The Problem with Democracy
February 28th, 2007 at 16:15

Democracy’s brilliant, right? Getting to have a vote every five years so that we can determine which cartel of elites is going to rule over us until the next election is the very definition of freedom. Our democracy has evolved to a point where each one person gets one vote - much like democracy itself, this is a fine idea in principle, but I think there’s one glaring problem with it.

The general public are idiots. If the people in charge listened to them we’d have bought back hanging, they’d be no tax on petrol and the Foreigner Secretary would be applauding the murder of Saddam Hussein for his “responsibility for 9/11″. We’d probably have invaded France by now too, because that Chirac looked at us funny and you can’t trust johnny foreigner anyway.

Surely a sort of meritocracy would be the best form of government? Everyone would get into power based on their abilities rather than simply being popular - everyone who’s been through school knows that the popular kids were always vacuous cretins, whilst the geeky clever kids always got the best results. So why do we let the people with arguably the most important jobs in the country get there without even a written exam and some coursework?

Just think how great a meritocracy would be - experts in their fields in charge of all of the important things, such as Alvin Hall being Chancellor and Ross Kemp Jack Bauer as Secretary of Defence. I guess the only problem would be how to define who is best for each job. I mean, look at economics for instance - do we know if Alvin Hall is a free marketeer or a fan of state intervention? Economics joke: we’d need to be able to find his invisible hands.

This meritocracy would act purely pragmatically, and I guess this could create some issues. As it’s tied to no ideology it’ll have no moral base or restrictions - everything will be up for grabs. Why not kill off all old people using death squads? It reduce the burden on the state to provide for them? It’d save tonnes of money, and it wouldn’t matter that the people are gone as the government won’t need to worry about being re-elected. Go on, admit it, in principle, this sounds like a good idea.

I guess the only problem with a meritocracy would be the lack of accountability. I mean, Mussolini apparently made the trains run on time, but he went a bit mad with power, what with being a fascist and all.

I think a lack of transparency in government is a price worth paying though if we can have Jeremy Spake (the camp bloke from Airport) as Transport secretary though. (I’m equating fame and popularity with ability… which, er, I guess undermines the point I’ve been trying to make for the past five paragraphs.)

Comments(1)

Why I’m not a designer
February 27th, 2007 at 02:53

Hey, you! Yes, you! Are you a fickle consumer? Yeah? I bet you own some of those mugs which have writing on the side that say things like “Coffee”, “Mmm”, “Tasty” and “Hot”, in varying font sizes and shades of pink. (Slightly similar to this.)

I’d like to try and understand your motives for buying them. Is it a psychological thing? Or maybe an image thing? Maybe you want to drink some sort of vile cold tea, but want onlookers to think that you’re really a cosmopolitan go-getting type who drinks coffee and commutes into London, wears a designer suit and works in PR, that sort of thing?

Maybe I should stop extrapolating perceived aspirational lifestyles out of the mugs people drink from? If my drinks container correlating with lifestyle theory stood up to any scrutiny, then Sean Hannity would be drinking out of a bull’s anus.

You’d think that I’d be someone who likes things that literally describe their purpose, but I just find these mugs particularly nauseating. Why not put relevant adjectives on the side of other things? You could have “Fast”, “Strong” and “Neigh” written on the side of a horse for instance, or “racists” on the side of UKIP central office.

I really don’t know what point I’m making.

(In, er, reasearching this blog entry I found out that Debenhams have eleven pages of kettles on their website. Who the hell puts that much thought into deciding which kettle to buy?)

Comments(2)

Achievements
February 25th, 2007 at 23:35

I’ve just discovered this clever piece of Javascript where you can put in your age, and it’ll tell you what other people from history have achieved by the time that they were your age. Its quite depressing seeing how much some people have achieved compared to me. Here are some of the things that people who are nineteen years old have done:

“At age 19: Writer, painter and filmmaker Jean Cocteau published his first volume of poetry.”

Actually, that’s not too bad. Some of my writing has been published, so Jean Cocteau can go fuck himself. (Yeah, I’m not quite as eloquent as a poet.)

“French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud (’A Season in Hell’) abandoned his writing. He had proposed that poets become visionaries by pursuing a complete derangement of the senses. Later he became a gunrunner in Africa.” - I don’t know what most of the second sentence means, but I’d love to be a gunrunner. Not full time, like, as smuggling weapons to perpetuate civil war must get a bit tedious, but a couple of weeks work experience maybe, that’d suit me.

“Henry David Thoreau delivered a Harvard commencement address. Expanding on Emerson’s 1836 essay on ‘Nature’, he proposed that man should work one day a week and leave six free for the ’sublime revelations of nature.’” Clearly Henry David Thoreau was just a lazy student. By “sublime revelations of nature” he means going on a themed bar crawl resulting in traffic cone theft.

“Dan Topliffe survived a 50+ foot fall from an oak tree in Clayvillle, NY while working for a tree trimming company. His boss said it was a miracle. He went from the tree to the ground and had only a sore spot on his back and a scratch on his elbow.” - I’d hardly call this an achievement… and it’s not the sort of thing you’d list as you’d say in a job interview. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” “Well, I’d like to have fallen out of tall oak tree”. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking “I hope I fall out of an oak tree today and sustain only minor injuries”.

However, these people are all old-timey celebrities, back from the day when nobody really did anything as they were too busy being paupers or dying from the plague, so it is tenuous to compare what they have done to what I have - but there are some modern day celebrities who have achieved more than me by my age too. Look at Billie Piper for instance, Wikipedia informs me that she had a number one single aged 16. 16! How many number ones have I had? A depressing zero. And now she’s in Doctor Who- and I don’t think I’m going to be Doctor Who’s sidekick any time in the next five years.

At least I’m not old, as that’d be depressing. Not because of this website, just in general, as y’know, I’d be complaining about my back and young people stepping on my lawn, that sort of thing. “By age 39, Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon and looked down on the earth from space… what’ve you done lately? Wallpapered the kitchen? You loser” (I assume by the time that I’m 39 Javascript will have artificial intelligence and a flippant attitude.)

Comments(0)

Not hugging a hoodie
February 25th, 2007 at 01:55

David Cameron has been pictured recently with a delinquent teenager who made a gun gesture towards him. There’s been some tutting on news programmes like the Daily Politics about this - after all, what sort of terrible upbringing must a teenager have had to want to point his fingers like a gun at a prominent politician?

Comments(1)

More window cleaner madness
February 23rd, 2007 at 01:53

I’ve spent this evening watching clips of Michael Moore documentaries on YouTube - like the one where he gets people who have lost their vocal chords due to smoking to sing Christmas carols at tobacco companies, so I’m going to tackle some BIG ISSUES in this blog update. That’s right, I’m going to talk about window cleaners again. This is a clever traffic-boosting ruse as my hits seem to go up when I talk about them. Shame I don’t have any adverts on here, really.

Since my last post, I’ve managed to haX0r my way into their message board to see what they’re saying about me (Peter Florida might have signed up to their forum and got approved by the administrator).

My original blog entry appears to have stimulated some debate about whether or not it is best to knock on the door of the house who’s windows you’re cleaning before you do it. They seem to be split down the middle over it- like the Tories used to be over Europe, back in the days when they had policies. (I’ve just managed to elbow in some political satire into a post about window cleaners. Excellent.)

Knocking on the door, whilst polite, apparently gives the punter a chance to reject the advances of a window cleaner, whereas if you clean the windows then harass the public for money, they can’t not pay you, as the job is already done.

Here are some quotes to prove that I haven’t made up this debate in my head:

“I don’t see what the problem is, I would NOT appreciate a WC cleaning my windows without knocking/calling first. It’s something that I always do, because you are looking directly into peoples bedrooms/rest of the house.”

“No way would I consider knocking on all my customers first - it wastes time, gives them a chance to say not today.” (’JM123′)

I daren’t imagine what sort of flame wars get going when they get on to the topic of WFP versus, er, not-WFP. (This is a window cleaner in-joke).

I’m not sure whether this is a sort of concious and knowing reference, but ‘EasyClean’ says: “With the kind remarks some of you made let’s hope he doesn’t turn out to be a tax inspector,LOL.” Funny you should say that, EasyClean.

‘Jeff1′ sums me up quite accurately: “I seen his video were he was pretending to be a www boxing champion, with that new wii, He looks like the typical arrogant lazy student he is.” Yeah, Jeff, I might might be a lazy student, but that’s what makes me so excellent.

‘Asboss’ had the nerve to infer that I’m lazy too! “This guy needs to get a life, waffling on about his dreams, he is a special agent wanna-be. He can’t get in the secret service cos he has no one to tie his shoe laces. Get a life fella, in bed when you should be out earning a living !!.”

‘Andy@w.c.s’ took time out to watch some of the videos I’ve posted on here: “YOU can see him if you go down to the karting vid on 6th feb 07. total waste weird oooooooooo”

Window Cleaners, or WC’s, as they’ve hilariously abbreviated themselves to are brilliant.

Comments(1)

Big Hair
February 22nd, 2007 at 01:34

I’ve been getting an increasing number of comments lately about the length of my hair (the real life kind, all of my blog comments have been from window cleaners). Its all got a bit ridiculous - my vision is bordered by hair, making everything I look at appear to be the establishing shot for a scene set in a jungle. It’s also just about long enough for me to look like someone who’s jumped on the emo bandwagon, as I can just about swish it over my eyes to illustrate how no one understands me.

Take a look:

Yeah, I did try to look as gormless as possible. I did consider attempting to smile, but thought that contorting my face at such close range might be slightly off putting. So I opted for a sort of deadened stare, where I’m looking not at you, but through you.

Usually, whenever I have a shave, which itself is a fairly rare event, I go and get my hair cut the next day, so I look consistent - the theory being that I need to balance out my face. Recently though, I’ve gone through a number of shaving cycles without getting my haircut. And you can clearly see the result above.

It’s quite weird when people start a conversation by talking about my hair, as I’m not used to it. Before I let my hair grow out of control, they’d usually start by commenting on my formidable dress sense or asking me to press ‘OK’ and enter my pin number. The woman in Virgin Megastores actually looked up, then down at my student card, then up, then down again, with her mouth slightly aghast when verifying that I can have a student discount, such is the disparity between my “usual” appearance on the photo on the card and what I look like now.

I’ve been told I look like a number of people, ranging from the bloke who does Never Mind the Buzzcocks to Frodo’s sidekick from Lord of the Rings. I can’t see it myself.

At work today, it was suggested that I shave it off for Red Nose Day. I have my doubts about this - I don’t think my messy hair is quite long, nor eccentric enough to justify such a “wacky” stunt. It’s not even as if it’s my ‘trademark’ thing that everyone knows me for. Not to mention that I’m not going to shave my hair off.

Both my dad and my grandad are bald - I want to savour my hair whilst I have the chance, and possibly use clippings to manufacture a wig should I eventually go bald. And I’d look ridiculous without any hair, anyway.

However, I do like the idea of helping poor people and briefly being the centre of attention. So I’m wondering - let’s workshop here - would anyone sponsor me for having my hair trimmed? I’m not talking anything ridiculous, I mean back to my usual self? Scissors on top and a high numbered razor on the sides. Basically the end result would be a bloke looking as he always did, which I guess would be a pretty anti-climatic. I’d even chuck in a shave if the money goes high enough.

Of course, I’d hypothetically accept Paypal donations and hypothetically film the event for the internet, if this were to hypothetically happen.

I’d love to give away a jumbo-cheque just once in my life… would any of you lot hypothetically sponsor me?

Comments(1)

“iam a window cleaner and ur a tit”
February 19th, 2007 at 01:14

Something insane has happened. I seem to have upset the UK’s window cleaners. I mean, all of them.

Ages ago, I wrote about an encounter I had with some window cleaners (this is the link you need to click for the backstory). Tonight, it seems that the people from the Clean It Up forum, apparently a forum full of industry professionals, found that post, and as a consequence, I’ve received about double the number of hits I usually get. Unfortunately, I can’t read the thread on their forum to see what they’re saying about me, as you have to be registered and manually approved by an administrator. Presumably they don’t want their secret window cleaning chat to be read by us mere mortals. It’s why no one outside of the window cleaning profession knows what the perfect mixture of soap and water is.

The only other time I’ve encountered a forum set up like this is when a Nazi website linked to me.

I like how window cleaners have banded together- you’d think they’d all be sole traders, self assessing their tax, aggressively protecting their home turf and not wanting to share their tips with the competition. The fact this forum exists suggests otherwise. In fact, I’m going to make the assertion that “window cleaners = Marxists”.

This forum existing also makes me wonder if they’re operating a cartel, keeping prices unreasonably high. After all, we all need someone to clean our windows if the rain doesn’t do it, or we’re too lazy to do it ourselves.

Anyway, Several window cleaners left comments on my blog post. They don’t seem to like me very much.

Two of the commentators recommended “Water fed pole technology” as a solution to my problem, whilst others were less, er, helpful: “iam a window cleaner and ur a tit”.

One thing I love is the that one of the comments refers to “WFP” as if I should know what it stands for- as the comments are on full moderation, this person wouldn’t have known that it was helpfully explained six minutes prior.

Several of the comments seem to dwell on my closing remarks: “I hate window cleaners”. I’d like to readdress this and point out that I don’t hate window cleaners, despite clearly writing the opposite six months ago. I just wish they’d all use water fed pole tech, obviously.

Comments(7)

Geeky hobbies
February 18th, 2007 at 03:05

I must admit, I’ve got some nerdy interests. This might come as a bit of a shock to you, given that you may have previously thought I was one of the cool kids. After all, I do like popular music and casual swearing.

But even wearing sunglasses at night can’t disguise the fact that I like some really geeky things.

For example, I’m quite an avid follower of ‘TV Pres’. For those out of the loop, that’s an interest in the graphics used on TV programmes. Those bits between programmes of the hippos, or the “4″ being formed out of pylons, people take an interest in that sort of thing. Seriously.

I think this weird interest is just a side effect of a slightly less tragic interest in the media, broadcasting and branding (this is my excellent excuse). I bloody love branding- nothing annoys me more than when logos don’t exactly line up, or the spines on a series of books don’t follow a common template. I actually wrote a whole blog entry about my love of branding, and included photos of good and bad branding for evidence - I decided not to post it though when I realised that it was the most tedious thing ever written. It was a more boring read than the European Parliament if it were turned into ASCII art and printed in a book.

I also run a Pokémon website, log the amount of Coke I drink, and spend hours on Wikipedia, to the point where I get what I’m going to coin a “Wikipedia headache”, after reading too much about the Ottoman empire, or Spiderman episode guides, or whatever.

Despite these things, I like to think though that I’m quite high up on the geek hierarchy, and sit in that zone of acceptability somewhere between World of Warcraft on one side and beatboxing street vagrant on the other. I mean, I think that some geeky hobbies are cool, like space exploration, for instance. Even the people who make websites about motorway service areas are cool - I like the fact that someone, somewhere is cataloguing that sort of thing.

But there’s some hobbies I’ll never understand. Train spotting, for example… trains travel on a predictable path and it is pre-announced where they’ll be before they get there. “Fuck me! It’s a train!” is a phrase you will never hear. Why can’t they pick something trickier to spot? Like their self respect. (Ziiiiiiing.)

And wrestling is always confusing. As far as I can tell, it’s just repressed homosexuals watching men not wearing many clothes jumping all over each other in a pre-scripted routine. Basically ballet with less clothes and an energetic commentator explaining what is going on at a mile a minute. Wrestling fans will usually admit that their, cough, “sport” is fake, but then go on to justify their interest by saying that the, cough, athletes, still train hard and have to fall from a long way up and get hit by chairs and so on… so wrestling fans admit they just like watching muscled, oiled men parade themselves in front of thousands of rednecks without even the illusion of a competitive element?

There’s also a darker side to the TV Pres world- I wouldn’t like to associate with everyone who is interested in it. On a forum I read, there seems to be a sort of social hierarchy. At the very bottom, you’ve got people who post-fantasy news programme presenter rotas, and debate the finer points of which presenters work better together… I wish I was making this up, as it gets a bit weird. Next up the acceptibility ladder are the people who stay up until the early hours to watch (and video tape) Pages from Ceefax when BBC Two closes down - they’ll talk about the CDs of library music used and stuff. I steer clear of these - same goes for the people who tape the test card whenever it (rarely) appears.

The top social group in the TV Pres world, aside from the lurkers like myself, are the people who don’t engage in any of that weird stuff, and just stick to discussing, er, the tickers, straps and astons that appear on News 24, and the positioning of the clock, and “safe areas”.

Actually, reading this back, TV Pres sounds even weirder, maybe even wrong. Do any of you readers have geeky hobbies? Explain in the comments to make me feel better.

(Incidentally, today’s a big day in the TV Pres calendar: BBC Two are launching some new idents. I’m not one of the people getting up early to watch them launch.)

Comments(1)

Robin Ince
February 18th, 2007 at 01:13

I went to see comedian Robin Ince last night- for the second time. Unlike the first time, I didn’t have the foresight to take my camera to get a slightly updated picture of me and Robin Ince. I think I look almost the same - just give me some more hair and a different black coat, blue fleece and black t-shirt.

It’s actually quite hard to write about going to see a comedian. I could go down the route of trying to remember some of his material, repeating it on here and execute it in the style of Barzan Ibrahim (ie: badly). Alternatively, I could go down the MySpace blog route of “omfg it was really gud!!!”, and not actually elaborating on what “it” was, and why it was good.

Basically, the point that I’m trying to make is that it was really excellent. And more importantly: really funny. He covered some topics similar to the last time I saw him: like Daily Mail headlines, for example. He even bought props. His ability to improvise and react to situations in the room was incredible- he started a running joke with an audience member about starting a band, and went off on a tangent about music after hearing a squeaky door. Of course, it could all be scripted, but it didn’t seem like it.

Before and after his performance, he sat in the bar at the table next to the one me and JD were sitting at. Unfortunately, I didn’t dare talk to him, which in retrospect is a shame, as I’d love a celebrity friend. I did vaguely consider seeing if I could steal his mobile phone whilst he was on stage… I could have got Ricky Gervais’ phone number or something. But, alas, the accepted norms of the society I live in overrode my desire to be vaguely associated with celebrities. Damn.

In conclusion: Robin Ince = Recommended.

Comments(0)

Capdown (yet again)
February 15th, 2007 at 20:46

Guess what I did last night! That’s right, I went to see Capdown live in concert again. This is the fourth time in eight months, so I’m starting to think I’ve become slightly obsessed. They were excellent, as usual, of course, so I’m pretty sure you can construct this identikit gig review for yourselves. Here are the pieces:

• The doorman was unnecessarily twatty. When I gave him the ticket with the ‘receipt’ bit still attached, he remarked that he could go and burgle my house now that he knows where I live. I remarked that he could shut his fucking face. At least, I wish I’d said that.
• The first support band were called The Disappointments. They lived up to their name.
• The second support band were called Howards Alias (yeah, the lack of apostrophe is their error). Their music was better than their grammar, so I bought their CD at the end.
• Capdown were excellent, of course. They played a slightly different set to what they, er, usually play, presumably because the new album is actually out now so people know they songs. I believe they played the following (this is not comprehensive nor in order):
• • Ska Wars
  • The Neverlution
  • Dealer Fever
  • Headstrong
  • New Revolutionaries
  • Keeping up appearances
  • Wind Up Toys
  • Surviving the death of a genre (I think)
  • Pound for the sound
  • They finished on Cousin Cleotis
• I was there with Sarah, who went to see Capdown with my last time. She still claims she doesn’t really like them. She has seen them twice now, so I’d suggest otherwise.
• The lead singer in Capdown used my shoulder to lift himself up on to the stage.
• Hilariously, there was a moron in the audience who started shouting at Howards Alias half way through their set. “Are you going to be at Download?” he shouted. “No, because its really expensive and there’s a load of shit bands playing”, the singer wittily replied. This was made funnier when a few songs later, about half way through the set, the same moron shouted at them to play Ska Wars, a Capdown song. Clearly, he’d mistaken the support band for Capdown… and for so long.

Basically, Capdown were really good. Hopefully I’ll go and see them again at some point. Also: Anyone want to go and see, er, Amen at Rock City on the 27th?

Comments(0)