My mate's mate's birthday.

It's nearly Christmas, and you know what that means! It's time for my most saccharine blog post ever! Ho ho ho etc.

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in God, at least not at the moment. Although like any good scientist I'm prepared to have my mind changed, I believe in a godless universe like I believe in gravity, and none of this stuff in here is floating away. There's no mystical energy field controlling my destiny. Jesus, though, him I gots time for. For one thing, there's some evidence that he actually existed, which makes him a lot more inspiring. The man's got a great message, a good story and an excellent look. I'm also a big fan of myths in general: big scope, a lesson to be learned, cool gimmicks that you can't get otherwise.

So Christmas? Christmas is ace. I'm perfectly happy to co-opt the celebration of a quasi-mythical historical figure to my own festive ends. It's hard to argue with its message, and it's impossible to avoid its reach, both socially and commercially. One good thing about being an atheist is that you can celebrate any religious festival you like. You may have to be discreet - as the other practitioners might take a dim view of your joining in the fun - but at least you don't have to worry about pissing off the wrong god. I love Christmas the best, but I'm also partial to Yom Kippur and Diwali.

It's not like it matters. Christmas in this country can be a religion-free festival if one so chooses. I don't get thrown out of midnight mass for clearly being an unrepentant sinner. I don't communicate with God at all, although I do watch and celebrate the story of the Nativity. I give thanks, but for elements of the tangible world: my friends and family, my health, my huge and almost obscene luck to be born where I was and when I am, compared to the many, many people who are born into suffering. I give thanks to the intangible world too: for my mind, for words, and (and this sounds nauseating, because it is) for love. I know it and miss it and am grateful for its existence and shall seek it out again. So Christmas is a time of personal, spiritual importance, not just an opportunity to over-eat.

Christmas has come to mean other things to, things far outside of its religious beginnings but, in my opinion, no less important. Christmas is a time for sadness, too.

It has often been identified that during a time in which we are expected to concentrate on joy, it is difficult to ignore the problems in our lives. Christmas is a time during which we have the loftiest aims: peace and love and goodwill to all men. These aims are noble, but difficult, and they remind us of the imperfections that we all face. For many people, Christmas can be miserable simply because we are supposed to be having fun, and we are unable.

Sometimes (not always, but often enough), just the societal conventions of Christmas can cause people problems. Christmas is, TV tells us, a time for family, a time for giving, a time for togetherness. Unfortunately Christmas can also be a time for arguing with your family, struggling to find stuff to give, together but bored to tupping tears.

That Christmas is a highly emotional time, perhaps even traumatically so, is so often identified as to become cliché. The Eastenders Christmas special is rarely all smiles and kittens. While on screen a perfect family Christmas is often the reward, normally the protagonists must profess their love, help out Santa, or take out a building full of terrorists before they get it. Christmas either sucks, or it sucks hard for a little bit and then you get the pay-off.

It happens so often that it's become accepted. Christmas is never perfect, rarely close. We celebrate it through a strange mixture of compulsions: compelled by our own personal wants or by those of others to faithfully emulate the traditions, even if we don't believe in the myth, or even the message. Sometimes we do it just because it's... well, it's Christmas. It's unavoidable.

I personally believe Christmas can be a time of growth, and growth rarely comes from complete stability. The fact that it is sometimes difficult makes it more important to me. I don't enjoy the drama (and with my family there can be drama), but I appreciate that it's a part of what happens when you get disparate persons together and try to make them love each other. If it's going to happen, then I'll try and salvage something from it, and if anything, it makes the whole festival more credible to me.

That's not true in every case. Some people have perfectly cogent reasons for despising the festive season. Victims of past trauma should not be forced to relive it year on year, and it is unfair and unfortunate that they must. But if you can't embrace Christmas, seeing as it is unavoidable, perhaps facing it head on is the way forward.

I'm looking forward to Christmas, because of the gifts and the family and all that bullshit but also, masochistically, for the crummy bits that I know are coming. It makes it feel like a real event, y'know? Something you could learn from, something worth going through, something worth more that the plastic, advertising led giftfest that we're taught to be so cynical about. There's one part of Christmas that the corporations can't take away: the arguments.

So I'm gift wrapping and carol singing and turkey eating but when the family squares up and the alcohol is flowing I'll scream obscenities and bare my feelings and put people in their place and be firmly put in mine. Christmas will be an ordeal as much as a holiday, but sometimes you come through an ordeal stronger. Just ask Father Christmas, he has a lot on his plate over the holidays (not really, if I don't believe in God Santa Clause certainly doesn't get a free pass).

Lightbulb Moment

Here is a very clever and rather sexy guy named Stephen Johnson talking about ideas, or to be more specific, the climates and situations in which good ideas come about. He starts his presentation talking about the lightbulb moment: that sudden flash of cognitive energy when inspiration strikes.

Of all the theories about ideas, this is the most prevalent. The concept of inspiration being a fleeting, momentary sensation is rather well established, going back at least to Archimedes, who had his trope codifying 'Eureka' moment while chillin' in the bath.

The generally understood notion is that inspiration strikes as an outside force: the solution to a problem bursts fully formed from somewhere else, some other situation, another piece of understanding, or perhaps simply from the ether. My favourite depiction of ideas comes from Terry Pratchett, who in one of his novels describes them as an actual universal force: actual particles of inspiration sleet through the fabric of the universe, occasionally striking a receptive neuron and leading to the birth of another idea. One of 'Leonard Of Quirm's' (Pratchett's counterpart to Leonardo Da Vinci) first inventions is a metal hat designed to keep these inspiration particles out, as he is embarrassed to keep waking up to find new designs for siege engines scrawled all over his bedsheets. 

In his presentation, Stephen Johnson points out that most truly good ideas do not come from nowhere, but are actually the product of a climate of intellectual discussion, industrial drive and general investigative discourse. My favourite moment in the talk is when he links the sudden scientific rush of the Enlightenment to the introduction of coffee into early modern British society. Up until that point most of what people drank during the day would have been alcoholic, which hardly pertains to an atmosphere of frantic industry. Suddenly people were sitting around drinking coffee all day instead of beer and the scientific breakthroughs started to flow (this might also explain why those swotty, tea-drinkin' ancient Chinese were inventing fireworks and paper and stuff while we were still messing around with earth kilns).

So the coffee house and the scientific institute became the nexus of good ideas, and remain so to this day. But Archimedes didn't have his revelation in a coffee shop, he had it half-way into the bathtub.

I'm bringing this up because I recently had what I consider to be a good idea myself. I'm off to America in the spring of next year, partly for research for the novel but mostly because I have itchy feet. I've always felt the need to go to America: it's the seat of practically all my culture, and so a trip there is a pilgrimage of sorts, as well as an adventure.

I had idly explored various ways to write about the trip. The simplest one would probably be a blog, something I'm obviously no stranger to. In fact, the first blog I ever wrote was a travelogue of my journey through New Zealand, Australia and Borneo with my girlfriend. The girlfriend sadly decided to find someone else, but the blog still exists, and you can read it  here if you like.

I decided, however, that I didn't  feel like writing a blog about my time in America. Firstly it can be a little bit time consuming, which doesn't always work out if you are constantly on the road. Also the pressure to keep constantly updating can make it seem like a burden or a chore, something I definitely didn't want on this particular jaunt across the pond.

But, while I was on the Megabus back from Leeds the other day, I had a lightbulb moment. Suddenly a whole project unfurled in my mind like a time-lapsed flower, and by the time I got back to London I had ironed out most of the kinks. I'm VERY excited about it: I think it's just the sort of thing I've been looking for. Even if I follow though with it the project won't be up and running for a long time yet, so I won't say too much now. Anyway, the point of this post is not the project plug, but the moment behind it.

Eureka means, literally, "I have found." Archimedes was searching for the solution to a specific problem (having been tasked by the King of Syracuse to determine if a crown was solid gold or of cheaper construction) before he got in the water. He was so pleased that he went running in the nuddy-pants through the streets, although in my opinion, he was probably more chuffed with the invention of hydrostatics than solving the specific puzzle.

Some good ideas may come, seemingly, out of nowhere. Occasionally, looking at a natural phenomenon or situation might lead you to consider a problem, a question, that you might otherwise never have realised existed. The apocryphal 'Newton and Apple' story is a good example, at least conceptually (again, I'm pretty sure it didn't take an apple falling on his head to make possibly the greatest scientific mind ever consider why stuff falls down).

But my point is that in order to find a solution, you have first to find the problem. I'm pretty chuffed with my good idea, partly because I think it really does have legs, but mostly because I'm just glad to have had it in the first place. It gives me a sense of my own potential, something that had been a bit thin on the ground lately.

I know there are people out there who think themselves capable of at least one big idea, and I agree with them. I bang on all the time on this blog about the individual's ability to take charge of their own life. But here's the kicker: inspiration is not like the particles in a Pratchett novel. It will only come if you make the conditions right.

Maybe you should start hanging out in coffee houses more. Perhaps you should spend more time in scientific institutions. I know you oughta start drinking less booze. But whatever you do, you need to set yourself a problem, a set of parameters, first. Like Archimedes, you'll find only what you look for.

Inspiration is more like a forest fire than a single flash of lightning. The lightning is just the start: you have to ready to burn.

An Ancient Chinese Recipe (for Self-Indulgence).

I've had a rough week, for reasons that are somewhat obtuse and, in retrospect, kinda stupid. I've been getting pissy over events that are long since passed, and to quote my man Bill, "what's gone and what's past help should be past grief." So there's a pleasing irony in the fact I'm dealing with said grief by remembering past times. Today is Guy Fawke's Day, and nothing, but NOTHING, helps deal with heartache like celebrating the brutal execution of a political dissident.

Bonfire Night is my second favourite annual festival (so I like Christmas, big whoop, wanna fight about it?). I like it because I like fireworks: lights and colours and big noises (which makes me sound like a toddler, but I'm not ashamed). And I like it because it gets you together with people, and it's an excuse to be outside once the clocks have gone back, and for the look on happy children's faces and all that other holiday special crap. More than that, I like lighting fireworks.

I mean, come one. They're big explosives that you get to set off in your own back garden! I'm not even slightly military minded, I think any obsession with guns and playing soldiers past pre-pubescence is lame (unless you're actually a soldier, in which case it's OK, I guess). But even a whiny beatnik pacifist like myself can appreciate the atavistic joy of making really loud noises once in a while. Bonfire night is my one chance to muck about with what is essentially brightly coloured gunpowder, and I plan to make the most of it.

Lighting fireworks is also another of those enjoyable tasks that menfolk have selfishly adopted for themselves by labelling them somehow arduous or dangerous. I've mentioned this once before in regards to my own love for flat-pack furniture. Lighting fireworks is a job for men, big manly men, possibly with full beards and a woodsman's axe balanced on their shoulder.

Fireworks can be dangerous, of course. Children should not be allowed to play with them, but as previously stated on this very blog, kids are idiots. Every year the fire service roll out the same adverts to be shown after Blue Peter (or its modern, ultra-violent equivalent, I don't keep up with what the little urchins watch). Don't hold lit fireworks in your hand. Don't keep fireworks in your pocket. Don't make dens inside bonfires. Don't throw fireworks. It's possible that you might have to explain this sort of thing on one occasion, to someone who had never encountered fireworks before, but it appears necessary to remind some folks each time. Every year hundreds of people are injured, sometimes seriously, by fireworks, but in almost every case it is less of a genuine accident and more of the 'which-one-of-you-was-playing-silly-buggers' sort of accident. If you understand what an explosive actually is, but still need to be reminded not to make it explode about your person, then you are not mentally cogent enough to handle lighting fireworks.I would boldly state that for most of us, it's not a hugely dangerous or difficult task.

But I play along with the fallacy (or should that be phallacy, am I right?) because I like setting off fireworks and I don't want anybody else to get to do it. I know that if, say, my little sister were given the task of setting off a rocket, she wouldn't just ignite the fuse with the firework still in her hand, and then wave it in my direction with a vague 'what-can-you-do' expression. Instead she would read the instructions on the packet carefully and follow them to the best of her ability, always paying due attention and respect to the brightly coloured bomb she'd been entrusted with detonating.

I'll pretend to her, and myself, and anyone else in the room, that fireworks require some modicum of skill. And in truth, I do have some area of expertise in the field. I spent all this morning out in the rain building launch stations for tonight's display, but this was largely to ward off my own blue mood, and probably not entirely necessary. I could probably have knocked it all together while everyone else was putting their wellies on.

So every year I put on a fireworks display because I like fireworks, and other people come round and tell me what a clever chap I am and pat me on the back. Sometimes they bring food and get this: occasionally they bring money. Actual cashpounds! For something I'd have done anyway! (To be fair, there's no more obvious waste of money than fireworks. If notes burnt in different colours you might as well just chuck them on the bonfire.)

This year it's even better, because I'm staying with my father till the spring, and the idiot bought the fireworks for me! I've barely had to spend a penny. And at the end of it I will stand, fresh glass of wine in hand, and accept the thanks of my adoring public with a bashful smile, telling them that it was nothing really, and that I was just happy to help. And they'll tell each other what a smashing young man I am, even though it really wasn't anything, and I was just happy to help, and in fact I'd have been a bit pissed off at their presumptuousness if they'd come wandering down the garden to give me a hand.

There will be a few people in the crowd who are in on it. A few, mostly men, who will be secretly wishing that it was they, rather than I, running boldly amid the smoke with a slow burning wick in one gloved hand. They won't be able to complain, though, because everyone else is having fun. I know their grief well, and sympathise. But if they think they're helping with my fireworks they can naff right off. Have a sparkler, mate, and shut your cake-hole.

"Yeah, all right mate, no-one likes a show-off." (Image copyright Ed O'Keeffe.)

Thousand Faces

This guy on the right is the Spectacular Spider-Man. He has super powers and a bitchin' theme-song but what people really recognise about him is his outfit. The red and blue costume is recognised all over the world, second perhaps only to Superman in terms of iconic status. It doesn't matter how many people read the actual comics, Spider-Man is instantly known because of his distinctive garb.

Secret Identity: sometimes more 'off' than 'on.'

 Less immediately recognisable is his civilian (and on-again-off-again secret) identity, Peter Parker. Peter Parker looks like this guy on the left.

Pink shirt/blue tie combo? Costume mystery solved: the guy is clearly colour-blind.

Except he also looks like this (if you like your Marvel Comics in 'Ultimate' flavour, anyway):

Peter Parker: humble enough to allow medical progress.

Or perhaps he even looks like this. While this guy is a lot more stylized and cartoon-y, he's certainly the coolest looking and the one I much prefer. My point is: all of these are Peter Parker. As long as we, the reader, understand who we are looking at, then that's who it is. This idea is particularly acute in comic books, where different writers and, crucially, artists, take the reigns over a particular character all the time. This can be a problem if you have a vested interest in the particular depiction. The guy on the left is drawn by Humberto Ramos, an artist whose very personal and exaggerated style tends to divide fans.

I'm a comic book guy so I'm used to dealing with this all the time. I've therefore become used to the fact that, for most people, Peter Parker looks like this:

"Are these my hands? Man, I am high as balls."

This sort of thing is obviously not limited to comic books. Any visual representation of an established fictional character is going to divide a few opinions. Partly this is to do with the gap between words and images. Peter Parker is 5'10, with brown hair and eyes. He has size 8 feet. As physical descriptions go this is pretty vague, but is all comic book artists have to go on when they draw him. This can lead, as previously shown, to some pretty different interpretations. Even when the verbal description is much more comprehensive there's still plenty of room for some visual wiggling.

Sometimes it hardly matters. Sometimes a writer leaves the physical description so sparse that you could envision pretty much anything you like. James Patterson's most famous creation is Alex Cross, a black detective working in Washington DC. Now, Patterson normally runs pretty light on the physical description anyway, but he says remarkably little about what Cross looks like in any of the books, save that he is black. Patterson should justly be applauded for not making a huge deal out of the race of his protagonist, but even by his standards Alex Cross is thinly drawn at best. So for most people with an interest, Cross looks like this:

Morgan Freeman: left the gas on.

But to me, that's just Morgan Freeman. I have actually read a few James Patterson novels, but I found the depiction of Cross so nebulous that I had no idea what he looked like. He was just an androgynous outline, like a gingerbread man. I found that I didn't really have a picture of him in my head at all. I think that this, more than anything, is the reason I thought it was a crap book. When I flicked through some of the same books a minute ago I still found it difficult to picture him, even with the film image of Morgan Freeman in my head.

Soon, to most people, Alex Cross will look like this:

"Peace."

That's Idris Elba from The Wire, by the way. He will be playing the part of Alex Cross soon but I'm pretty sure that if I ever read another Patterson novel (unlikely) he won't be filling in the silhouette left by the flaws in Patterson's writing.

Does any of this really matter? Possibly not: everyone is entitled to their own imaginings, and so fictional characters can look like whatever you decide. Just because they have been depicted in a certain way in a certain medium, doesn't mean you have to adopt that depiction yourself. You can just ignore it. If anything, this is the major positive about verbal descriptions: they can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. A strongly written character can have a generally recognised personality but a thousand different faces, and it's part of the fun.

But one thing I have noticed is that visual depictions tend to stick faster when they accompany an artistically credible piece of work. Therefore: the more you like something, the more that version of a character is destined to stick with you. James Bond is a good example: when people imagine him, they tend to envision their favourite actor as the model for his appearance, ignoring the Bond films that show him otherwise.

Disliking a piece of work can have the opposite effect. In my case, I was pretty sold on Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker after Spider-Man 2, a film I enjoyed immensely. However I thought the sequel painfully, embarrassingly bad, and was very disappointed in Maguire's performance. Now when I see him, I don't see Peter Parker at all; in fact I'm somewhat aggrieved that he occupies that space for so many people.

The best example I can think of is the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films. Those movies were incredibly well researched, a labour of love in some respects, and it shows in the effect it has had on the fans of the books. Gandalf the Grey now looks like Ian Mckellen, at least to me (and my dad). The films were a) so close to the vague imaginings in my head and b) so engrossing and inspiring and all the rest that it essentially taped over all the visuals I had and replaced them, and it matters to me not a jot. I can totally accept this because I enjoyed the films so much.

It is because of a particular piece of writing and art that I know what Peter Parker looks like. When I see him drawn otherwise I can accept it, but I find that how much I like a particular version of him depends on how closely it sticks to the idea I have in my head. That idea was put there by one of the best Spider-Man comics I ever read, a one-shot by Paul Jenkins that was mostly about a young man with cerebral palsy. Spider-Man unmasks at the end for a single moment, but such was the quality of the writing and art that it has stuck with me ever since. It's not enough to show people a picture. You have to paint it for them if you want it to stay.

Peter Parker: The Amazing Spider-Man

Leaks

Here it is. It's called Leaks. The Ship in was a real place, and the flood in it occurred and was related to me by a friend. None of the other people or events are real, and the narrator is not me... at least, no more than he normally is.

Stall for Saturday

I realise I haven't put any fiction on here in a while. So you can have a short story tomorrow (try to still your thumping hearts) once I've finished proof-reading it.

The power was mine.

I saw an advert recently reminding me not to use a 100 watt bulb when a 60 watt would do. It seems like a pretty simple thing to remember (how flippin' bright do you need your house to be, anyway?), but it sparked off a few neural connections in me that the advert's creators might not have intended. The sentiment, and the wording, was almost exactly the same as an after-credits short that was featured in the show Captain Planet and the Planeteers, that I must have watched at least 15 years ago.

If you aren't acquainted with Captain Planet then you might have missed the Saturday morning cartoon renaissance that occurred during the early to mid 1990s. The titular Captain Planet was an elemental warrior created from the powers of five magical rings, each belonging to a teenager from one of the five continents and each containing the force of one of the... four elements. I can imagine the brainstorming meeting at the show's inception:


Head Executive: So he's a superhero, like Superman, but environmental. So we rope the kids in and the merchandising does itself but we get the moms and schools and all that other crap on board. 

Junior Exec: Does he have different costumes, sir? 

Head Exec: No, this is the brilliant part. To even GET the superhero on screen, you need to combine a bunch of other powers. And the powers belong to teenagers. Use... I don't know, the four elements. And then you give one each to a kid from each continent. Put 'em together, presto chango: Captain Planet!

*Applause* 

Junior Exec: Um... sir? 

Head Exec: What? 

Junior Exec: There are... um, there are five continents, sir. 

Head Exec: Really? 

Junior Exec: America actually counts as two, sir. 

Head Exec: Well, just make up another element then. Something inoffensive, that doesn't change the format of the show. Like 'heart' but not as gay. 

Junior Exec: Well sir, the Chinese actually believe that metal is the fifth element and... 

Head Exec: What are you, a communist? You're fired. Power of heart it is. Aaaand done. *Does 'gun' gesture with hands.*




So the spirit of the earth gives five magic rings to five special young people, calls them Planeteers and sends them off to fight eco-crime or somesuch without clearing it with health and safety or anything. Ma-ti gets stuck with the power of heart but it doesn't really matter because the five Planeteers are, frankly, rubbish. In retrospect it's obvious that they would have to combine their powers to summon Captain Planet in every episode (he does come ahead of them on the billing), but at the time I remember thinking, even as a small child, that the Planeteers were strikingly inept, and that if I had magic jewellery that shot fire out of it I'd do a much better job of combating eco-terrorism.

On screen it looked like the Planateers were held back by their own creative shortcomings (if the girl who controlled water didn't have a fire to put out or sea-creatures to bathe, she just stood around looking sheepish), but in reality they were battling both against the demands of the plot and against an amazingly jarring contradiction in the show's own ethos. Captain Planet's motto was: the power is yours, but the tagline extolled every time he was summoned forth was: by your powers combined. The idea was to point out that people are much more effective when they work as a team: a worthy sentiment but one that left the Planeteers relegated to multi-cultural cheerleaders while Captain Planet did the required eco-asskicking. 

I'd actually forgotten his awesome, grass-green mullet. Go Planet!

The program was dead and buried by the mid 90s and although it is fondly remembered, most people recall it for its catchy theme tune and for the beguiling mix of sentimentality, violence and high camp that typified western children's animation during the period (Captain Planet, while a rugged looking dude, should have either fired his costume designer or is naturally one of the gayest looking beings in the universe).

The show had an effect on me, but perhaps not the right one. I mean, I remember the theme tune word for word, but I still need to be reminded to use a lower wattage in my light-bulbs.

When people talk about the effects of climate change, or indeed, any continued trend that may affect world development, the point is often made that it will be the next generation, or possibly the one after that, to suffer the full effects. We can fuck up the planet with impunity because we'll be dead and buried by then, but our grandkids sure are going to be pissed about it.

In my case, and in the case of people my age, the sad fact is that we've been listening to this argument for most of our lives. I was only 5 when Captain Planet first aired in the UK. It was pointed out at the time, possibly even on the show itself, that it would be the next generation that would need to act. And the next generation... well, I've had a lot of stuff on recently, so I've been a bit busy. What have YOU done to save the environment?

I don't want to sound like a defeatist, but maybe we're naive to think that we can convince each other to stop messing about with the planet, seeing as we're having so much fun doing it. Perhaps we can convince the next generation to do a better job. At least part of Captain Planet and the Planeteers point was demonstrating to children how they might make a difference in the world: that the power might be theirs. Seeing that I am that next generation, maybe the show wasn't as effective as its creators had hoped.

I know it sounds like I'm passing on the responsibility and that's because I quite blatantly am. I just think that it's unlikely that everyone my age is going to have a sudden change of heart about looking after the environment. I'm one of the more ecologically minded people I know and I'm still frankly crap at being green.Maybe we should turn our creative efforts onto a new project: how to get those that follow us to do better than we. Considering the example we currently set, I think we're going to have to make a better show than Captain Planet if we're to convince the next generation to stop passing the buck.

Ahead of the curve /or/ Put the wind up the oil baron

I spent some time recently thinking about renewable energy, partly because it’s research for my novel (which is set on a windfarm) and partly because of this post from Nash. It is of his usual stellar quality, and ruminates on the eventual need of humanity to spread beyond this pleasant orb and seek new places to pillage and despoil beyond Earth’s orbit. It looks quite a long way into the future but it made me think hard about some of the issues that address us as a species right now. Chief among them was the possible energy crisis that awaits when we run out of fossil fuels, and the more I thought about it the more I thought: well, that’s bollocks, innit?

Don’t get me wrong, it seems pretty likely we’re going to run out of fossil fuels sooner rather than later. It’s unlikely we’ll even be able to accurately predict when they will reach critical levels, because so much of their future usage will go into the developing economies of India, China and Russia. No one knows for certain how the economic needs of the world will evolve so we don’t know how much energy we will need, past the broad estimate of a flippin’ shitload.

The obvious alternative, therefore, is renewable energy. In fact, it is the only alternative: we can’t just let everything run dry and grind to a halt.

Before the switchover is complete it seems some people expect an era of crisis: we won’t have enough fossil fuel left to sustain the world’s current energy needs and we won’t have enough renewable energy to cope. My question is this: what about current business practice makes this seem likely?

Some good examples are the American railway companies, many of whom collapsed as America’s primary travel method switched from rail to road. The railway companies were selling a product: travel by rail, and when the need for that product disappeared the company was doomed to follow. Business in general learnt a harsh lesson: that no matter how solid and essential a particular product might seem, it can always, always be replaced, and that it is impossible to foresee what form its replacement might take.

The answer? Sell not a product, but an idea. Don’t sell train tickets, sell travel. A good current example is British Telecom, who have to occasionally put out advertisement reminding you that you even have a landline: the product on which their company is based. That they are still a success, despite the fact that a significant fraction of households don’t even bother to use their landline anymore, is down to idea vs product mechanic. BT don’t sell phones, they sell communication.

It seems unlikely to me, therefore, that when the oil starts to really run out, executives at the major fuel companies are just going to stop bothering to show up for work and start seeking employment at the nearest bio-mass depot. It seems rather more likely that the major fuel companies will already own the renewable energy sources, and will have for some time.It also occurs that the fuel companies are in the best position to estimate how much oil is left in the ground, and plan accordingly.

There is plenty of power in the sky and the sea. Enough, in fact, to supply the world’s energy needs several times over. Getting at it will require quite a lot of money, but here’s the thing: the fuel companies actually have quite a lot of money, and they’re willing to spend a bit to make a lot more.

So basically, energy crisis, schmenergy crisis. At first glance this looks like quite a good thing. We switch environmentally damaging energy sources for nice clean renewable ones, everyone feels a bit better and breathes a bit easier and can still keep their iPod charged. Win win.

Except. Except I’m not a massive fan of most fuel companies. I don’t really like the way they operate, or the product they currently endorse. I’d much rather they started making serious investment in renewable sources now, and left the fossil fuels in the ground. But of course they won’t, because that’s not currently how the money is made.

The problem with necessity being the mother of invention is that you have to stick with the person that does the inventing. If you invent things well in advance you can shop about a bit, and choose someone who’s not a colossal twat for your future inventing needs.

The question I’m posing to you, then, is how can we get ahead of the capitalist curve in this? Is there a way of making companies, and I’m talking the big boys here, not Flancrest Enterprises and Jim and Sally’s Family Wind Turbine Store, stop following the shortest route to profit? They’re going to have to change eventually, but only when there’s no money left in doing things the old way. Can we persuade them to do it a bit sooner?

As far as I can see this is the most important aspect of consumer choice. Getting things cheap is a fair goal, especially for those for whom money is in short supply. It’s perfectly within your rights to seek out the cheapest option for a particular product or service. I can’t help thinking, however, that companies will do much of the work in that regard for you. Companies want your money, and they will do anything they can to get it, and if that means lowering their prices then they will. Unfortunately the chief way they manage this is by lowering their overheads and passing on the savings, and in the standard business model the main way to lower your overheads is to start fucking someone else over even harder than you were before.

The only way to encourage large firms to act in a more ethical manner is through mass movement. This is a sentiment more easily made than acted upon and everybody knows it, but my point is this: eventually some firms are going to have to start acting in a certain manner. The problem is that in the meantime the world may have changed into a less hospitable place. It is in all our interest to encourage them to jump the gun.

Obstacles, scmobstacles

I have a new place to live, I found myself a job, work on the novel is goin' pretty vegan kosher, and I feel a little less frightened of life in general. So: I'm back, and there is a post below. Love and rockets.

The Goldfish

I talk to myself a lot. Obviously I only do it when I am by myself, as I already attract enough disparaging looks when I venture out in public thanks to my general air of untrustworthyness. I debate with myself in the car on long journeys, I voice lists of task aloud, and I sometimes read out loud in the bath or in bed, because I’m a solipsist and like to hear the sound of my own voice. In all these things I am not alone. But mostly, when I talk to myself, I insult, berate and criticise my own actions and outlook, and with good reason: when I am by myself, I metamorphose into an idiot. Seriously. An utter dim-wit.

Clearly I am no Einstein when I’m in a crowd (at work today I spent thirty seconds trying to open the safe door against its hinges) but when I am alone it becomes ludicrous. It would be unnecessarily long and tedious to list every faintly idiotic thing that I’ve done recently, but I shall give you a few examples so you can see what I’m driving at.

Firstly, I am capable of some truly incredible acts of clumsiness. I occasionally have accidents that require a perfect storm of physical ineptness, lack of forethought and sheer ignorance. I once almost succeeded, no word of a lie, in choking to death on an ice-cream while sat at the back of a rave. My panicked, potential final thoughts, were consumed by the knowledge that the ice-cream would melt before my corpse was discovered, leaving the authorities baffled as to the manner of my demise. I haven’t touched a Calippo since: they are as treacherous as frozen confectionary can get.

I am also guilty of some spectacular negligence. Given a kitchen to myself and enough time to wander off distractedly, and I will happily set fire to a pan of water.

Finally I occasionally find myself engaged in acts of monumental hubris. You know how sometimes on Casualty some idiot gets rushed into A&E because they were trying to replace a light bulb in a pitch black bathroom above a bath full of water up a rickety ladder while listening to thrash metal on a personal stereo and having a distracted conversation with someone three rooms away? Yeah, that sort of thing is right up my crippled, scarred-for-life alley.

I am not unintelligent. I used to get answers right in school. I have held down various jobs, some for several years, without ever getting into trouble or being disciplined. So why, when I am by myself, am I such a flippin’ retard?

The answer is my attention span, or rather the manner in which I focus it. I cannot keep my mind focused on a single task for more than about four seconds, unless that task requires my complete attention. Things that require extended concentration (driving, video games, cunnilingus, that sort of thing) are all fine, as long as they last. You cannot get away with letting your mind completely wander during these activities, and so it obligingly stays put. This allows me, incredibly, to split my attention in the manner so readily available to other people, and perhaps even do something else at the same time. This is why I can drive my car and talk to myself at the same time, without constantly heading down one-way streets or into canals when I reach a particularly difficult sentence.

Things that require little attention, things that should be easy: that is where I generally come a cropper. Cooking is, normally, not a difficult task. Unless you are making soufflé or ice swans or something equally complex, cooking is really just a collection of small, simple actions: you do the things in sequence and at the end, food happens. But it is because the actions are normally so small, so simple, that I regularly fuck the whole thing up. It’s easy, and so you have plenty of time for your mind to wander, and mine wanders a pretty long way, coming back with its boots muddy and its cheeks red to find the kitchen on fire and the stomach pretty hacked off.

If I have one simple task to do, I will either get distracted and forget about it, or I will become bored and try to multitask unsuccessfully. When I play video games I get bored at loading screens and try to read, an impossibly task that merely result in my reading the same sentence four hundred times and invariably missing the start of the game. Whenever I try to tidy a room I attempt to accomplish every piece of cleaning simultaneously, which means each task advances infinitesimally slowly and I spend the entire time in a state of high irritation. I regularly come back from the post box with the letter I went there to post. Once I put the slice of toast I’d brought with me in there instead.

I don’t do this, crucially, when there are other people around. This is because I am a) more aware of my actions when there are other people watching me, and b) because when there is someone nearby I am less likely to let my mind wander. God knows what I was thinking about when I started choking on my Calippo, but I sure as shit wasn’t focussed on the task at hand, and that wouldn’t have been the case if there was someone talking to me at the time. I can carry on a conversation with someone else while I’m doing practically anything (cunnilingus is a hard one, I’ll admit).

The solution, then, is to either start paying more attention when I’m on my own, or start pretending that I’m not, if you follow me. They say you should always dance like no-one is watching. I’m going to start thinking like someone is watching, and see if that ends up with fewer burnt stir-frys, fewer home decorating accidents, and fewer ice-cream related near-death experiences. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Not yet

I know it's been almost a month with no word, but I'm not stopping blogging. A combination of my MA dissertation, my final move out of Norwich and various festivals/ultimate frisbee tournaments has meant I haven't had a moment to even think about something worth saying, let alone find the time to scribble it down. But: new domicile, MA is all over, summer ends with Bestival next week. Normal service WILL be resumed. Cheers to all those who've waited.

The Listeners

When it comes to human relations objectivity is a tough concept to apply. We are subjective beings at heart, always influenced by our emotions and drives, which are in turn the work of our unique and very complicated biology. It’s pretty difficult to separate yourself from a situation that involves you even indirectly, and to view it in a purely objective, logical manner. We’re all ‘Bones’ McCoy rather than Mr. Spock, even though we know it’s not always the best attitude.

It’s a lot easier to remain objective if the situation doesn’t involve you at all. Although you are still likely to be affected by your own views and prejudices over a particular subject, you ought to be able keep your own emotions out of it.

This latter point is based on the assumption that you might have to provide an opinion at some point; to empathise with one or more parties and advise as objectively as you can. This is where it normally gets tricky but it’s important to remember that in many cases, no advice is necessary. The term ‘objective’ in these cases may not mean ‘neutral’ but instead ‘uninvolved.’ Simply being well outside of a situation might be enough. This is one of the jobs assigned to counsellors and therapists: to provide an emotional outlet for their patients that is completely separate from the situation being described. You are telling someone about your problems, but not your friends or your mum. The best way to be objective is to be a stranger.

It’s difficult voicing your problems, even to yourself. In fact, many people have no idea what their problems are until they describe them out loud. The basic remit of counselling is to help the individual in question identify for themselves what is causing them pain. For most people, telling their troubles to someone they know is out of the question. Their reaction, whether guessed at or unknown, could cause as much stress and woe as exists already. Most people would rather keep their mouth shut than take a risk like that, and who can blame them?

I recently watched an advert for a television documentary involving married couples. I don’t know if these couples had been previously filmed, but the substance of this show related to interviews of these people one year after the big day. Their situation was analysed and contrasted against their wedding day, and then the subjects were interviewed, both together with their partners and separately, and detailed their life and feelings one year after their wedding.

As is to be expected, some people were having a whale of a time, others not so much. Even from the trailer you could tell that some of the couples already tupping miserable and seriously regretting their decision to tie the knot. It was upsetting viewing, and it was only twenty seconds long. There was no way I was going to watch the actual show. It would be far too sad.

I watched the advert with my sister, and the question she immediately raised was this: what are the partners of the miserable individuals going to feel like when they see the show, and have to listen to the disparaging commentary provided by their spouses? What would drive someone to air their dirty laundry in this manner on national television?

This secondary question can be extended hugely, and made to apply to thousands of television shows and written articles. The most famous example among them is probably The Jerry Springer Show, and the variety of copycat shows with a similar formula. You may recall that I once thought about describing my dislike for The Jeremy Kyle Show and then changed my mind at the last minute (if you do remember, jolly well done. Gold star).

Why do people want to talk about their problems in this way? A simple (a perhaps at least partially correct) answer would be: for the money and the fame. It’s an easy qualification to gain oneself television time, and it pays a little bit of cash.

I think there’s another, more important reason. This is all pure conjecture but may have been expressed already elsewhere by someone brighter or more qualified than me. I think that people go on these shows to have someone objective listen to them.

Jerry Springer was more a ringmaster to his circus than a serious interviewer. Jeremy Kyle likes to present himself as a father figure of sorts. Neither of these styles seems particularly objective, but we need to remember that it is not an objective reaction these people are necessarily looking for. Instead they require someone well outside their social network to simply listen to what they have to say. That can be the host, or the people in the studio, or even the viewers at home. They want to tell their problems to a stranger, and have identified this as a profitable method.

Unfortunately, it goes further than this. I think people want, or need, to be asked the questions that Springer or Kyle or Goddard or Uncle Phil or whoever are posing, because no one else ever thought to. I think that perhaps, these are people with serious issues, and no one in their lives is interested. I think the people on the wedding program were telling their deep and darks to the person with the camera because they were the first objective person to ever show a fucking interest.

You don’t have to be a total stranger to make an attempt at objectivity. If you aren’t involved directly in a social situation you could have a good stab at remaining neutral enough to merely ask pertinent questions and listen to their answers. Rarely does Jeremy Kyle come up with some fantastical solution to people’s ills. It is almost always a simple, brown-bread answer: thank about how other people feel, and take basic steps to solve your own problems. Just voicing the problems aloud is enough to signpost their answers.

I feel lucky to have people to confess my troubles to: people that will just listen and then help me find my own way towards solutions. And I feel a great sadness towards those that have none of these opportunities, and must look towards the general public to simply speak out loud. Next time it becomes apparent that someone I know has a problem, even someone I do not know well, I hope I take the time to ask about it. I would not dream to proscribe your behaviour, but I would ask you to do the same.

Morpheus and Me

It’s hot outside and I’m on the move a lot recently, and so my sleep pattern is getting progressively more erratic. The only positive aspect of this revoltin’ development is that I’m dreaming again.

Everybody dreams, all the time. Whether you remember them or not depends on a list of factors, but when I’m sleeping well I tend to sleep relatively peacefully. I awake with no recollection of any nocturnal meanderings, and any fading memories are gone by the time I stagger to the bathroom. I suspect that I’m normally too knackered to waste precious REM time, but that’s hardly a scientific analysis.

I don’t really dream very much, at least, not that I remember. And when I do dream the images are often spectacular in their mundanity. I tend to dream about riding the bus, or doing my laundry. Sometimes if I have a big day ahead of me I dream that I’m experiencing that day, but none of the specific events are ever filled in. Basically, I dream in smalltalk.

Until my sleep pattern falls apart, and then I start to dream with greater vividness. Partly this has to do with falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon: it is a noted phenomenon that falling asleep in the middle of the day when the brain is still relatively active results in stranger, more vivid dreams. If I need to get up early but have only managed to snatch an hour or two’s rest I’ll often go back to bed after the morning’s task is done, and it is the sleep around brunchtime that evokes the most bizarre imagery.

Normally this is quite amusing. Dreams notable for their strangeness are sometimes inspiring, occasionally unsettling, but always worth remembering for one reason or another. If nothing else it gives me the opportunity for a spot of navel-gazing in regards to my own unconscious and its workings: all these images come from my own mind, so what on earth do they mean, and what on earth put them there?

My man Sigmund had a similar line of thought, obviously, and he spent a lot more time on his analysis than I ever will on mine. Most people are familiar with Freud’s assertion that what we remember from our dreams is not necessarily what our unconscious is trying to express (the most famous and oft-quoted examples is “when you dream about flying you’re really dreaming about having sex”). In other words, it is the latent content of the dream that is of most significance. Freud alleged that it is pointless to attempt to construct a coherent narrative from the actual dream itself: you’re missing the point if you concentrate on the pictures rather than what they mean.

Freud’s work attracted much criticism due to his perceived obsession with sexual issues (I say perceived because while it’s certainly a much played out theme in his work, and is certainly a dead-end in many cases, he’s not nearly the sexually-motivated nutcase I believed him to be when I started reading his work). His explanation for the existence of dreams themselves was also labelled simplistic, although it’s easy to aim that barb at the first pioneer in any field.

In any case, modern psychoanalysis has moved back towards exploring the ‘real’ content of the dream as most significant. Freud’s work is by no means forgotten however, and in fact it seems as though one of his main areas of interest has survived.

As well as wanting to know what we were really dreaming about, Freud always wanted to know why. If you’re dreaming about flying, and you’re actually dreaming about sex, what links those two concepts together in your head? What factors in your psyche cause you to express things in a certain way?

A lot of my dreams are relatively easy to interpret. I occasionally dream about a particular person who is no longer in my life, and whose presence I sometimes miss: it’s easy to see what that might mean. I sometimes dream of particular events, past and future, that have had a major effect on me: again I can draw the lines myself.

But what about those occasional blistering nightmares? What about the odd sex dreams that have no apparent link with my own romantic or sexual leanings? What about the dream I had last week, where I was spying on my neighbours through a ridiculous steam-punk telescope, only to discover they had knocked through all the separating walls in the apartment building and were now all living in various kinds of tent? What in the upside-down Sam Hill does that mean?

I haven’t a clue, obviously, but it’s rather fun trying to guess. The chances of hitting on some glittering psychological insight are pretty small, but it’s enough to raise a smile. If your dreams are weird enough, people are always interested, and in my experience relish the chance to interpret someone else’s dreams for them, regardless of their opinion on Freud.

I had a very inspiring professor once, who made a comment on psychoanalysis and its place in modern society that has always stuck with me. She said that the best thing Freud had done for the modern individual was point out to us that “our dreams were important enough to be studied like literature.” It’s a nice sentiment, and one easily applied. If you’re going to think about who you are, and why you feel the way you do, then your dreams are an amusing place to start.

City Limits

I have a love/hate relationship with the town that I live in. This is probably true for quite a lot of people, but seems especially relevant for me because I live in Norwich, a city that seems to provide everything I need.

Norwich is a sunny slice of nowhere that’s far out into the east of East Anglia, far enough that it takes two hours to get to London and at least three hours to get anywhere else in the world. It’s got no urban crime rate to speak of and when you smile at people in the street they often smile back, always a solid barometer of the locals’ mental state. It’s a lovely place to live, really it is. But it’s not exactly a happening town.

Unless you’re a student, in which case: Norwich is tupping mint. The entire city sometimes feels dedicated to higher education, so many places are there to better yourself through learning. Norwich is a small city with a tiny population base but it has a top 20 university, a university college of arts, and a couple of city colleges, all of which are prestigious in their own fields and specialities and all of which attract a thoroughly talented bunch of people.

Norwich also has as many pubs as there are days of the year, and some half decent clubs. It has some frighteningly awful ones too, but the drinks are always cheap and the girls’ skirts are short, and there is the aforementioned lack of street crime. If you are a writer, Norwich is also a fantastic place to reside. Notwithstanding the famous and talented authors who have come out of the city’s creative writing programs, there are myriad organisation promoting and publishing good writing in the city itself. Norwich and the Norfolk surrounds tend to turn up in the writing of any author who has spent any significant amount of time there.

So what’s my problem? Why aren’t I happy here? The first answer of course is: I am happy, I just like having something to moan about. Norwich has always, always been good to me. It has provided a safe, creative environment within which to grow, both as a writer and a person, over four (mostly pleasant) years. If that sounds a bit happy-clappy then good: I firmly believe that people deserve a chance for some happy-clappy personal development in their lives, and I have been lucky to find mine here.

I suppose part of my problem is that it is so safe, and so cosy. Nothing exciting ever happens here. The population is mostly white middle class, there are not that many people, and the music scene is developing quickly but can’t match that of larger urban areas. While I watched my friends move to exciting, vibrant cities, full of sex and drugs and waterfronts and skyscrapers and illegal street racing (possibly), I have spent the last four years living in a city that is the municipal equivalent of a nice hot bath and a hug.

Finally, it’s because my feet are itching. In four years a lot had changed. I have changed, perhaps majorly. Some of the things I considered to be a huge part of my life are over, some are just beginning. It’s time to look elsewhere for my adventures. It’s time to leave behind the person I was when I arrived, and only take with me the person I am now. I can’t sit on my heels forever.

In the meantime though, I give you this: my thoughts on living in a less-than-exciting metropolis, compiled over four years.

What to do if you live somewhere a bit boring:

1. Moan about it. Clearly. There’s no need to focus on the good parts, just complain to anyone that’ll listen about how boring the place you live is. It’ll help you cultivate that sense of existential ennui and detachment you’ve read so much about.

2. Leave. Obviously not for good (although if you do decide to leave, you don’t need to read to the end of this list if you don’t want to). Find what it is that’s missing in your city and go and do it somewhere else. Most people who complain about their town being boring are therefore looking for excitement, so the simplest thing to do is go and have an exciting time elsewhere. Again, for most people, an exciting time is directly linked to absorbing large quantities of alcohol and dancing like an idiot, and there are plenty of places that provide great opportunities to do so. The best thing about it is, you can leave all the consequences on someone else’s doorstep! Try and visit your friends in other cities regularly, wreck their place, and escape back to yours before the dust settles. Bring them a bottle of something (then drink it yourself) and leave them some vomit in their bath in exchange. Everybody wins! Well, everybody important wins!

3. Find yourself a filter. You can be louche and interesting anywhere, you know. You don’t need to be somewhere interesting first. Of course, if you were louche and interesting already you wouldn’t need this list, so we’ll have to find a stopgap measure. Drink and drugs can make everything seem a bit special, and will make you feel like Byron or Withnail or some other class-A fuckwit. It doesn’t matter what other people think of you, so long as you are having a jolly old time, so feel free to make a narcotic-fuelled nuisance of yourself until the wee smalls. One advantage of living somewhere boring is that the cold old world™ is less likely to start banging on your door the next morning (especially if you combine this option with the previous one, and leave your mates to sort through the detritus of the night out and their own hangovers, while you disappear to have your comedown privately in your nice clean house).

4. Become boring yourself. Try limiting your options in any given situation. Cultivating a taste for microwaveable food will remove the need for restaurants, saving you both money and the hassle of ordering. Watch what the people around you are talking about and then limit you conversations (and if you can manage it, your thoughts) to those subjects. Only watch telly between the hours of 12pm and 7pm. Only read publications with one-word, noun-related titles like Chat or Heat.


5. Become more interested. The human condition, en masse, is so stupendously vibrant and interesting that anyone with a working brain and a definite drive should be able to find endless amusement in even the most mundane situation. Unfortunately to do so requires quite a lot of thought, and thinking is pretty time consuming, especially with all the drink and drugs and whatnot. Actually, forget I mentioned this one, it’s rubbish. Go back to moaning instead.

Fresh

Ooh, a new layout!

Welcome to the new look Verbal Slapstick. You have ten seconds to guess what my favourite colour is.

Spike.

This blog is supposed to be funny, or at least, humorously themed. It would be inappropriate for me to provide concrete social and moral directives to my readers because I lack both the insight and the right: I am hardly perfect myself. The messages I try to convey through Verbal Slapstick are more the ‘after school special, just try and be nice to everybody’ clap-trap you can find inside any Sunday paper or fortune cookie.

This post is different, then, because it seeks to explore a particular crime, and speak out against it. I will make no effort to be balanced in my argument, nor will I attempt to justify said crime by anticipating mitigating circumstances, because I believe there to be none. It is a social issue that I feel comfortable discussing in some depth because I have both seen it firsthand and because it largely affects people of my age and broadly, my social background. It’s drink-spiking, by the way. I don’t know why I didn’t say that before.

Statistics are unnecessary, as is a Wikipedia description or similar. You spike someone’s drink by introducing a substance that they did not expect or want in it. Most drinks are spiked with chemicals that have tranquilising effects, ones that often either compound or mimic the effects of alcoholic intoxication.

I cannot ‘put myself’ into the mind of someone who spikes drinks. I can imagine, if I try really hard, a scenario in which I might murder someone. If I were the last of my species, doomed to wander the universe alone, and I confronted the being responsible for humanity’s demise in some sort of climactic battle (lightsabers, maybe) then perhaps I might, in a justified rage, kill him or her. Perhaps I can imagine, if my circumstances were lowered to miserable levels, stealing to provide for myself or my loved ones. I cannot imagine spiking someone’s drink. Nuh-uh, nothing doing.

The next thought exercise, therefore, might seem a little redundant, but let’s run with it. I’ll go through my own perception of drink spiking, and try and get as close as I can to the mentality of someone who commits this act.

Item 1: Drink spiking is an intended prelude to a sexual act. I find it patently unlikely that someone might get their drink spiked and then wake up in the middle of a long conversation about Kierkegaard with a stranger. People who spike drinks do so with the intent of initiating sexual relations with the person they spike.

Item 2: Drink spiking is the tipping factor in an act that would not otherwise have occurred. If you spike someone’s drink, it is because you don’t think you’ll be able to have sex with them without it. Again, I find it unlikely that one would want to have sex with someone who cannot reciprocate affection due to their own intoxication when an alternative exists.

Conclusion: Drink spiking is a prelude to rape. Obviously not a particularly difficult conclusion to reach, but one that should be stated. They didn’t want to have sex with you. You spiked their drink. This did not make them want to have sex with you, yet it allowed you to have sex with them anyway. Drink spiking allows individuals to circumvent the sexual consent of another. Sex without consent is rape.

Let’s go again. I’m getting a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m not done yet

Item 1: Drink spiking mimics the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. That’s how it works. You don’t spike a stranger’s drink in a teashop and watch them collapse into their sticky bun. Drink spiking occurs in places where excessive alcohol consumption might occur anyway, and masquerades as such.

Item 2: It is understood that excessive alcohol consumption may lead to bad decision making, and the occasional amorous encounter that might otherwise not have taken place. People do, occasionally, fuck people they might not otherwise have when they’re drunk. They do it because they are horny and their inhibitions are lowered.

Item 3: Lowered inhibitions or not, people still have the right to consent. Even if they’re extremely drunk, people can still say no.

Conclusion: Drink spiking legitimises sexual assault by disguising it as the accepted lowering of inhibitions that occurs with the consumption of alcohol.


General conclusion 1: People who spike drinks are rapists.
General conclusion 2: People who spike drinks are seeking to legitimise the act of rape in their own mind.

That’s about as far into it as I can go. Either people who spike drinks are rapists pure and simple, or they are trying to disguise the moral reprehensibility to themselves and the outside world but, and here is the thing, they are still rapists. Man, I’m getting sick of typing that word.

So what is to be done? How to curb the worrying spread of this crime? Well, the simplest way is to make people more cautious with their drinks, and this is what I see all around me in clubs and bars. Signs flash up on the mounted TV screens telling people to watch their drinks. Unattended drinks are cleared away by staff. Specialised straws and caps prevent access to peoples’ beverages.

All good ideas, each one effective in its way. But it strikes me that if the second of my general conclusions is true, then we are going about this the wrong way. Instead of protecting potential victims from the crime of drink spiking, we should be forcing potential perpetrators to confront the enormity of their actions. Shame is a powerful weapon in the enforcement of moral law. You’re less likely to drink drive if your friends express a low opinion of it. You might be less likely to kill someone in anger if a bystander called you a murderer. And anyone who spikes drinks and doesn’t consider themselves a rapist should be corrected. That’s what the signs in clubs should say. That’s what we should all be saying to ourselves, all the fucking time.

Everybody knows people. Everybody has parents, neighbours, colleagues. So everyone who spikes a drink is known to SOMEBODY. And that somebody ought to express their opinions on it. Drink spiking legitimises nothing.

Maybe I’m naive. In fact, I’m certain I am naive: perhaps even in this post I’m exploring an issue I know too little about. But I’m tired of taking precautions. I’m tired of hearing horror stories. I’m tired of seeing it happen to people I know. If I saw a sign in a club that read: ‘Drink spikers are rapists’ then at least I’d know they’d seen it too, and that at least they know what crime they’re committing.

I posted this largely because it’s been on my mind a lot recently. Now, hopefully, it’s off again, and we can get back to funny lists and alliteration next week. Look after yourselves till then.

Feed and grow

Yo. At the suggestion of the savvy and sexual Joe Williams I have (hopefully) sorted out an RSS feed with which to subscribe to Verbal Slapstick. You can find it over there on the right, underneath my profile picture. For all you technically minded folks out there it might be just what you need. It also means you won't have to keep checking back when I inevitably disappear of the radar for weeks at a time.

If you do subscribe, well, cheers. I really mean that: you keep this odd little ego boost on track. Peace.

Grief and upgrades

I learnt a new word the other day. Well, actually I try and learn a new word every day, to infuriate and patronise my friends, but this word was a little different, as it hinted at a concept – and beyond it a subculture of sorts – that I never knew existed.

The word was ‘griefer,’ and I doubt very much that it’s in the OED. I ran into it on the fun and informative website TVTropes, a place where any writer of fiction can easily while away a deadline or three learning about the cultural archetypes that help stories work (if you haven’t already clicked on the hyperlink I recommend postponing it until you have no pressing engagements, appointments, workloads or meals that you need to get through. The website is high-octane procrastination fuel).

A griefer is, in the simplest terms, someone who gains enjoyment from ruining other people’s experience in organised play. Basically, they fuck up videogames for their own pleasure. A police artist's sketch:

The term exists mostly in online videogame forums and chatrooms, where its existence is much debated and derided. The TVTropes page has an incredible list of observed ways that a griefer might muck about with your videogame experience.

This isn’t my first encounter with a completely new cultural concept on the internet, but it’s not like I’m at the bleeding edge of online memes. I’d do better in a 4chan message board than, say, my dad, but I’m hardly a huge presence on the information superhighway, or whatever they call it now. But I’m interested in the concept of a ‘griefer’ because it might be a completely new way of expressing oneself.

My first point is this: what exactly did griefers do before the opportunity to spoil other peoples games existed? Online gaming provides the twin buffers of distance and anonymity; annoying someone over the net might result in hurled obscenities, threats, or at most in a ban from the game being played. Beyond that, the person you’ve pissed off is stymied; they’re unlikely to show up and egg your house, for example. In ‘real life’ no such buffer exists: if you deliberately puncture someone’s football there’s nothing to stop them from pounding the snot out of you in retaliation. At the very least, you won’t be allowed to play, and here another difference from online games becomes apparent: because there are millions of games on thousands of servers, beginning and ending all the time, once a griefer has messed up one group of people’s online experience he or she can simply move onto the next one. Even if they are caught, booted or banned they can always begin again elsewhere.

Did this desire to seek gratification by spoiling other’s enjoyment always exist, or is it a new development? Are these the same people who knock over litterbins and smash peoples windscreens in the dead of night?

I personally do not think that it is a new phenomenon, rather an old one in a new garb. The online videogame revolution certainly did not ‘create’ the potential for griefers among the population; instead it provided a new and (mildly) destructive outlet for a certain type of person. And clearly if it occurs enough to have a TVTropes page dedicated to it, there are more of these people than might immediately be imagined.

This train of thought reminded me of a conversation I had nearly a year ago, not long after I started Verbal Slapstick. I was having dinner with my step-mother, and was trying to explain the purpose of this blog to her. This was quite difficult, partly because I was on my third glass of wine, but mostly because this blog has no real purpose, beyond my own vanity. It isn’t a diary, and it’s not really about things that happen in my life (save the things that happen in my head). I’m not reviewing anything, and I’m not, as many of my friends and colleagues do, gatekeeping my own media experience by posting photos or videos or anything like that. I get the occasional piece of free crit for my creative writing which is cool and much appreciated, but beyond that this whole platform is simply me hurling my own badly formed musings and self-deprecations into an indelible public sphere. Why do I do it? Because I’m an unremitting egotist and I think I know best, obviously. And if I didn’t have a blog, if the opportunity to blog didn’t even exist?

What my step-mum really wanted to know related to the apparent readiness of my generation to transcribe their experience for all to see. She pointed out that when she was my age, there wasn’t the readiness or desire to constantly communicate with friends and acquaintances, either by phone or online. People her age (and she is not, in truth, that old) are far less comfortable with keeping everyone they know posted on their likes, dislikes and movements. If, as has been argued, a blog is just a diary that you show to everybody, why the sudden need to show each other our private lives? Why, in short, was my generation so self-consciously media savvy?

My answer? Because we can be. It is my firm belief that human beings have a desire to communicate their experience and feelings that is so strong they will wholeheartedly adopt any new method with which to do so. Until we finally all learn telepathy and are able to instantly and accurately experience and empathise with everybody, we will boldly take up any new technology or concept that allows us a greater glimpse of ourselves and each other. Maybe, and this is mere conjecture, we always wanted the world to read our diaries. Like griefers, the potential is within us already: all things like the internet are doing is giving us new ways to realise this potential. Mobile phones have not created a desire for constant contact. We always wanted to be in touch with one another all the time. Now we have a way to do it. Is it any wonder that these new media forms become so quickly integral to the fabric of our existence?

All this leads to one final, obvious question. If the potential for mass media uptake, for instant and gregarious communication, even for the sadistic inversion of organised play, all already reside fully formed within us, waiting for an outlet, what other strange and novel patterns of behaviour exist in our collective psyches? A whole raft of behaviours, some which could become integral to the way we act as a species, might be restrained by a gap in our technological development, waiting for a bridge to to flow across, out into the world. It’s a potentially scary concept, la, but it sure is exciting.

ZOMG POLITICS!!!1!

Mark Twain (wordsmith and admitted coward: thus a solid hero of mine) once said that "in religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are, in almost every case, gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others." (He also once said “all generalisations are false, including this one,” but it’s my blog and I’ll ignore what I like.)

Parliament is back in session, Gordon Brown is long gone, and David Cameron and Nick Clegg (referred to ever after by me as ‘Dave and Cleggo’) are sat up on the Conservative front bench. It seems that, for the time being at least, we have a workable parliament. Whether the coalition will last is something I am painfully under-qualified to comment on, and so we’ll nip any political comment in the bud early on, and move on to the funny lists and things in a moment.

I voted in the general election, and I watched as much of the coverage as I could before I really needed to go to sleep (shout out to my man Dimbleby, the guy’s a machine). I’m not going to comment on my voting preferences, although I hardly kept them a secret from people. This is the first general election where people of my age seemed to have real opinions, and certainly the first one where they appeared to vote en mass. I heard all about it through the most suitable medium for discussing political awareness: Facebook!

Go on, even if you didn’t put who you voted for as your status, even if you ignored Facebook’s belligerent demands to know if you voted or not, even if you went to the pub after work and forgot to vote (or live in Manchester), you were still a little tempted to plaster your opinion on the ultimate social networking forum.

It’s so easy to display your opinion on the internet that you might be forgiven for forgetting that you don’t actually have one! It’s the work of moments to hawk your badly-informed political venom into a public forum, and it’s a lot easier to be vehement in your statements when you’re arguing predominantly with people you don’t know, people you went to school with and will never see again, and friends of your friends’ friends.

With an unstable coalition government the chances of another general election in the near future are high. To help you make the most of this opportunity, here are some tips on how best to show your political allegiance next time around:

Joshua’ Guide to the General Election... on Facebook!

1: It’s probably best if you vote. Some idiot might point out that it’s a little hypocritical to criticise someone else’s voting decision when you can’t commit to your own. If you want to make a big deal out of NOT voting, make sure you let everyone know in advance that you won’t be going to, then remind everyone halfway through that the day that you STILL aren’t going to, and then round it off with a big message at the end, where you can lord it over the sheep that did make it to the polls. Remember, you don’t need to suggest an alternative, or even a cogent reason why!

2: If you meant to vote and forgot, you can always lie. It’s not like people can check. If you weren’t going to vote anyway but you forgot all the preamble mentioned above, just tell everyone you spoiled your ballot! That’ll make you look super active and politically aware, without having to really go into detail or think about things too hard. Win!

3: Make sure you post your opinion on the nearest internet you can get your hands on. To make sure your status doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, why not make sure it contains as much inflammatory rhetoric as you can manage? Why not something like:

[Your name here] thinks that if u voted Labour today the country is DOOOOOOMED!!!

Look at those extra exclamation marks! Check out those unnecessary O’s! Yup, no one’s missing that little beauty off their minifeed.

4: The internet can be a fast moving place. Once you’ve got your super insightful political statement up there, how do you know it won’t get pushed down the list by someone’s party photos or people telling you what they had for tea? Simply keep posting! Now, you can’t have the same status over and over again, because then you’ll look like an over-zealous political nutjob (and we’ll reserve that description for anyone who disagrees with you). Luckily the live coverage on election night provides you with the perfect solution. (Slightly) new things are happening all the time! The results are (slowly) coming in! Now you can repost your status to your heart’s content, only slightly varying the wording to match the latest (minor) development!

5: The following have no place in any arguments you might have over the internet: compassion, good taste, tact, empathy. Replace them instead with: statistics you took from the BBC website, wholesale copy’n’paste jobs from political blogs and of course FULL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS!!!! Try and chuck a general air of smugness in there as well.

6: Remember, Facebook allows you to think your answers through before you write them down. Don’t actually DO that, for pity’s sake, you’ll be completely missing the point.

7: Everyone knows that the only real way to win an argument is to get the last word. Unfortunately you can keep going back to Facebook after you’ve thought up a new pithy quip. There’s only one way round this: you’ll have to stay up later than they can. The problem with election night is that a lot of people have planned to stay up late anyway. Why not consider taking the next day off work, so you can power through into the early afternoon?

8: If you didn’t get the result you wanted, be sure to post the most doom-laden report you can manage. If the Tories get back in next time and you’re a Labour voter, try suggesting that the entire country is going to be strip-mined to support the super-cities where only the top 200 wealthiest people will be allowed to live. If you’re a Conservative, what about envisioning a scenario in which the Greater London area sinks into the sea under the weight of all the illegal immigrants? Remember, the bigger the black cloud now, the more you can say ‘I told you so' later (unless it doesn’t happen, in which case you can breathe a secret sigh of relief).

9: If your astute political appraisal turns out to be incorrect (and it will), then rest safe in the knowledge that, as long as you update your profile enough, no one will be able to find it, come next week.

I hope this guide was helpful. Please do use it, if only to indicate to me who I need to delete from my ‘top friends.’

Micro- actions, macro-karma

I’ve been thinking a lot about karma recently, largely because I can’t seem to keep my hands on my own stuff. A little while ago I lost my phone and got it back, to my own delight and utter surprise.

I know people who would have kept my phone and flogged it. Heck, I have friends that would have kept it. Even if they’d found it with their mum watching. It’s a good phone, worth a little cash, and I probably have insurance (wrong, hypothetical phone thief!). It’s a few steps away from a victimless crime, but I doubt you’d wake up breathless about it a decade later.

But I got my phone back, from a nice young man names Stuart who kept it for me. I got him eight Stellas in return, because I was grateful, but also because I felt the need to balance my karma.

I’m an atheist. I do not believe in any kind of guiding or interventionist God, or indeed any sentient presence with a controlling stake in the cosmos.

I don’t really have any great leanings towards spiritualism either. I think my general spiritual view of the universe could be summed up as follows:

Stuff just happens. It happens because it does. Just because it happens, doesn’t mean it’s anything other than stuff.

It sounds quite simple, probably because it is. I find my spiritual understanding of the world is easier to manage if I keep it within terms a moody teenager would be familiar with.

I do believe in karma, though. It sounds like a bit of doublethink again, but I promise I’ve got a bit of thought behind this statement.

The universe is not random. Everything that occurs has been preceded by a myriad of events that shaped the fundamental matter of existence to allow it to do so. In the same way, any particular event is also the next step on an even longer chain of occurrences that stretch off into theoretical infinity. Events only appear random because the universe is really, really, really really really complicated. Each step on the chain is so ludicrously insignificant as to be unobservable to you and me (we’re talking about atoms bumping into one another). Not only that, they occur at a blistering pace and are subject to the interactions of billions upon billions of other chains of events, all effecting one another in inconceivable ways.

The universe is not random. But it is far too big and far too complicated to interpret on any meaningful scale. Any complex design might seem like utter chaos if you can’t see the whole picture.

This is not to say, however, that human beings cannot interpret the world around us in a meaningful way. Luckily, we don’t actually need to have a fundamental grasp on the nature of the universe in order to make predictions about events. This is largely because the events that affect us are perceived on a macro, as opposed to micro, scale. The things that touch our lives are a conflation of millions of other smaller events, the workings of which are too complicated to measure, but the end results are perfectly observable.

For example, I decide I want to punch you in the face. Once I make my decision electrical impulses flash down my nerves to stimulate the muscles in order to extend my arm and smack you. For your part, the light reflecting from my body enters your optic nerve and is decoded by your brain as the beginnings of an attempt to smash your face in. This leads to further electrical impulses being sent to prepare your muscles for movement, as well as countless chemical changes occurring all over your body to prepare you for sudden action (adrenalin release etc). These tiny steps number in the millions.

But we don’t need to be in control or even aware of all these events. You have no perception of the things that are occurring above. But you see I’m going to punch you, you smoothly move aside, and you kick me in the nuts (you jerk, it was only an example).

For me, karma operates in an area between these two extremes. Say you do something nice for someone else. You might be able to predict that they’d do something nice for you. You might even be able to guess how they’re attitude towards you might have changed, and be able to use that in future to inform how you act around them.

Beyond that, you’re a bit out of the loop. You have no idea how that good deed makes them act towards other people. You have no idea who they might tell about it. Human lives, like the universe, are incredibly complicated, and there are simply too many interactions going on all the time to make any educated guess about the effect one event might have beyond a few steps in any direction.

As we’ve seen, though, a lot of ‘big’ actions are actually made of an amalgam of millions of smaller ones. So your one, ‘small’ good deed might be a tiny part of something bigger. The more good deeds you do the more likely it becomes that you are influencing systems beyond your awareness.

It is absolutely impossible that Stuart knew anything about me when he found my phone. We have never met, and are unlikely to ever do so again. It is also highly improbable that any good deed I have ever done for someone has found its way towards Stuart. I have had absolutely no influence on his life.

Someone sure as hell has, though. There’s a reason that Stuart was ‘nice’ enough to return my phone: he had been successfully socialised into that way of thinking by repeated exposure to similar good deeds, done for him by others. Again, it is utterly unlikely that I affected any of those people either.

But that’s not really how I choose to see it. As I’ve hopefully demonstrated with my punch in face example, just because something is impossible to measure doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. I consider my own positive actions to be a tiny pail in a vast sea. They might appear useless, but without their fundamental presence then the object would be different. No pails = no seas. No atoms = no apples. No brain impulses = no me getting planted in the goolies.

Every good action could be an influencing factor in another good thing somewhere, sometime. Likewise, every random act of casual tossbaggery could be an impossible minor contributor to an act of greater nastiness.

My point is, just because it feels like your actions are insignificant, doesn’t mean they are. They might just be a contributing factor in a system too complicated to really grasp. But if you keep doing it, and invite others to do the same, eventually those micro actions might end in macro results. And you might get your phone back. But probably not.

***EDIT***

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