Dustymania

Apparently Google has some algorithmic demon that picks up on key words in one's blog and targets advertising accordingly.

I recently wrote a blog in which I expressed my quite sincere hope that the woman who wrote 'The Secret' gets cancer. Don't get me wrong, this is purely an intellectual exercise. I've never met her, I don't actually have any strong opinion on her, but her book is pure idiocy, the kind of vulgar insult to actual philosophy that does nothing more than play on people's narcissism and desperation, and I just want to see what would happen if its central theory, the so called 'Law' of Attraction, was put to a particularly gruesome test involving her body and a rapidly-growing tumour.

Now, here's the funny bit. Google's magic algorithm must have picked up on the reference to the book, because it chose to put up an advert promoting, wait for it...

A 'Law of Attraction Business Model' advocated by some website called 'Vision-To-Reality'.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you 'vision to stupidity' and the most delicious taste of irony I've had in ages. Well spotted, Google. You manage to advertise a company based, one presumes, on 'The Secret', bang in the middle of the blog of a drunk who is wishing a terminal illness on its author.

So, genius Googlerithm, make what you will of this:

Google is entirely run by promiscuous homosexuals who engage in rampant three- and four-way sexual encounters throughout the working day, usually at or bent over their desks, but sometimes in the company pool.

Let's see what adverts that produces.

Google - what fuckwits!

Tee hee!

P.S. I don't really have anything to say about Al Gore, either.

The title of this instalment in my 'blog' is totally an in-joke which will only be funny to two people, possibly not even that many. So don't even try. It's a reference to something I was supposed to have written but didn't.

But since someone pointed out I hadn't blogged for a long time (I did write one about Horne and Corden, or whatever they were called - remember them? They were vaguely funny and massively irritating about a hundred years ago - but I forgot to publish it), I thought I'd put mind to keyboard and see what came out.

Two things bothered me today. One was a bad-suited mental card-sharp called Esther Hicks who apparently channels a non-physical entity called Abraham who gives lousy advice to stupid people. If you want to see more of this woman's 'work', just Youtube her. I've watched quite a bit, with that growing sense of outrage coupled with a strange delight for which there must, surely, be a word in German. Outrage, because she says things along the lines of 'victims of the Holocaust got what they really wanted'. No, I'm not kidding. She does have the decency to point out that this isn't an answer most people want to hear. Bless her.

Delight, because it's like watching a really, really skilled stand-up comedian at work. She's steely, she's charming, she's outrageously manipulative. She is very, very skilful at doing something at which I am reasonably skilful, which is taking advantages of people's fear of being the object of other people's attention and turning it to her advantage.

Of course, when you watch a skilful stand-up comic at work, you're aware that even if they make jokes about the Holocaust, they're trying to make you laugh and nothing more. With this woman, there is a sense of outrage, because the people asking her for guidance are under the illusion she actually has some to give.

Watch her. Watch how she singles people out, instils anxiety in them, manipulates their reactions, makes them a stooge for her routines, leaves them feeling somehow grateful to her. It's bullying, mostly. And if you want to know if she has anything real to contribute to the sciences, to philosophy, or to public debate - subtract her from the equation, write down what she says, and then try to make sense of it.

Anyway, the only other thing I have to say about Esther Hicks is that, if we get what we want, I want her to be torn to pieces by wolves.

Her and 'Abraham', the non-existent vat of ectoplasmic snake-oil she's so busy peddling.

I'm just putting it out there.

Oh, and to the stupid cow who wrote 'The Secret' - I hope you get cancer. I mean even if you do, it's only because you wanted it, right?

The other thing that is bugging me is seeing that overtly irritating gay blond bottle-Scandinavian chap from 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' - name begins with K, I think, but I wasn't really paying attention - 'transforming' the life of a woman by giving her a makeover and putting her picture on a billboard.

Okay, it's late night television, and I've been drinking. I may not quite have understood what was happening.

The woman in question was tall, with a killer figure and a cute face. It wasn't like he had to work hard to make her gorgeous. Basically, it all came down to the billboard.

She told him tearfully that she would never forget him and she would keep him in her heart.

Why? Well, apparently, because he put her on a billboard.

That's right. The most transformative experience of her life was being made a rough and temporary facsimile of someone who might be famous. Briefly.

Orwell aside, the future of the human race looks bleak, and here's why.

We will be genegineered into narrow corrals of 'racial perfection' not by Mengeles strapping us down and injecting acid into our gonads.

We will, by the looks of things, walk willingly into the fire. Because the wide-screen telescreens will tell us to. We, as a race, will be so desperate for moments of validation based on nothing but our looks and, crucially, our visibility, that we'll make any sacrifice to achieve them.

Warhol would be astonished. It's not just that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, it's that we'll suck Satan's cock to get there even if it's ejaculating rancid lipsuction fat.

P.s. I am beginning to lose faith in Facebook as a source of spiritual nourishment. Can you believe that? I actually had someone complaining about the misrepresentation of Catholicism in the media and wishing that the poster-kids for Rome were a bit more... wait for it... charismatic.

Yeah, because that's the priority. Charisma.

I hate to see a minority bashed, so I naturally expressed my solidarity. Although I'd feel a lot more pro-Catholic if they'd sack their Pope as being unfit to hold office, change their policies on homosexuality and abortion, and sell up the Church's assets and distribute the money to the poor in accordance with the teachings of one J. Christ, Esq.

Religion hey. What would Esther Hicks have to say?

So, celebrities are boycotting Nobu because it continues to serve the endangered blue fin tuna.

At the risk of sounding like a cynic, and fully aware that every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single fish, or whatever it is, something about this pongs of sensationalism. And inconsistency.

Are they boycotting every supermarket that continues to serve Atlantic cod? Inhumanely raised veal? Food grown in illegal Israeli settlements?

Why pick on Nobu? It offers bluefin tuna to its patrons while pointing out in the menu that it's an endangered species. That smacks of hypocrisy to some, but at least it's giving customers an informed choice. Isn't that what 21st century post-New Labour Britain is all about? Choice?

Does Tesco's packaging for veal tell the truth in the same way Nobu's menus do? Does the average caff selling cod and chips mention the fact that Atlantic cod stocks are on the verge of total collapse on its ketchup-stained laminated price-list?

Like fuck it does. And do you seriously think a handful of Nobu restaurants are going to have the impact on the bluefin tuna population that the entire Japanese nation does?

If Stephen Fry et al are serious, they should boycott Japan. Personally, I can't see that the Japanese are any less entitled to their catastrophic cultural addiction to fatty tuna than we are to our addiction to beef. Raising cattle = deforestation, enormous consumption of water supplies and a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Everyone else getting up in arms over Nobu (and I rather suspect some of them are just taking pot-shots at the restaurant because it's so hideously trendy) should accept that, without regulation, the likelihood of the general populace actually changing their behaviour significantly to save the bluefin tuna on this rapidly dying planet is about as great as the likelihood of my giving birth to a tap-dancing giraffe. For crying out loud, people freak out if they add a penny to the price of petrol, all the while nodding and saying 'yes, we really need to do something about global warming'. I guess we will get the planet we deserve.

In the meantime, given that my days are numbered, if I had the money I would go to Nobu right now and demand the bluefin tuna. And relish every delicious morsel.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Daniel Merriweather.

Now this blog is not intended to be an organ to facilitate my public flirting. (Although Sean Maguire - if you're reading this, I love you. No, I really love you. I mean it.)

Sorry, got diverted. Now, to Daniel Merriweather.

Because it's a beautiful day I opened a bottle of verdelho and made some lunch. (Linguine with crab and grilled courgettes and tomatoes and fresh herbs. Oh and little tiny capers. Yumm....)

Sorry, got distracted. Now, Daniel Merriweather.

(I MEAN it Sean. Let's do it, let's fall in love, and then let's have really comedic rows where you can do stunts and bump into things 'cos you are adorable when you do that and then we can have make-up sex and you can do Anything You Want.)

Sorry. Daniel. Merriweather.

So, it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining. You might even say the 'weather' is 'merry'. (Coincidence? Yes. Simple as that really. It just takes an old fraudulent tarot-reader like me to make the connection. If you think there is some actual meaningful connection between the merry weather and Daniel Merriweather being on the telly when I turned it on, you're an idiot.)

So sunny day, I'm indoors, my aversion to sunlight being a matter of record, and I turn on the telly and it's the music chart show. I am so out of touch with popular music I have to pretend to get Frisky and Mannish's references but it's a LIE. So I decide it might be a good idea to see what the young people are listening to.

And this young Australian scamp called Daniel Merriweather is singing a heart-rending (* people who say 'heart-rendering should either be sterilised or have their hearts rendered) ballad called 'Red'. It's a good song, with a great hook, although the lyrics are at times held hostage to the banality necessary to make a pop song accessible to the Public ('behind your lies I can see the secrets you don't show' was one such, I believe).

But overall, it's a tuneful pop ballad in the great tradition of the cardiovocal efforts of Sensitive Guys throughout the ages.

OR IS IT?

You see, there is something interesting about this song, to me anyway. And I don't just mean Daniel's gorgeously crooked smile and Hurtin' Expression. That much is old-school. Hurtin' Expressions are the stock-in-trade of male troubadours trying to convince you that they really really REALLY love you and therefore it's tantamount to torturing them with needles under their fingernails that you don't return their affection. Aforesaid Expressions are also the standard operating procedure of rogues and vagabonds who need to convince you that they just made a mistake, you have to forgive them, please take them back etc.

*** Time for a quick remedial lesson in Male Emotion:

I really love you = I want to fuck you.
I'm in pain because you don't love me = It hurts that you won't let me fuck you.
I'm suicidal because you don't love me = I'm threatening to kill myself as blackmail to make you fuck me.

Likewise:

I was a fool = I fucked someone else but I still want to fuck you, now I must abase myself in the hope of getting away with it. 'Cos then I get to fuck you more, even though we both know I'll probably fuck someone else at some point.

And finally:

I was such a fool, I know you'll never love me again, but I'll never get over you = Even though I know I screwed up completely and you'll never let me fuck you again, I want you to think well of me and maybe miss me a little bit, because you'll tell your friends, and then one of them might let me fuck her.

In most songs of this type, the Sensitive Guy proves his sensitivity (i.e. fuckability) by throwing himself, metaphorically, at the feet of the Girl. He cedes his power to her, because either calculation or impulse tell him to. And, he hopes, she will reward him with forgiveness (i.e. fucking). It's how these things are done.

Why is Daniel Merriweather different? Let him speak for himself:

'And I can't do this by myself
All of these problems, they're all in your head
And I can't be somebody else
You took something perfect
And painted it red.'

This is Sensitive Guy territory, but with a magnificent post-feminist twist. The difference being that in this song, She is Entirely To Blame.
Reading between the lines, what he's essentially saying is:

You're a psycho. You're fucked in the head. Your problems are yours, not mine. I have no intention of changing to accommodate your neuroses. Even though it actually hurts me, I'm giving you the wide berth you deserve. Actually, come to think of it, I had pretty much gone off fucking you anyway. You crazy bitch.

Ordinarily this kind of thing is the province of The Girl, inasmuch as in these narratives it's almost always the Guy who is At Fault, To Blame, and the rest of it. The Girl who resists her desire to get back with the Bad Boy is Strong (he is Weak). When she walks out on him, she's Asserting Herself (he's always left Bereft or Confused). He prostrates himself and she revels - tearfully - in her power.

How many songs do you know in which She let Him down not by going off with some other guy (Cf. 'Burn' by the tremendous Ray Lamontaigne), but by being a nutter? You see, in the male troubadour tradition, Betty-Blue types can be the object of adoration or regret or even euthanasia, but it's a bit, well, girly, to say to one of them: 'I'm breaking up with you, because you've REALLY upset me, all right, and I think you're Bad For Me, and It's Over and I'm Walking Away.'

Of course that's the window-dressing. What he's really saying is, 'actually, sod off, you're an over-emotive pain-in-the-ass'. Only he's saying it in a Sensitive Guy way complete with Hurtin' Expression. And that's the genius of it.

Fans of Leonard Cohen will probably be able to give some examples other than this tune. But they (examples, not fans of Leonard Cohen) are rare birds. 'Red', by Daniel Merriweather, belongs to a post-feminist world. It doesn't assume that male and female instincts and emotions are identical, although there is an enormous degree of overlap. It does conclude that in a world in which men and women are equal, men are just as entitled to blame women for their emotional failures as the other way round. In this world, men suffer too, and at the woman's hand, and don't have to take any of the blame.

Shifty sods, you might say. But in any evolutionary struggle, that's how the games are played. I find this actually quite an exciting development because it signals the feminisation of culture, something which I think can only yield improvement. I'm not speaking for womankind, of course. Most women who fall for Daniel will probably fall for his lovely voice and delicious lips and Hurtin' Expression and won't pay much close attention to the message behind the lyric. They might even think they'll be The One To Make Up For That Last Evil Bitch Who Hurt Him. And maybe even by identifying this as something new, I'm showing my age.

Either way, I will continue to objectify him in print and to some degree reduce him to his physical virtues. It's a post-feminist world, matey. Get used to it.

(Sean. Call me.)

POST SCRIPT. The lovely Than Slade has pointed out that, in fact, the blues are full of songs in which men moan about their crazy girlfriends. Oh well. I never said mine was a very sound theory.

(Sean. Who are you to turn love away?)

so,

i've maintained for some time now that Schadenfreude is the Zeitgeist. the Susan Boyle phenomenon just proves this. however lovely it was initially to see a rather odd-looking woman confound the expectations of the unbearably smug 'judging' panel of Britain's Got No Shame, now i just feel as though we're hounding the woman, with a palpable sense of expectation that at some point she's going to go postal.

she seems a feisty sort, but i imagine her life experience has not equipped her for the role in which she has now been cast. the collective media are audibly salivating at the prospect of her very public nervous breakdown and possible 'woman strangles cat Pebbles then gasses herself' headline.

i have a suggestion. since we have apparently become a culture which has no shame about eviscerating someone in public, let's revert to the guidelines set out by the Romans. Viz:

1. we buy the Hippodrome.
2. we reinstate the practice of throwing Christians to the lions.
3. we also throw Muslims to the lions, so that nobody accuses us of being Islamophobic.

why Christians and Muslims and not, for example, Buddhists? because Christians and Muslims believe in Life After Death. and i gather that dying as a Martyr guarantees you fast-track entry to Life After Death. it's like being a member of one of those special clubs for frequent flyers that give you access to the airport courtesy lounges that i always imagine are full of fruit baskets and hot Russian acrobats who are just dying to give me a rub-down. *any B.A. club members please verify.

now - and please, if you can find a flaw in my reasoning, do tell me - given that people who are martyred get Fast Track Entry to the Eternal Frequent Flyer Club that is Heaven, that must be worth a few seconds agony at the claws of a cranky lion. and think how entertaining that would be for the rest of us!

ergo:

Christians (and Muslims) get publically mauled to death by Lions. they get to heaven, we get a good laugh, Susan Boyle gets a break.

everybody's happy.

the language of Monkeybooze has four elements:

1. the word 'monkey'
2. the word 'booze'
3. a whistle, and;
4. a hum.

MONKEY

represents the first and third person pronouns and all nouns (with a handful of exceptions). the word for 'monkey' is 'monkey'.

all nouns and pronouns are pluralised by being repeated. so 'I' is 'monkey', but 'we' is 'monkey monkey'.

there are no articles. so 'the monkey' would be 'monkey' and 'the monkeys' would be 'monkey monkey'.

BOOZE

represents the second person pronoun and all verbs in all tenses and voices, with a handful of exceptions. thus: 'you are a monkey' would be 'booze booze monkey'. there are no auxiliary verbs but doubling can be used to cover tenses other than the present. so 'i am' is 'monkey booze' and 'i will be' is monkey booze booze'. negation is signified by shouting the word 'booze'.

WHISTLE

the whistle covers everything adverbial, prepositional, including adverbial phrases, and all the demonstratives and interrogatives. in writing it is represented by an asterisk. thus: 'this man is a monkey' would be '* monkey booze monkey'.

HUM

the hum is all adjectives, with the exception of the word for 'drunk', which is 'monkey'. so 'this monkey is a drunk monkey' would be '* monkey booze monkey monkey'.

so: 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog would be':

hmm hmm monkey booze * hmm monkey.

and 'i am so drunk i can't find my monkey' would be

monkey booze * hmm monkey BOOZE monkey.

just thought i'd clear it up.

xx

as it happens, i went to a wedding the other day to which i hadn't been invited. now i know that makes me sound like Maud from Harold and Maud, but it was in fact my friends' wedding and i'd got confused by the multiple invitations and turned up to the ceremony when in fact they really just wanted me at the reception. luckily they thought it was funny and someone else had done the same thing so i had a wedding crasher buddy.

i'm glad i did go, though, because for one thing, it was a very beautiful service and for another, it gave me an idea for this blog. it was a civil ceremony performed by an official in a town hall. there was no mention whatsoever of religion. so in the absence of the lofty and beautiful language of the King James Bible or some such thing, i was half expecting a dry-as-dust municipal ceremony that would leave us all bored rigid.

not at all. it was very well phrased, with some beautiful moments, and it was wonderfully concise as well. it went straight to the heart of the matter - that marriage is a union of people through love, commitment and devotion.

it made a lie of a sentiment that i often hear from non-religious people who say they'd still like a Church wedding because 'it's so much more beautiful'. call me a grouchy old atheist, but this fucks me right off. the C of E is, by and large, a lovely institution full of quaint English humanism, but it still has a long way to go before i'll regard it as entirely civilised. so having your wedding in a church when you don't believe in God is lending your support, publicly, to an institution that still treats gays and lesbians as inferior beings.

and the civil version can be just as lovely. so there.

the other thing that interested me, though, was that part of the ceremony did actually define 'marriage' as being between a man and a woman. this provoked an audible gasp from one of the handsomely-dressed gentlemen at the back. it did seem egregious. we're watching a man and woman being wedded. why did the registrar have to throw in a 'definition'? was it to appease the anti-gay-marriage brigade? it was an off-note in an otherwise tuneful melody.

if, as i'm being told, civil partnerships are 'marriages' in all but the name (they're not quite, but by and large the two things are equal), why are we still lumbered with 'civil partnership' as a term? opponents of same-sex marriages are against the whole idea of putting same-sex relationships on equal terms with different-sex ones. merely having civil partnerships as a legal entity already does the damage - the genie is out of the bottle - so surely they can't be so utterly utterly shallow and thick that they are going to make a fuss about what it's called? about a single word?

surely!

whenever the subject of gay marriage comes up, i am always struck by one thing. its opponents must be incredibly insecure if they attach so much importance to a word. it's the same when people say ludicrous things like 'gay marriage undermines the institution of marriage'. what? surely if same-sex couples want to marry, it reinforces the institution, by asserting getting married is such a lovely thing, even the gays want to do it.

i mean how, exactly, does gay marriage 'undermine' the role of marriage? this is a question nobody has ever been able to answer. they just assume it's self-evident. but if it's that simple, they should be able to make a case. they never can.*

the other one that makes me laugh is 'undermines the family'. human beings by their nature pair off and have offspring which are raised in communities. we've always done it and we always will. attempts to break this instinctual pattern, such as on early kibbutzim or various misguided socialist experiments, always involve massive coercion and always end in failure. so how the hell can letting two people of the same sex get married and use the word 'married' to describe it possibly undermine the family?

the only way someone can believe this nonsense - which, to be honest, is just a rationalisation of homophobia - is if they think marriages and families are such innately fragile things that they need to be held together by the feeble glue of being 'special'. in other words, heterosexual bonding is actually so fraught, so inclined to shatter at any moment, that only by putting it on a pedestal can it be preserved.

mind you, maybe that's true...

* i should point out that the kind of people who get their knickers in a twist about 'the gays' 'hijacking' the word 'marriage' are, one can be almost certain, very, very stupid. so perhaps that's why they have trouble constructing proper arguments.

okay, i said i wouldn't do this but i was provoked.

i predicted in a previous instalment of this, my blog, also known as my excuse for staring into space on the tube, and indeed, my favourite displacement activity, that the 'there is probably no God' bus adverts would start a kind of war.

today i saw an ad saying 'There really is God, stop worrying and enjoy your life'. paid for by the Russian Orthodox Church.

three things:

1. i love the non-specificness of 'there is God'. no indefinite article. and yes, i know Russian doesn't have one, but i don't think that's the point. it's almost Spinozan in its total lack of willingness to define the Deity whose existence is being asserted with such unbelievable - literally - certitude. this makes me angry. this kind of intellectual vacuity makes me really, really cross.

2. it's a total, hideously unimaginative rip-off of the agnostic adverts which at least had the brains and dignity to say 'there probably isn't a God'. note the 'probably'. it might seem cocky, but it isn't nearly as chin-droppingly arrogant as the certainty of the Russian Orthodox version. which is a copy. a bad copy. not even enough imagination to come up with a new slogan. but then again, Christianity didn't have enough imagination not to copy Mithraism et al. yes that's right. it's a trope, a meme, a recurring metaphor, indeed, a cliché, the dying-and-reborn-born-to-a-virgin god myth. it isn't, by the way, that Christ is everywhere - it's that Christ is just one of many.

3. this means war.

4. don't get excited. of course it doesn't. Christians are still, by and large, the nice hypocrites they've always been. it's not like those people who hate women and loathe gays and want to enforce their disgusting Medieval religious laws on us.

funny, isn't it? any reader of that last sentence assumes they know to whom i'm referring. but it could apply to almost any religious ideology of the last 2000 years.

i've always said there's no such thing as 'religion'. there are, however, such things as 'religions'.

O. M. F. G.

As my hipster friends might say if I had any.

I was just in Walthamstow walking past a church and saw a sign saying 'There definitely IS a God, rejoice!'

I gather this is the riposte to those lovely bus adverts.

I look forward to the people who came up with this slogan providing me with unequivocal evidence for God's definite existence.

I cannot imagine a more thorough example of (a) missing the point and (b) showing yourself to be as stupid as we've always suspected you to be, only we were too polite to say.

I mean, as Hermione Grainger would say, if she definitely did exist... 'honestly!'.

However, apart from the fact that it made me laugh in the same way I do when I see videos of toddlers tripping over dogs (yes, I've watched 'You've Been Framed' and I have laughed - the key is to turn the sound down and play Diamanda Galas at the same time)... apart from that aforementioned fact, this sign clearly indicates that the mere fact of someone's pointing out, very gently, that there probably isn't a God, is seen as drawing the battle lines.

This is going to get nasty.

And yet it's going to be hilariously funny at the same time.

Right, that's the end of my contribution to the debate about God's existence. Next blog is going to be about puppies.

Or the fact that Barack Obama is really quite strangely hot.

As of today, Section 76 of the 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act makes it an offence punishable by up to ten years in prison to elicit or attempt to elicit information about a member of the armed services 'which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.'

For instance, taking a photograph of a police officer could, in theory, constitute such an offence.

Extremely stupid children could probably make the following points which seem to escape the utterly intolerable Jacqui Smith:

1. That wording is so broad you could drive a herd of John Prescotts through it, and makes no mention of intent - in other words, there seems to be no need to prove intent to facilitate a terrorist act. Laws really should be framed with a little more attention to detail.

2. Photographs of members of the armed services might be useful to people planning acts of terrorism. They might also be useful in documenting, for example, acts of police brutality or abuses of power.

3. This is giving carte blanche to any member of the armed services who, for whatever reason, decides to object to photographs being taken.

4. Only very stupid children continue to believe that the police are always the good guys.

I have a horrible suspicion that over the next few years I'm going to be making this point again, and again, and again, but here goes:

Never give to the State any power you wouldn't be perfectly happy to have exercised against you.

We don't even need the lessons of history to know that power corrupts and that those in possession of it abuse it. We need only the most basic understanding of human behaviour.

ID cards are going to go through because not enough people said 'hang on, this is nonsense. This is exactly the reason we kicked Napoleon's sorry little arse.' We are sleepwalking into a time when the citizenry are answerable the State, not - as it should be in a liberal democracy - the other way round.

And by the by, if anyone ever says 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear', punch them violently in the face. And then show them the flowers at Stockwell tube station.