Existential Crisis

A not uncommon feeling in adult life is 'what the hell am I doing?'

Its a funny moment, pregnant with nothingness, like when a fridge stops humming.

I assume everyone has this feeling (the existential questioning, I mean, though I hope you know the fridge thing too). The existential querying thing is pretty profound and probably worth addressing as its a foundation for everything else you're doing.

I was wondering why its not addressed more in school, but it kind of is, in art and literature, theatre and music, it's just mostly people don't tell you that these are actually important tools you're developing.

I'd like to think about this more, but I've got to go to work... 

Wait a sec... !!

Daily Fail

I'm getting a bit blood lusty to see Dacre fall, but then perhaps this desire for circus is something I should keep in check.

The Mail plays to the meanest of people's spirits - some deep part of the lizard brain that has no ability to consider a bigger picture, only to flinch aggressively.  Having this jeering turned back on him, pelting him with the same shallow,

rotten tomato cries of 'hypocrisy', seems a fitting treatment for Dacre, but really anyone with any interest in the papers has known the fella as a shitty bully for years.  Its not really news is it?

The more harrowing thought is the sort of complacency where we're happy just to watch this circus.  The popularity of the paper represents worrying deep-rooted vales in the hearts of many people.  They're not changing quickly with one man suddenly in the spotlight.

The Mail drummed up 42'000 complaints for Sachsgate, and while some presenters lost their jobs, it didn't really change any values, did it?  The media is as awash with crassness and insensitivity, probably more so.  Similarly, there is now all sorts of outcry for this latest story, 10s of 1000s stating their support of Ed Milliband, and there is questioning as to whether Dacre will weather the storm.  It doesn't really feel like a victory, when its the same sort of pettiness underlying it all.

It my be entertaining to see The Mail be put through the mill, but the real victory would be to win on my own terms, and see Dacre passionately singing celebrations of the harvest whilst dancing with a gay, Polish, single-parent, gypsy... hang on, that also sounds a bit circusy.  Dammit.

Note To Self

Note to self

Hello little posh boy, you can brag with a smile,
How youve just moved, just off the murder mile,
Be proud of your gap year, building wells, building schools,
And you brought back those fabrics,
So random, well cool!
Now you sit in new cafes, tea and broiche 5 pounds,
Youre right next to an estate, but youve no common ground,
Youre like Marie Antoinette, youre the one eating cake,
Ignorant to what might put your neighbours on the take,
Gentrify the jungle, will
It help? i doubt it?
Stop fetishising poverty, and do something about it,
Its the same with the brands which you deride to be funny,
But when they ask you to work, youre all 'show me the money'.
You bite the hand that feeds you, just not hard enough.
You sorta leave a bite mark just to show them that your tough
Stop.
Your principals are all talk.
Do some ethics exercise, get the strength to do the walk.

A poem about a drunk man arguing with the moon

Im not what you might call a conspiracy wanker,
But i had an idea as I left The Hope n' Anchor,
I may have been drinking, my thinking be muddy,
As I question the veracity of our celestial buddy,
Oh moon oh moon don't you think it quite mental,
How many of your features I'm s'posed to think coincedental,

Number 1 of your tricks, of your lies from the skies,
Is the fact that you appear the same size,
As the bright one from day time, numero uno, the sun,
Such incedent in our solar system there is only one,
Between sun, moon and planet, this relationships a loner,
Its a gift - we can see, when you pass, the corona.

(Hiccup!)

This fact alone would cause me no strife,
Even though it so happens on the planet with life,
Id think it just quirky, some fun, a bit eccentric,
A reason for us to get Antropocentric,
But there is more of those quirks you crater faced creature,
Here is another loony lunar feature,

28 days with our planet is the length of your dance,
AND the time of your own rotation?this can't just be chance?!?
You've something to hide or you'd turn us your cheek,
Don't you know what you'd inherit if you'd just be so meek?
You treat us with mocking, with scorn, with derision,
You say 'tidal locking'? Its engineered precision!

What's the truth moon? Nazi base? Alien nation?
And what is your link to the tides of menstruation?
I may not be clear moon, I may start to splutter,
Thats partly because I just tripped in the gutter,
I'm a drunkard who gripes with someone so far,
It might not have happened if I'd gone to The Star,
Perhaps I've been gobby, ensconced in libation?
But you wobble too, its name is libration,

Just one last question dear moon, if you've nothing to hide,
Please tell me why its called your dark side?

A-level results.

With A-level results out today, and the surrounding excitement, it got me thinking.  Success.  In any conventionally measurable sense of the word (income, career prospects, home-owning?!?), many people are doing much better than I am.  Most of these more successful people would have had poorer A-level results than me*, significantly poorer A-level results or no A-level results at all.  Of course, I may be an exception to the pattern, and better A-level results may usually mean you’re more likely to achieve more highly later in life, not guarantee it.   However, I actually suspect that there is a rather low threshold, after which it is hard to predict what the relative success of a 3A student might be vs a 3C student.  A better predictor of later life success is probably what school you went to, which is in turn indicative of your social background painting a rather worrying picture of social mobility.  I guess my questions are why is there so much emphasis and stress placed on the results of A-level examinations and are any other important qualities being overshadowed?

The first answer to why A-levels are stressed as important is because they determine access to further education - most significantly what university you go to.  This again just seems to be moving on the problem to the next set of qualifications – out of me and my siblings, one didn’t go to university, one went to a former polytechnic and one went to one of the highest ranked universities in the country.   Again by conventional measures, comparing their relative successes, the latter (me) is in the weakest position.  Again, I may be an outlier, and of course some degrees undoubtedly indicate a higher chance of later success than others, but again I doubt they are as strong a predictor as a social background.  For me the answer that A-levels matter because they determine your university place just expands the question to why is such a great emphasis placed on qualifications in general?  Highly regarded qualifications may predict later success, but both are far more strongly predicted again by social background (here is an article on this - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/social-class-determines-childs-success-934240.html).  High qualifications then seem to be more back-slapping for the already financially and culturally well-off.

One of the cruelest punchlines of formal education is that if you’re doing it to get ‘a good job’, excluding vocational callings such as medicine, law, architecture or research, after years of cramming information into your skull, you end up just starting again.  I made 5000 cups of tea in my first year of employment!  I didn’t need a medical sciences degree to do this – I might have started this at 16 and then been 6 years of experience further ahead of my university leaver piers at 22 going into the same work.  Even in vocational degrees, I imagine there is a large amount of theory baggage that never really gets used in the practical side of work.  This is hardly a new argument.  Does all this education then have any worth?  Of course it does. Exam results just aren’t always very good at reflecting this value. 

Whether its education or success, we often focus on the qualities which are easily measurable (exam results, money, etc.) and can miss other valuable qualities which are harder to quantify.  Education has tremendous value in its own right - the development of conceptual abilities, the sense of endeavor, the pleasure of being part of the massive conversation of human understanding.  Being too focused on exam results alone risks stamping out this endeavor all together.  All that work.  Done now. 

No conclusion. 

Go and make the tea.

*since you ask AAAAa, but yeah, one was General Studies.

Sunshine on a rainy day

I love the rain. I was just in the park and a beautiful monsoon reduced everybody to sodden wrecks. It happened so quickly there was nothing you could do. I have never seen so many beaming smiles in the rain - it was as if everyone had given up hope and then realised, oh it doesnt really matter. As my relief grin was subsiding, the sun came out. It could never have looked that good without the rain.

Three legs good, G8 bad

3 legs good, G8 bad

My table was wobbly at breakfast today. As I went to stuff napkins under one of the feet, I thought of a solution to this common cafe problem. You might have wobbly tables at home, but because they dont move as often, once youve fixed the problem you can leave. Cafe tables get moved more regularly for cleaning and different sized parties etc. Small imperfections in floors and tables mean that its hard to line up the four points of contact on a table with the floor and you'll often end up with a wobble. If cafe tables were designed to stand with only three points of contact, even on the most uneven floors they wouldnt wobble at all.

Why aren't cafe tables normally made with three points of contact? Perhaps its because cafe-table-makers are quite removed from where their tables end up... They don't come into contact with wobbly cafe tables enough for it to even be thought of as a problem. Even stranger is that they could save 25% on the cost of legs, so its in their interest to make three-legged tables.

Its not hard to understand how being detached from the environment your making solutions for means that you might miss problems that need solving - you may even miss solutions that are in your own interest to carry out. It seems odd then that the G8 is meeting to solve, amongst other things, poverty in Africa without any representation from African states.

Obviously, its tasteless to declare yourself a representative of the poor when you stink of cash, but youre also risking missing some pretty simple solutions, and with the G8 these are solutions that could help billions of people. Or we could just spend another century stuffing napkins under the unnecessary forth table leg of food supply management.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/bono-africans-stealing-voice-poor

Unexpected Delay

"The train will be held at the station whilst we try and get a trespasser off the track in Croydon" says the announcer. The train heaves a collective sigh. Oh those vital minutes of having to sit here, instead of somewhere else whilst you play with your phone and ignore people.

The couple opposite me are sharing the Mail on Sunday. Even off their phones there isnt much warmth between them - it sort of feels like they're together just to take it turns carrying the bags and to split the price of the Mail. They even have their own grapes. Their grapes are privatised. Who doesn't share grapes? Anyway, their occasional conversation is about Thatcher. Mainly they exchange rhetorical contempt for anyone criticising her in the wake of her death.

"These disgusting death parties - speak no ill of the dead!" broods the ruddy hubby.

"Completely compassionless loony left" comes an indignant reply, "and selfish!"

It is interupted by the announcer again. "It looks like we may be delayed a little longer than expected, the trespasser has sadly been struck by a train and killed."

With no time for reflection, and a sudden u-turn on of-dead-ill-speaking, ruddy hubby huffs "some people are just selfish idiots."

Yes. Yes they are.

A proposal for massage recipients

A PROPOSAL

If you've ever given a massage, you've probably been told at some point that you're good at them. Massages usually feel quite good, even at the most amateur level. For some people, however, this praise can lead to over confidence. People can come to believe that 'I'm the sort of person that is good at massage', even in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary.

"Ouch don't do that. You're hurting my neck"
"No Im not. Im the sort of person that is good at massage"

They will even try and prove that it is your neck nerves that are wrong, not their skilled fingers...

(Strained) "Please stop"
"Listen, if your neck is hurting, you're not letting me do it right"

Their belief in their massage skills is fundamental, and like a zealot, they are pretty hard to argue with when it comes to core beliefs.

Eventually you will make your escape, but you may lose your friend and probably the use of half your face. To protect against this I propose that all massage praise is in future realistically calibrated.

"That was a good massage in a way that many people would be capable of. I nevertheless appreciate your attention"

For example.

Incidentally, the best massage I ever got was off a 6' 5" Polish scaffolder called Joe. It was like he was rubbing my soul. He was not in the least bit noisy about his skills, but people who he had touched were positively, off the radar, 'best massage ever!' evangelical. It would seem that recipient testimony is a far better indicator than the boasts of a potential incapacitator.

Remember. Be accurate with your massage praise.

Massage zealots may already be lost, but lets hope that some shoulder muscles may still be saved.

Some thoughts on the atheists

“What about the dinosaurs?!?” cried the atheist stand-up, as if creation stories are the only question religion attempts to answer.

Whilst I do not deny the unhelpful impact religious institutions have on some aspects of society, from distrusting pork, prawns and homosexuals, to harbouring institutionalised paedophilia, there is also only so much you can learn about the human heart by dissecting a frog.

Jesus’ ‘sermon on the mount’, a live track from his excellent first album ‘the new testament’, is a pretty right on message of love, forgiveness and social harmony. However, just as Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood (any many more in their wake) seized upon the revolutionary punk movement to sell records and clothes (albeit excellently cut – damn that girl knows a woman’s body!), so too was Jesus’ anti-establishment message appropriated by the mainstream. Punk was dead by the Nicene Creed 325AD.

But if this stuff has been being said for so long, why is it so frequently missed? Other than the fact that most people work too much to ever have any time to think about this stuff, we often find it hard to separate the fine wheat from ubiquitous chaf.

Athiests might throw out a ‘Jesus’ baby*, with the ‘I’m the son of god’ bathwater. David Icke talks a lot about stopping brutality in the world, famine and saving the economy, but he also says the Queen is a lizard… as well as straying frequently into anti-Semitism. John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine’. He also worked with Paul McCartney.

Sometimes I hesitate to say I’m an atheist, because other atheists are so annoying. Maybe this is how those people feel when they won’t say they’re feminist because they don’t like dungarees. Of course those people are very foolish. To not say you’re feminist, you might as well say that you are pro-bigotry. But back to ‘some atheists’ - an enthusiastic defence of rationalism overlooks the fact that we are not totally rational. If my girlfriend is seeing her ex for coffee, my rational response is ‘I’m sure he is a great guy, he certainly has a great taste in women’, but my gut’s response, and the one I feel altogether more vividly, is a desire to grind his face into an abrasive surface, be sick and hope he fails in everything he ever does again. I do what my head says, but still feel what my gut says, and maybe religion can answer my guts questions. Besides, atheists who criticise dogma, just do it so dogmatically!

Preech over. Testify.

*Jesus baby NOT Baby Jesus

A discussion on honesty

People put up a lot of fronting, don’t they? A lot of facades… but there’s other stuff on Grand Designs too.

People pick on hip hop or chav culture for fronting, and they have a real hatred for it, but its no different really to middle class fronting, things like letters about Grace’s Grade 7 flute and how everything is fine.

Everything isn’t fine. Your husband’s never home and your eldest is a drug abuser.

Of course, drug abuse is a funny phrase. Usually if you’re abusing something, the thing is the subject of abuse.
(mimes punching a shrub) “Take that cocaine!!” said the man punching a bush.

Does Cocaine grow on bushes? I don’t know where cocaine comes from. Probably shouldn’t put stuff in your body if you don’t know where it comes from… like 98% of the food we eat.

It should be called drug ‘misuse’ because that would imply that drugs can also sometimes be just used too. Except cocaine. I think if you’re taking cocaine, you’re probably misusing cocaine. No-one has ever been enlightened by cocaine, unless it was by the sun shining out of their arse.
Not to bang on about cocaine (Charlie, have you had some cocaine?), but top quality cocaine smells a bit of petrol because petrol is used to get it out of the leaves. With shitty smelling cocaine that doesn’t smell of petrol, whilst its good to know you’re not snorting petrol, you’re probably also not snorting cocaine either.

An argument to re-establish the Danelaw

I am tired of suffering at the hands of English imperialism - You might not be able to tell by my accent, so brutal has been the eroding of my culture, but I am in fact a native of the Danelaw and have had enough of the imperialism of Wessex! 

Our once proud land has been robbed of its heritage, coal and gravy and enslaved by a 1000 year enslaught of corrupt governments, false religions and The National Lottery.

I have not come to your capital to fight though, but as a merchant of peace. I fear for you and see not the honesty in your trades of ‘brand manangement’ (Ccbrandchch Managechment in my native dane – literally ‘font whisperer’) and think you may be humbled by our noble trades of sheepherdessing, hill climbing and bingo calling.

During an economic climate of massive unemployment in my homeland, I have marvelled at your ability to create committees-full of jobs to promote hair-dryers and digital television (Cchdgdchhd in my native dane – literally ‘soufflé’) amongst Wessexian counterparts.

I’m calling for a ban on Wessexism in the work place, and a devolved parliament for the Danelaw.

cCchhcGgdgdgdghgdhdh (Dane for ‘Who’s with me’?)