I’ve been embarking on a new project recently, which harks all the way back to this rather hopeful sounding post from days gone by. The idea discussed therein has now begun to blossom somewhat, and I have some collaborators – stalwart friends both – who are lending their skills and advice. The project goes live around the end of this month (you’ll know when I start shamelessly and relentless plugging it) and I’m rather proud of the idea, if not the execution.
Without giving a huge amount away the project consists of interviews. Interviews with strangers. Random interviews with strangers. In a bustling capital like London thousands of tiny interactions with those unknown to us happen every day – a glance, a thank you, a hushed ‘fuck off and die’ muttered under the breath – but actually sitting down and chinwagging with someone you’ve previously never clapped eyes on is rarer. It happens in Richard Curtis films and Match.com adverts, but despite a similar air of befuddlement I look nothing like Hugh Grant or Colin Firth, and I don’t even know how to play guitar.
So forcing myself to interact with strangers has given me some interesting insights into the nature of social interaction in general, but more specifically into the concepts of personal space and 'approachability.'
I had never given much credence to the concept of auras (still don’t, save for the purpose of this analogy), but there is certainly an atmosphere around people that is discernible, readable. This is obvious and second nature to all but a few of us: anyone able to read someone’s body language, detect where a conversation is going or steer around a touchy subject is doing it competently without even thinking about it.
The genesis of my project was in America, where people are famously more approachable. This is certainly true, but once a dialogue had begun American people seemed to need more management: to me at least they seemed quicker to lose patience, quicker to become suspicious or tire of a subject. Instead of being closed off and gradually opening up they often seemed immediately candid and then worried about giving too much away.
Perversely I suspect most of this comes from the natural ease with which Americans conduct their own conversations. Americans are very good at talking to strangers; they do it all the time. Their interactions are swift, and industriously handled on both sides. They were attempting to manage me: to ease me through the dialogue. The only difference: I was a strange English boy asking them personal questions, and was attempting to marshal the conversation to get the most out of them. Small wonder many felt the need to stage a retreat when I got too personal.
It’s more difficult to get stuff out of English people, but once they get talking, it’s hard to shut them up. In terms of thermodynamics, Americans are great conductors of heat, English people very poor. They stay warmed up for a good long time if you can get them comfortable.
All this is moot if you can’t find the nads to approach people in the first place, and that’s where reading people comes in. It can be nerve-wracking, going up to strangers, although now that I think about it I cannot say for sure why that should be so. I have a list of questions to ask them – so I know what I’m going to say at least – and I consider myself relatively personable. I am not particularly concerned that someone might haul out and punch me, or start screaming rape or similar. Even if they don’t want to be interviewed (as is entirely their prerogative) all I get is a polite ‘no thank you.’
My own apprehension means that I tend to gravitate towards those who give off an air of approachability. People who radiate some sense – through body language, positioning, even appearance – that they wouldn’t be terribly bothered if an oddly earnest young man sat down opposite them and asked them about their lives. For the purposes of the project they have to be alone, which makes it easier, if only because those who are alone and don’t want to be bothered are pretty easy to spot.
Then only problem is that approaching people who are themselves approachable tends to give a biased sample base. For example, they tend to be younger or older, not middle aged. Younger women are less likely to tell you to go away immediately, but are more likely to be distant. I had expected women to be less often alone than men and was surprised to find this not the case, but men are more likely to occupy themselves with something regardless of where they are. A newspaper can be a formidable shield. Elements of people’s dress can render them distant or affable (and interestingly, the eccentricity of dress has little to do with it). I’ve become very good at picking out the easiest person to talk to in a room.
Unfortunately the easiest person to talk to may not always be the most interesting, or for the purposes of my project, the most varied in terms of life experience. So I’ve learnt some useful new skills only to have to discard them. I’m much better at recognising people who might want to talk, but have to avoid that sort of person if I’m not to repeat the same sort of interview over and over.
I’m exaggerating, of course. The best thing about people in general and Londoners in particular is that everyone is unique. Talk to anyone long enough and you’re certain to hit on something interesting, so no interview is going to be wasted. And the more I force myself to talk to people the more I begin to realise that approachable or not, most people, once approached, are willing to give you the time of day, especially if you explain yourself clearly and concisely.
So what have I really learned? The same thing I learn every week on this blog. To get over myself. ‘Aura of approachability’ my bum. Just don’t be surprised when I sit down next to you.
Updated only when you aren't looking.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Alternate viewing
Cracked.com has ruined a lot of things I like. It’s mostly my fault: no-one is making me look at funny lists of Star Wars bloopers, but once I’ve had them shown to me I can’t un-see them. I’m now that guy, the one who points out editing gaffes or continuity errors in films, just to spread the misery around. You know, that one person who comments on the submarine scene in Raiders even though ‘no gives a crap, oh my God will you shut up about cinematic mistakes, we’re trying to watch a film, why do we even invite you over.’
Occasionally, though, Cracked drops something good in my lap. A recent article suggested a reading of The Catcher in the Rye in which the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the death of his younger brother. It’s an interesting theory; Caulfield does demonstrate some of the symptoms of PTSD (mood swings, fluctuating sexual drive, feelings of alienation etc), and equally fascinating is the fact that J.D. Salinger suffered from combat stress reaction or ‘battle fatigue,’ which is thought by many psychologists to be a precursor to PTSD. *clenches fist* Suddenly it all falls into place!
Now when I read The Catcher in the Rye I have difficulty discarding this theory, even though it came from an admittedly left-field source. It indelibly informs my understanding of the book. I can ignore it if I choose, but it’s added a new and interesting dimension to the novel (one I wish I’d heard about when I was at uni. Man, would I have looked smart).
There’s a fan theory about Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in which Ferris is merely a figment of Cameron’s imagination: his psyche’s attempt to break Cameron out of his funk and go and enjoy life a little bit. As a reading it lacks some depth (the fact that Cameron sees plenty of people interacting with Ferris elevates him from charming mental projection to full blown dissociative personality), but like all the best alternate readings once you’ve set out the ground rules you can twist the actual narrative to fit, if you want.
You can apply an alternate reading to whatever you want, even if it’s something you hate. Who’s to stop you? The Thought Police? (I’m hoping that’s not a thing yet.)
I’m not a huge fan of Jedward, but there’s a reading of Jedward that I quite like. My brother claims to have come up with it but I’m pretty sure it was Russell Howard. Anyway, my preferred decoding of Jedward states that one of them (it can be John or Edward, I don’t think anyone remembers which is which anymore), really, REALLY hates being a part of Jedward. That with each camp wave and power kick a little part of him flutters and dies. He stares at himself in the mirror, starkly lit by the sodium lamps of another Butlins dressing room, and wishes himself anywhere else. He wanted to be a surgeon, a captain of enterprise, a hostage negotiator. He dreams of filling their back page column in Heat with his informed feminist rhetoric... but instead has to fill in little coloured bubbles about what their favourite fizzy drink is, or what they dream about at night (Column answer: riding with their fans on unicorns. Real answer: holding Louis Walsh’s head under the water until the bubbles finally stop).
The cast of Made in Chelsea are not, as the show would have us believe, rich, under-educated sociopaths, who cannot either be interesting on their own, or act interesting even when prompted. Instead they are a collective of penniless orphans, given one last chance to act their way out of the workhouse, playing the parts of rich, under-educated sociopaths who cannot either be interesting on their own or act interesting even when prompted, and giving the performance of their goddamn lives.
Remember how the first series of Big Brother was pitched as a genuine psychological experiment, with scientific talking heads and everything? People immediately realised that they were happy to simply watch other people do stuff (which is, when you think about, all you basically do in your daily life anyway), and after a few seasons people were mostly watching it for Russell Brand pulling down his trousers and pants, but to begin with Big Brother was legitimate viewing. And you can do the same to almost any TV show, with a little creative thinking.
The Bachelorette is part of a super-soldier breeding programme. Tool Academy is beamed into space as a counterpoint to ‘the best of humanity’ plaque that went out with the Voyager probe, so that if aliens ever find us we don’t look too stuck up. The men in Playing it Straight are all homosexual. So is the female lead. It’s all a big gay practical joke. The kids that get booted off the island in Shipwrecked are in fact killed and eaten by the remaining cast as supplies dwindle.
The only flaw in my genius scheme to single-handedly save television is that you could just go and watch something else, something not crap, and save yourself a lot of time and effort. But I don’t watch Made in Chelsea because I like it, I watch Made in Chelsea because my flatmates like it, and I was here on the sofa first and it’s cold in my bedroom. They get irritated, and rightly so, when I pick holes in their entertainment. They know it's crap. They don’t care. I could easily go read a book. Since I can’t be bothered to get up, the least I can do is find a way to enjoy what I’m watching.
I’m not suggesting you put up with inferior entertainment forever. I’m always suggesting that you go read a book. But media is yours to enjoy, and yours to exploit and mutate. Go nuts.
Occasionally, though, Cracked drops something good in my lap. A recent article suggested a reading of The Catcher in the Rye in which the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the death of his younger brother. It’s an interesting theory; Caulfield does demonstrate some of the symptoms of PTSD (mood swings, fluctuating sexual drive, feelings of alienation etc), and equally fascinating is the fact that J.D. Salinger suffered from combat stress reaction or ‘battle fatigue,’ which is thought by many psychologists to be a precursor to PTSD. *clenches fist* Suddenly it all falls into place!
Now when I read The Catcher in the Rye I have difficulty discarding this theory, even though it came from an admittedly left-field source. It indelibly informs my understanding of the book. I can ignore it if I choose, but it’s added a new and interesting dimension to the novel (one I wish I’d heard about when I was at uni. Man, would I have looked smart).
There’s a fan theory about Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in which Ferris is merely a figment of Cameron’s imagination: his psyche’s attempt to break Cameron out of his funk and go and enjoy life a little bit. As a reading it lacks some depth (the fact that Cameron sees plenty of people interacting with Ferris elevates him from charming mental projection to full blown dissociative personality), but like all the best alternate readings once you’ve set out the ground rules you can twist the actual narrative to fit, if you want.
You can apply an alternate reading to whatever you want, even if it’s something you hate. Who’s to stop you? The Thought Police? (I’m hoping that’s not a thing yet.)
I’m not a huge fan of Jedward, but there’s a reading of Jedward that I quite like. My brother claims to have come up with it but I’m pretty sure it was Russell Howard. Anyway, my preferred decoding of Jedward states that one of them (it can be John or Edward, I don’t think anyone remembers which is which anymore), really, REALLY hates being a part of Jedward. That with each camp wave and power kick a little part of him flutters and dies. He stares at himself in the mirror, starkly lit by the sodium lamps of another Butlins dressing room, and wishes himself anywhere else. He wanted to be a surgeon, a captain of enterprise, a hostage negotiator. He dreams of filling their back page column in Heat with his informed feminist rhetoric... but instead has to fill in little coloured bubbles about what their favourite fizzy drink is, or what they dream about at night (Column answer: riding with their fans on unicorns. Real answer: holding Louis Walsh’s head under the water until the bubbles finally stop).
The cast of Made in Chelsea are not, as the show would have us believe, rich, under-educated sociopaths, who cannot either be interesting on their own, or act interesting even when prompted. Instead they are a collective of penniless orphans, given one last chance to act their way out of the workhouse, playing the parts of rich, under-educated sociopaths who cannot either be interesting on their own or act interesting even when prompted, and giving the performance of their goddamn lives.
Remember how the first series of Big Brother was pitched as a genuine psychological experiment, with scientific talking heads and everything? People immediately realised that they were happy to simply watch other people do stuff (which is, when you think about, all you basically do in your daily life anyway), and after a few seasons people were mostly watching it for Russell Brand pulling down his trousers and pants, but to begin with Big Brother was legitimate viewing. And you can do the same to almost any TV show, with a little creative thinking.
The Bachelorette is part of a super-soldier breeding programme. Tool Academy is beamed into space as a counterpoint to ‘the best of humanity’ plaque that went out with the Voyager probe, so that if aliens ever find us we don’t look too stuck up. The men in Playing it Straight are all homosexual. So is the female lead. It’s all a big gay practical joke. The kids that get booted off the island in Shipwrecked are in fact killed and eaten by the remaining cast as supplies dwindle.
The only flaw in my genius scheme to single-handedly save television is that you could just go and watch something else, something not crap, and save yourself a lot of time and effort. But I don’t watch Made in Chelsea because I like it, I watch Made in Chelsea because my flatmates like it, and I was here on the sofa first and it’s cold in my bedroom. They get irritated, and rightly so, when I pick holes in their entertainment. They know it's crap. They don’t care. I could easily go read a book. Since I can’t be bothered to get up, the least I can do is find a way to enjoy what I’m watching.
I’m not suggesting you put up with inferior entertainment forever. I’m always suggesting that you go read a book. But media is yours to enjoy, and yours to exploit and mutate. Go nuts.
Friday, 23 December 2011
"Real in the imaginary world"
Yesterday my girlfriend asked me whether I would tell my child about Father Christmas or not. What she meant – seeing as Father Christmas appears all by himself on screen and billboard and Coca-Cola truck around October – is whether I would inform my kid of Santa Clause’s fictional nature.
I thought about it and tried to answer honestly, and I think she was gratified with my response. I have no problem with letting my offspring believe in Father Christmas. It’s a nice thing to believe, at least for a little while. Santa Clause has the right level of humanity (big fat guy, big bushy beard, works his fingers to the bone) to counterpoint the miraculous (round the world in one night, flying reindeer, lives at the north pole but isn’t featured on Frozen Planet). It’s a harmless thing to believe, I think, and it goes some way to allaying the fears a precocious child might have about Christmas (what about people who have no-one to give them gifts, or people that don’t know about Jesus, or orphans etc?). Until a child is old enough to understand that the world’s problems are not magically solved at Christmas, Santa Clause can take up the slack.
I wondered if I wasn’t cutting corners. I have no plans to instil any religious belief in my son or daughter, quite the opposite. I have no plans to ‘raise my child atheist,’ but I’m certainly not going to bring the subject of God into their life until I think they’re old enough to grasp it conceptually and come to their own conclusions.
So am I being hypocritical letting my child believe in Santa Clause, a character who is patently fictitious, while actively avoiding the subject of God, an entity which I personally believe to be the same?
After giving it some thought I still think I’m on the path of righteousness, but it’s nice to know that, when posed with the same question, Tim Minchin seemed to bottle it a bit as well.
I like Tim Minchin a lot, not least because we seem to share views on science, faith and religion. He’s a little more outspoken in his beliefs, but I suspect that is because he has to get on stage and sing about them all the time.
I think Tim Minchin is always remarkably cogent about his personal views, and generally fairly magnanimous about other people’s. His justification in the New Statesman for letting his little girl believe in Santa Clause is certainly better put together than mine would ever be. You can read it here, and I suggest you do. It makes more sense than the piffle I’d be spouting about now.
It’s reassuring when people you admire make the same decisions as you; it makes you feel like you’ve chosen correctly. I’m not saying you should blindly follow your idols, but if you’re seeking to evaluate your judgement it makes sense to start with people who you consider rational and well-informed. Tim Minchin seems to be a pretty good social compass, so I was pleased we shared a viewpoint.
I’m glad I don’t have to reconsider my girlfriend’s question, partly because everybody likes to be right but mostly because she was pleased with my answer, and that made me happy. She looked at me as if I were a precocious child myself, and had given an answer beyond my years. I don’t think it was what she was expecting; being right is nice but sometimes it is equally gratifying to surprise the people you love.
So finally, sticking with the subject of people you admire sharing your views, here’s a video from Tim Minchin talking about his opinion of Christmas (seeing as he's not on the Jonathan Ross show, for some pretty spurious reasons).
It would be nice (at least for me) if you went back and had a look at this time last year’s post, in which I talk about why I like Christmas, despite being a pretty staunch atheist with a mental family. Once again, my own ideas seem to be in line with Mr. Minchin’s, and that gives me rather fuzzy feeling inside. A nice Christmas gift is to be certain in your beliefs, or at least to know that people you care about share them. I hope that Tim Minchin won’t mind me sharing this video. You should buy his DVD with your Christmas money.
I thought about it and tried to answer honestly, and I think she was gratified with my response. I have no problem with letting my offspring believe in Father Christmas. It’s a nice thing to believe, at least for a little while. Santa Clause has the right level of humanity (big fat guy, big bushy beard, works his fingers to the bone) to counterpoint the miraculous (round the world in one night, flying reindeer, lives at the north pole but isn’t featured on Frozen Planet). It’s a harmless thing to believe, I think, and it goes some way to allaying the fears a precocious child might have about Christmas (what about people who have no-one to give them gifts, or people that don’t know about Jesus, or orphans etc?). Until a child is old enough to understand that the world’s problems are not magically solved at Christmas, Santa Clause can take up the slack.
I wondered if I wasn’t cutting corners. I have no plans to instil any religious belief in my son or daughter, quite the opposite. I have no plans to ‘raise my child atheist,’ but I’m certainly not going to bring the subject of God into their life until I think they’re old enough to grasp it conceptually and come to their own conclusions.
So am I being hypocritical letting my child believe in Santa Clause, a character who is patently fictitious, while actively avoiding the subject of God, an entity which I personally believe to be the same?
After giving it some thought I still think I’m on the path of righteousness, but it’s nice to know that, when posed with the same question, Tim Minchin seemed to bottle it a bit as well.
I like Tim Minchin a lot, not least because we seem to share views on science, faith and religion. He’s a little more outspoken in his beliefs, but I suspect that is because he has to get on stage and sing about them all the time.
I think Tim Minchin is always remarkably cogent about his personal views, and generally fairly magnanimous about other people’s. His justification in the New Statesman for letting his little girl believe in Santa Clause is certainly better put together than mine would ever be. You can read it here, and I suggest you do. It makes more sense than the piffle I’d be spouting about now.
It’s reassuring when people you admire make the same decisions as you; it makes you feel like you’ve chosen correctly. I’m not saying you should blindly follow your idols, but if you’re seeking to evaluate your judgement it makes sense to start with people who you consider rational and well-informed. Tim Minchin seems to be a pretty good social compass, so I was pleased we shared a viewpoint.
I’m glad I don’t have to reconsider my girlfriend’s question, partly because everybody likes to be right but mostly because she was pleased with my answer, and that made me happy. She looked at me as if I were a precocious child myself, and had given an answer beyond my years. I don’t think it was what she was expecting; being right is nice but sometimes it is equally gratifying to surprise the people you love.
So finally, sticking with the subject of people you admire sharing your views, here’s a video from Tim Minchin talking about his opinion of Christmas (seeing as he's not on the Jonathan Ross show, for some pretty spurious reasons).
It would be nice (at least for me) if you went back and had a look at this time last year’s post, in which I talk about why I like Christmas, despite being a pretty staunch atheist with a mental family. Once again, my own ideas seem to be in line with Mr. Minchin’s, and that gives me rather fuzzy feeling inside. A nice Christmas gift is to be certain in your beliefs, or at least to know that people you care about share them. I hope that Tim Minchin won’t mind me sharing this video. You should buy his DVD with your Christmas money.
Friday, 2 December 2011
How does one spell 'GERDOOSH!'
Yesterday I finished the first of my introductory personal training sessions at my new gym, having decided that, as an unemployed writer with no discernable career prospects, a premium membership at an expensive London gymnasium was a cunning and necessary investment.
I’ve actually had a few personal training sessions before. The daughter of my next-door neighbours was a personal trainer occasionally employed by my step-mother, and as a generous gift my step-mother once bought me a few hours of her time.
Despite being born and raised in the Cotswolds (with numerous bratty escapes to Florence), Sam the personal trainer had something of the cockney sparrow about her. Petite, blonde, with a ready smile and a savage wit, she should would stamp her feet and blow cigarette smoke into the freezing December air while I ran laps of the garden, or mock my private life and romantic entanglements as I did sit-ups. For a couple of months she was also my impromptu shrink, her perceptions as sharp as her repartee. She’s off the fags and happily preggers now and should be due any day (incidentally if she’s reading this, I’ve always thought Joshua a wonderful name). And she always left promptly when it was clear I was going to puke after our sessions, to spare me some manly pride, the lamb.
Elvis the personal trainer is slightly more intimidating. He’s got the body I want, but physically we are spheres apart. Possibly the only parts that could stand up to comparison are our shins, which looks like regular shins, basically the same, I suppose, apart from mine are white and his are black. In the shin department we’re neck and neck. Elbows too, actually, let’s give me some credit, we’ve both got elbows, and his aren’t noticeably more muscular than mine. Eyelids. I bet we could probably bench similar weights with our eyelids.
Everywhere else is a different story. I might want Elvis’s physique but one glance shows it is definitely beyond my grasp. In order to get a left arm of comparable size to Elvis’s I would have to get myself another left arm, duct-tape the two of them together and then stuff the gaps with sand, or possible lead shot. Elvis’s pectorals look like they would deflect machine gun fire with a series of tings and kpwings. To an objective observer we could easily be two separate subspecies of humans: homo weedus and homo stackus, perhaps.
Like many very large men Elvis carries himself with a considered, almost delicate deliberateness (the poor man can probably rend metal with a gesture; imagine the tactile responsibilities of a superman). He has a taciturn face and is very softly spoken. He has recently been on Deal or No Deal and talked - with enthusiasm so warm that it became touching - about being recognised in the shops. He didn’t do very well in the show: offered a deal in the high thousands, he held out for £100,000 and walked away with 250 quid. When I ask, as politely as I can, what he did with his ‘winnings,’ he tells me he took his missus out for a meal. By this point I’m starting to fall for Elvis.
The work-out isn’t that bad, partly because I’m a little fitter than I look but mostly because Elvis goes easy on me. “You got this. You’re a strong guy,” he says at one point, managing to keep a smile off his face. We do T press-ups and mountain climbers and the rest (well, I do, Elvis just counts and tells me not to worry when I fail the last rep).
I’m not actually as unfit and puny as I’m making out. I am, however, whippet-skinny, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get as ripped as Elvis. I’d look ludicrous with a large upper body: like Mr. Incredible, or a Stretch Armstrong someone’s left out in the sun.
However I’m determined to get my money’s worth from this gym, although it’s very impersonal and mechanistic. The breaks between music videos on the screens give ‘positive’ tips, one of which, no word of a lie, is to put unhealthy ‘bad’ items at the front section of the trolley when you shop. This is ostensibly so we can ask ourselves “do we really need this item” but seeing as the item by this point is already in the trolley, all giving the front section special attention is going to do is remind people how poorly disciplined and hideous to look at they are.
One should give the gym the benefit of the doubt: the advice is no doubt designed to inspire rewarding self-control, but I feel the drop in self-esteem engendered by finishing the shop with the front section stuffed with biscuits outweighs the positive feelings that might be accrued in the frankly unlikely scenario where you hold the biscuits thoughtfully in your hand before exclaiming: “Not this time, worthless calories!” and hurl them back on the shelves.
It’s a little disappointing to find that I’ve joined White Goodman’s Globo Gym, but none of this is Elvis’s fault. He’s a good motivator and a nice guy and if I stick to the exercises he proscribed I’m sure I could beef up a bit. The aim of this? Well, the look, obviously, but mostly to feel like I’m getting something worthwhile out of all this free time.
Although it doesn’t make much sense financially, at least going to the gym allows me to exercise control over one element of my life: my body. No job, no book deal, yadda yadda yadda. The best I can do is to make the most of what I have to get what I want, and I have lots of spare time, and I want Fight Club era Brad Pitt’s body. It’s an unrealistic aim, but so is getting £250,000 cash out of a little red box, and if Elvis can give it a fair go and then take the loss with a smile on his face, then perhaps I should follow his example. I’m sure Elvis’s missus would have preferred the big one, but I bet she was pleased with the £250 meal. I’m sure my missus would prefer Fight Club era Brad Pitt, but I figure me getting a little more tonk won’t make her scowl either.
I’ve actually had a few personal training sessions before. The daughter of my next-door neighbours was a personal trainer occasionally employed by my step-mother, and as a generous gift my step-mother once bought me a few hours of her time.
Despite being born and raised in the Cotswolds (with numerous bratty escapes to Florence), Sam the personal trainer had something of the cockney sparrow about her. Petite, blonde, with a ready smile and a savage wit, she should would stamp her feet and blow cigarette smoke into the freezing December air while I ran laps of the garden, or mock my private life and romantic entanglements as I did sit-ups. For a couple of months she was also my impromptu shrink, her perceptions as sharp as her repartee. She’s off the fags and happily preggers now and should be due any day (incidentally if she’s reading this, I’ve always thought Joshua a wonderful name). And she always left promptly when it was clear I was going to puke after our sessions, to spare me some manly pride, the lamb.
Elvis the personal trainer is slightly more intimidating. He’s got the body I want, but physically we are spheres apart. Possibly the only parts that could stand up to comparison are our shins, which looks like regular shins, basically the same, I suppose, apart from mine are white and his are black. In the shin department we’re neck and neck. Elbows too, actually, let’s give me some credit, we’ve both got elbows, and his aren’t noticeably more muscular than mine. Eyelids. I bet we could probably bench similar weights with our eyelids.
Everywhere else is a different story. I might want Elvis’s physique but one glance shows it is definitely beyond my grasp. In order to get a left arm of comparable size to Elvis’s I would have to get myself another left arm, duct-tape the two of them together and then stuff the gaps with sand, or possible lead shot. Elvis’s pectorals look like they would deflect machine gun fire with a series of tings and kpwings. To an objective observer we could easily be two separate subspecies of humans: homo weedus and homo stackus, perhaps.
Like many very large men Elvis carries himself with a considered, almost delicate deliberateness (the poor man can probably rend metal with a gesture; imagine the tactile responsibilities of a superman). He has a taciturn face and is very softly spoken. He has recently been on Deal or No Deal and talked - with enthusiasm so warm that it became touching - about being recognised in the shops. He didn’t do very well in the show: offered a deal in the high thousands, he held out for £100,000 and walked away with 250 quid. When I ask, as politely as I can, what he did with his ‘winnings,’ he tells me he took his missus out for a meal. By this point I’m starting to fall for Elvis.
The work-out isn’t that bad, partly because I’m a little fitter than I look but mostly because Elvis goes easy on me. “You got this. You’re a strong guy,” he says at one point, managing to keep a smile off his face. We do T press-ups and mountain climbers and the rest (well, I do, Elvis just counts and tells me not to worry when I fail the last rep).
I’m not actually as unfit and puny as I’m making out. I am, however, whippet-skinny, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever get as ripped as Elvis. I’d look ludicrous with a large upper body: like Mr. Incredible, or a Stretch Armstrong someone’s left out in the sun.
However I’m determined to get my money’s worth from this gym, although it’s very impersonal and mechanistic. The breaks between music videos on the screens give ‘positive’ tips, one of which, no word of a lie, is to put unhealthy ‘bad’ items at the front section of the trolley when you shop. This is ostensibly so we can ask ourselves “do we really need this item” but seeing as the item by this point is already in the trolley, all giving the front section special attention is going to do is remind people how poorly disciplined and hideous to look at they are.
One should give the gym the benefit of the doubt: the advice is no doubt designed to inspire rewarding self-control, but I feel the drop in self-esteem engendered by finishing the shop with the front section stuffed with biscuits outweighs the positive feelings that might be accrued in the frankly unlikely scenario where you hold the biscuits thoughtfully in your hand before exclaiming: “Not this time, worthless calories!” and hurl them back on the shelves.
It’s a little disappointing to find that I’ve joined White Goodman’s Globo Gym, but none of this is Elvis’s fault. He’s a good motivator and a nice guy and if I stick to the exercises he proscribed I’m sure I could beef up a bit. The aim of this? Well, the look, obviously, but mostly to feel like I’m getting something worthwhile out of all this free time.
Although it doesn’t make much sense financially, at least going to the gym allows me to exercise control over one element of my life: my body. No job, no book deal, yadda yadda yadda. The best I can do is to make the most of what I have to get what I want, and I have lots of spare time, and I want Fight Club era Brad Pitt’s body. It’s an unrealistic aim, but so is getting £250,000 cash out of a little red box, and if Elvis can give it a fair go and then take the loss with a smile on his face, then perhaps I should follow his example. I’m sure Elvis’s missus would have preferred the big one, but I bet she was pleased with the £250 meal. I’m sure my missus would prefer Fight Club era Brad Pitt, but I figure me getting a little more tonk won’t make her scowl either.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Writer's... um...
Every writer writes about writer’s block at some point. In fact, I’m fairly sure I’ve started several blog posts in this manner (possibly with that same opening sentence, I do love alliteration), only to put them aside either until ‘proper’ inspiration struck, or because I felt the idea seemed trite or overdone. As I’ve said, every writer mentions it at some point (even if it’s only to say they don’t ever suffer from it, the smug paranormal-romance writing bastards).
I suppose I’m persisting with it now because I don’t really have writer’s block at the moment. For the time being, work on the novel has slowed, and I’m starting to enter the next phase: finding someone who likes it enough to represent me. It’s a frankly petrifying move, as every rejection (not many so far, but mounting) feels like a simple and solid reason to abandon the project that has consumed eighteen months of my life, taken me out of a settled existence surrounded by friends; into a place I hardly know and where no one knows me, and left me an embarrassing stretch behind other recent graduates in trying to find employment.
So the novel suffers not from writer’s block but rather writer’s paralysis. Until I find some feedback, any sort of feedback, I know not what to do with it. It can become this or it can become that, dependent on the whim and will of an agent or a publisher or the public or my friends and family. I’m confident in my writing. It’s my only talent and I have worked hard at it. If I might be allowed to bluster a moment: it’s better than Verbal Slapstick. These blog posts take roughly an hour or less, and are edited perhaps once before I upload them (this may explain why they are littered with typographical errors).
My book is in part a labour of love, and inverted, a test of skill. If someone tells me how to make it better, I am positive I can do so. I just don’t know how (which is sort of the kicker, no matter how you look at it).
A dear friend and successful author has what I believe to be the most sensible and generally successful solution for writer’s block: write around it. It doesn’t matter what you turn to, even if it’s something away from your primary project. Just getting words on paper or on screen can be enough to start the creative juices flowing (a metaphor I am unable to source, and somewhat weirded out by).
More than that, writer’s block can be just that: and obstacle to be skirted, flanked, outmanoeuvred. Some things are difficult to write about. Some things are boring to write about. Some things are challenging to write about in a way that makes sense, or is compelling, or isn’t a little cringe-worthy. Every writer has things that they personally struggle with. I don’t write sex scenes because I can’t (please don’t make any inferences here). It’s just too hard (that’s what she said). So if I feel I have to have a sex scene (and sometimes you just do) I have to find a way to write around it without looking like I’m writing around it. It’s a time-consuming and messy process (much like sex).
Another quite well-known writer of my recent acquaintance told me a good story about his own experience leapfrogging writer’s block. Finding himself completely stymied while trying to write a scene set in a sea-side cafe during winter, and finding it more a problem of atmosphere rather than description, he decided to take himself to a similar cafe and grab some photographs. Jumping on the train to some depressing sea resort he wandered around until he found a cafe comparable to the one in his imaginings, had a cup of tea and snapped some photos. He got them developed on the way home and pinned them up around his writing desk. And did not look at them once. Although he had not been paying special attention to the cafe his was in (his idea was to get the photos and be home as soon as possible, before the urge to write at all disappeared) something about the place had apparently seeped in – the look or the smell or the sad tiredness of it all – and swilled around in his head so that he returned to his desk fully equipped to carry on. Writer’s block can be defeated by ‘physical’ means: action can be taken.
You can read your way around it. This sounds like an intellectual way of saying ‘steal things from other writers’ and it sort of is, but there’s nothing malicious behind it (or at least there shouldn’t be). Stephen King said that if you don’t read then you lack the tools to write and I think that goes beyond an aphorism into straight-up profundity. Words are your tools and your building material at the same time, your clay and your wood and your chisel and saw and pencil and granite and and dynamite. The more examples, combinations, permutations you are exposed to, the more ideas you have to draw on. And I don’t mean simply by facsimile. There’s an arborescence to writing: every new word you learn, or new context you experience, increases the number of viable word-links you can make. And because of the profligate manner in which words can be joined (especially English words, the slags) the number of links increases immensely with each piece of inducted knowledge. You are constrained only by the rules of grammar (which can be bent) and those of style (which can be broken).
Finally, you just have to keep going. I have no internet connection right now, so I cannot say with authority which writer described writing as ‘staring at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds’ (or something along those lines), but that is often what it feels like. Writing when it isn’t coming easy can be tortuously hard. It’s less fun than almost everything else there is to do in your house, up to and including de-scaling the kettle. But if you go away and leave it when it’s hard, chances are it will still be hard when you return (that’s what she said. I’m so sorry). It might be better to creep, creep your way across the screen, checking your word count (wisely removed from the hotkeys and appearing at the bottom of the screen on Word 2007) every few seconds, writing and deleting, writing and deleting, a frustrating arduous slog up a literary hill until... until the difficult part is over, or what you’ve written leads naturally to something else, or while you’re thinking of a way to tell this bit, you figure out how to tell that bit, or (and this happens more than one might like, but is necessary), you realise that you’re fighting a pointless battle, and you may as well chuck this whole section and start again a bit further back but with a better idea.
Writer’s block is a problem with creativity. Ergo, in order to beat it, all one has to do is create. Quality can follow on. So I don't know what to do with the book. Better start thinking about the next one.
It occurs that perhaps I should have saved writing this post for a time when I actually have writer’s block. Oops. Bit of a plus for my flatmates though: that kettle’s going to be sparkling at some point.
I suppose I’m persisting with it now because I don’t really have writer’s block at the moment. For the time being, work on the novel has slowed, and I’m starting to enter the next phase: finding someone who likes it enough to represent me. It’s a frankly petrifying move, as every rejection (not many so far, but mounting) feels like a simple and solid reason to abandon the project that has consumed eighteen months of my life, taken me out of a settled existence surrounded by friends; into a place I hardly know and where no one knows me, and left me an embarrassing stretch behind other recent graduates in trying to find employment.
So the novel suffers not from writer’s block but rather writer’s paralysis. Until I find some feedback, any sort of feedback, I know not what to do with it. It can become this or it can become that, dependent on the whim and will of an agent or a publisher or the public or my friends and family. I’m confident in my writing. It’s my only talent and I have worked hard at it. If I might be allowed to bluster a moment: it’s better than Verbal Slapstick. These blog posts take roughly an hour or less, and are edited perhaps once before I upload them (this may explain why they are littered with typographical errors).
My book is in part a labour of love, and inverted, a test of skill. If someone tells me how to make it better, I am positive I can do so. I just don’t know how (which is sort of the kicker, no matter how you look at it).
A dear friend and successful author has what I believe to be the most sensible and generally successful solution for writer’s block: write around it. It doesn’t matter what you turn to, even if it’s something away from your primary project. Just getting words on paper or on screen can be enough to start the creative juices flowing (a metaphor I am unable to source, and somewhat weirded out by).
More than that, writer’s block can be just that: and obstacle to be skirted, flanked, outmanoeuvred. Some things are difficult to write about. Some things are boring to write about. Some things are challenging to write about in a way that makes sense, or is compelling, or isn’t a little cringe-worthy. Every writer has things that they personally struggle with. I don’t write sex scenes because I can’t (please don’t make any inferences here). It’s just too hard (that’s what she said). So if I feel I have to have a sex scene (and sometimes you just do) I have to find a way to write around it without looking like I’m writing around it. It’s a time-consuming and messy process (much like sex).
Another quite well-known writer of my recent acquaintance told me a good story about his own experience leapfrogging writer’s block. Finding himself completely stymied while trying to write a scene set in a sea-side cafe during winter, and finding it more a problem of atmosphere rather than description, he decided to take himself to a similar cafe and grab some photographs. Jumping on the train to some depressing sea resort he wandered around until he found a cafe comparable to the one in his imaginings, had a cup of tea and snapped some photos. He got them developed on the way home and pinned them up around his writing desk. And did not look at them once. Although he had not been paying special attention to the cafe his was in (his idea was to get the photos and be home as soon as possible, before the urge to write at all disappeared) something about the place had apparently seeped in – the look or the smell or the sad tiredness of it all – and swilled around in his head so that he returned to his desk fully equipped to carry on. Writer’s block can be defeated by ‘physical’ means: action can be taken.
You can read your way around it. This sounds like an intellectual way of saying ‘steal things from other writers’ and it sort of is, but there’s nothing malicious behind it (or at least there shouldn’t be). Stephen King said that if you don’t read then you lack the tools to write and I think that goes beyond an aphorism into straight-up profundity. Words are your tools and your building material at the same time, your clay and your wood and your chisel and saw and pencil and granite and and dynamite. The more examples, combinations, permutations you are exposed to, the more ideas you have to draw on. And I don’t mean simply by facsimile. There’s an arborescence to writing: every new word you learn, or new context you experience, increases the number of viable word-links you can make. And because of the profligate manner in which words can be joined (especially English words, the slags) the number of links increases immensely with each piece of inducted knowledge. You are constrained only by the rules of grammar (which can be bent) and those of style (which can be broken).
Finally, you just have to keep going. I have no internet connection right now, so I cannot say with authority which writer described writing as ‘staring at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds’ (or something along those lines), but that is often what it feels like. Writing when it isn’t coming easy can be tortuously hard. It’s less fun than almost everything else there is to do in your house, up to and including de-scaling the kettle. But if you go away and leave it when it’s hard, chances are it will still be hard when you return (that’s what she said. I’m so sorry). It might be better to creep, creep your way across the screen, checking your word count (wisely removed from the hotkeys and appearing at the bottom of the screen on Word 2007) every few seconds, writing and deleting, writing and deleting, a frustrating arduous slog up a literary hill until... until the difficult part is over, or what you’ve written leads naturally to something else, or while you’re thinking of a way to tell this bit, you figure out how to tell that bit, or (and this happens more than one might like, but is necessary), you realise that you’re fighting a pointless battle, and you may as well chuck this whole section and start again a bit further back but with a better idea.
Writer’s block is a problem with creativity. Ergo, in order to beat it, all one has to do is create. Quality can follow on. So I don't know what to do with the book. Better start thinking about the next one.
It occurs that perhaps I should have saved writing this post for a time when I actually have writer’s block. Oops. Bit of a plus for my flatmates though: that kettle’s going to be sparkling at some point.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Keep On Moving
I’ve moved house again, and I consider this relocation a more positive one; instead of just shuffling between my parents’ respective houses when they got sick of me, I’ve moved in with members of my peer group. Friends, at least for now.
I have a somewhat bipolar view on moving house, although this refers solely to the actual act of moving all the crap you’ve accumulated from one location to another. It’s the shifting of domiciles that gets me all flustered, rather than generally changing location. There are obvious benefits of moving to London (there’s a Caribbean/bagel shop round the corner. That’s the best kind of slash, even better than Buffy/Willow).
Moving house can be a rich and fulfilling experience. It’s an opportunity to imprint a facet of your personality on to a physical space: changing the way a room looks to better reflect your own tastes. One hopes that moving home is a chance to upgrade, to make a fresh start in better surroundings. In these times of financial uncertainty many people may unfortunately find themselves downsizing, moving to poorer accommodation in an attempt to save cash. This is depressing, but even in this case moving home means you can start afresh.
When you move house, you are essentially creating order from chaos. Some of the order you bring with you from your own place: your furniture and your pictures and your telly. Some of it is discretely tucked away in your new house: that cupboard with an unexpected amount of space, that strange little nook in the kitchen that turns out to be the perfect size for the wine rack. This bit I like. The way all that clutter fits neatly in the aforementioned cupboard. The way all your wine bottles look in the aforementioned rack. The way the aforementioned wine gets you pleasantly shitfaced.
The problem is that there is just so much tuppin’ chaos about. And your efforts to unravel complexity and strife only create more. It occurs that I haven’t just lazily listed things for a while, so suck it up:
Things you didn’t plan for on your cheerful ‘New House’ list:
1. It’s filthy. The previous owners or the landlord will have spruced it up a bit, and this will serve to hide the grime until just after it is practical to clean it properly yourself i.e. as soon as your stuff is piled up in the middle of the floor. The obvious bits will be sparkling: oven door, the middle of the carpets, mantelpieces. But anything above eye height and anything below ankle level is going to be mucky and probably with an oddly unplaceable but distinctively unpleasant smell.
Sometimes the house will have been ‘professionally cleaned’ before your arrival. This brings to mind an adept and well practised grime-fighting team, sort of Kim and Aggie with uniforms and without the inherent bigotry. What you probably got is a collection of bored students, or a group of harassed first generation immigrants, rushing to their eighteenth job of the day to earn enough cash to keep little Yaakov in short trousers. You aren’t going to be cheerfully eating off the floor after their lacklustre performance. On the other hand, it might assuage some of the guilt you feel for leaving your old place in such a fucking state.
2. None of your stuff fits anywhere. It doesn’t matter how spartan you were when you moved, or how zen you felt when you took all your old tat to the charity shop. It doesn’t even matter that the space you’re moving in to is technically larger than the one you left. Everything you own is going to spend several days waiting morosely in the middle of the floor. You will fall over it. Several times. Unpacking is not simply a case of transferring your things from suitcase to drawer. Instead it has become, somehow, a three-dimensional jigsaw of hellish complexity and stress, like playing Tetris while ramped up on coke. The only way to ensure you will have a place to store all your shoes is to abandon them all and arrive barefoot.
3. It will take at least twice as long as you anticipated. ‘Oh, we’ll try and get the majority done over the weekend,’ you glibly inform your mother on the phone. Yes, you will try. And, young Jedi, you will fail. Miserably. By Sunday night you will still be craning your neck to see the TV around the boxes marked ‘Kitchen: Misc.’ And on Monday you will go back to work, and on Monday evening you will come back exhausted and look at the box and go: ‘No. Shan’t. You can’t make me.’ You finish moving in roughly three weeks before it’s time to move out.
4. No service providers care you’ve moved. Not a jot. One would think, seeing as it’s all your money in the bank, that said bank might be more forthcoming in updating their details. They won’t: they’re a bank. Instead they’ll fail to update your address at all the first time you tell them, then when you realise you haven’t had a statement in months they’ll change it incorrectly, so your neighbour gets a juicy opportunity to impersonate you on Amazon. And when you finally stagger to the bank and shout at someone they will obsequiously listen to you rant and agree that mistakes have been made and then demurely tap away the changes on their computer. And then the cash machine will eat your card on the way home so you’ll know not to fuck with them next time.
5. Utilities companies don’t want you to move. In fact, they will actively deny that you have done so, in order to keep charging you for the electricity the new tenant is using. Like lovers refusing to acknowledge the end of an affair, they will continue to write and call long after it has become appropriate. When it has become indisputable that you have truly gone for good, they will seek you out at the next property, to make sure that £2.13 you owe does not go unreturned, and possibly post their masturbatory tissues through your letterbox.
6. No one is going to forward you your post. Look at what you did with the old mail from your new house. You collected it up, like an organised and industrious person, then you left it in a prominent place on the table by the door, and when the pile got too big and you couldn’t stand you look at it any more, you sneakily recycled it all.
7. Sky aren’t coming. I’m sorry, they just aren’t. When you think about the service you are getting from them, it’s almost mind-boggling. Information is being coded into a digital signal: intangible, invisible, and amazingly fast; and is being fired up into space and then back down to your television. Imagine how impossible that would have sounded a hundred years ago. And the price you pay for this fantastic, incredible technology is to use up two day’s worth of holiday, and then have to chuck a sickie next week, and finally get it installed three weeks after you were supposed to, and after the technician has drilled several dozen holes in every wall of your house. And you’ll be bored to tears all day while you wait because, obviously, you don’t have Sky, and all your books are still in a box marked ‘Bedroom: Misc’ that you just can’t face opening.
8. You haven’t got the internet. Best get a TV licence. Oh, how do I do that without the internet? Is there a number to call? Actually, wait, the phone doesn’t work. Better set that up first. Um... wait, how do I do that without the internet? Oh you know what, fuck it, let’s just get a takeaway and sort it tomorrow. Right, where’s the nearest Chinese? Just Google... oh for shitting shit’s sake.
9. IKEA hates you. You would think, being a Swedish brand, that IKEA would be fairly liberal, and it certainly pretends to be. ‘Look, much if our furniture is customisable! And we sell Swedish food in the cafeteria! And the instructions are all pictorial, like Lego. Isn’t that so crazy and Scandinavian?’ In fact, IKEA operates much like a Fascist state: everything works fine as long as no one deviates from the set ideal.
‘You vill valk vhere ve tell you to valk! If you deviate from the display path you will end up back vhere you started, or unable to return to the section you need, as punishment for your transgression of zhese simple rules! Ve do not care if you only came to buy vun of zhose tissue paper lamp shades. You vill purchase ALL ze items from a display room, and you vill install ze furniture exactly as ve describe! If you do not, none of it will fit, or it vill look shit! All of our bookcases are unreasonable short, or too tall for ze average room! Zis is to remind you that you are simply a cog in ze IKEA paradise machine. Now nest, you worthless filth. And buy meatballs at ze end. From a can.’
10. That doesn’t work. That thing there, whatever it is. If it worked, they would have taken it with them when they left. If it seems to work, it just means that it’s broken in a way that isn’t immediately apparent, and will only become obvious when you’ve left it alone for a while. It leaks water. Or gas. Or it makes the room smell like burning. Or it might explode. Just leave it.
11. Sometimes making your possessions fit will require a tiny amount of DIY. DIY tasks so small and menial that you cannot in good conscience leave out the Y part. Drill one hole in wall, put in one rawlplug, put in one screw, hang mirror. You cannot justify getting a workman out for that. Even though you know, you KNOW, that you will drill one wonky hole in wall, stuff in incorrect rawlplug, be unable to get it out or get the screw in, dig the whole thing out with pliers and make a horrendous mess, and then in three months time when you’ve gotten over the experience the mirror and possibly the wall will fall over.
12. Every single lightbulb in the house will blow within the first week. Those filaments have been waiting, taut, stretched, aching, aching for release. Click, twang.
Artificial light is over-rated anyway. It gives you cancer, probably. Just put the wine rack somewhere you can still see it, and pray the light in the fridge holds out.
I might not be out of action that long, as I’ll try and sort some automatic updates until I finally get an internet connection (in three weeks). Till then, I’ve got moving chores to get on with (mostly playing Batman: Arkham City. I’m still basically unemployed).
Stay tuned for Verbal Slapstick: Fully Automated.
I have a somewhat bipolar view on moving house, although this refers solely to the actual act of moving all the crap you’ve accumulated from one location to another. It’s the shifting of domiciles that gets me all flustered, rather than generally changing location. There are obvious benefits of moving to London (there’s a Caribbean/bagel shop round the corner. That’s the best kind of slash, even better than Buffy/Willow).
Moving house can be a rich and fulfilling experience. It’s an opportunity to imprint a facet of your personality on to a physical space: changing the way a room looks to better reflect your own tastes. One hopes that moving home is a chance to upgrade, to make a fresh start in better surroundings. In these times of financial uncertainty many people may unfortunately find themselves downsizing, moving to poorer accommodation in an attempt to save cash. This is depressing, but even in this case moving home means you can start afresh.
When you move house, you are essentially creating order from chaos. Some of the order you bring with you from your own place: your furniture and your pictures and your telly. Some of it is discretely tucked away in your new house: that cupboard with an unexpected amount of space, that strange little nook in the kitchen that turns out to be the perfect size for the wine rack. This bit I like. The way all that clutter fits neatly in the aforementioned cupboard. The way all your wine bottles look in the aforementioned rack. The way the aforementioned wine gets you pleasantly shitfaced.
The problem is that there is just so much tuppin’ chaos about. And your efforts to unravel complexity and strife only create more. It occurs that I haven’t just lazily listed things for a while, so suck it up:
Things you didn’t plan for on your cheerful ‘New House’ list:
1. It’s filthy. The previous owners or the landlord will have spruced it up a bit, and this will serve to hide the grime until just after it is practical to clean it properly yourself i.e. as soon as your stuff is piled up in the middle of the floor. The obvious bits will be sparkling: oven door, the middle of the carpets, mantelpieces. But anything above eye height and anything below ankle level is going to be mucky and probably with an oddly unplaceable but distinctively unpleasant smell.
Sometimes the house will have been ‘professionally cleaned’ before your arrival. This brings to mind an adept and well practised grime-fighting team, sort of Kim and Aggie with uniforms and without the inherent bigotry. What you probably got is a collection of bored students, or a group of harassed first generation immigrants, rushing to their eighteenth job of the day to earn enough cash to keep little Yaakov in short trousers. You aren’t going to be cheerfully eating off the floor after their lacklustre performance. On the other hand, it might assuage some of the guilt you feel for leaving your old place in such a fucking state.
2. None of your stuff fits anywhere. It doesn’t matter how spartan you were when you moved, or how zen you felt when you took all your old tat to the charity shop. It doesn’t even matter that the space you’re moving in to is technically larger than the one you left. Everything you own is going to spend several days waiting morosely in the middle of the floor. You will fall over it. Several times. Unpacking is not simply a case of transferring your things from suitcase to drawer. Instead it has become, somehow, a three-dimensional jigsaw of hellish complexity and stress, like playing Tetris while ramped up on coke. The only way to ensure you will have a place to store all your shoes is to abandon them all and arrive barefoot.
3. It will take at least twice as long as you anticipated. ‘Oh, we’ll try and get the majority done over the weekend,’ you glibly inform your mother on the phone. Yes, you will try. And, young Jedi, you will fail. Miserably. By Sunday night you will still be craning your neck to see the TV around the boxes marked ‘Kitchen: Misc.’ And on Monday you will go back to work, and on Monday evening you will come back exhausted and look at the box and go: ‘No. Shan’t. You can’t make me.’ You finish moving in roughly three weeks before it’s time to move out.
4. No service providers care you’ve moved. Not a jot. One would think, seeing as it’s all your money in the bank, that said bank might be more forthcoming in updating their details. They won’t: they’re a bank. Instead they’ll fail to update your address at all the first time you tell them, then when you realise you haven’t had a statement in months they’ll change it incorrectly, so your neighbour gets a juicy opportunity to impersonate you on Amazon. And when you finally stagger to the bank and shout at someone they will obsequiously listen to you rant and agree that mistakes have been made and then demurely tap away the changes on their computer. And then the cash machine will eat your card on the way home so you’ll know not to fuck with them next time.
5. Utilities companies don’t want you to move. In fact, they will actively deny that you have done so, in order to keep charging you for the electricity the new tenant is using. Like lovers refusing to acknowledge the end of an affair, they will continue to write and call long after it has become appropriate. When it has become indisputable that you have truly gone for good, they will seek you out at the next property, to make sure that £2.13 you owe does not go unreturned, and possibly post their masturbatory tissues through your letterbox.
6. No one is going to forward you your post. Look at what you did with the old mail from your new house. You collected it up, like an organised and industrious person, then you left it in a prominent place on the table by the door, and when the pile got too big and you couldn’t stand you look at it any more, you sneakily recycled it all.
7. Sky aren’t coming. I’m sorry, they just aren’t. When you think about the service you are getting from them, it’s almost mind-boggling. Information is being coded into a digital signal: intangible, invisible, and amazingly fast; and is being fired up into space and then back down to your television. Imagine how impossible that would have sounded a hundred years ago. And the price you pay for this fantastic, incredible technology is to use up two day’s worth of holiday, and then have to chuck a sickie next week, and finally get it installed three weeks after you were supposed to, and after the technician has drilled several dozen holes in every wall of your house. And you’ll be bored to tears all day while you wait because, obviously, you don’t have Sky, and all your books are still in a box marked ‘Bedroom: Misc’ that you just can’t face opening.
8. You haven’t got the internet. Best get a TV licence. Oh, how do I do that without the internet? Is there a number to call? Actually, wait, the phone doesn’t work. Better set that up first. Um... wait, how do I do that without the internet? Oh you know what, fuck it, let’s just get a takeaway and sort it tomorrow. Right, where’s the nearest Chinese? Just Google... oh for shitting shit’s sake.
9. IKEA hates you. You would think, being a Swedish brand, that IKEA would be fairly liberal, and it certainly pretends to be. ‘Look, much if our furniture is customisable! And we sell Swedish food in the cafeteria! And the instructions are all pictorial, like Lego. Isn’t that so crazy and Scandinavian?’ In fact, IKEA operates much like a Fascist state: everything works fine as long as no one deviates from the set ideal.
‘You vill valk vhere ve tell you to valk! If you deviate from the display path you will end up back vhere you started, or unable to return to the section you need, as punishment for your transgression of zhese simple rules! Ve do not care if you only came to buy vun of zhose tissue paper lamp shades. You vill purchase ALL ze items from a display room, and you vill install ze furniture exactly as ve describe! If you do not, none of it will fit, or it vill look shit! All of our bookcases are unreasonable short, or too tall for ze average room! Zis is to remind you that you are simply a cog in ze IKEA paradise machine. Now nest, you worthless filth. And buy meatballs at ze end. From a can.’
10. That doesn’t work. That thing there, whatever it is. If it worked, they would have taken it with them when they left. If it seems to work, it just means that it’s broken in a way that isn’t immediately apparent, and will only become obvious when you’ve left it alone for a while. It leaks water. Or gas. Or it makes the room smell like burning. Or it might explode. Just leave it.
11. Sometimes making your possessions fit will require a tiny amount of DIY. DIY tasks so small and menial that you cannot in good conscience leave out the Y part. Drill one hole in wall, put in one rawlplug, put in one screw, hang mirror. You cannot justify getting a workman out for that. Even though you know, you KNOW, that you will drill one wonky hole in wall, stuff in incorrect rawlplug, be unable to get it out or get the screw in, dig the whole thing out with pliers and make a horrendous mess, and then in three months time when you’ve gotten over the experience the mirror and possibly the wall will fall over.
12. Every single lightbulb in the house will blow within the first week. Those filaments have been waiting, taut, stretched, aching, aching for release. Click, twang.
Artificial light is over-rated anyway. It gives you cancer, probably. Just put the wine rack somewhere you can still see it, and pray the light in the fridge holds out.
I might not be out of action that long, as I’ll try and sort some automatic updates until I finally get an internet connection (in three weeks). Till then, I’ve got moving chores to get on with (mostly playing Batman: Arkham City. I’m still basically unemployed).
Stay tuned for Verbal Slapstick: Fully Automated.
Friday, 11 November 2011
Batman: Arkham City
It might seem a little unfair that I’m about to praise Batman: Arkham City for expanding on a previously successful game, when my previous review of Dead Space 2 criticised the developers for doing just that. But where Dead Space felt like version 2.0 – a little slicker but perhaps with a little less heart – Arkham City is packed to bursting point with new content. Rocksteady have seemingly decided to skip 2.0 and go all the way to 5.
Before I get too over-enthusiastic I should point out that the above comparison does hold some water: this isn’t a new game by any means. Anyone who played Arkham Asylum is going to be able to dive right back in. The fighting system is the same, as are the sneaking sections and (broadly) the locomotion controls. You’re still Batman, you still stride around after your great big chin with your cape flowing behind you, you still pull petrified hoodlums off balconies or leave them dangling from gargoyles, and you still get to bang heads in flowing, graceful combat.
What makes Arkham City a great sequel is how far the developers have pushed the formula. Firstly this it down to some inspired extras. I don’t know how much extra programming it took to include Catwoman and Robin but it was surely worth it. This is how you do extra content: the basic mechanics of both characters are exactly the same as Batman but they both feel fresh and vibrant and different. The Catwoman sections are well plotted and provide a nice break from Batman, although there simply aren’t enough of them to provide anything but a distraction. The downloadable option of Robin is limited simply to challenge modes, so it’s gratifying to see how much effort Rocksteady have put into the package: Robin has a whole different gadget set and his fighting moves are a joy: agile, skilful and flashy compared to Batman’s ‘break every bone one-by-one approach.’
But the game itself has more than enough content to keep people happy without going near an internet connection. Arkham City is huge, and as a sandbox is delightfully constructed. There is stuff everywhere. Hardly any areas are simply there to be traversed, riddles, collectables and power-ups abound. It’s the mark of a good sandbox game when travelling across a small area takes a long time simply because there are so many distractions. The main story is a little too short and is poorly paced, but you probably won’t notice because you’ll spend much of your time off doing side quests. The fact that the basic mechanics of the game are so enjoyable means you’ll relish the chance to play even if it’s not related to the story: it’s hard to just glide over a collection of henchmen idly chatting in the street when you can leap down among them like a black angel and start doing the fighty-fighty. It makes you feel like Batman every single time.
It’s the fighting mechanics that are at the core of this. Rocksteady toyed originally with the idea of a beat-match style system for combat and although that idea was dropped you can see its legacy in the smooth flow of moves. The fighting system is still largely the same as the previous game: strikes, counters and evades make up the basics, with special moves and gadgets being introduced as the game progresses. Arkham Asylum was praised for providing depth with an apparently simple system and Arkham City expands on this by simply stuffing in more moves. You can use almost every gadget in a fight, and there are hardly any two-button combinations that don’t do something in combat. Combos can contain more than a dozen unique moves. It makes you feel like Batman, and it makes you look like Batman to anyone who might be watching.
The stealth sections have also been beefed up, but here it becomes apparent that there’s more to creating a great experience than cramming things in to the build. The predator sections are in many cases inferior to the previous game's offerings simply because there is too much going on: too many bad guys, too many guns, not enough obviously scripted areas. Although this provides a greater challenge, it robs some of the atmosphere. The guards are smarter and more vigilant but it’s less cinematic to take them out in the most practical way; we want more idiot guards snoozing under skylights or hanging out by fragile walls.
The challenge maps provide a nice counter to this, as they demand that you fulfil particular tasks while taking out enemies. A lot of these are ingenious and fun and so they add a little of what the main narrative has lost. Many are unlocked by solving The Riddler’s puzzles and collecting trophies so there’s a nice progression to content that continues after the main game.
The Riddler makes an in-the-flesh appearance this time, along with a cavalcade of other Batman villains. Again it feels like Rocksteady wanted to give you your money’s worth and generous as that is it can sometimes feel like the game is at bursting point. The story is packed full of villains and so it can occasionally seem like you are wandering about at their behest rather than as part of an overarching tale. Villians are introduced and disposed of too quickly, sometimes with little introduction and no back story. The superb codex and occasional audio logs go some way to counter this but they cannot match the raw atmosphere of Arkham Asylum.
If there are any real criticisms to be made of Batman: Arkham City it is that the game occasionally tries to do too much, without giving adequate time and affection to what makes it so fantastic. But with the sheer level of content on offer, it’s hard to argue with Rocksteady’s choice. There are a few underused or lazy patches, but there’s enough quality here to allow them, and enough quantity to keep you in the Batsuit for a good long time.
Before I get too over-enthusiastic I should point out that the above comparison does hold some water: this isn’t a new game by any means. Anyone who played Arkham Asylum is going to be able to dive right back in. The fighting system is the same, as are the sneaking sections and (broadly) the locomotion controls. You’re still Batman, you still stride around after your great big chin with your cape flowing behind you, you still pull petrified hoodlums off balconies or leave them dangling from gargoyles, and you still get to bang heads in flowing, graceful combat.
What makes Arkham City a great sequel is how far the developers have pushed the formula. Firstly this it down to some inspired extras. I don’t know how much extra programming it took to include Catwoman and Robin but it was surely worth it. This is how you do extra content: the basic mechanics of both characters are exactly the same as Batman but they both feel fresh and vibrant and different. The Catwoman sections are well plotted and provide a nice break from Batman, although there simply aren’t enough of them to provide anything but a distraction. The downloadable option of Robin is limited simply to challenge modes, so it’s gratifying to see how much effort Rocksteady have put into the package: Robin has a whole different gadget set and his fighting moves are a joy: agile, skilful and flashy compared to Batman’s ‘break every bone one-by-one approach.’
But the game itself has more than enough content to keep people happy without going near an internet connection. Arkham City is huge, and as a sandbox is delightfully constructed. There is stuff everywhere. Hardly any areas are simply there to be traversed, riddles, collectables and power-ups abound. It’s the mark of a good sandbox game when travelling across a small area takes a long time simply because there are so many distractions. The main story is a little too short and is poorly paced, but you probably won’t notice because you’ll spend much of your time off doing side quests. The fact that the basic mechanics of the game are so enjoyable means you’ll relish the chance to play even if it’s not related to the story: it’s hard to just glide over a collection of henchmen idly chatting in the street when you can leap down among them like a black angel and start doing the fighty-fighty. It makes you feel like Batman every single time.
It’s the fighting mechanics that are at the core of this. Rocksteady toyed originally with the idea of a beat-match style system for combat and although that idea was dropped you can see its legacy in the smooth flow of moves. The fighting system is still largely the same as the previous game: strikes, counters and evades make up the basics, with special moves and gadgets being introduced as the game progresses. Arkham Asylum was praised for providing depth with an apparently simple system and Arkham City expands on this by simply stuffing in more moves. You can use almost every gadget in a fight, and there are hardly any two-button combinations that don’t do something in combat. Combos can contain more than a dozen unique moves. It makes you feel like Batman, and it makes you look like Batman to anyone who might be watching.
The stealth sections have also been beefed up, but here it becomes apparent that there’s more to creating a great experience than cramming things in to the build. The predator sections are in many cases inferior to the previous game's offerings simply because there is too much going on: too many bad guys, too many guns, not enough obviously scripted areas. Although this provides a greater challenge, it robs some of the atmosphere. The guards are smarter and more vigilant but it’s less cinematic to take them out in the most practical way; we want more idiot guards snoozing under skylights or hanging out by fragile walls.
The challenge maps provide a nice counter to this, as they demand that you fulfil particular tasks while taking out enemies. A lot of these are ingenious and fun and so they add a little of what the main narrative has lost. Many are unlocked by solving The Riddler’s puzzles and collecting trophies so there’s a nice progression to content that continues after the main game.
The Riddler makes an in-the-flesh appearance this time, along with a cavalcade of other Batman villains. Again it feels like Rocksteady wanted to give you your money’s worth and generous as that is it can sometimes feel like the game is at bursting point. The story is packed full of villains and so it can occasionally seem like you are wandering about at their behest rather than as part of an overarching tale. Villians are introduced and disposed of too quickly, sometimes with little introduction and no back story. The superb codex and occasional audio logs go some way to counter this but they cannot match the raw atmosphere of Arkham Asylum.
If there are any real criticisms to be made of Batman: Arkham City it is that the game occasionally tries to do too much, without giving adequate time and affection to what makes it so fantastic. But with the sheer level of content on offer, it’s hard to argue with Rocksteady’s choice. There are a few underused or lazy patches, but there’s enough quality here to allow them, and enough quantity to keep you in the Batsuit for a good long time.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
What I Know Is...
At dinner the other day I had someone raggin' on Wikipedia, and I felt the need to step in. It didn't do much good (at least, it didn't convert him to my point of view, which is the only 'good' I'm going to allow for here), which was not unexpected. Wikipedia has become so ubiquitous that most of the 'it's just made up' or 'anyone can do it' criticisms have fallen by the wayside. It's hard to constantly dismiss a service you use with great effect, every day of the week. The only people who are still staunch critics of Wikipedia are those who do not regularly use it, and they can therefore be difficult to convince of its positives.
Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the internet, one of the most consulted resources on the planet. It's a universal repository of the world's knowledge, accessible to everyone with a connection and watched over by a community of independent guiding individuals. With it you can take a good stab at answering any non-subjective, fact-based question you can come up with, and if it doesn't have the answer its editors will eventually get around to looking it up. Or if you already know, you could make the page yourself, with the guidance and correction of the community and their code of conduct. It's basically the collective wet-dream of Ancient Greek philosophers and 1960s science fiction.
However, Wikipedia’s most egalitarian dynamic is the source of its most persistent criticism: anyone can edit it, you don’t have to pay for it, and therefore it’s all incorrect. Wrong. Bullshit. Outright lies (often with some sort of agenda).
There have been several well publicised acts of Wikipedia vandalism, in which people deliberately introduced incorrect and occasionally defamatory information to particular pages. There are instances of omission or out-of-date data, and perceived bias (in America, and possibly only America, Wikipedia has been reported to have a ‘liberal’ bias, and other services have sprung up to mirror or counter this).
You know, instead of me telling you all this, why not peruse the Wikipedia article on its own reliability? It’s extremely interesting.
Criticisms of Wikipedia seem to be fading away. Many of its opponents have had their queries or criticisms addressed and have tentatively given the initiative their approval. One suspects that many of its critics have simply found it too convenient, or found it their first place of research too many times to remain vociferous in their disapproval.
One thing you might note from the article linked above is that the most vocal critics of Wikipedia seem to be editors or ex-editors of other encyclopaedias. The easy joke to make is: ‘well they would say that, wouldn’t they.’ None of them could possibly admit that Wikipedia –a free service – can perform the functions of their own, paid publications as well or better than they can. As well as being a little embarrassing, they’d be out of a job (probably not because the encyclopaedia would fold, but I wouldn’t want to have to explain my Wikipedia thumbs-up to the board of directors on Monday morning).
However, I think it a little truculent to assume a reactionary stance on the part of these people. They are responsible for publications that have a dedication – a paid, professional dedication – to the truth. They are correct to point out that, in a system that is open to anyone, perfection is either unattainable or impossible to keep hold of. They make a salient point. I just don’t think they are operating in possession of all the facts.
Firstly one must remove all the assumptions or criticisms that are addressed by Wikipedia themselves. Primary among them is the idea that Wikipedia claims to be in any way incontrovertible. Wikipedia knows that people mess with it. It knows because the people who edit it spend much of their time removing incorrect information. But the fact that some of the information might be incorrect does not invalidate the rest. Wikipedia freely admits to its flaws, but doesn’t need to advertise them. To do so would undermine the principles of sharing factual information.
Look at it this way. Say the staff of the Encyclopaedia Britannica sat down before the launch of the latest edition. New research will, over time, either disprove or modify some of the information their book contains. New theories will either solidify or be dropped. It is also always possible, however unlikely, that some mistake might have slipped through their net. They cannot say with absolute certainty that every single word in the book is correct, now and forever, because that is simply impossible. Firstly, this does not negate the books usefulness as a research tool, not a jot. Secondly, it does not mean they are going to whack a big sticker on the front of every edition saying ‘Caution! One of these facts may prove to be false.’ To do so would invalidate (subjectively, not statistically) every other fact contained within. They don’t have to do that, in fact they shouldn’t, and neither should Wikipedia.
Next, it’s becoming increasingly hard to argue with Wikipedia’s results. As the community gathers strength (and let us not forget that Wikipedia is only ten years old. Britannica has been around since 1768), articles get bigger, better structured and better referenced. The kinks are slowly being ironed out, and now Wikipedia’s rate of major mistakes is comparable to paid services.
Thirdly, well, if you’re looking to really do some research, I would suggest looking at more than one book. To begin with, academic institutions came down hard on Wikipedia, refusing to countenance its use in a scholarly environment. While one might argue that it is Wikipedia’s slow trudge towards better quality that has led to the relaxing of these guidelines, a cynic would suggest that it’s because every single student in the world uses it as their primary research tool, if only to get a basic understanding of the concept they were supposed to have learned about in that class they slept through. Nowadays, most academic institutions (and this change was visible even during my own university career) limit themselves to wearily pointing out Wikipedia’s possible problems and suggesting that it might be an idea if students varied their sources a little bit. This final part is nothing new: students have always been told to research from multiple sources to get a better understanding and confirm the veracity of their statements. The most enterprising of lazy students will note that the bigger Wikipedia articles have lists of references at the bottom: the perfect place to start wider reading (without having to find that pesky reading list that you immediately lost on day 1 of the term).
Finally, most people are unaware of how Wikipedia actually operates behind the scenes. This is a little surprising, considering how simple it is to go and have a poke around. You can edit articles with relative ease, and create a user profile and start writing your own stuff within minutes. What people might who try might note, however, is how frickin’ difficult it is to just jump on there and start fucking with things.
Every change made to a Wikipedia article is visible to other users. There are teams of Wikipedia users, dozens, scores, hundreds, who spend a lot of their free time trawling around checking these immediate edits. If they don’t make the cut, they get cut. Straight away. In almost half the cases, before anyone else might have time to read them.
When I tried to create my first Wikipedia article I was staggered by how in-depth the code of conduct was. I did my best to follow it, and made an article for an upcoming book by a well-known children’s author. I had the new releases catalogue next to me, so I had a source, and I was fairly certain that no one else would have made that page. Off I went, and stuck to their style guidelines as best as I was able. All the information was demonstrably correct; the style was neutral and objective, the page itself linked to another page about the real-life individual the novel was about.
It lasted less than two days before it was marked for what is known as ‘speedy deletion.’ When I enquired as to why, I was told that the subject in question was not demonstrably notable: there was no apparent demand for the article, no one wanted to know, the very fact of the books existence was not enough to get it a page dedicated to it.
I tried to get sniffy about this but was stumped by the sheer objective weight of the person I was dealing with. He demonstrated what made an article notable, and more important, how that could be proved. ‘It doesn’t matter if you think it’s notable,’ he said (I am paraphrasing, his replies were marked by politeness but a certain brevity, I suspect I was not the only newbie he was gently remonstrating with). ‘You might even be right, but you need to be able to prove it.’
I gave up on that article, although I want to eventually become a bigger part of the Wikipedia community. For now I’ll edit any mistakes that I see (still waiting on that) and watch how it’s done. Hopefully my brief and unsuccessful foray points out how comprehensive the moderating is, and also how stringent the code: it’s a little eye-opening to see how every article matches the guidelines (even if it’s badly written or apparently pointless).
So if Wikipedia is easy to defend (and it is: I did all this in an hour, and guess what my primary source was), and if its criticisms are either easy to address or in some cases simply unfair and unrealistic, why the bad vibes, Joe Public?
I think it’s probably because it’s free, and anyone can edit it. That sounds like a tautology based on what I’ve discussed previously, but I want you to look at the above statement very carefully.
It’s free, and anyone can edit it. This has no inherent negative connotations. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it can’t be as good as or better than a paid service. The water that comes out of the tap is consistently demonstrated to be better for you than water you pay a pound for. And just because anyone can edit it, doesn’t mean that those who make edits might be poorly informed or somehow malicious. The fact that anyone can edit it means that you have a potentially limitless knowledge base on which to draw, making it, in statistical terms at least, the greatest learning tool in existence.
That isn’t how people see it, but I think that says more about people than Wikipedia. It’s become a natural assumption that anything free is somehow inferior to something you have to pay for. It’s the natural assumption that most people are idiots, and any initiative maintained by a collection of people must reflect this, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. If the masses are in charge, it must be somehow inferior to something created by the elite.
But knowledge is self-duplicating. The more people who know about it the more of it there is. That means that although a contributor may not have a PhD, they can still crib off the notes of someone who does. It’s the same knowledge. Having a PhD doesn’t make it more intrinsically right. If that knowledge could not be verified then no one would be able to get a PhD in the first place. Wikipedia is not merely the URL each article inhabits. It is a window to all knowledge relevant to the subject, regardless of who discovered, formulated or described that knowledge. The person who made the page is irrelevant, as it should be in the best encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites on the internet, one of the most consulted resources on the planet. It's a universal repository of the world's knowledge, accessible to everyone with a connection and watched over by a community of independent guiding individuals. With it you can take a good stab at answering any non-subjective, fact-based question you can come up with, and if it doesn't have the answer its editors will eventually get around to looking it up. Or if you already know, you could make the page yourself, with the guidance and correction of the community and their code of conduct. It's basically the collective wet-dream of Ancient Greek philosophers and 1960s science fiction.
However, Wikipedia’s most egalitarian dynamic is the source of its most persistent criticism: anyone can edit it, you don’t have to pay for it, and therefore it’s all incorrect. Wrong. Bullshit. Outright lies (often with some sort of agenda).
There have been several well publicised acts of Wikipedia vandalism, in which people deliberately introduced incorrect and occasionally defamatory information to particular pages. There are instances of omission or out-of-date data, and perceived bias (in America, and possibly only America, Wikipedia has been reported to have a ‘liberal’ bias, and other services have sprung up to mirror or counter this).
You know, instead of me telling you all this, why not peruse the Wikipedia article on its own reliability? It’s extremely interesting.
Criticisms of Wikipedia seem to be fading away. Many of its opponents have had their queries or criticisms addressed and have tentatively given the initiative their approval. One suspects that many of its critics have simply found it too convenient, or found it their first place of research too many times to remain vociferous in their disapproval.
One thing you might note from the article linked above is that the most vocal critics of Wikipedia seem to be editors or ex-editors of other encyclopaedias. The easy joke to make is: ‘well they would say that, wouldn’t they.’ None of them could possibly admit that Wikipedia –a free service – can perform the functions of their own, paid publications as well or better than they can. As well as being a little embarrassing, they’d be out of a job (probably not because the encyclopaedia would fold, but I wouldn’t want to have to explain my Wikipedia thumbs-up to the board of directors on Monday morning).
However, I think it a little truculent to assume a reactionary stance on the part of these people. They are responsible for publications that have a dedication – a paid, professional dedication – to the truth. They are correct to point out that, in a system that is open to anyone, perfection is either unattainable or impossible to keep hold of. They make a salient point. I just don’t think they are operating in possession of all the facts.
Firstly one must remove all the assumptions or criticisms that are addressed by Wikipedia themselves. Primary among them is the idea that Wikipedia claims to be in any way incontrovertible. Wikipedia knows that people mess with it. It knows because the people who edit it spend much of their time removing incorrect information. But the fact that some of the information might be incorrect does not invalidate the rest. Wikipedia freely admits to its flaws, but doesn’t need to advertise them. To do so would undermine the principles of sharing factual information.
Look at it this way. Say the staff of the Encyclopaedia Britannica sat down before the launch of the latest edition. New research will, over time, either disprove or modify some of the information their book contains. New theories will either solidify or be dropped. It is also always possible, however unlikely, that some mistake might have slipped through their net. They cannot say with absolute certainty that every single word in the book is correct, now and forever, because that is simply impossible. Firstly, this does not negate the books usefulness as a research tool, not a jot. Secondly, it does not mean they are going to whack a big sticker on the front of every edition saying ‘Caution! One of these facts may prove to be false.’ To do so would invalidate (subjectively, not statistically) every other fact contained within. They don’t have to do that, in fact they shouldn’t, and neither should Wikipedia.
Next, it’s becoming increasingly hard to argue with Wikipedia’s results. As the community gathers strength (and let us not forget that Wikipedia is only ten years old. Britannica has been around since 1768), articles get bigger, better structured and better referenced. The kinks are slowly being ironed out, and now Wikipedia’s rate of major mistakes is comparable to paid services.
Thirdly, well, if you’re looking to really do some research, I would suggest looking at more than one book. To begin with, academic institutions came down hard on Wikipedia, refusing to countenance its use in a scholarly environment. While one might argue that it is Wikipedia’s slow trudge towards better quality that has led to the relaxing of these guidelines, a cynic would suggest that it’s because every single student in the world uses it as their primary research tool, if only to get a basic understanding of the concept they were supposed to have learned about in that class they slept through. Nowadays, most academic institutions (and this change was visible even during my own university career) limit themselves to wearily pointing out Wikipedia’s possible problems and suggesting that it might be an idea if students varied their sources a little bit. This final part is nothing new: students have always been told to research from multiple sources to get a better understanding and confirm the veracity of their statements. The most enterprising of lazy students will note that the bigger Wikipedia articles have lists of references at the bottom: the perfect place to start wider reading (without having to find that pesky reading list that you immediately lost on day 1 of the term).
Finally, most people are unaware of how Wikipedia actually operates behind the scenes. This is a little surprising, considering how simple it is to go and have a poke around. You can edit articles with relative ease, and create a user profile and start writing your own stuff within minutes. What people might who try might note, however, is how frickin’ difficult it is to just jump on there and start fucking with things.
Every change made to a Wikipedia article is visible to other users. There are teams of Wikipedia users, dozens, scores, hundreds, who spend a lot of their free time trawling around checking these immediate edits. If they don’t make the cut, they get cut. Straight away. In almost half the cases, before anyone else might have time to read them.
When I tried to create my first Wikipedia article I was staggered by how in-depth the code of conduct was. I did my best to follow it, and made an article for an upcoming book by a well-known children’s author. I had the new releases catalogue next to me, so I had a source, and I was fairly certain that no one else would have made that page. Off I went, and stuck to their style guidelines as best as I was able. All the information was demonstrably correct; the style was neutral and objective, the page itself linked to another page about the real-life individual the novel was about.
It lasted less than two days before it was marked for what is known as ‘speedy deletion.’ When I enquired as to why, I was told that the subject in question was not demonstrably notable: there was no apparent demand for the article, no one wanted to know, the very fact of the books existence was not enough to get it a page dedicated to it.
I tried to get sniffy about this but was stumped by the sheer objective weight of the person I was dealing with. He demonstrated what made an article notable, and more important, how that could be proved. ‘It doesn’t matter if you think it’s notable,’ he said (I am paraphrasing, his replies were marked by politeness but a certain brevity, I suspect I was not the only newbie he was gently remonstrating with). ‘You might even be right, but you need to be able to prove it.’
I gave up on that article, although I want to eventually become a bigger part of the Wikipedia community. For now I’ll edit any mistakes that I see (still waiting on that) and watch how it’s done. Hopefully my brief and unsuccessful foray points out how comprehensive the moderating is, and also how stringent the code: it’s a little eye-opening to see how every article matches the guidelines (even if it’s badly written or apparently pointless).
So if Wikipedia is easy to defend (and it is: I did all this in an hour, and guess what my primary source was), and if its criticisms are either easy to address or in some cases simply unfair and unrealistic, why the bad vibes, Joe Public?
I think it’s probably because it’s free, and anyone can edit it. That sounds like a tautology based on what I’ve discussed previously, but I want you to look at the above statement very carefully.
It’s free, and anyone can edit it. This has no inherent negative connotations. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it can’t be as good as or better than a paid service. The water that comes out of the tap is consistently demonstrated to be better for you than water you pay a pound for. And just because anyone can edit it, doesn’t mean that those who make edits might be poorly informed or somehow malicious. The fact that anyone can edit it means that you have a potentially limitless knowledge base on which to draw, making it, in statistical terms at least, the greatest learning tool in existence.
That isn’t how people see it, but I think that says more about people than Wikipedia. It’s become a natural assumption that anything free is somehow inferior to something you have to pay for. It’s the natural assumption that most people are idiots, and any initiative maintained by a collection of people must reflect this, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. If the masses are in charge, it must be somehow inferior to something created by the elite.
But knowledge is self-duplicating. The more people who know about it the more of it there is. That means that although a contributor may not have a PhD, they can still crib off the notes of someone who does. It’s the same knowledge. Having a PhD doesn’t make it more intrinsically right. If that knowledge could not be verified then no one would be able to get a PhD in the first place. Wikipedia is not merely the URL each article inhabits. It is a window to all knowledge relevant to the subject, regardless of who discovered, formulated or described that knowledge. The person who made the page is irrelevant, as it should be in the best encyclopaedia.
Monday, 24 October 2011
Murder on the Marylebone Express
Insomnia and early rising don’t mix. In fact, insomnia doesn’t mix with much, except perhaps a slow slide towards psychosis and the occasional rage-induced homicide. But having scored some work experience at the London offices of a major publisher (saying it that way obscures the fact that I’m still on work experience at 25), I’ve got to get up in the morning. The fact that I don’t live in London doesn’t help. It’s especially jarring as my last commute to work involved walking to the end of my road and then climbing over the wall into the pub car-park.
Even after a (at this point probably mythical) good night’s sleep I’m not a morning person. So a broken 5 hours leaves me crusty-eyed and pale and, more importantly, venomously spiteful. I was seriously worried that, even if I didn’t straight-up murder somebody on the tube, I might still catch myself being horribly rude to some undeserving passenger or barista or shop-assistant. It has since dawned on me that even if I were to be so unpleasant, nobody would notice. It seems like the rest of the world can’t stand mornings either.
I first realised it while trying to take a seat on the train. The scenario was one most people would recognise: only one seat – a window seat – was available, and a suited and briefcased gentleman was sprawled in the aisle seat next to it. His coffee was on the shared table, his newspaper supplements spread over the free chair. I lingered nearby, waiting for him to notice me and let me by. I continued to wait. It became obvious that he had noticed me. It is doubtful he misinterpreted my reason for standing there (“Man, this new cologne is really excellent!”), and so he was clearly waiting me out, hoping I would give up and leave the free seat in his churlish employ.
Bastard, I thought (not, I hope you’ll agree, unreasonably). I grunted aloud, preparing to give him my patented ‘I’ll kill you and all your relations’ death-glare. But the look in his eyes startled me right out of it. It was a version of my own murderous stare, with a trace of desperation and shame in it too. He needed that seat. Really needed it. And he obviously begrudged me my selfish, unnecessary attempt to wrest it from him. His eyes spelt out a self-righteous, self-justified, class-A fuck you.
The venom in his glance had me momentarily taken aback. But my legs were tired and my bag was heavy and most importantly screw you mister so I awkwardly clambered over his legs and then stood hovering above him: a strange tableau that threatened to become sexually charged if he took no action. Suitably abashed, he removed his magazines and I sat down next to him. We spent the next hour avoiding each other’s gaze, frowning fixedly, and hoping against hope that our latent telekinetic powers might finally manifest so that we could slam our antagonist like a ragdoll against the ceiling of carriage. Hate condensed in the air around us. The train lights flickered and sparked with pent-up aggression. People in the seats around began to develop radiation-induced tumours.
Since then I have noticed a palpable undercurrent of malice in my morning interactions. It filigrees through our communications like a fracture in glass, a tiny but visible flaw in our otherwise transparent connections.
“Can I take your order? …please ask for ritual suicide.”
“Just a cup of coffee please…and you have ten seconds before I throttle you.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but could you move down inside the carriage slightly… or a swift death will be your greatest blessing.”
People aren’t rude to each other, heavens no. They are either frostily, mockingly polite or stony-silent. Occasionally a tourist might commit the cardinal sin of British bad manners (pointing out someone else’s bad manners), and then develop a gushing nosebleed as they suddenly find themselves the subject of a collective psychic assault. The rest of the time we all just sit and stew…
… and then when we get to work we swallow it all down, compose ourselves into smiles and ‘How was your evenings,’ and get on with our lives. The train home is better, but only because most people appear too dog-tired to conjure the energy for physical violence.
There’s an easy happy-clappy message here: do as you would be done by, if-that’s-how-you-feel-how-do-you-think-they-feel etc. Well, for your own safety I suggest you drop all that joy to the world crap and think practically about it.
Look at it this way. You are a paragon of self-restraint and justice. You are a strap-hanging saint, a paladin of the platform, the ethical emblem of the escalator. And when that guy accidentally jarred you with his suitcase it was all you could do not to light him on fire and dance around the flames.
So do you really want to risk pushing that bald man with gimlet eyes and his bag on the seat, or try reading over the shoulder of that clearly psychotic woman with the iPad? They don’t look quite so well-balanced.
Morning people? How morning are we talking? We are biologically programmed to wake at sunrise. There are no morning people when, like most commuters, you have to leave in the dark for much of the year. Think about your personal safety. Let’s just assume that, before 9am, everyone we speak to is a short-fused passive-aggressive timebomb. Why risk turning your trip on the Northern Line into a scene from The Hurt Locker? Follow my example. In maudlin, eyes-to-the-floor silence.
See you at work, everybody.
Even after a (at this point probably mythical) good night’s sleep I’m not a morning person. So a broken 5 hours leaves me crusty-eyed and pale and, more importantly, venomously spiteful. I was seriously worried that, even if I didn’t straight-up murder somebody on the tube, I might still catch myself being horribly rude to some undeserving passenger or barista or shop-assistant. It has since dawned on me that even if I were to be so unpleasant, nobody would notice. It seems like the rest of the world can’t stand mornings either.
I first realised it while trying to take a seat on the train. The scenario was one most people would recognise: only one seat – a window seat – was available, and a suited and briefcased gentleman was sprawled in the aisle seat next to it. His coffee was on the shared table, his newspaper supplements spread over the free chair. I lingered nearby, waiting for him to notice me and let me by. I continued to wait. It became obvious that he had noticed me. It is doubtful he misinterpreted my reason for standing there (“Man, this new cologne is really excellent!”), and so he was clearly waiting me out, hoping I would give up and leave the free seat in his churlish employ.
Bastard, I thought (not, I hope you’ll agree, unreasonably). I grunted aloud, preparing to give him my patented ‘I’ll kill you and all your relations’ death-glare. But the look in his eyes startled me right out of it. It was a version of my own murderous stare, with a trace of desperation and shame in it too. He needed that seat. Really needed it. And he obviously begrudged me my selfish, unnecessary attempt to wrest it from him. His eyes spelt out a self-righteous, self-justified, class-A fuck you.
The venom in his glance had me momentarily taken aback. But my legs were tired and my bag was heavy and most importantly screw you mister so I awkwardly clambered over his legs and then stood hovering above him: a strange tableau that threatened to become sexually charged if he took no action. Suitably abashed, he removed his magazines and I sat down next to him. We spent the next hour avoiding each other’s gaze, frowning fixedly, and hoping against hope that our latent telekinetic powers might finally manifest so that we could slam our antagonist like a ragdoll against the ceiling of carriage. Hate condensed in the air around us. The train lights flickered and sparked with pent-up aggression. People in the seats around began to develop radiation-induced tumours.
Since then I have noticed a palpable undercurrent of malice in my morning interactions. It filigrees through our communications like a fracture in glass, a tiny but visible flaw in our otherwise transparent connections.
“Can I take your order? …please ask for ritual suicide.”
“Just a cup of coffee please…and you have ten seconds before I throttle you.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but could you move down inside the carriage slightly… or a swift death will be your greatest blessing.”
People aren’t rude to each other, heavens no. They are either frostily, mockingly polite or stony-silent. Occasionally a tourist might commit the cardinal sin of British bad manners (pointing out someone else’s bad manners), and then develop a gushing nosebleed as they suddenly find themselves the subject of a collective psychic assault. The rest of the time we all just sit and stew…
… and then when we get to work we swallow it all down, compose ourselves into smiles and ‘How was your evenings,’ and get on with our lives. The train home is better, but only because most people appear too dog-tired to conjure the energy for physical violence.
There’s an easy happy-clappy message here: do as you would be done by, if-that’s-how-you-feel-how-do-you-think-they-feel etc. Well, for your own safety I suggest you drop all that joy to the world crap and think practically about it.
Look at it this way. You are a paragon of self-restraint and justice. You are a strap-hanging saint, a paladin of the platform, the ethical emblem of the escalator. And when that guy accidentally jarred you with his suitcase it was all you could do not to light him on fire and dance around the flames.
So do you really want to risk pushing that bald man with gimlet eyes and his bag on the seat, or try reading over the shoulder of that clearly psychotic woman with the iPad? They don’t look quite so well-balanced.
Morning people? How morning are we talking? We are biologically programmed to wake at sunrise. There are no morning people when, like most commuters, you have to leave in the dark for much of the year. Think about your personal safety. Let’s just assume that, before 9am, everyone we speak to is a short-fused passive-aggressive timebomb. Why risk turning your trip on the Northern Line into a scene from The Hurt Locker? Follow my example. In maudlin, eyes-to-the-floor silence.
See you at work, everybody.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Gig in 100 words
Nero have got the monochromatic look, and a hot singer who’s also a midwife which helps probably, and they sound like their keyboard has the major chords highlighted and only responds to two fisted hammer-blows. A number one record gives them an earworm or two and a lightshow that few one-word remix artists past deadmau5 are allowed. They might be accused of being cheesy, and with reason, but their drops stimulate the part of the human neuro-cortex that makes you throw your gun fingers about like Eminem before he got sad all the time.
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