Clumsist

I bet you think that being clumsy is a bad personality trait. Well, I'm here today to argue the opposite. Let us begin.

I'm quite clumsy. It's a generally held belief. I spill drinks. I accidentally drop stuff. I trip over. I bump into people. And people get annoyed. They tell me being clumsy is a bad thing. They tell me to pay more attention to what I'm doing.

But if I waste all that time to such mundane tasks such as pouring drinks or walking, I lose valuable thinking time for other things. My mind is occupied elsewhere, I'm thinking about something else. Clumsiness is caused by being distract. But I am distracted by more interesting and important things than whatever it is I'm being clumsy with.

So, don't mock the clumsy. We're a kind and noble people more interested in the bigger picture than the dull constraints life places upon us in the day-to-day. Support us, don't be nasty.

Imagine if the future inventor of the cure for cancer happens to have a brainwave just as she's pouring out a glass of apple juice. If she spills her apple juice because of it, her friends and family may laugh at her and deride her confidence.  The humiliation would in turn make her forget her cancer brainwave.

So the next time you laugh at someone clumsy just remember that over 1,500 people die from cancer every day in the United States alone.

Quotes.

Quotes out of context are often meaningless, or at the very least rendered vapid, but I still love them, and I love quoting those quotes. So this post will not be an interesting and thought provoking attack on the use of quotes as sound-bites, and their lack of insight, verbatim or otherwise. No. It will be a simple list of some quotes I like, on a variety of different topics.

Christopher Hitchens. An extensive list of excellent quotes could probably be derived just from having a 10-minute conversation with him. I'm paraphrasing from an article written by his friend Martin Amis, that is no longer available on the Guardian's website, that he is a terrifying rhetorician.

Christopher Hitchens speaks the way that I wish I could write. He rails off frighteningly articulate sentences on arbitrary subjects as if he had been practicing them in the mirror for the last five years of his life.

He primarily speaks on the subject of religion. He's an atheist and in fact an anti-theist. At times he is also deliriously right-wing, and that's annoying. But you can't help be taken in by his arguments just from his incredible ability to vocalise them.

“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

I also very much like the following quotes, not from Hitch, and in no order of preference, and no over-riding theme, just some words that I like. Many are lyrics.

"If the crowd gets behind you it means you are facing the wrong way" - Simon Munnery

"The only thing that's left to do is live" - Frank Turner

"True progress means matching the world to the vision in our heads. We always change the vision instead" - Thrice

" 'And we learn, as we age', we've learned nothing, and my body still aches" - Brand New

"A comprehensive study of its causes" - Stewart Lee (his best punch-line)

"'Cause a few mother's sons will never really be enough. Not 'til half of our names are etched out in the wall. And the other half ruined by the things we saw" - Brand New

"If it's still gonna hurt in the morning, and a better plan's yet to get forming, then where's the harm spending an evening in manning the old barricades" - Frank Turner

"So I don't see it like it's us and them
I just see everybody working for that same eternal weekend
Droning on and on and on and never doing what we wanted
Heavy legs two steps behind some forever dangling carrot.

And I'm tired of this
So who's to say that we can't just fucking change it?

And I know it seems dramatic
But I treat it like a crisis
The office to the coffin
All our time and talent wasted
And that weight against your throat
Is that a noose dressed like a necklace?" - Kevin Devine

Music today

When I think about music now, I feel really sorry for kids. When was I was just discovering that I loved music there were so many small music labels promoting all sorts of different bands. These days all the small labels have been bought by big labels and so their agenda has become exactly the same: bands that make money.

So many of best experiences come from listening to brilliant music, and I'm the person I am today in no small part due to the excellent variety of alternative available to me as a kid.

When I was a kid there were so many good British bands: Funeral for a Friend, Biffy Clyro, Lostprophets, Hell Is For Heroes, Hundred Reasons, Reuben, My Vitriol, InMe, Vex Red, Million Dead, Fony, and I could go on.

There were countless American bands as well, too many to try to name, but they spanned all sorts of genres, emo, nu-metal, punk, metal, indie rock, acoustic, pop rock.

What exactly are alternative kids supposed to listen to? The British music scene is dead, and the American scene falls into to two categories: pop-metal and pop-punk. There is nothing else.

Energy drinks.

I drink energy drinks, sometimes.
Red Bull, or the cheap Tesco equivalent usually.

I don't know why I do it.
I know it's tricking me.

On the packaging of my 'KX Energy Stimulation Drink' the largest letters read: "Fire up and focus your body and mind with stimulating caffeine, taurine, guarana and B Vitamins."

Aside from being an utterly ridiculous and clunky piece of advertising copy-writing, it is also, quite frankly rubbish.

Limited to the truth, the can would read:
"Fire up and focus your body and mind with the fuck load of sugar we pump into these things"

That's what gives you the energy boost. The sugar. Not the fucking guarana. The sugar!

One little 250ml can which I effectively down in about 2 or 3 minutes contains nearly 30% of my recommended daily intake of sugar.

I had two of them yesterday. 60% of my daily sugar in two cans of drink.
I don't even know why.

Why not use up that sugar on something that doesn't taste like someone has swallowed a whole packet of Skittles, let it reduce in their stomach acid for half an hour or so, then vomited it back into your mouth.

Business.

I've had a brilliant idea to make business fairer.

How about a system for business where, the person at the top can only earn a certain percentage more than the person at the bottom. Say 400%

So a cleaner on pro-rata £12,000 a year doesn't have the company director earning £500,000 plus benefits. The most that director can earn is £48,000. If they want to give themselves £80,000 a year, then the rest of the staff's money has to be changed accordingly, and the cleaner has to be on pro-rata £20,000 a year.

Maybe the figure needs to be higher than 40%. But I still think it's a brilliant idea.

Religion, again.

I'm due a Christianity rant, so here we go.
In this rant I am targeting full-on Christians, who believe the Bible, this rant probably doesn't apply to the lackeys spouting their "I believe in God, but..." excuses.

There is a brilliant quote from Ben-Stiller-lookalike atheist Sam Harris. It reads:

“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.”

It's true. And I'm afraid to say that in all likelihood (unless you're a "born again Christian"), the following is also true:

The only reason you believe in God, is because when you were a child, your parents, or other adults that you trusted told you that God existed, and told you things from the Bible.
It's the same reason you believed in Father Christmas.

(I remember believing in Father Christmas, I can't remember ever believing in God. I think it might be because there is actually a lot more practical evidence for the existence of Father Christmas, you see him most Winters hanging out in shopping centres)

When your parents told you Father Christmas doesn't exist, that it's just a silly story to protect your innocence. Well, Christians, I'm doing the same thing for you now.

Sorry. You cried when mummy told you Father Christmas wasn't real, and it'll hurt just as bad: God just isn't real.

Like Sam Harris says, in any other case, if someone asserts something you will ask for evidence. If I tell you I can fly, it's pretty reasonable for you to expect me send a couple of minutes suspended in mid-air to prove it.

But what's that you say? On the surface it doesn't matter if I can fly or not. Even if you believe me without evidence it's not doing you any harm to believe that I can fly.

So, how about I say: I can fly. Now worship me because of it.
Will you require evidence then?
I can fly. Now donate money to me.
Will you require evidence then?
I can fly. Now go to war and die because of it.
Will you require evidence then?

An argument I hear regularly from Christians is:
How did it all start then? If there is no God to create the universe, no divine architect, how did the universe go from not being, to being.

Well, let's start by saying I'm not a scientist. There are many theories. But in all probability, the answer right now is: we don't know.

That doesn't mean we won't ever know.
I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of people who, for example, would know if you asked them:

How does an electric guitar's sound come out of an amplifier. (Many people do know, but I bet there are a lot of people who don't).

Just because they don't know doesn't mean there isn't a scientific explanation. The fact that you don't know about amplifiers doesn't mean you can't ever know. And it's the same with science.

We haven't always known everything we know now. We'll probably never know everything. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying and just say: God did it.

God didn't do it. There is no God.

It's easier to be...

NOTE: on reading this back I realise that it is, in most places, highly vulgar. I tend to write this blog without any planning. I just write and write and write in a stream of conciousness. I also say a lot of things I say for comic effect, rather than because I actually believe them. This blog is meant in jest. It is not an example of what I would like to leave behind for future generations to think of me.

It's easier to be gay.
I'm sure there are literally numerous examples, so I'm just going to pick one at random to prove that it is easier to be gay than straight.

Orgies.

Now, I've never been to an orgy. I don't exactly know how they come about. Does someone cheekily suggest it with a Facebook event invitation, and then gradually everyone comes to a collective decision that an orgy is a good idea? From my experience, the emotions of having sex with just one person at a time is complex enough. I can't imagine what it would be like to simultaneously be sexually involved with a group of people.

But my innocence and naivety aside, let's look at the concept.
I'm going to keep it fairly simple.

A 5 person orgy.

Now, if you are straight there is an obvious problem with a 5 person orgy: 2 doesn't divide by 5. There will clearly be a gender imbalance.

Common male sexual fantasy will suggest that a ratio of 1/4 is the optimum break down. Now, maths and sexual stimulation rarely mix nicely together, so already we're beginning to see a problem with straight orgies.

Personally I just can't see it working. I mean it's a tough enough stretch of the imagination for me to envisage convincing one willing female to engage with me in guilt-free violent pseudo romance with the touching of the genitals and so forth.

But imagine, just imagine, the complexities of an orgy that has a ratio majority of straight males. The mind boggles, and takes me to places that I simply do not have the courage to commit to the written word.

It would be dreadful.

Gay people, however, have no such problem. You see, at a gay orgy (lets just take male, for the sake of it) all the men are attracted to men. They are all equally able to fornicate happily with each other.

That is why it's easier to be gay.
Orgies.

Friends.

OK, so, let's say you've popped out for a drink with your good old pal, Adolf Hitler. Adolf's a good laugh, even if he is a bit mouthy sometimes. But that's OK, it's just one of his personality quirks. He's a bit of a 'character'.

But this time, you're out and Adolf makes a couple of comments about Jews that you don't much care for. But you laugh it off.
"Here we go *tsk* Adolf's off on one again".
And the night carries on, and you all have a good laugh. Adolf does his party trick with two pint glasses and a thong.

Then a few weeks later, you and Adolf have gone out for a nice meal. Thai. His choice. You're discussing popular music, when Adolf brings up that he thinks Jews are the source of all the world's problems and that at the next election he's going to vote for the antisemitic party. He says it with a cheeky little grin on his face, because he knows you're not so partial to racial hatred, but you can tell he's deadly serious.

Some months pass and you're on a night out. You haven't seen Adolf for a while, but he appears at the same club you're at. He's bought a load of his rugby mates; a boisterous lot. You're boogieing through the night having a laugh, when a drunken Adolf puts his arm over your shoulder.
"I've had it with the Jews," he slurs "and none of the political parties are doing fuck all about it. I'm gonna start my own party".
Later that night you witness Hitler's rugby mates beating up a Jewish guy outside. Adolf doesn't get involved, but you can tell he's loving it.

"I don't think he really hates the Jews," you tell your other friends who think Adolf is a bit of a prick "that's just the way his parents are".

So a few days later you get a Facebook invite to the first meeting of Adolf's new political party.
"Look at Adolf!" you think "starting up his own political party, I never thought I'd see the day".
You'd better go along, you think, as long as nothings on TV. It'll just be for a bit of morale support for him. It'd be horrible if no-one turns up.

You arrive and you can't believe it. The place is heaving. Adolf is standing at the front, preaching loud and proud. And preaching to the converted. Everyone here hates the Jews. And Adolf's good with words too, he's turning their hatred into belief. You feel a bit intimidated and out of place, so you sneak out the back.

You and Adolf don't see each other for a good six months. You've both got things going on, and the opportunity never really comes up. But then you bump into each other in Tesco.
"How are things going?" you ask.
"Oh great mate," says Adolf "I'm the leader of the country now, and we're killing the Jews by the thousands, gassing them to death in chambers"
"Wow, glad things have turned out so good for you. Hey, we should try out that new French place that has just opened up"
"Yeah sounds good, see you soon"
"See you later Adolf".

At what point do your friends beliefs and opinions stop them from being your friend? That's the point my Adolf Hitler story is trying to make.

Knowing stuff sucks, man.

I am not a political heavyweight, no matter how loud I talk. At best I'm a political light-bantamweight feathering weak left-jabs at Tory sluggers who could have me down for the count with one quote from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

I've got my opinions and I'm not afraid to share them with you (usually quite obnoxiously, as if there is no possible alternative). But I'm wholly unprepared for a proper political argument. To be blunt, I just haven't done my homework. I read the Guardian, and scoff any time I come into contact with right-wing paper.

See, I like evidence. It's part of the reason I'm not religious. I've got plenty of information about basketball, though, so if you wanna have an argument on basketball I'm pretty confident I can beat you. But politically I just don't have the base of knowledge. It's not that I can't site my sources, it's that I don't have sources to site, most of the time.

When I was younger, I didn't know anything. But I didn't know that I didn't know anything, so it was easy to puff out my chest and lambaste whomsoever I felt was due a lambasting. These days I'm fully aware of my own ignorance, and I know how easy it would be to defeat my argument. So I often have to contain my opinions, even though they are more relevant and informed than I have ever been before.

The problem, as far as I can see, is knowing stuff.
Someone clever once said:
"The smarter you become, the sadder you become"
I think it was me.

But it's true. And it's because when you're young the world is presented to you very simply and neatly. Mummy tells you that being good is good, and you'll be rewarded, and being bad is bad and you'll be punished. The heroes always win in books and TV and films, and the evil villains not only lose, but they get their comeuppance too.
When you grow up. Everyone's a fucking villain. And they're all getting away with it.

The more you learn, you realise what a terrible place the world is, and how the sugarcoated existence you once knew is gone, and can never come back