I consider myself something of an expert at procrastinating. I’ve somehow developed the ability to put off merely the simplest of things for hours, if not days at a time. Even now, writing this, I’m merely procrastinating and avoiding doing some work towards my International Relations degree, and the reason my column didn’t appear last week was because I put off writing it until this week. Whoops.
I don’t think this is a trait unique to myself though - I think that technology has greatly aided the procrastinator, and with a little bit of training, you can fritter away entire days without doing any activity worthy of even being summarised as a bullet point.
Being someone who pretends to be a writer in addition to being a student, I spend the vast majority of my time in front of my computer, and the great thing about modern computers is just how many programs you can setup to bleep and ping at you to steal your attention away from the blinking cursor on the blank page in front of you where the important work should be. Right now, for instance, I have my e-mails open so every few minutes I get to look away from this page and delete yet another advert for “CHE@P MEDS”. Not only this, but because I’m a young person, and therefore hip and modern, I have a chat program called Twitter popping up constantly with status updates from other people, who invariably explain that they’re also sitting in front of a computer, trying to avoid doing some work.
I’ve recently learnt though of another ultra-effective means of procrastinating. Having recently moved out of my parents house for the first time, I’ve discovered that to maintain a house to a tolerable standard, there are all sorts of little chores and tasks that must be done. Most are pretty menial - washing up, washing clothes, replenishing cupboards with food and the like, but when given the choice between starting on that all important essay or sorting my socks into matching pairs, the latter is a surprisingly attractive prospect.
It’s baffling really - I shouldn’t really mind writing essays, as not only is that what I’ve chosen to spend the next year of my life doing, but the essays are about a subject that I find interesting, as that’s why I chose to study. I think it’s because now the essays have become official and important, this must make writing them boring compared to everything else in the universe. By this logic, rather than choose to study International Relations, I should have chosen to do a degree in home making (I hear the University of Life has a good course), and then due to my natural abilities to procrastinate, I’d be turning out hundreds of wonderful and insightful essays on the topic of International Relations every day.
It wouldn’t surprise me if most people are plagued by this compulsive procrastination disorder. I keep meaning to do the research to prove it, but for some reason I just never get around to doing it.
London can be a scary place at times. At a gig the other day I got talking to some punk types hanging around outside who within moments of meeting me explained how they were drinking free beer. “How’d you get it for free?”, I perhaps naively asked. “Big pockets”, came the response from a man who would a few minutes later urinate in the street in such a way that it would form a small stream along the street. It seems that in London, maybe not all of the streets are paved with gold - or at least, if they were at one point, a fair chunk of the gold has probably been stolen by now.
Yesterday I had perhaps my first proper encounter with a drug dealer. I mean, obviously a sizeable proportion of the people I went to school with are now inevitably drug dealers, but this was perhaps the first time I’d encountered a drug dealer during trading hours.
I was standing around in Camden (where else?) with my ‘crew’ and we were approached by a drunken looking man with a can of beer, who wobbled up to us and said “Would you like some cocaine?”. It surprised me because rather than do what I’d expect, and refer to the drugs by some sort of nickname, such as ‘Ivory Flakes’, he just said “cocaine”. He could have only been more obvious if he’d said “Hello, would you like some drugs?”
I always assumed drug dealers would be a little more coy. Surely you wouldn’t simply want to announce you’ve got cocaine? If I were a drug dealer, I’d stick to using obscure nicknames, so that only the target market knows what I’m talking about, rather than so any old square, like myself, knows that ILLEGAL DRUGS are what are being discussed. He wasn’t even wearing a long coat with the “merchandise” inside.
I’m sure from the tone of what I’ve written so far, you’ve probably detected that I’m not a big fan of drug dealers. This isn’t because they’re invariably unpleasant and stabtacular, but because they fail to comply with even basic retail practices.
Aside from issues surrounding soliciting business on the streets without a permit and the shirking of obligations under the Sale of Goods Act to provide a receipt for purchases, even more frustratingly drug dealers are seemingly on the side of those awful “Metric Martyrs” types who, Daily Express tucked under their arms, refuse to surrender to the “Brussels beurocrats” by not joining the Englightenment and not going metric. Drugs, as far as I’m aware, are still sold in ounces, which is no longer a valid form of measurement under European law - really if you want to buy an ounce of drugs, you should be asking for 28.35 grams.
If I were a drug dealer, I’d show them how to do it properly.
In these difficult economic times, there is a group of people we need to feel for, as they must be stressed, tired, angry and confused. No, not the millions of home owners or those facing unemployment, or even the millions of people who have a bank account, but the white-collar city workers. A few weeks ago I wrote about offering them hugs, but since then the crisis has had more twists and turns than the average company exec’s tax-exiled accounts, I’ve been thinking about what else we can do to help these bankers and financiers, and then it hit me: why not setup a Fight Club?
Obviously, my first step in looking into this venture was to re-watch the film “Fight Club”, to see what I needed to do to translate it into reality. In the film, a Fight Club is basically a group of men in the cellar of a dodgy bar fighting with each other two at a time… I think there are several things that I will need to take into consideration.
For a start, any real life Fight Club would be a health and safety nightmare and would almost certainly incur the wrath of the Health & Safety Executive. The fighters would have to wear much more protective gear than in the film, and obviously would have to sign a waiver, otherwise the insurance costs will be phenomenal - I imagine pitching “two people having a fistfight” to an insurer would cause them to have a fit. Similarly, I assume that there would be an obligation to have a first aider on hand, given the dangeous nature of the club, which would push up costs. And before any fighting could begin, it would certainly be diligent to give a short health and safety lecture to participants. A bit like Lazer Quest, really.
I think the club also may fall foul of equal opportunities legislation. If the rules from the film are taken as a base, then the “no shirt, no shoes” policy would certainly have to change as otherwise this could conflict with female fighters, who would risk sexual harassment and the like. Luckily two birds could be killed with one stone here, as the amount of safety gear that fighters would be required to wear could act as a “kit” and protection at the same time. Similarly, disability discrimation would be a minefield too - if a wheelchair user was matched up to fight against someone who was able-bodied, it would be an unfair fight, so something would have to be worked out here too.
Moving on to business concerns, obviously the marketing would have to change. “Do not talk about Fight Club” is a very counter-intuitive rule - if the business is to grow then it must grow by word of mouth… perhaps some sort of discount referral system could replace this first and second rule of Fight Club? In terms of expansion, though, the film seemed to have the right idea - a franchise system would allow for fast growth across a wide area. Though one thing the film is less effective at is branding - a coherent brand that can be used across all franchises will create a loyal customer base.
Looking at it all this written above, setting up a fight club does seem like hard work, which surprises me considering that in the film you never see either Edward Norton or Brad Pitt sit down and do a single bit of paperwork - which is something that would have made it much more realistic. I guess the Fight Club will have to remain a figment of my imagination.
As la revolucion continues unabated, it’s making me wonder if this crisis is worse for me than I originally thought. My first degree was a degree in International Relations & Globalisation, and I’m somewhat concerned that it’s going to become meaningless because of this global financial crisis.
Back in those heady days of earlier this year, I was taught about Held and McGrew’s various characterisations of globalisation as a process. To cut a long story short, there are basically three schools of globalisation - the hyperglobalists, who reckon globalisation is in full effect, the world will never be the same again the very notion of the nation-state is laughable, and at the very least deserves sneering at, and there’s the transformationalists who believe that globalisation is an ongoing process - and there was a third school, the sceptics, who were could be characterised as having their heads in the sand, still believing in the nation state as an international actor and the like - basically they thought globalisation was a load of rubbish.
It was this last school of thought that I had the most contempt for, to the point where I really struggled to write about it - it felt so self-evidently ridiculous to posit that globalisation hasn’t changed anything that I just wanted to submit photos of me belming and point and my face as a critique of the sceptic position.
The trouble is, that with the on-going financial crisis, I’m starting to wonder if the sceptics sort of had a point, maybe. Banks are being nationalised, the international financial system is slowly creaking to a halt as states work to impose more regulation and it can only be a matter of time before barriers are raised back up and the post-1929 protectionist mantra becomes fashionable again. More importantly, it might take meaning from part of my degree.
You see, I’ve got something of a vested interest in globalisation being an actual thing. If they decide globalisation doesn’t exist, then my first degree may as well have been BA (Hons) International Relations & Homeopathy. This is probably why I’m so concerned about global financial meltdown.
I’m worried too that it might not end here. What if this collapse causes the entire international system to break down? What if tough economic times and the pursuit of resources causes war and strife? What if we end up destroying each other in a nuclear holocaust and go back to living in caves and a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? Then there won’t be any International Relations for me to be moderately insightful about. Meaning that theology students may have more credibility that I do, as we gaze up at the sky and wonder what that big ball that it hurts to look at is.
So please, international banking system, please don’t collapse… For my sake!
As you’ve probably noticed, these are tough times for the world economy, so consequently, everyone has been rather understandably moaning about it. There is a balance though - with capitalism, a crisis can also been as an opportunity - though the banks are all down, alliterative news headlines are up, as are photos of stressed-people using telephones.
All of this turbulence, though, has led to some pundits drawing comparisons with Marx and calling all of the bailouts and nationalisations “socialist” - in fact, it was this reason why many American congressmen wouldn’t vote for the $700bn bailout first time round. What I think is interesting about this is it isn’t too far from the truth. I accidentally attended a socialist party meeting last week (don’t ask) and the speaker made the interesting point that it isn’t Cuban President Raul Castro or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez being the best socialists and nationalising everything - it is in fact George Bush, and it’s the American government who now own some of the world’s biggest banks and insurers, and bizarrely, sponsor Manchester United. Next time they play Newcastle United, sponsored by Northern Rock, it’ll essentially be a proxy-war between America and Britain.
It has made me think though. Maybe it was that socialist meeting warping my mind, but maybe, just maybe, Karl Marx was right, that the revolution is just around the corner? Capitalism doesn’t seem to working out too well, so maybe we do need an alternative. Obviously, if Karl were here now he’d probably suggest communism as the new economic system… but I’m not so sure. I hate to disagree with such a renowned, historical icon and possibly the most famous Marxist intellectual out there, but maybe there’s another system we could bring back that will keep the world economy in check?
Why don’t we bring back the feudal system? We used the system for hundreds of years in the middle ages before, so I can’t see why we can’t use it again. If there’s one thing the banks need at the moment, it’s stability in the system, less of the ups and downs associated with capitalism… and what could be more stable than a rigid system of class-based subservience and subsistence farming? Sure, there could be some minor issues with, say, lack of social mobility, or the vast majority of us becoming peasants who will die at 30 only to have our kids replace us in farming the same plot of land whilst paying tribute to a tyrannical baron, but the environment for big business will be perfect for trade - businesses, or the barons that will replace them, will be able to make big long term decisions as they’ll know what the conditions will be like in ten, fifty, even one hundred years on - because conditions will be exactly the same. The other upshot is that no one will have to worry about job security, as under the feudal system, everyone is guaranteed a job for life - as a peasant farmer.
The Feudal System: It’s not only the past, it’s the future.
If Rage Against the Machine have taught me anything, it is that it’s moderately important to “know your enemy”, in order for you to know who you’re raging against. Which is why last week I went to the chapel, which was basically a mini-church in my uni. Stained-glass windows, candles, the works. I wasn’t there for a church service or to actively rage against it, but for a lecture on ‘natural theology’, by Alister McGrath, the former Oxford professor who wrote ‘The Dawkins Delusion‘, who now, inexplicably, is a respected professor at my university.
Now, I got used to my friends making fun of my old undergraduate university, and claiming that it’s a Mickey Mouse university, because it’s a former-polytechnic, but I’m starting to wonder if in fact the university I’m at now is more like Acme Looneyversity. Not only does it have a Chapel as one of it’s central features, but it has an entire theology department - which is at least a magnitude less-valid a subject than, say, fashion design, which my old uni was one of the leading places for.
So I decided to go along to this public lecture Alister McGrath was hosting in the Chapel, in order to challenge my opinions. I’d only be a good disciple of Dawkins, and advocate of reason and evidence, if my scientific worldview could stand up to the challenge.
As luck would have it, rather than have an epiphany and have to repent on slagging off religion a lot, it turns out that my opinions are still correct and accurate. It turns out ‘natural theology’ is bollocks. And I don’t mean that in an anti-intellectual way, and I really don’t intend to write-off an entire branch of academia, but assuming that the lecture I saw was representative of the subject at large, it really doesn’t seem like it should be allowed to be something a serious place of learning should allow to go on.
Natural theology is presented as pretty much an alternative to the scientific method. The idea is that rather than us drawing conclusions about the nature of existence based on the shared experience of verifiable, observable evidence, is that you fill in the blanks yourself (usually with “God did it”) then look for something to support it. In other words, basically doing exactly what the creationists do. McGrath said that he tried to present in as theologically-neutral terms as possible, but this was undermined slightly that the lecture was being held in a fucking chapel.
Apparently taking the “Christian perspective” can help “understand” things. A couple of direct quotes from the slides were: “Capacity of nature to point to the kingdom [of God] when it is rightly interpreted” (my emphasis) and “nature has to be seen in a certain way if it is to be properly understood”… is pretty much the antithesis of what academia is all about. You’re supposed to study things first, then use what you’ve learnt to figure out what’s going on - not the other way around. I admit, things being the other way around would be useful for me though - I wouldn’t have to read some books before writing the 15,000 word dissertation I’ve got to do this year.
To give an example of the “natural theology” approach, it was presented as the bastard-child of the arts and the sciences (a bit like geography if geographers drew maps before checking them against the shape of the land). One peace of “evidence” was talking about the nature of beauty, and an excerpt from a poem about how nice some hills looked or something was shown as if to say “pretty nice hills… you’d need God or you can’t appreciate them”. No time was given to any alternative explanations for the nature of beauty, of course, such as how a human perception of beauty correlates with what someone who is healthy looks like, and that can be explained in terms of natural selection.
What was truly startling though was that once you strip away the already slim on the ground substance, you’re left with literally nothing - I honestly came away from the 90 minute lecture having felt that I learned nothing. It was all very poetic and wordy, and so on, but it was more akin to listening to some nerds who like Lord of the Rings discuss their own fan-fiction continuity ideas rather than anything more academic.
I bet it’s quite easy to do for a job though as there’s no real studying involved.
Last night I went out in trendy/dodgy east London to see some stand-up comedy with 66.67% of my housemates, Paul and Jim. It was a mixed bag of entertainment but was certainly worth going to. What made this exciting and notable was what happened on the bus on the way home. You mileage may vary on the phrase “exciting and notable”.
To get to Liverpool Street from the comedy club we had to take a bendy bus. It was a pretty exciting experience - it was my first time on a bendy bus, and I really can’t see what Boris’s problem with them is. We were so thrilled by the concept of a bus that bends, we decided to stand in the bend itself. Basically we were having the time of our lives.
As we approached Liverpool Street, a bloke who was perhaps in his mid-twenties leant over to us and say “they don’t allow faggots on buses”. Which was, er, a useful piece of advice, I guess? The thing that bothered me about this most that was my concern that he was passing on inaccurate information, and that he himself had been misled. And I think I’m pretty justfied in thinking this.
I don’t think he was a bus conductor, or an employee of TfL in any capacity - unless hoodies are now part of the uniform. Even if we accept his premise as true, and TfL did try to impose the “no faggots” rule, it would be almost impossible to enforce as it would be overruled by various pieces of anti-discrimination legislation, and would require getting some sort of system installed or at least training staff to detect them. I don’t think this technology exists, at least in a way that is deployable to the many thousands of buses in Greater London. And I don’t remember participating in any sort of test to determine whether or not I was a “faggot” upon boarding the bus - even if there was I would have “passed” anyway. Being a straight, white, male has many advantages, such as having society hugely balanced in my favour, but it does have one disappointing downside: I’ll never be able to fulfill my goal of being the next Rosa Parks and acting as a figurehead to some sort of great civil rights movement. I guess I’ll have to pursue my second and third life goal instead, of winning a MOBO award and successfully suing the campus LGBT society for discrimination instead.
So this leads me to the question as to why he acted as he did. One possible explanation is that he was trying to impress the girl - possibly his girlfriend - sitting next to him. Whilst I wouldn’t like to jump to conclusions and claim that he thought his homophobic language would endear him towards her, it is certainly a possibility - I must admit, even though he is misguided, when he used the word “faggots”, I thought he was a cool dude. Maybe this is where I’m going wrong? Maybe women prefer men with uneducated prejudices?
There is, however, an equally likely alternative hypothesis: that the guy was implicitly implying that all other men were homosexuals, in order to leave the girl next to him with no other choices - if he could convince her that every other man was gay, then she’d have nowhere left to turn.
So really, I think rather than being a rather lame attempt at some off-the-cuff wit, I think he was trying to provoke this much discourse in understanding his actions.
![Album art for 005 Warped Tour Compilation [Disc 1] by Dropkick Murphys](http://jamesomalley.co.uk/blog/wp-content/lastfm_album_art/2005_Warped_Tour_Compilation_[Disc_1]^Dropkick_Murphys.jpg "Dropkick Murphys - 005 Warped Tour Compilation [Disc 1]")
London can be a scary place at times. At a gig the other day I got talking to some punk types hanging around outside who within moments of meeting me explained how they were drinking free beer. “How’d you get it for free?”, I perhaps naively asked. “Big pockets”, came the response from a man who would a few minutes later urinate in the street in such a way that it would form a small stream along the street. It seems that in London, maybe not all of the streets are paved with gold - or at least, if they were at one point, a fair chunk of the gold has probably been stolen by now.