The Thing Is.

Apparently ‘The Thing’ movies are on their third incarnation since the sixties, each reflecting the current zeitgeist. Anyway being in the latter stages of a cold here’s a new proposal for a fourth. 

For

thousands 

of years the human race

has suffered from the common cold. 

Innocuous enough but strangely resistant to any form of cure. It’s just two sickie days and a runny nose that firms up into gooey lemon curd. But what if that lemon curd has been slowly dissolving some lower part of the human brain responsible for individuality? Yes I’ve just read on the internet that this has been know about for years. Since the 1800’s the elite responsible people in power have been working relentlessly to counteract this long-term condition affecting all of us. After the smogs of the fifties they created an explosion in advertising and spent millions of dollars on television networks just to help us make our individual choices. Their slow sickening realisation that the masses would dissolve into pointless dissolute eccentricity made them redouble their efforts. They expanded government, provided us with an intricate framework of laws and provided us with wars just so we wouldn’t fall victim to the malaise of the common cold. But after all this valiant effort we just kept catching colds, atchooo, and our condition worsened. They provided countless hours of sit-coms to help us remember what it’s like to have a sense of humour, hours of reality programs to show us how non-suffering individuals can have fun in the jungle and Essex and bitch about other people’s cooking. And all interspersed with those vital ads should we succumb to not knowing what to buy. Sadly their superhuman efforts on our behalf have come to no avail and it is widely runed that 2012 will be the year of their final defeat. How we will cope without them God only knows. With our unique power to pursue being an individual gone what will be our fate as we finally succumb to, ‘The Thing that makes us Sneeze’? A nondescript oneness, a sort of pointless freedom? Who knows. So coming to a cinema near you, the scariest film you’ll ever see, “The Thing from Wolverhampton.”

Flattened by Stats.

I was sharing a few beers last week with a huge Stiffmouse fan who is, if not the actual person, Matt Cardle. That is when the X Factor star fancies inhabiting an alternative body to sling back several incognito pints in the dingy marquee behind one of Sheffield’s most disreputable pubs, lit only by a weedy string of post apocalyptic Christmas lights. This meeting and noticing Stiffmouse page views for November are heading for 500 made me for a moment feel quite bullish. But after a further moments analysis I figure there are less than thirty people consistently bored enough to follow my blog. So how do I feel about thirty? And in itself isn’t that a question that could shake our numerical world like a CGI earthquake, conflating as it does the pre-cision of numbers with the inde-cision of feelings? I suspect numbers are merely our way of applying a fanciful post accuracy to, in more simple terms, what is or isn’t enough. Anyway thirty is somewhere between a pitiful percentage of world population and a decent audience for a pub gig. Similarly in terms of large and small numbers the numerous millions in the government compensation fund for the damage caused in the summers riots has so far paid out £3,500, and the £6 million available in the bankruptcy settlement to pay the swindled but hopeful Christmas savers in that collapsed Christmas saving company of a few years ago has been reduced by £8 million legal costs to -£2 million. How do we feel abut that?

Life on Balls.

I’ve just watched a robot demonstration. It was like a miniature 3’ tall office block balanced on top of a basketball. It sensed any inclination and rotated the ball to right itself 160 times a second. It could stay where it was or move around in response to being pushed, follow a person and dance to music. And then there’s the Arab Spring. OK this is a bit tenuous but go with it. Now perhaps it’s just me but balancing on a basketball and righting myself 160 times a second to counteract dangerous inclinations is an apt metaphor for my cognitive condition. I exist in a constant succession of micro tweaks this way and that so as to appear, outwardly at least, sensible. I call it thinking. God forbid some ripple in the carpet should send me spiralling off into an uncontrollable wobble, but then again I might perfectly maintain my basketball balance whilst imperceptibly drifting around on the inclines of my circumstance. So now lets look at the long standing Arab leaders, Gadaffi et al. For thirty years they’ve been on a steady incline tweaking themselves upright 160 times a second. Everything is and always has been perfectly ‘sensible’ so “why on earth has the world suddenly gone mad?”

Surely it would benefit the human race greatly if we took into account that however upright we may appear our individual cognition has no way of identifying where it is in the overall cognitive landscape. All we have is the facility to right ourselves 160 times a second. If we did recognise this universal proclivity as fact it would dramatically alter our approach to social organisation. “Power corrupts…” would no longer be a whimsical myth but a scientific fact that must be designed out. Anyway skyscrapers on balls is a great idea. They’d bend with the wind, we could move them around and when it’s time to demolish them just drive them to a land fill and tip them over.

Grapes of What?

So the Republicans wouldn’t give an inch on increased taxes, I guess they didn’t need to because the automatic result of stalemate will be spending cuts to reduce the $15 trillion US deficit. I’m amazed no one’s done the maths behind income distribution and the effective funding of society. My guess is they would prove extreme pay differences cause government debt. The average cost of Medicare, etc per individual will be x say. It will vary only slightly between rich and poor. The unemployed poor though will absorb vast amounts in welfare. These people require a framework to be profitable, a job in a company. Now when the top people of that company take excessive pay they help to starve it of capital. As monetary asset strippers they reduce the blood flow down the pyramid and one salary of £3 million at the top will starve 3,000 jobs at the bottom. These 3,000 move from profitability to absorbers of welfare, and government debt grows. In these recessionary times if the top salaries were reduced the company would have extra resources to grow and in growth bring more individuals out of welfare back into profit. The resulting company growth would benefit workers, companies and the government in higher tax revenues and less welfare i.e. double whammy debt reduction. It’s not about taxing the wealthy more because that would just be swallowed up in welfare, it’s about proving to them that their greed is harming everyone, themselves included. Don’t they remember the depression and the dust bowl and that they were only saved by selling arms to their western allies?

Meanwhile this year there has been a drought in Oklahoma. Time to read John Steinbeck again.

Passive Aggressive Machines.

Do you enter into conversation with lifts and Sainsburys automated checkout stations? Where are we now? “Ground floor.” Are you going to open the bloody doors? “Doors opening.” Thank you, etc. Only by entering into conversation with these messages do you realise how passive aggressive they are. “Have you used your Nectar card?” No I’m just trying to find the bloody thing, it’s in here somewhere. “Have you…” OK OK, ah here it is. “Card accepted.” Oh thank you, very kind of you, I feel quite fulfilled by your sincere endorsement. Oh and “Approval needed”, which insinuates gently but categorically I have to ask an embryo to verify I’m in fact old enough to be his grandfather. Yes thank you very much, I’m well aware I’m fifty years the wrong side of eighteen. Then there’s “Unexpected item in the bagging area.” This means ‘you cheating bastard, you’ve tried to get away without paying for something.’ I tell the machine an unexpected crow has just landed on my six-pack of sausages and is pecking at it to get it open, but it takes no notice. The embryo looks at me suspiciously and swipes his magic card again. Finally it gives me permission to go, “Please take your shopping. Thank you for shopping at Sainsburys.” But this is just a taster of what’s to come. Imagine switching your fully automatic robot hoover on to clean the front room carpet and its sweat cleaner voice reporting, “Perhaps in future Gordon you would like to pick up all the small Lego pieces before you turn me on.” Or your programmable dishwasher suggesting, “Gordon this is the second time I’ve had to tell you you’re not pre-washing your dinner plates thoroughly enough.” No, mark my words, we’re heading for robot servitude. And then on leaving our Sainsburys I hear, “The travelator is coming to an end. Be prepared to step of.” Well quite frankly, at my age that’s offensive. 

Youth Unemployment.

 I’m angry at the way my generation has shafted our children. We’ve given them false expectations, a false sense of maturity, largely debilitating schooling, a huge bill for higher education of dubious benefit, and to cap it all no outlet for their skills and enthusiasm. Though it’s no fault of theirs our children are trained consumers of product and entertainment just as19th century kids were trained to labour or starve. Where those kids, though they were never fairly paid or credited for it, built a cushion of wealth for our nation that’s taken a century to dissipate, our kids have entered on the downward curve, indebted, contracting and soft. Today’s wombs are holding leveraged babies. So much for blame, it’s never useful. 

So kids forget your jumping-through-hoops education and enjoy some real learning of some kind that feeds your enthusiasm for life itself. Forget your TV training in consuming, celebrities and luxuries from our ‘Taste the Difference’ range. Beneath the surface of life is a cave of many riches, understandings, emotions and the twists and turns of your own Arthurian legend. It is your duty only to strive to be the best you can be not to just fulfil some employer’s needs. Be that and they will come to you. Pick the fruit that’s within your grasp; you will be taller tomorrow.

And to my generation. Remember that times have profoundly changed. Challenges and solutions are not the same. Remember that your ‘never had it so good’ was built on a million previous struggles and sacrifices, and now it’s your turn. Not this time in Christmas presents but holding, supporting and encouraging our young to find their fulfilment and prosperity. We don’t know the answers, not now, and neither do they, but it is they that must find them with our help, not us.

To politicians. Begin to think. You have too long mouthed. Take risks to be loved and supported, for the answers are no longer in the box.

And to Jeremy Paxman. Well done for not strangling those two shites, I would have nutted ‘em.

Raw Rats Arse.

In our kitchen there has lurked for no small while a petite jar from ‘Deli Continental.’ It contains, ‘Shiitake, Paddy Straw, Nameko and Porcini mushrooms in vegetable oil.’ Someone paid good money for it and gave it to us as a present. I can see why. It has the familiar look of a Bush-tucker Trial. It wouldn’t take much to convince me it contains lambs eyelids, rats pituitary glands and assorted baby eagle offal. We’ve never found the right occasion to open it. Presumably if we ever do get around to opening it it will also taste like the latter. So Mark out of Towie is, this very pre-recorded moment, in the Australian jungle in a Melbourne back garden attempting to eat his own Deli Continental fare. Good luck mate, good on yer. I like people with arrogance, it’s a much misunderstood virtue. I admire someone honest enough to say, “bring it on, sure I’ll do it, up for anything me, what? Fuck that” followed by “ It’s not humanly possible”, after watching Freddie Star down a bowl of raw rats arse. Granted Freddie was hospitalised as a result, so technically Mark was right. No I won’t have anything said against mark, he’s as translucent as a wet t-shirt and I prefer a wet t-shirt any day to Teresa May’s murky obfuscations. OMG I’ve just imagined Teresa May in a wet t-shirt! Give me that Deli Continental jar.