt.
You may not always get what you want from actually sitting down with someone and talking to them, but what you will always get is closure and a sure idea of exactly where everything stands, from words plus gestures and expressions, intonations and postures. Well, it's what I always get. If you don't then you may be even more muddled and messed up than I am, which is almost certainly not a good thing.
I love the internet and talking to people on it. But I think I occasionally need reminding that it's just a tool. Something which helps one to keep in touch. It's not a substitute for any kind of relationship. Recently I've not done so well at remembering that and as such I've lost a lot of the spark and frivolity which makes people want to talk to me in the first place. I truly hope that I've realised this before I've lost any friends.
People who complain the internet is just a load of people talking trivial nonsense and doing nob jokes are missing the point. It's the trivial nonsense and the nob jokes which are what give life its colour and what brings people together, more often than not to just discuss trivial nonsense and do nob jokes. I've seen what it's like, and BEEN what it's like, to be sucked into the world of Internet - Serious Business and I don't like it. Dotmund 2.0 is sometimes a maddening person to know, even to the point where you wish you didn't.
You may not always get what you want from actually sitting down with someone and talking to them, but what you will always get is closure and a sure idea of exactly where everything stands, from words plus gestures and expressions, intonations and postures. Well, it's what I always get. If you don't then you may be even more muddled and messed up than I am, which is almost certainly not a good thing.
I love the internet and talking to people on it. But I think I occasionally need reminding that it's just a tool. Something which helps one to keep in touch. It's not a substitute for any kind of relationship. Recently I've not done so well at remembering that and as such I've lost a lot of the spark and frivolity which makes people want to talk to me in the first place. I truly hope that I've realised this before I've lost any friends.
People who complain the internet is just a load of people talking trivial nonsense and doing nob jokes are missing the point. It's the trivial nonsense and the nob jokes which are what give life its colour and what brings people together, more often than not to just discuss trivial nonsense and do nob jokes. I've seen what it's like, and BEEN what it's like, to be sucked into the world of Internet - Serious Business and I don't like it. Dotmund 2.0 is sometimes a maddening person to know, even to the point where you wish you didn't.
The next time anyone sees me near a computer or a mobile phone (or even a wireless telegraph) with a furrowed brow or a worried expression, feel free to hit me with a bone. Big one. Out of a mammoth's leg.
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