Category Archives: Technology, being bewildered or terrified by

See and Touch Their Bathing Suit Area

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So, hello. Where were we? I’ve not done this for a while for plenty of reasons, most of which involve:

a) not being arsed

and

b) the modern world moving on so fast that blogging took a matter of months to stop being even marginally relevant and instead look hopelessly old fashioned and quaint, like David Niven movies or the notion of shame.

However, these are important times and someone needs to be here to document them. Especially as it turns out that both the Mayans and Roland Emmerich were right, humanity- as I think we all suspect but don’t want to say out loud- will crumble to a messy end sometime in 2012. It’s important that a person grasps the mantle of banging on about these end-days at tedious length for whatever civilisation springs up in our place in the distant future, so that’s what I might as well do.

Hello future civilisation if you’re reading. I hope you’re well.

You’re all probably wondering what happened to us all, reading this in the distant future. Well, obviously, I don’t know yet- we’re still here for now, though everyone’s running out of money, pissed off with everything and taking to the streets. We’ll probably just all end up shouting each other to death in a mass orgy of impotent rage. That’ll do it. Or an asteroid, obviously.

Anyway, since the terminal descent of life as we know it into some unknown cataclysm isn’t due until some time in the new year- though hopefully not until after the Olympics as I’ve got tickets- we can turn to More Pressing Affairs.

Today’s More Pressing Affair is ‘textalgia’- a term recently coined by me when I should have been doing something more productive like, for example, absolutely anything else that anyone could care to name. Basically, experiencing ‘textalgia’ is the process of going through old text messages to relive interesting, exciting or funny moments in your recent life. Obviously, that’s if you’re the sort of person whose lives’ interesting, exciting or funny moments involve a beep and a pithy communication from a fellow human which, considering I’m the wrong side of 30 and with little to look forward to beyond Type 2 diabetes, is pretty much me.

Most modern technology is, of course, nothing special. The internet’s great and all that; but really mankind peaked with fire, the wheel, television and garlic paste in a tube. Mobile phones are mostly awful, being as they are merely a way for a man called Alan to interupt me at any time of the night or day and talk about mortgages, but they do hold also allow for the sending, receiving and storing of texts- which is useful for the sort of emotional retard like me who struggles with even the most basic face-to-face dialogue and never has a thought or emotion which needs expressing in more than 160 characters.

Texts are great. This is because phone calls are the preserve of those with bad news to impart or some drudgery to ask. Think about it, when was the last time gave you a ring to say something lovely, like “I know where to find wine” or “please can I do something lovely to your lower bits?”. No, it’s always people asking for money, telling you a family pet/member has died/is ill/is a cow; or its someone called Alan talking about mortgages. If your job involves a phone, you’ll also be aware that it’s simply a portal for whinging rather than the magic device through which someone rings to offer a pay rise or, at the very least, a sandwich.

Now, go on and check your recent texts. I’ll bet that it’s mostly nice stuff in there. Some of it mundane, sure, but possibly signed off with a nice ‘X’ which is more of a kiss than you’ll get on the phone (though that’s probably a good thing- kisses sound weird down the phone, like someone farting in a diving bell). There’ll probably be some really sweet messages in your inbox if you look right now, and definitely something funny. Possibly both if someone managed to recently send you a knock knock joke which also alluded to the fact that they like how you’ve done your hair today (a long shot admittedly but I’m working on it).

The reason texts are nice is because they serve the emotionally stunted section of contemporary society which, as luck would have it, isn’t just me but all of you as well. You want proof? You know that person you really like? With the eyes and the nose and that smile? Them? Desperate to let them know how you feel aren’t you? It wouldn’t be hard to do, would it, face-to-face? You see them enough. You suspect they might fancy you too don’t you? So have you spoken to them? Or given them a call? To tell them?

Of course you bloody well haven’t.

But your inbox is full of slightly flirty text messages pinging back and forth, isn’t it? Because you’re emotionally stunted, so is the other person, and texts at least allow you to think you’re both performing some intricate waltz of attraction when, in fact, you’re just trying to shoehorn into an SMS about shopping in Sainsburys how much you’d like to see and touch their bathing suit area.

I was in that situation once. It went on forever. Until I finally told the girl how I felt. By text. And she responded. By text. We’ve been together nearly 8 years. It could have been longer but, we were just texting back and forth for ages. Like idiots.

Nearly 8 years. Blimey. I should probably marry her. I won’t though.

I couldn’t make the vows fit into a text message.

Welcome to now

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So, that was the noughties.  Did you enjoy it?

No, I’m not sure either.  When you really think about it, lots and lots of stuff happened since the Millennium but all I can really remember of the previous decade is that everyone got an i-Phone and then Louis Walsh judged them.  This is probably not a suitable eulogy for 10 years that, logically speaking, should represent the pinnacle of all human achievement and existence thus far.

Actually, I do genuinely believe that humanity is constantly achieving greater and greater feats of excellence as time goes on but, unlike those who think this is represented by all those clever people and their big pipe in the ground at CERN, I reckon our species has thus far peaked with the Shea Stadium level of Beatles Rock Band played with the Rickenbacker controller.

Anyway, leaving the noughties behind us it’s time to boldly embark on a new year and a new decade (technically, it actually isn’t as pedants like to point out, the new decade starts with 2011 just as the Millennium actually started with 2001.  Don’t worry about it though, people who think like this are an evil on par with ethnic cleansing).  However before we get down to it this upcoming year and decade need something really quite important.

They need naming.

First of all, are we in 2010 or 2010?  I’d probably better do that in words rather than numbers.  Are we in two-thousand-and-ten or is it twenty-ten?  Personally, I favour twenty-ten, it sounds more futuristic and and while me might not all be whizzing around on hover-boards or watching Jenny Agutter undress while we run away from a chap called Francis and the ritual of Carrousel it’s at least nice to pretend we could be by giving our years more sci-fi sounding monikers.

And it looks like the future might need all the help it can get as, not only has mankind peaked as I’ve already demonstrated, but the teenies (that’s what I’m calling this decade till I can think of something better) have already got underway with the dis-spiriting news that we’ve already started hurtling down the other side of the evolutionary mountain.  Because we’ve started getting uglier.

Yes, that’s right- our old friends at BeautifulPeople.com have been at it again, this time turfing over 5,000 people off their dating website for the aesthetically pleasant and socially retarded as they have slipped below the appropriate standard of loveliness.  The folks who have managed to get through the stringent selection process and get on the website have been doing a spot of internal policing and have complained about anyone who has posted a photo of themselves that suggests they’ve gained any weight over Christmas.

Now I don’t want to pour scorn on anyone so early in a new decade but isn’t this moving slightly from an endearingly self-absorbed form of sociopathy into full blown nutterdom?  I can’t decide if BeautifulPeople.com is now on the path to becoming either a new and terrifying cult or a breeding ground for worldwide network of slightly more attractive versions of the killer from ‘Se7en’.

Judge for yourselves by reading this quote by BeautifulPeople.com’s founder Robert Hintze from possibly the most chilling press release ever unleashed: “we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld; letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model”.

Tough call isn’t it?  That talk of how they ‘mourn the loss of any member’ is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to hear some demented cult leader utter to comfort his followers after a few of their number had been at the mass suicide punchbowl a few days before ‘The Ascension’; while the use of the word ‘fatties’ does hint at the sort of simmering anger and resentment that fuelled Kevin Spacey to get Gwyneth Paltrow’s head Fed-Exed to the middle of nowhere.

So- BeautifulPeople.com; sinister cult or club for serial killers?  Robert Hintze; the new David Koresh or the new Dennis Nielsen?  Whatever it turns out to be- it’s definitely an incredibly successful website and Robert Hintze is clearly a gifted entrepreneur and the sort of man who knows how to be a success and get some publicity in 2010.

Maybe that’s what we could call this new decade then.   Not the ‘teenies’ but ‘the we-all-just-realised-that-to-be-successful-in-this-day-an-age-you’ve-got-to-be-a-cross-between-a-manipulative-control-freak-and-a-murderous-psychopath-ies’. 

Here’s to the future.  Happy New Year to you all.

So Here It Is…

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The Germans have a word: weltschmerz.  Actually, the Germans have lots and lots of words but anyway, for now we’re just focusing on weltschmerz.  It means the feeling of realising that the real world will never live up to to the ideal of it that a person has in their head.  There’s also a word in English that means exactly the same thing.

Christmas.
Here’s the image of Xmas that’s sold to us every December:  snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.
Here’s the numbing reality:  frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A My Family Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteloe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.
It is, in a word, cack.  You’re only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males).  If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as me (Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible.  Thanks).
However, in the Christmas spirit I present to you the follwoing cut-out-and-keep (if you’re monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:
Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal.  This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators.  Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet TM (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion.  Includes 2 AA batteries.  Only £29.99.
iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different of vibrate settings.  All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.
Suicide Adventure Day-  by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year.  Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?!  You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion.  From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget.  Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.
Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU! to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!.  Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension!  But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producer for Britain’s Got Talent int he hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it fair!  But wait!  Mum’s GOT a gun!  She says she can’t take it anymore!  That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with!  She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card!  Hang on!  That gun didn’t even come with the game!  Where’d she get that!  Put it down dear!  Put it down!  Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!
Merry Christmas everyone.  And a Happy New Year.

Christmas.

Here’s the image of Xmas that’s sold to us every December:  snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.

Here’s the numbing reality:  frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A ‘My Family’ Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteltoe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.

It is, in a word, cack.  Your only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males).  If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as, say,  me (size 11 Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible.  Thanks).

However, in the Christmas spirit and to help you along, I present to you the following cut-out-and-keep (if your monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:

Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still-developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal.  This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators.  Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet (TM) (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion.  Includes 2 AA batteries.  Only £29.99.

iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different vibrate settings.  All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.

Suicide Adventure Day- by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year.  Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?!  You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion.  From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget.  Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.

Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!.  Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension!  But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producers for Britain’s Got Talent in the hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it first!  But wait!  Mum’s GOT a gun!  She says she can’t take it anymore!  That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with!  She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card!  Hang on!  That gun didn’t even come with the game!  Where’d she get that?!  Put it down dear!  Put it down!  Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!

Merry Christmas everyone.  And a Happy New Year.

Charity begins online

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Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day’s worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.
Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn’t look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).
They’ve also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation.  At which point they’re hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone’s face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission.  They’re like velociraptors in bibs.
At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning in some respects with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.
This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation ‘Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2′on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop ‘Game’ will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who’s lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it’s a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some ‘frags’ or something.
Let’s explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions.  A bit like a dissertation except with the word ‘fannies’ in the 7th paragraph.  The money from this ‘Game for Good’ event is being raised for ‘Warchild’ who describe their noble mission as ‘to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion’.  The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to ‘strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4′
For those of you to whom this isn’t clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses.  I don’t want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn’t it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death?  Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something.  Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone’s paired up and living happily ever after.  The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.
I honestly didn’t mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it’s obviously how I feel right now.  A student was recently telling me how they’re i-Pod was a special ‘anti AIDS’ edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities.  And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.
Right.
It’s much like ‘Fairtrade’ products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead.  We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce ‘Fairtrade’ and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible.  They’ll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we’re the ones willing to pay for it.
Just as we’re the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can’t be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it.  Just as we’re the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends.  Just as we’re the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we’re promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.
God this planet’s fucked.

Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day’s worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.

Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn’t look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).

They’ve also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation.  At which point they’re hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone’s face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission.  They’re like velociraptors in bibs.

At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.

This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation ‘Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2′on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop ‘Game’ will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who’s lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it’s a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some ‘frags’ or something.

Let’s explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions.  A bit like a dissertation except with the word ‘fannies’ in the 7th paragraph.  The money from this ‘Game for Good’ event is being raised for ‘Warchild’ who describe their noble mission as ‘to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion’.  The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to ‘strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4′.

For those of you to whom this isn’t clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses.  I don’t want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn’t it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death?  Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something.  Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone’s paired up and living happily ever after.  The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.

I honestly didn’t mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it’s obviously how I feel right now.  A student was recently telling me how they’re i-Pod was a special ‘anti AIDS’ edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities.  And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.

Right.

It’s much like ‘Fairtrade’ products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead.  We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce ‘Fairtrade’ and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible.  They’ll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we’re the ones willing to pay for it.

Just as we’re the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can’t be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it.  Just as we’re the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends.  Just as we’re the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we’re promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.

God this planet’s fucked.

There Is A Light, It’s Going Out…

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Imagine careering through a portal and ending up a few centuries in the future. Go on, imagine it. I’m not going to sit here and describe in searing detail the mind-boggling sensation of hurtling through time. Sod that. You’ll just have to imagine it for yourselves instead- it’s about time you lot started doing some of the work round here. Go on.

Done it? Good. Just so we’re all singing off the same hymn sheet- when you arrive in the future you’d feel something like Charlton Heston does in Planet of the Apes. Only without the apes.

Now imagine wandering down the future streets in your future shoes past a future Starbucks as future teens play future music on their tinny, nasty future mobile phones (some things, alas, never change). As you walk along you happen upon a big imposing building cheerily proclaiming itself to be a ‘Museum of the Past’. It could be doing this via the medium of a great big sign or the building itself could be proclaiming it by talking directly to you through some big masonry mouth. This is the future after all.

Intrigued, you wander through the entrance, past the gift shop, and take a look around. What would you expect to see when you happened upon the area dedicated to the early 21st century? What would they be commemorating from the Noughties? While you ponder this, bear in mind that museums often adopt a faintly patronising tone towards the obsolete practices and artefacts of the past- almost chuckling with incredulity at, for instance, medieval doctors trying to cure the plague with a bunch of posies and a big stick and wondering why they didn’t just google the answer instead.

This is what I think you’d see: a waxwork figurine of Jeremy Clarkson playing tapes of him doing lots of those pregnant pauses he does….. at the end of sentences; an X-Box 360 with Guitar Hero III on a constant loop of Leona Lewis songs; a mock Hygena kitchen featuring male and female figurines crying over a mortgage statement to the strains of Dizee Rascal’s ‘Dance Wit Me’ and, in a sealed, alarmed vial protected by lasers and guns, there’ll be a tiny amount of genuine, precious water as a testament to the time before it was all used up and people had to start using a system whereby rain and nourishment are downloaded off i-Tunes.

And in amongst all this there’ll be a large display dedicated to a strange human phenomenon that will have been finally killed off around the year 2010. It’ll amuse and baffle the residents of the future who will never have experienced the particular sensation described within and will merely be able to read the accompanying notes- all the while gazing upon a vista that contains details not only on how this thing felt but also how it was battered out of existence around the turn of the Millennium.

And the title of the exhibit will be ‘Romance’.

Let’s be perfectly honest with each other here- romance is very nearly dead. It’s as outdated and outmoded as steam engines, smallpox and bands with ugly but talented drummers. This state of affairs is a particular tragedy in this country as, despite what the French or Italians would have you believe, the Brits were once the most romantic nation on Earth. Just look at our movies if you don’t believe me. I dare you to watch ‘Brief Encounter’ or ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ or ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ or ‘Gregory’s Girl’ or ‘Room At The Top’ or ‘The Go-Between’ and tell me that the understatement so traditionally inherent in the people of this island- our charming brand of emotional retardation- didn’t make for romance to be, quietly, a central pillar of our very national existence. I say quietly because romance doesn’t scream from the rooftops. Instead romance creeps up on you from nowhere, romance whispers sweet nothings, romance is- in the nicest possible way- just a voice in your head. Romance, most of all, is mystery.

And mystery just can’t be tolerated any more.

Take, for example, The Jeremy Kyle Show- a daily chavapalooza of screeching involving couples comprised of alcoholics and the eletcronically-tagged arguing over the parenthood of their children. I know a number of people who say they love the show and if you’re one of those people and, whether you’re being ironic or not, I want to address this next bit directly to you:

You are a pillock. We may be friends, we may have spoken warmly in the past and shared good times but, and I really, really mean this, you’re everything that’s wrong with the world and you should be uttery ashamed. Seriously. If this is what you call entertainment then you are single-handedly reversing 2 million years of human evolution. You are that dumb. You are that pathetic. You are everything that is wrong with everything. And you owe me a tenner.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show (I’m talking to everyone again now. Welcome back. How’ve you been? You didn’t miss much), it often features a couple from a council estate going through a DNA test to prove how much bovine sex the man (and I use that term loosely) or woman (and I’m barely adhering to that term at all) of the pair has been having. I don’t know about you, but a DNA test really takes the romance out of a relationship. In terms of loving gestures it’s on a par with spending three solid weeks bellowing into your partner’s ear that they smell of eggs. But Kyle’s Bear-pit Theatre is merely the most denegrating part of a recent movement which has lead me to picture romance being nothing more in the future than a museum exhibit referenced in an overlong introduction by a man who loves the sound of his own keyboard.

There is, quite simply, too much stuff in the world that needs to be filled. It used to be a couple of television channels, a few newspapers and the occasional book that needed creative input but now everything’s gone digital and, alongside all the stations on your Sky+ box, there’s also a great big internet out there which constantly expands to accomodate an ever growing torrent of irrelevant, pointless cack. This used to just mean a dishonourable band of ham-fisted blogs but now sites like MySpace and in particular the one you’re reading this on have lead the tiniest minutiae of everybody’s life to be broadcast through the ether as though anyone else honestly gives a flying one.

Don’t get me wrong- Facebook is a good thing in so many ways. It’s allowed me to find out which of my schoolfriends grew up to be hot or work in I.T. and the opportunity to see photos of my nearest and dearest having much more fun that I ever seem to do is always likely to warm the cockles. But should I ever need to find romance again this website would kill it off with all the dead-eyed efficiency of Predator on performance-related pay.

Let me put it this way- I’m old fashioned. Without going into too much detail, my relationship with the missus began with a genuine courtship; much like they tend to do in Jane Austen novels and contrived American sit-coms. It’s a period of my life I look back on with intense joy as a time when two people slowly got to know each other and realised that something, somewhere, somehow seemed to make a connection. And that, my friends, is what happens when you embrace a bit of mystery in your life.

If we were to meet now, however, only the first couple of days would be the same as we started chatting over a bar in Sunderland. Then, in 2008, we’d simply add each other as friends on Facebook and, within mere moments, be able to see each others’ political views, religious beliefs, favourite books, status as of 5 seconds ago and previous performances on copyright-infringing Scrabble games. Years worth of discovery would be packed into a quick browse around a webpage and then, if this was you, where could you go from there?

I’ll tell you where. You’d miss that period of finding out about your beloved and then start inventing things to find out about them that didn’t even exist. You’d ponder if they’re actually a convicted sex offender, or an abscodned member of the Thrid Reich with a talented plastic surgeon, or one of those lizard people David icke keeps banging on about. Then you’d be just a small step away from claiming your significant other has banged everyone you share a postcode with and before you know it you’d be sat in front of Jeremy Kyle’s cackling bovine audience as he lorded it over you with the results of a DNA test.

This is the future. I hope you’ll be happy.

Collision Course

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You know that special person? You’ve got one- everyone does. They might not necessarily be the person you share your bed with at night, your nearest and dearest. They might be a friend for whom your love is unrequited. They might be the one that got away all those years ago. They might be the mythically beautiful person you see on the bus every morning. You might never have even met them. But there’s someone, somewhere who gets your heart pounding and your mind racing. Someone who does for you the best thing anyone can do for another person- they make you feel, for want of a better word, funny.

Think of that person. Now, tell them how you feel. Go on. Do it. Find the way to track them down and let them know, right now, that there’s someone in the world for them and that someone is you. Tell them now, I’ll wait here for you. And be quick about it.

Because you’re about to die.

The harbinger of your impending doom, like so little else in human history, comes from Switzerland and goes by the rather bland name of ‘The Large Hadron Collider’. Essentially, it’s a 17 mile circular tunnel 100 metres below the Franco-Swiss border which is currently in the process of being cooled to -271.25 degrees centigrade. When this is done, the scientists who run it will then start firing beams of protons in opposite directions round the tunnel and make them crash into each other, thereby replicating conditions that prevailed within a few millionths-of-a-second of the Big Bang. And the reason they’re doing all this is to test their current model of particle physics which, as they put it themselves, “is known to break down at a certain energy level”.

Let’s go through that again. A bunch of men in white coats realise that a very important theory of how absolutely everything fits together at the most minute level breaks in certain extreme conditions. ‘Extreme conditions’ being, in this case, an alternative way of saying ‘The Big Bang’. They therefore have decided to recreate those exact same conditions or ‘Big Bang’ in a great big underground tunnel and just see what happens. Oh, and it’ll all happen at light-speed.

Little wonder then that more than a few people are a tad worried that, since no-one knows what’s going to actually take place, it’s entirely possible that the experiment will do something like creating a black hole that will subsequently swallow the Earth into itself.

The scientists at the colider themselves state that this is ludicrous as “there is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the Large Hadron Collider”, which is frankly a bit rich from a bunch of chaps who are basically trying to demonstrate that one of their main theories doesn’t work properly.

It’s worth getting worried about what might happen when the collider goes online as boffins (a name used by The Sun to describe all those of the ilk of scientists and inventors- a deliberately light-hearted term the newspaper uses to take the sting out of sullying itself with stories of human excellence and achievement) don’t have a partcularly impressive track record with health and safety when they’re on the cusp of great discoveries. John Logie Baird, for example, managed during one of his early experiments in creating television to blow the entire power grid of Glasgow. In a similar vein a chap called Antonio Meucci- who the United States House of Representatives recently passed a motion honouring as the true inventor of the telephone- only came up with his idea after electrocuting his wife and hearing the sound travel down the wire. If this is what happened with two blokes who were only working on transmitting electronic signals across tiny distances, heaven only knows what’ll transpire when those Swiss scientists attempt to recreate the birth of the Universe.

Which is why this is probably a good time to do everything (and, indeed, everyone) that you ever wanted to. Some scientists have postulated that if the hadron collider does create a little black hole of it’s own it won’t engulf the planet instantly, but rather take it’s own sweet time going about it- which means that the whole of humanity will have a clock over it counting down unerringly towards annihilation.

Now if you’re a fan of the movies, particularly the glut of disaster films from the late-90s that featured Earth teetering on the brink of destruction from aliens or an asteroid or something, then you’ll know the drill. We all desperately try to flee the cities and get stuck in traffic or huddle up with our families by the TV and radio awaiting news of whether Will Smith or Bruce Willis has miraculously saved us all with seconds to spare. Then we all cheer, embrace tearfully and listen to a speech by President Morgan Freeman.

I’ve got a feeling that, in real life, this won’t actually happen. Ask yourselves, is that really how you want to spend your final few hours and days on this planet, knowing that the end of everything is just around the corner? For a start off- and let’s not be coy about this- who, knowing that impending armageddon will expunge all awkward consequences, wouldn’t want to give mass, unadulterated fucking-on-the-streets a bash? Just imagine a great big, winner-takes-all, grab-the-nearest-stranger, thronging mass of limbs and fluids rolling merrily up the high street and into oblivion. Like Newcastle on a Friday night. That’s a fitting way to give life a send-off.

Mind you, I did start this piece by stating that everyone should go out and find their special someone before time runs out, and it would take an extraordinary stroke of luck to dive head first (figuratively speaking) into a mass Book of Revelations orgy and happen to catch hold of your one true soulmate. But then again, a bookmaker once set the odds of Earth getting swallowed by a black hole in the next 50 years at 100 million-to-one. So things going horribly wrong in that reactor under the soil of Switzerland could turn out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us all and the chances of inadvertantly porking your spiritual muse seem tiny and easily surmountable by comparison. Or, alternatively, you could just play similar odds by buying a lottery ticket.

Either way you’d be getting screwed.