My computer has lots of viruses...

I was at home and the land line phone rang.

No, gentle readers, I am not referring to an event from 1996, I'm referring to a couple of days ago in the technologically mighty haven-age of 2012. The land line! As I live and breath.

I dusted off the old boy and once I'd remembered that the home phone doesn't have a touch screen and I'd have to press buttons to make it work, I went ahead and pushed some buttons.

"Hello?" I said, slightly nervous, as on the land line, it doesn't tell you who's ringing. It could be any fucker. It could be Queen Elizabeth II. It wasn't (which was both a relief and a disappointment). It was a man. It was:

"Paul, from Windows Technical Support"

"Well, what a treat!" I thought to myself "a personal call from Windows Technical Support, and I haven't even requested any Windows Technical Support"

A cold call. Just in case I was having problems. Briefly, my day had been made. This, of course, made me suddenly vehemently angry. How dare anyone suggested that Apple is better than Microsoft. Do Apple cold call their customers just to make they're OK? I think not.

But then my quick, enquiring wit took hold. And, readers, I presented myself with an inconsistency in the argument (the argument that his name was Paul and that he was from Windows Technical Support).

You see Paul had a thick Indian accent. And by a 'thick Indian accent' I don't mean that he sounded like a mentally-slow Indian. I meant a 'strong Indian accent'. Thinking about it, I could easily have replaced the original 'thick Indian accent' with 'strong Indian accent' when I realised the ambiguity and carried on without this pointless, lengthy interjection. But in maths exams they make you show your working out, don't they. Well, that's just what I'm doing: showing you my linguistic workings.

Despite my suspicions, I continued the call, remembering the potential kindness. Paul told me that:

"Your computer is receiving a numbers of error messages which have been caused by viruses that you have downloaded"

Well now, this is interesting. My computer is fairly well protected with anti-virus software and firewalls. I don't do illegal downloads, or torrent anything, or stream from shady websites. But then again, of course that doesn't mean I don't have a virus... I'm not really that up on the complexities of computer issues.

I did come up with a slight flaw in the argument, however:

"There are 4 computers in my house," I said "which one has the virus?" a bit of an issue, but nothing that Paul couldn't sort out by giving me the make and model.

"That would be the main computer you are using, sir" said Paul. I searched diligently on all four computers, but I couldn't find anywhere the make and model number given as "the main computer". Disappointed that he had merely been referring to a 'main computer' in the most basic sense, I returned to Paul.

"Well," I said "there isn't really a main computer, 3 out of the 4 get used very regularly, so I'm going to need some more information"

"It is the main computer, sir" Paul said "the one that you use most for the internet"

Now, I'm no internet-Jonathan Creek, but I can deduce a thing or two. If Paul had been calling from Windows Technical Support, I feel sure he would have come equipped with facts to prove his and his company's veracity.

Well, that's what I'd do anyway.

Deciding that the nearest computer to my proximity would do for a make-shift 'main computer'. I sat down and following some of Paul's slow and phonetically spelled instructions.

What he wanted me to do, was to open Run, and using Run, run Event Viewer. Usefully, he took his time spelling out the words. This gave me the opportunity to type "Event Viewer" into Google (in the hope of finding out exactly what was going to happen). I'd gotten to around the second 'e' in 'viewer' when Google suggestions helpfully suggested "Event viewer scam" which I clicked on and found a website (much like this blog, except without the psuedo-impressed introdution and land line shtick) informing me that Paul was indeed a scammer from India hoping to take remote control of my computer and download a fraud anti-virus software, leaving my bank account $185 lighter.

Well, I was thoroughly disappointed in Paul. For my own amusement, when Paul showed me the list of "errors caused by the virus" (actually just common issues that a standard computer experiences every day), I feigned dramatic fear and confusion.

I then made him phonetically spell a few more things.

Soon it got down to the dirty business of him trying to defraud me out of money. And I mean, I'm game for a laugh, but Paul's attitude began to annoy me at this point, so I told him I knew who he was and that he was trying to scam me and ended the call.

Dancing in the Gangnam Style

Permit me to prove to you why I need a job.

You've heard, I'm sure, of the Korean pop sensation PSY and his rap/dance hit Gangnam Style. I have made a few observations of which I would like to inform you at length.


Let's start with his name.

PSY - dancing enthusiastically to Gangnam Style.

 It seems strange to me that PSY's name is pronounced "si" like  our words pysche, psuedo etc. Assuming that the Korean language does not share the silent P given to us by the Greeks, it's odd that such a quintesstially Korean artist should take his name from an English linguistic trait.

Anyway.

I'm sure that you have heard of Gangnam Style and if you have not I strongly recommend checking it out. It's halfway to a billion views on YouTube, and if you have seen it I'm sure that youalready have your own opinion about it.

And I'm sure you'd imagine that I'd hate it.

Well, you're wrong. I like it very much. I like that it is quite clearly mocking the culture of attempting to look cool. I like that it's not only not taking itself too seriously, but that it's mocking the kind of people who are obsessed with image and looking cool.

Take as a equivalent that I strongly dislike: LMFAO's 'Party Rock Anthem', ostensibly a humorous video that doesn't take itself too seriously. BUT WAIT, notice how important looking cool is in this video and how seriously the dancers are actually taking themselves.

PSY's video appears, to my eyes, to be mocking the kind of people who take themselves very seriously and are obsessed with style and image.

Feel free to disagree with me.

I also found a rather darkly humorous news story in The Guardian in which two Thai gangs manage to pull themselves away from the noble exploits of crime and racketeering for a plunge into the always confrontational: dancing.

I especially like the use of the word "escalates" in the title of the story. To me the word 'escalates' seems to suggest a sort of natural progression (like an escalator), it feels here as if The Guardian is suggesting a fifty-odd bullet shootout is the obvious logical step after an aggressive Gangnam Style dance-off.

It is my own personal opinion that Gangnam Style had nothing to do with the shootout, and that the cause was in fact the ridiculous length and unnecessarily unpronouncability of Thai names. As a couple of examples let's take two members of the current Thailand national football team, striker Napat Thamrongsupakorn and goalkeeper Sinthaweechai Hathairattanakool.

Paradorn was briefly no.9 in the world.

It's almost as they've chosen names to be deliberately obtuse, as if learning their names should be a lifelong challenge within itself. They should take a hint from the Koreans, of whom the names, Kim, Lee and Park account for more than 40% of family names (Park Jae-sang, the person I'm supposed to be talking about, being a ready-made example). 

Bizarre naming traditions also appear to be very popular in Thailand (and not Taiwan, which an erstwhile friend once adamantly claimed was the country of origin of Thai food... I mean, seriously, THAI). The Srichaphan brothers, all of whom were professional tennis players, had the given names: Paradorn, Naratorn and Tanakorn. 

Seriously? Who came up with that...

But anyway, I digress.

I like PSY. I like Gangnam Style. 

And if it comes on and I'm out then I'm going to be dancing to it.

The G Word

What the fuck does this fucking t-shirt even mean?

Hold up now, because the shit is about to hit the proverbial fan. I haven't gone on a proper rant in a while.

And that means I have been recharging. Recharging in preparation for this.

Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is my magnum opus, my eureka moment, my je ne sais fucking quoi.

See, what I did, is I grew up and I went to school. And, get this, I was clever! I liked reading, if you'll believe it. I sat in class and I listened because learning was interesting, and I did my homework because I wasn't a brainless cunt.

But when you're a kid, wearing glasses and actually liking to things entering my brain which weren't just the cacophonous wails of the latest X-Factor fame-slut, that makes you something. It makes you unpopular, it makes you bullied, it makes you the G word.

It makes you a GEEK.

Now, that was fine. I didn't mind being a geek. My friends were geeks. We huddled together in the popularity storm, hiding in our anoraks. But it was OK. We were in it together and it was OK.

From left to right: Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt.

But then I grew up. Became an adult. And I was horrified to find about something known as geek fashion, or geek-chic.

To your left you will notice some cunts pretending that they are geeks, sporting the geek-chic.

They can fuck off.

They can fuck right off.

They do not know the pain I suffered, we all (we geeks) suffered. Wearing stupid glasses and sitting attentively in lessons and not going for a smoke being the bike sheds. We suffer for what we are.

They have done none of the suffering. They are cool people who have hijacked what geeks look like to make themselves look cooler.

It's a fucking war out there, man. I'm serious. People get beaten up for looking like a geek (haven't you ever seen the opening scene to any coming-of-age teen comedy ever?).

Weezer - categorised as "geek rock" apparently purely on the basis that Rivers Cuomo wears glasses.

[As a side note here, I always felt that movies are a bit mean to jock characters... I mean, they are always, always portrayed as mindless bullies while the geeks are the nice, sensitive caring ones {of course, we are, so I suppose it's justified} but I just wonder whether jocks watch those kinds of films and are rooting for the geeks, or whether they want them to fail?].

These people stealing the geek image - they've probably never even seen Star Wars, or spent a lunchtime at chess club, or ever genuinely been for an eye test (their pathetic over sized glasses probably not even having real lenses).

Well I implore you, fellow geeks. We cannot let them get away with this.

It's OK for me to call myself a geek. And it's OK for me to call me friends geeks. If you are a geek, you can use the word. But this is OUR WORD. They have no right using the G word.

We are geeks.

Some songs you should be listening to

Because my taste in music is so excellent, I've received literally two demands for insight into my current musical taste. As such I've decided I'm going to post 10 songs that have been my favourites this year.

10. Amsterdam - Guster


 

I heard about this song through a live video of Taking Back Sunday. In it, Adam Lazarra errroneously uses the word band name "Guster" when he means "gusto". He and John have a laugh about it and then they reference this song. So I checked it out, and I really like it. Good story that one.

9. I Am What I Is - Wheatus




Wheatus are a hugely underrated band to me. You remember Teenage Dirtbag and A Little Respect but that's about it. They're still going and I think that they have one of the most distinctive sounds in pop-rock music. This song deserves to have more than 300 odd views on YouTube.

8. Love Always, Leviathan - Icarus The Owl



And now for something a bit different. Icarus The Owl are quite a progressive band with lots of odd time signatures and timing changes. The album is a bit of a challenge to listen to but there are moments of brilliance - like this one. 

7. The Company Dime - The Get Up Kids



The Get Up Kids is always lauded as an originator in the emo genre, so I thought it was time I gave them a chance, to see what all the fuss was about. Something To Write Home About is a very good album, and this is my favourite song from it.

6. Island - The Starting Line



I'm a sucker for a good chorus, and I think this is one of the best on my list.

5. Tangerine - Mansions



Obscure band that I found (as I often do find bands) because Mike Sapone had produced their EP. If Sapone sees something in them, there's a good chance I will too. Mansions are like a poppier Crime In Stereo.

4. Head First In The River - Envy On The Coast



Now we're getting to the business end of proceedings. Envy On The Coast tread along the Icarus The Owl path of doing this a little bit differently, with time signatures and what not. But this is just a really good song.

3. Wired Song - Elyjah



Can't even remember how I found this obscure German band but this song has remained one of my absolute favourites throughout the year. I have no idea what he's singing about, but I'm a fan.
 
2. Ghost Of York - As Tall As Lions



As Tall As Lions are a Long Island band, which automatically makes them better. They've got a couple of good albums, so I wasn't sure which one to put up a preview for on here. For future reference you should also check out "Break Blossom".

1. Alive With The Glory Of Love - Say Anything



Anyone who has talked to me recently will have noticed I am enamoured with Say Anything. They are a band that I wish I had been into when I was a kid. Listening to it is a strange experience. Even though the songs aren't familiar with my teenage years I still feel a lot of nostalgia for those years when I listen. Say Anything are about as emo as they come, and moments of undisputed cheesiness, but their album Is A Real Boy is a genuine masterpiece in the genre. My favourite on the album is 'Belt' but this one is a decent introduction - a love/sex song about the holocaust.

Honourable Mention:

Hotfoot - Sainthood Reps
They See Only Shadows - Gates
Blame - Right Away, Great Captain
The In-Between - Underwater Tiger
Donald Domesky - Prawn
Crawl - Two Tongues
Trippin' The Life Fantastic - Weatherbox
Fire's Highway - Japandroids
Til It's Done To Death - John Nolan
Cover The Roots Lower The Stems - Moving Mountains
Earthquake - Hit The Lights
Gates - The Menzingers
American Hearts - Piebald
Paper Thin Hymn - Anberlin
Firebreather - Daytrader

This one's for football fans only.

I logged onto Facebook several hours after the Man City victory over QPR to win the Premier League title for the first time in decades.

I watched the whole match and was a little disappointed when City won. But I certainly wasn't cut up about it. I'll explain the situation in a minute.

But loading up Facebook I was caught off guard with the number of statuses proclaiming that this was the greatest football league in the world and that it was an epic end to the season.

OK, I'm sorry but did you watch the match? I did. It was this:

11 of the world's best and most highly-paid players held the ball and continuously, and rather ineptly, attempted to score goals. The 11 QPR players sat in their back third and just blocked every shot and defended well.

City got a lucky ricochet goal. Then QPR against the odds, and against the grain of the game, scored a breakaway goal. Revert back to the original style of City hammering them with any actual skill or talent just force of numbers. No incisive dribbling. No beautiful silky skills. Just a team of better players trying to score goals against a team of lesser.

Imagine if at school all the best players had got together and played aginst the worst players... well that's what it was like.

Joey Barton, QPR's captain, elbowed City's Carlos Tevez in the face and got sent off. I kinda wish that QPR had been facing relegation if they had lost, maybe then the stupidity and pointlessness of Barton's action might have had a consequence he could appreciate. But anyway.

Now it was 11 of the world's best players against 10 lesser players. Same thing happened. Boring. Tedious.

Then a breakaway and Manchester City's overpaid defenders were once again exposed. 2-1 to QPR and City's inconsistency (a consequence of being a team of players who played for the highest bidder) looked like it might be thier undoing.

Revet to the same thing as before. Frustrated City and QPR sitting 10-men behind the ball. It was nerve-wracking but boy was it boring.

Eventually it became too much for QPR. The news had reached them that Stoke had equalised against Bolton, meaning that the result of the match become inconsequential to them. Man City scored two goals, one in the last minute.

Surprisng? No, not really. It should have all happened much earlier in the match.

A brilliant example of football? No, it was 95 minutes of last-ditch defending punctuated by a few instances of luck.

That's what constitutes the best league in the world?

Think before you fucking speak. And definitely think before you post idiotic stuff on Facebook.

The people I work with make my job bearable. The people I work for make my job unbearable.

New blog

I'm exporting all of the atheist and argumentative stuff onto my new blog which can be found at http://themilitantskeptic.wordpress.com .

There should be some interesting controversial opinions on there from time to time, so please read it. Thanks.

Disappointment.

Disappointment is a recurring theme in my life and, interestingly rhyming, the only recurring dream that I can remember.

I would never ever ever suggest that I have a difficult life. I know I have it easy, and live in relative excruciating wealth and happiness compared the massive majority of people who are alive, have ever lived and, in all probability, will ever live. But disappointment is something that can happen to anyone, regardless of the overall generally quality of their life. I get disappointed an awful lot.

People always act exactly as I expect them to. But I always forget that.

101 things not to do... 11 to 15

11. Don't have a website

The internet, as I will explain in a future post, is the scourge of modern society. Worse even than television (and I fucking hate television). It has defeated the concept of being intelligent. It has ruined social interaction. It has turned us into greedy, selfish people obsessed with our own perceived sense of entitlement.

12. Don't contradict yourself

There is nothing less attractive in a personality than to be a hypocrite. Have a bit of moral courage. Do feel free, however, to point out any contradictions that I might be a part of. If I have one aim in life these days, it's to get my ideology nailed down so I can decide exactly what I believe. That way my conversations can be even more didactic than they are presently.

13. Don't learn to juggle

Just don't.

14. Don't get a tattoo

Getting a tattoo is another classic way of expressing your individually just like everybody else is. Engrave onto your skin something that seems relevant at the time, and it's like putting on a necklace that you'll have to wear forever despite the fact that its gaudy and repulsive and makes you look like a 'rebellious' 14-year-old.

Again I know that some people who have the capacity, or indeed are likely to read this, have tattoos. I'm not presumptuous enough to believe that my hating tattoos and directing those comments at you will provoke anything more than mild laughter and disappointment that I don't empathise without your outlook on life. But if you are offended, please feel free to get a tattoo about how much you hate me. If nothing else at least it will be original.

15. Don't cheat

I've actually got two points to make here. Because when I said, don't cheat, a second ago, I meant it as in terms of not cheating at sports/tests etc. But I feel I should also say something about cheating in a relationship: fucking someone else, if you will.

OK so a little while back I was forced by circumstance to read one of those women's magazines they have now. Yeah you've seen 'em. And it laying out some statistics about men. And this particular statistic said "50% of men say they would never consider cheating on their girlfriend".

Let's think about that. Think of two men who you know. It doesn't matter who. That sentence means that statistically one of those two men you just thought of, is a full-on cunt. They would happily consider shitting all over the feelings of someone who they care about and who cares about them, just so they can get a little bit sex with someone new. That is a definition of selfishness.

Now onto the other type of cheating. I watch football. And I get annoyed when players dive or feign injury. I know a lot of people do. But I think that the punishment for cheating isn't nearly high enough. In cases where players deliberately fall over in order to win a penalty I would advocate the death penalty.

I've been frivolous now and suggested something hideous which undermines my point so let me try and reel it back in. Cheating is just pathetic. Certainly not limited to professional sports, I hate cheating wherever I see it. It's not fair that some people have to work hard and other people take the easy route. They should be ashamed.

101 things not to do... 6 to 10

6. Don't try being a vegetarian

Possibly a controversial as I know a few people who are vegetarians. In the main part they are kind people. But I always think that vegetarianism is a kind of misplaced kindess (I'm making the assumption here that people are vegetarians for ideological reasons rather than health/taste-bud issues). But being a vegetarian sounds like a positive thing for a kind, rational thinking person to be. But if you are going to go down that route, you have to be a vegan.

I can respect the ideological integrity and consistantcy of vegans. They know that animals shouldn't be used to do the bidding of humans. Vegetarians on the other hand, are simply avoiding the issue. They don't want to eat dead lamb because it's cruel. But they are completely fine with enslaving chickens to have a life where they simply make eggs to be stolen from them by farmers. They are completely fine with taking away baby cows from their mothers and forcing those mother cows to lactate until the end of their days.

Vegetarians can fuck off. It's vegan or nothing. And I am nothing.


7. Don't learn to play the guitar

This is another issue that everyone does it. I did it. But I did it before it was cool. I did it when it thoroughly wasn't cool. Not long after I got into we had a generation of former-chav indie kids picking up their guitars to write a musical crusade of endlessly dull pop songs about going out and getting drunk, all in laconic and styleless verse.

These days I just would recommend anything else simply because if you can be a decent bassist, keyboard player, drummer etc. then you'll have a plethora of talented guitarists to pick from when the inevitable happens and you attempt to form a band.

8. Don't ever watch any TV, ever

I hate television. I've explained before. I think our culture is infinitely worse for what television has done to us. Books are a rich and enlightening form of entertainment. You learn things from books; either facts or just things about yourself.

Television allows you to sit there mindlessly for hours without learning a single fact or discovering anything interesting that you couldn't already have guessed.

9. Don't swim with dolphins

Right, the only reason anyone likes fucking dolphins is because they look like they are constantly smiling. Male dolphins are known, during the mating season, to gang up together and pick off a female dolphin and basically beat her up, and then once she too tired to run away anymore they all get to mate with her.

Dolphins are just scumbag rapists. Don't go swimming with them. Lock them up with some great white sharks.

10. Don't go skydiving

People talk about it as if it's some fabled brave thing to do. Right, you know that you've got a parachute strapped to your back and a back-up parachute? And you'll have instructors who've been doing it for years. How many skydiving accidents do you really ever hear of? There's nothing brave about skydiving.

Overcome a real fear. Or do something that's genuinely amazing. Don't just let yourself drop for 10,000 feet. Gravity is one of the most important aspects of the universe. You'd think people would have gotten over the novelty of it by now.

101 things not to do... 1 to 5.

1. Don't visit Paris

Everyone bloody does it! Can't the romantic impulse in us extend to something more than the old cliche? Visiting Paris is the least romantic thing I can imagine because it means you've thought SO LITTLE about your partner, that the best idea you've got is to take them to Paris.

2. Don't run a marathon

I can't think of a more unbelievable waste of your time. If you like running, then go running, but to run for hours? No. Do something productive in that time. Write a book or something.

3. Don't write a book

To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens: everyone has a book in them, in most cases, that's where it should stay. IF you are a genius with a fantastic story to tell laced with wit and ambitious prose, then please go ahead. If you've just been laid off by Tesco and your reading experience is exactly: 4 of the Harry Potter novels, the Twilight series, and the sport section of The Sun every morning, then please, PLEASE do not write a book.

4. Don't climb Mount Everest

Every year about 10 people die trying to climb the fabled mountain. You're fat. Don't do it. Don't become a statistic.

5. Don't learn a language

Try mastering your own instead. This one goes out to anyone who says "bored of" or pronounces H "haitch". It's "aitch" you motherfuckers, AITCH.

1. Don't write a 101 item list

Under no circumstances ever write a 101 item list telling people what they should be doing with their lives...

101 things NOT to do before you die

Life-affirming motivational people are such incandescent bores. I see so many lists of top 100 novels you should read, or top 100 cities you should visit, or things you should do, or albums you should listen to and blah blah blah blah blah.

No.

I want a dose grumpy pessimism on the subject. Live your own life. Don't do a load of things that other people thought was good.

I will be compiling a list of 101 things that I will not do before I die.

How my personality changed.

When I was about 21, I went through a kind of retroactive upheaval of my personality and beliefs.

Through university I had been a heavy-drinking, lazy, Top-Gear-aficionado, Jeremy Clarkson-loving, liberal, computing gaming, proponent of the illegitimacy of the Iraq Wars, agnostic, opponent of climate change, Guardian-reading, arrogant twat. I realise how contradictory many of these positions are now, but at the time, I would have had a clue. Thanks to the arrogance, and my general ability to have an answer for everything, I would have put forward a case for my own wonderful intelligence, and in my mind I would probably have won the argument.

My re-education (and more generally, education, if you prefer) came primarily from three things.

I believe the first was that on one of my many viewings of the TV channel Dave I watched the first episode of the first series of Stewart Lee's TV series Comedy Vehicle. I had read an article on Stewart Lee by the Daily Mail (this is how brilliant a critical thinker I was) and even though I knew the Daily Mail was a pile of crackpot lies and insanity designed to make people angry at things, I nevertheless got angry with Stewart Lee.

The article said Stewart Lee had insulted Richard Hammond, and had wished he had died in the car accident and that he had brain damage. At the time, I was shocked and appalled (exactly as the Mail wanted me to be) and I took a strong dislike to Lee, in defence of Hammond. Fortunately, I never said it aloud, or displayed my hatred for Stewart Lee in public, otherwise people would have proof that I am a stupid hypocrite.

I'm not sure why I watched it, I think maybe it was to be able to say "yeah, that Stewart Lee, he's not even funny, I watched his TV show and it's shit" just so I could defend Richard Hammond. But I watched the first episode of Comedy Vehicle.

My mind was blown. Up until that point I hadn't realised comedy could actually be intelligent. The first joke is "If you only ever read one book in your life, I highly recommend you keep your mouth shut". It's brilliant. It draws you in with the cliche, and then the punchline zings makes you realise what a fool you've been.

(I later found out that Lee actually bought this joke from Simon Munnery for £1, and although I was slightly surprised to find out that the joke that drew me into Stewart Lee isn't actually his, I realise that it is effectively a witty one-liner of the kind that Lee can't, or doesn't want to, write, but nevertheless it sums up exactly what he is like a performer; that joke is his show in microcosm).

I got into Stewart Lee, and he made me realise a lot of the ridiculousness of the right-wing politics. I had always described myself as liberal or left-wing (not realising that there was a difference between those two things) but I still had some level of right-wing ideology thanks to Top Gear etc. But now that right-wing sentiment in me had been destroyed.

Now we move to the second factor in the change in my personality. I attended a lecture by The Plashing Vole. He went by a different name, of course. And I was slightly fearful of him. He seemed to go on about poetry quite a lot and had a slightly intimidating air of knowledge that I knew I couldn't match. I wouldn't have avoided courses run by him, but I certainly viewed the lectures he ran with trepidation.

He had also been angry once when people hadn't turned up to a seminar, of which I was guilty. So perhaps that had something to do with it too.

Well, this lecture was just brilliant. Fascinating and engrossing. I am a strident note-taker. Over-enthusiastic, some might say. But that whole lecture I just sat, listening, learning. The lecture was on some aspect of media and also went into how the banking crisis had happened and why. (I don't really know why I did media at university as the second part of my joint degree. I am an English major, through and through, and I should have known that, nevertheless, that lecture was one of the single best learning experiences of my life).

The third event was Christopher Hitchens, and I'd say that at this point, Hitch has defined the new aspects of my personality more than anything else.

I had been aware of him, and was a great admirer of his atheist stance. I'd watched videos of him explaining why women aren't funny, and read a couple of articles. But fundamentally I didn't know much about Hitch aside from the fact that has was a very sensible atheist with some very obscure views, including hatred of Mother Theresa and support for the war in Iraq.

I considered him a sort of enigmatic figure, a main course of genius with an order of insanity on the side. It was only very close to his death that I began to realise just how brilliant he actually was.


His support for the war in Iraq, for example (which by the way, is something I completely subscribe to now: it was the right decision taken for the wrong reasons) is something that makes him an easy target.

But when you examine his reasons you begin to see how much of the liberal west got caught up in its own fantasy, and how many people's knowledge of the situation really does not go any further than:

1) It was all Bush's idea
2) It was a war for oil
3) The West started the problems in the Middle East with our foreign policy

If you believe those three things, I strongly recommend you read and listen to Christopher Hitchens, or better yet, get a decent grounding of understanding in the political history of the Middle East.

But I digress.

Part of the problem with Hitch, is that he is such an inspired and brilliant rhetorician but also so unbelievably erudite and intelligent, that it would be easy to do two things:

1) Misunderstand him
2) Take every word he says verbatim without applying any critical logic to it
(something that I see quite regularly away from Hitch with many of my friends or whatever you call some of the people on Facebook who believe themselves to be free-thinkers because they read a couple of Guardian articles a week and take everything Charlie Brooker says as the gospel - pun intended)

What I've learned from Vole, and Hitch especially is that most important thing you should do is mentally challenge everything you hear, read or think. I knew it before. But I absolutely solely believe it is the most important part of your life now.

Ladybird.

How emasculating must it be to be a male ladybird? I mean, the name of your species is just two different words for women.

...

Thank you!

I've been working on that joke for about half a year now.

It's still not funny.

I'll keep you updated on any progress.

Tune in next time for a rant about Fabrice Muamba and some more bashing of religion.

When I'm 40.

Someone asked me recently what I thought my life would be like when I was 40.

I don't really know. I think a lot of problems might come down to things beyond my control. But I did imagine that I would be able to write the following sentence:

"When I was in my early twenties I wrote a blog. I had a few sweeping generalisations of what I thought the world might be like, but no actual experience. As such it descended fairly quickly into effectively an open diary available 24 hours a day to allow anyone with any interest in my personality to have the mystery excluded from them almost immediately."

Is it worrying that I'm planning such pessimistic sentences 17 years before they will be applicable to write.

I worry sometimes that part of the problem is a lot of the opinions that I currently have wont make any sense until I'm in my forties, and by then it will be too late to use them as anything other than depressing nostalgia.

I remember Stewart Lee saying that his on stage personality has always been effectively the same: a world-weary man with wise Liberal pessimism, but that the character only really makes sense as an older man who is seemingly more capable of the knowledge that his opinions are correct.

Pseudonym

I am an aspiring author.

By that I mean I aspire to write a novel. I've got this idea. And it's brilliant. But it's massive and long and complicated and requires three main characters to tell the story properly.

I'm sure you're looking forward to reading it. I give a speculative (and optimistic) release date of March 2028.

In the mean-time I have a task. I must think of a publishing pseudonym.

It's not that I don't like my own name. In fact I quite like it. My parents named me very rationally and intelligently. David is a sturdy, ever-popular name capable of everything from elegant Prince David, to flamboyant homosexual hipster Davey to down-to-earth taxi driver Dave. It spans class and age-group

It's an every-man's name: comforting and familiar. Everyone knows a Dave. I know about ten. But David Wells isn't a name destined for stardom.

There is already a minutely famous astrologist called David Wells. And they level of fame that I might be able to garner as a moderately successful author would surely only get me oft confused with my scumbag namesake.

I should note here that we had a signed David Wells book come into our office where I work. Intrigued I decided to give him a chance rather than (as I had previously) writing his work off as brainless, malicious rubbish. I was right the first time, I'm afraid to say. And wrong to give him a chance.

His book described a process of arbitrarily assigning numbers to specific letters and then working out a mathematical equation for your name. The resulting number gives you a short paragraph about your personality.

It actually scares me that there might be people who believe this banal crap.

Back on topic.

I need to think of pseudonym.

The first name, I think, is actually a bit easier for me but it's still hard. I like names. The difficulty is not using names that I want to use in future pieces of writing. For example, I would find it impossible to name a character David, just because it would feel strange to use my own name for someone who wasn't me. Maybe I'll get over that feeling with time.

I do find, however, that it is difficult for me to completely divorce names from people I know with those names. My writing of characters is often coloured by those names.

So I have to think of names that I don't directly relate to anyone specifically, or if I do, I relate them in a positive way. Now, generally, I dislike people. So I have a negative impression of most names. And for those rare people I do like, I have other people who I don't masking my fondness for that name.

I think I've effectively narrowed my first name choice to:

Patrick or Oliver.

Fairly middle-class author-ish type names. Patrick has pleasant connotations for me, the lowest rank of which was that it was the name of my first hamster. White as snow and docile, he died of having some weird thing on his eye (I was young-ish).

Oliver is a name I've always liked: multi-syllabled for such a short word and kind to the tongue. I always feel there is something peaceful about it, despite the connotation of Cromwell or the Dickens, which are anything but.

The second name is more difficult. Patrick and Oliver are fairly pedestrian in themselves, they are fine as a pre-amble, but we need to finish on a flourish. Something eye-catching and memorable.

I'm searching for something lavish and extravagant.

I flirted with "Juneau" and on reflection it's still the best idea I've come up with. It's the name of a song I like (although not one of my absolute favourites). It's also the state capital of Alaska. The only American state capital that isn't accessible directly by road, I believe.

There is something in the excessive vowels that I like.

But I'm not really sure what I'll go for.

Was Hitler evil?

These days we think of Hitler as being the epitome of evil, right? He's like our ultimate in anti-morality and callous disregard for human compassion. It's become almost a cliche in shock value.

Even the word "Hitler" has an ugly connotation, just looking at it. You can't get any lower or morally worse than Hitler.

But I fear we are divorcing historical context just a little bit. And that's never a good idea.

Now, I'm certainly not going to come anywhere near an argument that Hitler is a tragically misunderstood good-guy, but consider it from this perspective:

At that time that Hitler was in power, Jews were generally not well liked across the world. You can bet that around and during the war that the majority of people in England would have harbored, what we would now consider, racist views about Jews. But at the time they would have been morally reasonable and sound.

I'd like to use the example of paedophiles today. There is a lot of hatred towards paedophiles in our current society.

But imagine if in a hundred years time, the distinction between childhood and adulthood has become blurred and the new moral code doesn't really see anything wrong with a relationship between a 30-year-old and a 13-year-old. By today's standard the idea is morally reprehensible, but it's the same idea with Jews.

In the 1940's Jews were considered inferior and unpleasant, not just by Nazi's but by regular people.

Jump back to present day. I'm sure you'd be able to find quite a number of normal, British people these days who would advocate a death penalty for paedophilia. Maybe they don't represent a reflective, educated person's views but they are likely to be widely held nevertheless. I concede you could argue with me on this point, but for argument's sake let's say I'm right.

So, knowing that some people think paedophillia is a just cause for the death penalty, it can't be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that there must be some people who would take that to it's logical conclusion: put all paedophiles into concentration camps and gas them to death in batches.

Note I would also accept that there is a very strong difference between a religious belief and being a paedophile (although the mischievous Atheist within me would argue that both are mental illnesses).

I'm just trying to make the point with something that general moral opinion says is bad (paedophilia) with something that the 1940's general moral opinion said was bad (being Jewish).

So, Hitler is extremely evil, we would agree certainly. He brought about the deaths of millions of Jews.

Imagine today if we learned that Germany was placing paedophiles into concentration camps. There might be outrage among some parts the Left, and intervention would be talked about. But there would certainly be a relatively strong contingent of the opinion: "well, maybe it's not such a bad idea".

Likely the outcome would be the same, however. But the point I'm making is that Hitler is only unmitigatedly evil by the terms of our modern morality (of course there are extremists who would tell you Hitler was onto a good thing, but there are always going be extremists).

But I'm not talking about extremists, I'm talking about out-of-the-mill bigots. My generation is more naturally liberal in terms of race, sexuality and religion. But would we take the same stance on paedophiles? I imagine the morality would be much more divided.

And so in a hundred years time when relationships between adults and children are morally accepted, they would look back on the German paeodphile concentration camps with horror, and they would imagine the perpetrators as the worst evil they can think of.

But by our standards a killer of paedophiles would certainly be less immediately reprehensible than, say, someone who kills black people.

Hitler is only the ultimate evil in our modern context. He was a product of his time, and was just somewhat more extreme than a majority who may have, in principle, agreed with him.

I should maybe also note that I do think Hitler is evil and will always be considered evil. I'm just using this as an example of evil could be a lot more subjective that we think.

Religion under attack?

Joining the debate a little late, but there has been some talk recently about religion. I believe the issue was that a court had ruled it was unlawful to enforce prayers on the agenda of a local council meeting.

A councilor who was consistently referred to in the press as an "atheist" won a high court ruling to say that prayers on the agenda of a council meeting were unlawful. Unlawful, by the way, is a very key word here.

It's not that the prayers have been decreed to be "unwelcome" or even "unnecessary", they have been ruled as "unlawful". It's against the law to put prayers on the agenda on council meetings. I think that's quite important in this story.

Eric Pickles, the communities secretary waddled into the affair claiming that "Christianity plays an important part in the culture, heritage and fabric of our nation."

Can't argue with that, although while Pickles is suggesting this is a positive thing, I would claim otherwise. But that's a different debate entirely. However, Pickles went on to say:

"The right to worship is a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty."

Now that is a hideous piece of linguistic prestidigitation if ever I've seen one. Who exactly is claiming that the "right to worship" should be rescinded here? No-one.

Our laws are secular laws and faith is a personal thing. No-one has even come close to hinting that the "right to worship" should be removed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Church of England's primary place of worship is not St. Paul's Council Meeting Room.

If you want to believe in religions (my own views notwithstanding) then feel free to do so in your own time. But don't impose your insane faith on grown-up political matters than are actually important.

My ideal partner...

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. I wrote a blog on Valentine's Day last year, and it's still extremely relevant, as I'm sure it will be for the rest of my life. This year I thought I'd do something different.

Given that Valentine's Day is a day for romance and I will be spending it partner-less and alone, I thought it was worth taking a look at exactly what I might want from a partner: my ideal partner, as t'were.

I'm going to break it down into two basic categories: personality and appearance.

First off, I should say that my ideal partner, ideally, would be female. Not least because the concept of having breasts is much more attractive on a woman than it is on a man. 

So, personality-wise, what am I looking for?

I once said that my ideal girlfriend would be exactly like me, but could not remind me at all of me. In realistic terms I think that would mean they should be bright, but don't need to be extremely smart, they just need to be fairly wise to make up for my shortfall in this area. They shouldn't be arrogant or pretentious. They should be relatively confident within themselves, but they need necessarily need to be confident on the outside.

She would probably have to be reasonably innocent or naive, but should also be fierce and curious.

Funny seems to be the universal quality everyone is looking for. It strikes me that perhaps people don't realise how much funnier someone appears when we find them attractive. I suggest that the attraction, might often come before the funny, rather than after it. I'm not saying you'll be attracted to everyone you find funny, however.
After funny, it seems that the way someone looks is the chief principle. People often refer to eyes unaware perhaps that, broadly speaking, eyes are identical. It's what surrounds the eyes that is attractive or otherwise. I don't really take eyes into consideration, personally. Eyes are generally pretty. Bigger is better naturally, but that isn't actually the eye, it's the opening. I'm ambivalent about eye-colour. Deep brown is very attractive. Bright green is beautiful. I knew a girl once with quite astonishingly ice-blue eyes. But it doesn't even need to be a particularly defined colour. More pale colours are equally attractive, and often compliments the face a lot more. (The girl with the ice-blue eyes for example: her eyes completely dominated her face, the result was very pretty eyes, but not very pretty otherwise).

When it comes to looks, I don't know, I don't think they are too important. I mean, obviously attraction is requisite, but I don't think I'd be able to explain exactly what I find attractive in anyone.

Body shape isn't really an issue. I know some people who imagine very skinny girls as the ideal in beauty, and some who think too skinny is ugly. Once again, I find myself sitting on the fence.

I find some very thin girls very attractive: their fragility perhaps, suggests a femininity not afforded too specifically by their physique. On other girls I would concede that there is a 'too skinny' category, but then again some girls who I find myself most attracted to are just about as skinny as it's possible to be for a healthy person.

On the other hand, the other end of spectrum is a little clearer. Certainly there is a limit at which people become too fat to be attractive, but I wouldn't say my boundary is particularly limiting. I find some slightly larger girls very attractive. Curves are a natural in what men find attractive about women.

Perhaps the point is that any weight within the perceived limits of what can be considered healthy, places them in a very good place to be attractive.

I remember reading a quote from an old book that I agreed with. It was a man commenting on women said something along the lines that it is rare to find a woman who doesn't have something beautiful about her and it is impossible to find one without flaws.

Hair colour and style are of little importance. I happen to think short-hair always looks good on girls. But literally any length can be attractive. I'm not too fond, generally over over-elaborate hairstyles. But I think that's mainly because of what I think it indicates within the personality.

Skin colour is interesting too. I know some guys who tell me that they simply don't find non-white girls attractive. I grew up and live in a primarily white-dominated part of the world, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I must say, however, that not even trying to pretend I'm some sort of super-liberal, all-loving, all-accepting king of political correctness*, I simply do not make the distinction. Attractive is attractive, simple as that.

I have even been accused, by friends, of only finding non-white girls attractive (although I believe it was in jest), which I can categorically state is not the case.

But I think I made a fairly important point a second ago.

I know what I find attractive, but I can't explain to you what it is. Attractive is attractive.

In conclusion, I think that my ideal partner can be summed out in a single word: unobtainable. So, instead I must think of something else to do tomorrow. Maybe I'll get back to writing.

* Which I am, by the way

The gym.

I am always annoyed by status updates on Facebook or Twitter describing a successful gym visit. I know that I could delete my accounts and probably be happier for it, but then how would I do blogs with trivial stuff to get angry at?

So anyway, it starts and someone says:
"Just the gym! Gonna get in shape for the summer, can't wait to get started"

Then a day or two later you'll see:
"Epic first sesh at the gym, dripping sweat, feels great"

Then the next day:
"Two hours work on my arms today. I'd post a picture of my guns but they now no longer fit in the picture frame of my camera"

Then about a week goes by:
"Great to be back at the gym"

Then another week:
"Good 30 minute sesh"

Then nothing.

Then you see them a couple of months later and they look exactly the same.

Still, I expect it's just petty jealous: the story of my life.

Saying something.

I feel that one of these days I'm going to say something that I regret. Not just about one issue, about several.

I'm going to say something that is either too kind, or something that is too angry, because in the moment I'll get caught at one end of the spectrum of my thought.

If it's too angry I'll end up having to apologise and my point will be lost.

If it's too nice I'll be angry with myself for not explaining the situation as I'd like, ad that will make the situation worse.

Names, but for a different reason.

I realise I've been using people's full names a little too flippantly in this blog. I will avoid it in future.

Something else for you not to watch

I watched a film the other day. I didn't enjoy it. I watched virtually all of it, but didn't see the end. I didn't care about the end. It didn't matter.

It a comedy-drama set in the 1970s written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's. This is the duo behind The Office (which was good, despite the fact that it only had a single joke: David Brent is an awkward dickhead) Life's Too Short (which is exactly the same as The Office except with a midget as the main character) and Karl Pilkington (which is utterly dreadful. Right, it's funny because it's trying to make you believe that Karl Pilkington is a real person, that his personality is actually like that, which it just is not. Karl Pilkington is a character that they have tried to sell as a real person and that completely takes away the joke for me, because if you aware that this is simply a character and not a person's actual beliefs then the whole situation just becomes one where two writers are trying imagine what someone stupid might think about things, and then you laugh at that fake stupid person.)

The film is called "Cemetery Junction" which is the most pathetic, hackneyed and obvious foreshadowing technique you could ever imagine using. In my mind it would be like calling the star of an action film Jack Actionhero. Watch the film and you'll see what I mean. Well, actually, don't watch the film, that's the point of this blog, just trust me, I'm right.

I was alerted to how bad the film might be when a young man supposedly from the 1970s asked his friend "where are all the fit birds?" Fit! Now, I wasn't alive, so I could be corrected, but I'm pretty sure that the word 'fit' as a synonym for 'attractive' is a lot more recent than that. Certainly I've never heard it any old English TV and from the few people I have asked they are certain 'fit' just meant 'healthy' up until recently.

So then, that's not only a rather embarrassing show of the ineptitude of the writers but also a poor excuse for whoever edited the script or even read it.

Now there are a couple of things you could say. Maybe it's an intentional mistake. I can imagine this being the case. The central theme of the film seems to be that change and progress is a positive thing, and so the idea of using a new phrase doesn't seem too out of place, especially as it is placed next to 'bird' which seems to be more of an archaic term.

The problem is that if that is the case it is quite clumsily executed. It's said by the wrong character. Instead of being progressive, it comes across as an almost sexist and childish outburst.

The other point, however, is that maybe it's not too important. It's either artistic license, as they say, or an honest mistake. I'm not one of those people whose enjoyment of a film is ruined if someone's jumper changes colour during a scene during The Dark Knight. If you're willing to suspend your disbelief that a muscular billionaires goes around punching criminals dressed as a bat, but unwilling to accept a colour-changing jumper, well that's your own problem.

Either way, it's not the main issue, but it does reveal part of the problem. See films based in dreary towns in the 1970s are always going to rely on the characters. Unfortunately in this instance they are filled with cliche, and worst of all, there isn't an milligram of wit lying around.

There is a huge reliance on the word "cunt" throughout for the shocking moments. Shock value being the real lowest form of wit, by the way.

The plot has no surprise twists, no complexity. The ending (which I have since read about rather than watched) is gutless and so utterly and painfully predictable.

Advice.

I have some advice. Some advice that you won't take. You won't take it for a variety of reasons, but I think primarily because no-one takes advice. And certainly not at the age that this advice is aimed at. I should also note that probably 100% who read this advice won't even be in a position to take it.

But, just in case, here it is:

Do not go to university unless you want to learn.

That sounds like a strange thing to say, because surely going to university is the ultimate testament in desiring learning. But it's not. Not these days. And I can tell you that because of the experience I went through.

I love learning. But I didn't go to university to learn. I went to university to get a degree. I had to learn things along the way to get that degree, but they were arbitrary. I don't think I'm alone in saying that. In fact I know I'm not. There were always lots of people in my classes who weren't there to learn, and a lot who were, were just learning to pass the degree.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm ashamed of it now. I have a thirst for knowledge now.

And I hate the anti-intellectual world we live in, where the length of time that Kerry Katona can submerge her head in a bucket of live cockroaches passes for Saturday night entertainment.

(NOTE: this feels like a good time to say that I currently despise almost all television. I hate the throwaway nothingness of it. I hate the way that you can sit down and watch a night's worth of television and learn nothing. I watched half and hour of some program about a rich couple buying a house in rural Somerset. They walked round. They quite liked some of the houses. And they had some reservations. And that was it. You learned fuck all. People buy houses and they have to compromise. Great.)

But anyway. If you go to university, get the most out of it. And you'll get the most out of it by making yourself smarter. It's something that I never really understood. Becoming smarter at university just seemed like it would be a natural progression.

I did learn things, I had some good tutors, but I could and should have learned a lot more. I despair at the time that I could have spent reading but I spent playing Call of Duty.

Reading is the way forward, by the way. Just in case you were wondering. Stop watching television and start reading. And don't read fucking ghost-written celebrity autobiographies because they are shit. And I'm not even trying to be a pretentious arrogant dickhead. They might be entertaining, I know they are, just like TV is entertaining. But TV is only entertaining in the moment. You can sit there are watch it and it's easy. But it's stupid.

People complain about some people watching too much football, but than those people are quite happy to sit down and watch hours upon hours of witless American "comedy" and facile scripted-reality.

People wonder why their government is failing and why they can't get a good job. Well it's because we've had generation upon generation now who have shunned intelligence in preference to dumbed down entertainments and pass-times.

Why is it such a pathetic punch-line for me to prefer staying in and playing chess than it is go out and get drunk until I throw up? Why does that make me boring? I can't think of anything more boring than going out.





Well. That turned into a rant and enough.


I think the moral of the story is when I start talking, ignore me.

Names.

Names are important to me.
For example, the name Jake. I have never met any decent guy called Jake. One called Jacob. Zero called Jake. They are all dicks.

And spellings of names are important too.
Let's take Nicole as an example.
Nicole is Nicki's full-name. But her name is Nicki.

I become distressed when people write the name 'Nicki' with any other spelling than 'Nicki'.
It's just wrong.

Nicky is unacceptable because Nicky is a boy's name, and Nicki is not a boy.
Nikki is unacceptable because Nikki is a porn-star's name, and Nicki is not a porn-star.

Only Nicki is correct.

Two things that I learned working at Marks and Spencer

While in my first year of sixth form college, I applied for temporary Christmas work at Marks & Spencer. I got the job, working on Menswear. 

I lied in the title. There are actually three important things I learned at Marks & Spencer, none of which were taught to me by any member of staff (actually that's a lie, one was, but they didn't intend to).

The first important thing I learned was how to fold suits and suit trousers correctly. I was 16 when I started working there so you could perhaps argue that I should have known by then, but what can I say? I didn't.

Compounding this problem was the fact that when I started, nobody taught me. Given that suits were a pretty big factor in clothes sales at M&S I think it's slightly surprising that no-one bothered to check that their staff could do things correctly, but never mind.

An elderly foreign couple, perhaps Cypriot, came in and bought a pair of suit trousers, navy blue and from our finest range, if I recall correctly.

I placed the trousers quite clumsily in a bag, and the man, rather annoyed, asked me to take them out and fold them correctly (if there is one thing that you become immediately accustomed to working in M&S, it is older people speaking to you as if you're a piece of shit).

Had I been older and more confident, I feel like I would have reacted in a rather volatile manner to being spoken to in this way (whilst I admit it was my fault).

Instead, I sheepishly admitted that I didn't know how to fold suit trousers correctly. Once again the man was angry.
"How can a young man not know how to fold trousers?"

The lady was much more kindly, as is generally the case with the genders.
"Oh, look at him, he's just a young man - a baby"

She smiled at me, and proceeded to show me how to fold trousers so they don't crease up. I apologised profusely and explained I had never been shown how as I didn't own any trousers like that.

The next two things I learned are the original two I refer to in the title, and they are less physical and more philosophical.

Important thing I learned no. 2:

There was a woman who started at M&S about two weeks before me. Her name was Paula. Middle-aged and extremely petite - short and slim, with exponentially curly hair.

Paula taught me something, and I'm sorry to admit because she was very kind, caring and thoughtful, and she was always very nice to me, and we got on well. But she taught me that I was more intelligent than an adult. Because for all her good qualities she was not clever.

It was the first time that I had been able to fully appreciate that I was significantly smarter than someone older than me. Up until that point my only experience, really, of adults in the real world came from my parents, my relatives and my teachers, all of whom are generally smart and world-wise.

So, to me, it seemed like an obvious natural order. I knew I was relatively smart for a young adult - I always got good grades and I was a geek. But it just seemed to follow that adults would have had more time to learn things than me, and so would be naturally more intelligent.

But I knew things that Paula didn't. A lot of thinks. Fairly basic things. After that, the flood gates opened. Upon realising I was smarter than Paula, I noticed that not everyone was as intelligent as I was giving them credit.

The third thing that working at M&S taught me is a bit more obscure. It's difficult to say exactly what I learned. But I'll explain and we'll see where we find ourselves (part of the problem here is that I conceived the idea for this blog a while back, and I now can't remember what I originally believed I had learned from the following experience).

Some back story is required.

My first real best friend was called Daniel H. I've mentioned him before in this blog because the primary influence he has had on my life (more important than being my first best friend, although I thank him for that) was that he introduced me to basketball.

(Note also that once, when asked about origin of our friendship not long after its inception, Daniel told the asker that we had had a fight: if I had won we would not be friends, and if he had won we would agree to be friends, Daniel triumphantly explained that he had won the fight and so we had become friends.

Now, I don't remember this happening and it sounds like a lie, I also recall however that at the time we were I asked I couldn't remember how we had met or why we were friends.

About a week later I decided to test out the theory that he had beaten me in a fight. I suggested a play fight. With compete modesty I can tell you that I completely over-powered him very easily. So I must say that the story seems extremely unlikely.

I also believe that winning this fight is the sole reason for my undue confidence that should I become involved in a violent physical altercation that I would be fine. Fights are something that, to my equidistant happiness and disappointment, have been in extreme scarcity in my life.)

Some years after my friendship with Daniel had disappeared altogether (we went to different schools in years pre-mobile phone or MySpace) I saw in Marks & Spencer a man named Keith R.

Keith had been the husband of Daniel's mum at the main time I knew Daniel, so he was Daniel's step-dad. They had divorced a little time before I lost contact with Daniel (I believe it was their divorce that in sighted Daniel and his mum and sister to move away from Southwick).

So I saw him, but couldn't quite place who he was. To my delight he handed over his credit card and I took a peak at the name. It was Keith's name.

I realised then why I hadn't recognised him completely. See, my memory of him was from about eight years earlier, and to put it sensibly, eight years before I was 16, I was 8, and being 8 makes a big difference to your memory.

My 8-year-old memory of Keith was of a large, heroic man. I recall being told a story by my mum of being he once dived into the road at the last second when Daniel's younger sister (and not even Keith's blood-related daughter) had wandered into the road with a car approaching.

But now as he stood in front of me, I saw a very different man. I was only 16, and hadn't yet filled out my frame entirely, but already I was more broad-shouldered than he. While not slight, I cannot be described as someone with a particularly large frame anyway.

So in that sense he seemed almost scrawny. Thin, almost emaciated, and with rather sharp angular features that I wouldn't have credited.
I asked him if he was Keith R, and he said yes, and that he thought that he recognised me but couldn't recall who I was.

I learned that my memory was hugely subject to my own manipulation due to the stories I had been told.

To this day I don't believe I have seen Daniel or any other members of his family.

A sad fact.

There is a fact.

It is a fact that my family and I have had to deal with for a while now. It came to a head this weekend.

It's a sad fact, but it's true nevertheless. My mum discriminates on the basis of colour.

She'll admit it to your face, she doesn't care who knows. White is the only colour for her, and I think that's the way it's always been. I don't think we should judge her badly on it, it's just the way she was brought up.

She feels uncomfortable whenever non-whites are in the house, and I've seen her get genuinely angry because of it.

This weekend, she called someone up to come and physically remove some non-whites from our home.

Yes, I'm afraid it is true. My mum only likes white toilet roll.

There, I've said it. It's out in the open.
She made an order with Asda's online shopping department, and ordered 12 toilet rolls. White.

Unfortunately it seems the none were available, so they substituted them for peach-coloured ones.

Despite the fact that we had run out of toilet rolls, my mum sent them back. I couldn't believe it when I heard. I mean, is bathroom sartorial elegance so important.

I was just dumbfounded. I think I had been quite looking forward to the peach-coloured toilet roll. A welcome change. But no, she sent them back.

What am I going to do with my 2012?

It turned 2012 recently. You might be aware. Saying that, there do appear to be some people who have forgone the traditional calendar and now count their existence only in the number of X-Factor's they have lived through. If that is the case, then welcome to 9, the year of Mix.

I prefer the standard calendar, of course, so I will continue to use it.

I'm rather unsure of what to do with 2012 (or, indeed, the rest of my life but let's not wish my life away).

Fundamentally, I break down my life fairly simply. I have three main agendas:

1) Where I work.
2) Where I go on holiday.
3) Where I live.

(Note here I accidentally wrote 'love' instead of 'live' when I first came to write point 3, I wonder if it was subconscious. I have chosen to leave the idea of romance out of my potential plans. I don't have any plans in that department. Well, no, that's a lie. I've got loads, but they wont materialise because I live in my own fantasy world. So instead, I'll just push it to the side, it'll happen when it happens.)

So here we go:

1) Work is sort of complex. To a certain extent, I like my current full-time job. There is a nice office environment and I like the people I work with. Pressure is very limited and I don't tend to feel any stress. I'm also relatively mindful of the fact that there isn't much better out there.

Jobs are few in the creative industries, so for the moment I count myself a bit lucky that I simply have a job that I don't hate.

There could be some changes on the horizon though. I write part-time (but ever increasingly) as a sort of jack-of-all-trades copywriter. I'd love to be able to do it full time, but getting work is a slow process.

The more I get, the more I can think about leaving my current job, or at least reducing the hours.

2) Now, I love holidays. There are quite literally too many places to list that I'd like to visit, so here are just a sample:

• Road trip down the West Coast of America - starting in Seattle, WA and moving down the cost through Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, then coming a little in land from some Las Vegas casino-and-bright-lights action.
• Cities in central Europe - I have a desire to see a load of the cities in central Europe, just to go and sample the culture. Ideally I'd see them over the course of a few trips. I could even do like weekend breaks. Sample a museum, or art gallery, sample a couple of decent restaurants, sample a couple of decent bars. Sounds pretty good to me. Cities include Prague, Vienna, anywhere in Germany, Amsterdam, Budapest. 
• Livingstone, Zambia and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. I have a fascination with Africa, and certainly so with Zimbabwe. This is a particularly touristy part of Africa but its also a wonderfully naturally beautiful area.
• I'm quite intrigued by Windhoek, Namibia as well. For the urban aspect of Africa.
• India - at first it wasn't a place I thought I had any interest in, but the more I think about it the more it seems like a great idea. I love Indian food (and not just greasy Anglo-Indian stuff [although I do love that] that is made delicious mainly by cream and butter) and I'd love to experience real India. 
• I want beach holidays - literally anywhere with a beach and sunshine so I can relax and read or go swimming or eat seafood for a week or so. Portugal would be great, or Spain or Turkey, and somewhere more exotic like Dominican Republic or Morocco would work even better for me.
• Another road trip, this time around New England in the north-east of America. Get to see Boston, the Basketball Hall of Fame, Six Flags New England, the fall colours and all the clam chowder I can get my hands on. 
• I'd really love to visit Tahiti. But it would probably be rendered pointless with a partner.
• Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos and Thailand intrigue me. Probably Thailand the most, even though it is obviously the most touristy. But almost everywhere around that way intrigues me, mainly for the food and the culture. I think I'd be a bit worried by the terminal lack of the English language, though.
• Certainly some backpacking around New Zealand would be great. And to a lesser extent I'd like to revisit Australia, mainly for the beaches. If I found myself in that part of the world I'd love to take the time to visit Fiji.
• There's a couple more US road trips too. The deep South and the the mid-West (Chicago and what not), plus Texas and the surrounding area. Then I'd have to complete it by going to the other states. Hawaii would be nice of course, to get away from the continent. Canada too.
• I want to go to Scandinavia, and go up and see the Northern Lights.
• I've got some interest in first world Asia too, South Korea seems to appeal more to me than Japan or China but I would like to visit all three. North Korea somehow also fascinates me too, morbidly. I'd like to go just to say I'd been.

EDIT: I'll finish the rest later.

A sad event.

Imagine the scene.

You walk in from the cold night air. You've been playing high-tempo basketball for the last hour. Your muscles ache. Your hands are hurting from a rather suspicious, identical double thumb injury.

You ascend the stairs and begin to run a bath. Closing the door you allow the steam from the water to envelope the room, making for a relaxing semi-sauna. You step into the bath - it's just the pleasant side of too hot.

You lie back and your skin tingles as the water rushes over you. And suddenly there is no pain, and no aching. You close your eyes and enjoy the moment, completely calm and placid.

Then through the calmness you begin to feel something on your arm. Some water, you presume, from the bath. You open your eyes to investigate.

And on your arm, there is a rather huge and angry-looking spider. We are talking this big. 

Now, I do not consider myself to have arachnophobia, but nevertheless, I'm not particularly good at dealing with surprise attacks, especially from spiders.

In what can only be described as a morbid panic, I swung my arm back violently. I smacked my arm into the wall behind, causing me tremendous pain. My crippling thumb injuries and aching muscles returned.

The spider had vanished. I eventually found him scuttling around behind the shower and, with some considerable skill, managing to lift him up and put him out the window.

Here is an artist's impression of the event.

So that was a sad end to my evening.

Religious Tract Society.

Becoming acquainted with a vast quantity of literature is one of the major perks on working for a large antiquarian book retailer. You can wade, waist-deep through paper tides of Biggles' and Uncle Tom's Cabins' and Dennis Wheatley's, all in their own sense fascinating, but (certainly the latter, at least) generally dreadful.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular, fascinates me. The novel presents a grotesque caricature of slave-life; in some sense laudable due to it's rather progressive anti-slavery message, if deeply clumsy and stooped in Christian allegory. Especially galling as the bible advocates and justifies slavery in its very basis, but let's get beyond that.

We also find plenty of books from the Religious Tract Society, which would go on to become the Lutterworth Press, which is still around today, albeit in a highly abbreviated format. 

RTS books are generally quite hilarious. They are monotonously similar, to the point in which all you have to do is pick a main character, and then the story is virtually written for you.

Take The Blind Basket Maker , the story of the title character, Abel Curry. Abel feels only bitterness and anger towards the God that robbed him of his sight; he struck Abel's shed with a bolt of lightning. Abel's hard-working and smart, and despite his dislike for the almighty, makes a decent living as a basket-maker.

This disgusting paragraph sums the RTS' principle message on pg.39:

"Poor Abel! he had yet to learn that God never lets harm come to us but for some good. The good is often hidden, and the paid is all we know; but some day God will open our eyes to see how He was teaching us, and we shall praise Him that He did not give us our own way"

Abel's bitterness towards God appears to enrage our divine king, presumably violently irate that Abel was unable to see the funny side in being blinded for his own amusement.

God sends a thunderstorm to flood the river by which Abel does his work. He then sees fit to kill Abel's dog, and then his young daughter.

Not to worry though, because soon enough Abel meets a pious young girl named Mary. Her kindness renews his faith for some reason.

Unfortunately, Mary's father soon dies, so she comes to live with Abel and his wife.

The story ends there. Devout Mary's father dead, and Abel a broken man. But at least they have each other. The moral of the story is, it seems: your family will likely die, but don't worry, God will kill many other people's families, so you can just join together. All is well, praise Jesus. Amen.

Fuck the RTS.

Tom.

Sometimes Tom makes some tea.

The best.

I was reading Christopher Hitchens' memoirs and I thought to myself: I'm probably never going to be famous enough to write a memoir. Even if I somehow managed to get even moderately famous, memoirs are generally left to those who are either very famous or very powerful.

I can't imagine a scenario in which I am either of these. In a sense this fills me with sadness, but I suppose also with relief. Mainly because at this point I have very little in the way of intrigue fit for the purpose of a memoir (perhaps there is some merit to the argument that I would perhaps gain such anecdotes on my to the aforementioned improbable fame). I digress.

Here is a chapter from my never-to-be-written memoir:



Dave and I made the journey to Reading to go snowboarding and skiing (respectively) in Milton Keynes. A non-sequitur, you may be thinking, but there was sound reasoning there. Reading was home to James (or Jimmy, as I generally referred to him, unsure if this was his preferred mode of address or simply a call to his past, a name he could not effectively shake).


I would often, in the past, refer to Jimmy as the same person as Dave. The truth is far from it, but they do share uncannily similar vocabulary and intonations. A veritable conjoined idiolect, if you will. Equally, they both have a passion for mocking people.

Born at a similar time, I believe, though could be mistaken, they had been friends virtually from birth, so perhaps their similarities are somewhat to be expected.

As an addition this I can recall a taxi journey home, I forget whether it was before or after these events. Violently and through drunken tears Dave informed me and another of our friends, that Jimmy was his only real friend and the only one who he expected to stick by him. Jimmy was in the taxi at the time, and it made for an awkward few minutes, before Dave ordered the cab to halt and stormed off into the night, Jimmy following shortly after. Fitting in a sense.

Jimmy is a skilled snowboarder; practiced and accomplished. We were to visit the Milton Keynes snow-dome with him. But I don't wish to talk about skiing, or indeed Milton Keynes. Fascinating as that anecdote could be, I have something to talk about: an incident in Reading.

Jimmy lived in a house with three females and a male. I use these medical terms rather than boy/man or girl/woman/lady, as these are loaded with connotations, mostly inaccurate and confusing to the context. If someone says "girl" I think of a child, or at most an older teenager. If someone says "woman", I think of a professional looking female perhaps in her mid-to-late thirties. If someone says "lady" I think of a fifty-plus-year-old with silvering hair. "Female", I think, has a much more general and pleasant connotation.

Sam, the male, was away. I have never met him, and probably never will, despite, I believe, stealing some content from Call of Duty Black Ops from him.

Of the females I can certainly remember Amy and Emma were two of them. The third, I have trouble with, with is a shame because I recall her wearing a Jimmy Eat World t-shirt. She, sartorially at least, had seemed the most interesting on our first meeting. I'll guess her name was Sarah, as that seems so common a name for younger females these days.

She was, however, also the least interested in socialising with us while Emma and Amy hung around us much of the evening.

Emma is the subject of the anecdote. Not because I have thought on her very much after the event. I haven't spoken to her since, but she did do something rather remarkable in my life; something I never got the chance to properly thank her for.

Emma, as I recall, was attractive. Disappointingly she was also clearly attracted to, and affection towards, Jimmy. I use disappointingly perhaps wrongly because I did not feel specifically attracted to her (though was she was attractive and female, the only requisites in those heady days) I just generally feel a very, very slight twinge of sadness that every straight female does not find me attractive.

Of course I realise universal attraction would be an unrealistic expectation even if I were much more attractive than I am. But the very fact that they are female and attracted to males, and I am male but they are not attracted to me, suggests either that there is there is something wrong with me or that there is something wrong with all of them... and I don't like those odds. A melancholy thought, certainly and one I won't dwell on.

On the morning of the first night I stayed there, and we are getting close to the incident. 

Jimmy called out a request for someone to make us tea. I'm not one for chauvinism, personally, and I was rather hoping for a chorus of mocking from the females. To my lasting sadness, Emma opened the door and asked us submissively how we liked our tea.

In this situation I would usually play the 'kindness' card and either politely decline, or offer to make, or at least help make the tea. My altruism was unfortunately overpowered quickly by desire for tea and aversion to move.

"One sugar please," I said, in my most feminist-sounding voice.

I don't think too much on tea. I like it certainly. I prefer it with sugar, but have been having it without at work because I have so much of it (out of habit rather than love). Some people really love it though, and I wouldn't put myself in that camp. But I certainly can tell, and appreciate, the difference between good tea and bad tea.

When Emma returned she brought with her my tea. Without any doubt the best cup of tea I have ever had in my life.

Tea is something I have almost every day, in fact, certainly at least three times most days. My very basic estimate suggests I must have had in excess of 3,000 cups of tea in my life.

For me to be able to say, with clarity, which of those was the best, I think is relatively important. There had to have been something amazing about it. But I don't know what.

As far as I know (she went out of the room, and I didn't see anything between her asking me how I liked it, and her handing it to me) Emma made that tea, and made it brilliantly. Was it the tea-bag? Was it the sugar? Was it the milk?

I just don't know, and I doubt I'll ever know. I can't really bring it up with her now. I could probably fairly easily find out her name and ask her via Facebook, but I must doubt that her memory of the event would even be available. She made tea for one of Jimmy's friends, I doubt she even remembers that. Let alone the details of how she made it.

By accident I stumbled across the perfect way to make tea, or the perfect tea-maker. I doubt I'll ever speak to her again.

2012.

It's 2012. I hope we don't all die. Not because I'd be dead. Because I don't care about that. I won't know about it.

Because if we do all die, then it'll be a big victory for that Mayan calender 2012 doomsday bullshit.
It'll look like it's right. When, even if we did all die, it would just be a coincidence.

But beyond my selfish desires of not wanting everyone to die, there is another reason I don't want the world to end in 2012.

I'm feeling pretty optimistic about this year. I mean, I'm no fortune-teller, but I'm definitely feeling better about it.

I think that's mainly because I seem to have unburdened myself from something: a major part of my life that has hung around for years.

I used to get that feeling, that sinking feeling, like you know when someone mentions something you'd sort of forgotten about but are completely dreading: that feeling. Well, I used to get that feeling all the time when I'd think about this thing. But it seems to have gone.

Fundamentally if I am beyond it, then I think this year can only be better. No matter what happens. It's already better.

I don't have a plan for the year yet. I've got a lot of ideas, but effectively I'm going to improvise.

So it's going to be a jazz year.
Lots of improvising as I go. Lots of solos (ha ha, a joke, but there was lots of this last year). Lots of atonal scales.

But I don't like jazz an awful lot.

I might do some traveling. I might not. I think that will depend on whether I have a girlfriend, and whether I have any friends. And besides, it's a toss-up either way. There's loads of places I want to go. It's just a constant challenge of finding the time, money and companion(s).

I might get a new job. But that well depend wholly on the pay situation and the writing situation. I'm relatively happy to stay in this job a little while longer so long as the pay increases and I'm still getting some writing work (but not too much, because then I'd have to give up this job, but then that would be preferable, but of course that depends on the pay). You see how complex it gets when I try to write it down.

Put simply, I'll find a new job if:
a) the pay doesn't increase
b) I lose my writing work
c) conditions become more stressful and target-orientated (again without pay-rise)
d) a good job comes along

Barring a rather generous pay increase I can't see myself being at this job beyond my birthday. But then, I said that last year and here we are.

I think I've decided that there's a lot of things I could complain about. A lot of things I could worry about. But it won't do any good. I find that nothing substitutes for a bit of man-ing up, and growing up.