Friday, February 29, 2008

I'm Right, You're Left, She's Gone...

I’ve been watching the West Wing a lot recently. By a lot I mean every hour that I’m not sleeping or boozing. When it first came out I was at school and I didn’t have anything like the free time to watch an episode at the same time every week but now, thanks to my casual approach to voluntary lectures, I’ve been able to watch two seasons of West Wing (totalling just shy of a day and a half solid viewing time) in two days and I’ve emerged on the other side slightly confused.

For starters it’s a great show. The writing is so fast that you wonder whether the writers were sitting in a room with burnsen burners placed directly under their arses which were turned to full power if they didn’t produce another hilarious, historical and relevant fact about Truman for the script. Actually, it’s not writers but writer. Creator and all round nutjob Aaron Sorkin wrote pretty much every screenplay for the first four seasons which isn’t that impressive until you watch a few episodes and realise that this man must have a brain that’s more greased and wired than a cyborg Lance Armstrong bike-thing.

You do end up feeling slightly sorry for the Republicans though. The wonderfully partisan nature of American politics means that all the apparently free-thinking, liberal types in Hollywood have to be democratic. The number of contributions to the Democrat Party from Hollywood stars is endless, while the only Republican celebrities I can think of are Kelsey Grammar and Chuck Norris, a disparate group at best, most likely to decapitate you with a roundhouse kick whilst making witty comments comparing the colour of your blood to a fine Italian Merlot.

This means that the politics of the West Wing is so far to the left it’s gone completely full-circle and obliterated any semblance of sound right-wing policies. All the characters are portrayed as heroic, virtuous types who spunk out world-saving ideas on a weekly basis and rarely put a foot wrong. Even when they’re assassinating ambassadors from friendly nations who are suspected terrorists or lying to the public about the President having a serious illness, the moral weight of the script is behind the main characters so you end up supporting them through whatever pickle they’ve got themselves into.

Meanwhile the Republicans are portrayed as absolute bastards who get kicks out of handing guns to children and spitting on poor people. The Republican/Democrat divide is shown to be on the one hand people that care and just want to give peace a chance, while on the other full of crazy Christian rednecks who wouldn’t understand liberalism if it sauntered up and kissed them upside the cranium with an aluminium baseball bat.

But hang on, wait a minute. I’m no expert on American politics mainly because I don’t live there and can’t vote (and yet suffer as a direct result of America’s foreign policy decisions) but I’ve seen pictures of Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain and I’ve subconsciously absorbed a lot of the technical jargon that flies around on the West Wing and something worries me slightly. In fact it’s not just a thing with American politics but given the climate I’ll talk about it in that context.

There must be an answer to this but I’m too lazy to work it out so can someone please explain why ideas like free-market economies and the rights of the individual have to be hijacked by bastards who also believe the Earth is five thousand years old and that freedom to express yourself sexually is the Devil’s Work, while those who want to legislate and tax people back to the stone age tend to be much more free-thinking and open-minded when it comes to society?

I’m not saying it’s true in every case, you get moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats, but in terms of perception of right and left wing politics it seems to be true. It puts me in a nightmare position because whenever I tell people that I believe in right-wing politics they tend to look at me like I’m about to don a swastika and start beating up anyone who doesn’t look like me, although for some reason when people tell me that they’re on the left I don’t presume they’re about to slaughter millions of their own people and send the rest to the gulags.

Anyway, the point is that I believe in the right of the individual and free-market economics meaning that the government is there on a minimal level purely to protect individual rights through the law and levy the occasional moderate tax in order to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Beyond that, the state is a bloated, bureaucratic, statistic driven, poll mad mess that hinders more than it helps.

However, and I can’t stress this enough, this does not mean that I’m sexist, homophobic, racist, religious or just wish that everything was the same as it was 1000 years ago before all those damn immigrants arrived. Why is it that the right-wing is loaded up with these self-righteous pricks when surely the ideas of individual liberty and minimal state intervention would lead one down the jaunty liberal path of an individual being entitled to do whatever the hell they want as long as they don’t harm anyone else?

I don’t know, I guess I’d vote Democrat if I had a choice because I’d rather be a weak leftie liberal than a racist hardcore conservative but either way I’d be unhappy. It’s the danger of media politics and the problem that I’m suffering from right now. If there were more of an actual, practical interest in politics and the way governments shape our lives then perhaps the unnecessary stigmas of the left and right could be forgotten. But as it is, when bombarded with soundbytes and stereotypical views of hippies on one side and rednecks on the other it becomes more of an intuitive decision than a well thought out declaration of political views.

I wonder if it’s possible to vote for the Democrats but insist that they take on the Republican economic plans? Or vote Republican but only on the condition that they stop going on about this abortion and God horseshit? I neither know nor care, it’s just that politics seems to be so bloody central in the UK nowadays that I have to start worrying about it in other countries. Here’s an example of how rubbish our politics is: the US gets the West Wing, we get the Thick Of It.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Mobile Circus

When it comes to technology I am what marketing types refer to as ‘The Cash’. Not in a real and practical sense given my pitiful inflow of mahulah*, but certainly in a theoretical sense. Being the godless heathen that I am, I have to dedicate my entire purpose and meaning in life to science and the gifts that it bestows on us mortals through commercial technology. This generally involves me sitting like a starving dog outside a restaurant, wolfing down whatever random scraps happen to get thrown out.

It means my purchasing choices can be a bit askew. The reason I got my MacBook wasn’t because I scoffed at Windows and thought Microsoft was for suckers who liked their computers to act like an arthritic cat with chunks of missing fur and a tendency to blindly plunge headfirst off high surfaces. No, I got the MacBook because it is shiny. It has things that go ‘vrooom’ and ‘weee’ and ‘whoosh’ in a visual sense. It makes my brain uncomprehendingly coo and gurgle which no doubt is a nice thing but I’m not sure if that’s sufficient justification for pledging my undying allegiance to Macs*.

It’s the same for things like HD-TVs which apparently we all need and I desperately want even though the only thing I could use my £1,000 investment for at the moment would be making the Big Daddy savagely beating me to death in Bioshock that little bit sharper to the eye*. They could release a new piece of technology that did nothing but follow you around all day, occasionally reading over your shoulder and making random bleeping noises and I’d be cutting through hordes of other technology bitches to get my hands on the Uncomfortable iPresence ver.1.0.

There’s some kind of progress going on here at least. Computers continue to boost themselves up with exponentially aggressive steroids every year which makes me feel a bit guilty for using them for nothing more than writing, t’interweb and the occasional snuff film, things they’ve been able to handle for years; while HD-TV means that stuff is more real or something. I don’t actually know how these things work. The fact that my iPod is a little box with music somehow contained within it still baffles me*.

But surely there must come a point where we say in one collective voice, ‘Enough is enough. We can only push the boundaries of science so far. Once something has been perfected we must leave it and move on to save on resources and stuff’. I’m still waiting for this to happen with mobile phones.

As far as I can tell a mobile phone has two purposes: to make and receive calls and ditto for texts. As an auxiliary function they should also try their little cotton socks off at not breaking. Now in my opinion these feats were accomplished with the Nokia 3310 and every phone since has been nothing but a pointless replica of the same thing. Let’s compare some of the features found in the Nokia 3310 and the latest piece of brain-melting hardware, the Sony Ericsson W910i*.

Both phones are off to a strong start as a couple of calls to a bemused Dominos phone person prove that they are equally capable of fulfilling one of two essential phone functions. It’s a strong and confident outing from both when it comes to sending texts as well, my hands feel more comfortable around the clear and distinct plastic of the 3310 but that’s just preference. Both phones can perform the tasks that they’re employed for 98929%* of the time.

Now for the ‘other’ stuff. The new phone has polyphonic ringtones, multimedia games and a camera. But none of those matter because only a spiritually lacking cretin gets pleasure in their hilarious A-Team ringtone sounding off yet again. Multimedia games include the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 which came out 53 years ago and serves only to remind us all how far computer games have come since then. Besides, Snake II on the Nokia 3310 was the best mobile game ever made because of its simplicity and addictiveness and if you like gaming on the go you’ll already have a DS. As for cameras, I’ve yet to see a cameraphone that can take photos which aren’t simply a smear of large grainy chunks of colour*. For the same money I’d have to spend getting a new phone I could just get a decent shiny camera.

I did upgrade once. I got a fancy flipper-me-open Samsung thing and it kept me happy for a while, even if it was less intuitive than the 3310 at least it could store more than 10 fucking messages*. Then it came in contact with a slither of moisture and completely gave up the ghost. In contrast my 3310 has been in three different seas, a variety of swimming pools and myself. The most it has needed after is a brief dry with a hairdryer and then it’s back, ready for more. What more could I ask for from technology?

Arseburgers. Just as I finished this* my 3310 keeled over for no reason. It seems my phone has decided to switch off at random intervals, specifically when I’m trying to call or text someone, therefore rendering this whole thing pointless. Still, if it’s any consolation it was a bigger waste of my time.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Joan of Arc

I woke up this morning and realised I’d turned 22. There were no trumpets, no Tom Waits serenading me as I awoke, no new legal avenues of vice available to me, just an overwhelming sense of meh. This sensation was caused by the fact that 22 is my first genuine nothing birthday. Every previous birthday has been better than this one. Not in terms of enjoyment, merely the fact that in the past each successive year has brought something new to my life.

Everything up to 13 was freaking brilliant cos I was young and birthdays were amazing moments where I became a whole year older and closer to being a real person. 14 and 15 were curious because I was a teenager going through the biggest physical and mental changes of my life, and they were the first parties where alcohol was tentatively introduced. 16 I could buy cigarettes. 17 I could drive. 18 I could vote, drink and become an adult. 19 and 20 marked an important transition period from teenager to adult. 21 was the daddy; I became a man, had not one but two fuck-off parties and got loadsa presents.

22 marks the end of all that. There is nothing good about turning 22. It’s an entirely insignificant age and just the first of many. The next significant birthday is 30, which according to gender stereotypes is the most depressing moment of any woman’s life. So that’s a bullet missed at least. Then it’s 40, where I guess the real mid-life crisis sets in. Joy. Then 50, which is an achievement but bloody ages away, and after that you have to go through the whole lot again until reaching 100 which is a mixed bag cos you get a nice card from the monarch but are probably too batshit crazy to realise that you’ve finally made it to an interesting age again. All the other birthdays in between serve only to remind you that you’re getting older, you’ve achieved less than you meant to and that for one day a year you are no longer special.

What is it to be 22 anyway? The only relevant thing I can think of about the number is that it’s a famous bingo call. Not famous enough for me to be able to remember it though… two dead ducks? I forget. And it’s a palindrome too, but that’s not exactly sexy. No one sexy is 22.

I’ve certainly missed the prodigy boat. Prodigious talents make themselves known by 21 at the latest. Whenever you hear about someone young breaking out into the world of success they’re always 21 or younger. After that you have to wait til 33 at the earliest before you can breakthrough again. I’m getting to an age where I see musicians who have released seminal albums, sportstars who have achieved immense physical feats and millionaire entrepreneurs, all of which are younger than me. For no logical reason I’m filled with a vitriolic bile towards these smug bastards. Is it jealousy or fear? I think it might be fear. Fear that time is slipping away from me. I’m oooooooold.

Of course I realise that anyone over the age of 22 who is reading this will probably be entertaining thoughts of finding me and beating me savagely round the side of the head with a sledgehammer. I think 22 is depressing and old? Ha! It’s positively pre-pubescent mate. You just wait til your belly starts sliding away beyond your control, your limbs stiffen up and your hair goes grey!

Alright, fair enough. That stage is a lot more depressing than the point in my life I’m currently residing in. I don’t really feel old, I just no longer feel young. I can no longer use that excuse to myself of, ‘I’m young! I’ve got years left to mature and worry about the real world!’ I can’t do that anymore. It’s scary. It ain’t right I tells ya. Between now and 30 I can see myself in a state of limbo. Age-confused. Yearning for immaturity lost.

I think a lot of the reason for my minor early 20s crisis may be the presents I received from my family. Everything I got was clothes. Everything. Clothes all the way. I’m not complaining. I like clothes but rarely buy them and my siblings have better fashion tastes than I do anyway, so getting a big pile of clothes was great. But it’s also a pretty clear indication that you have reached an insignificant age. There are no more obvious birthday presents, or even presents at all. From now on it’s clothes, DVDs and CDs all the way. But that’s all I spend money on anyway, so net gain!

Perhaps it’s a good thing, a sign of my need to mature and move on. Birthdays are no longer just about me, jelly and ice cream. They are instead a chance to pause, to think, to get together with friends and get wasted. Yes, that’s it. Boldly should I step forward, out of the cave and into the light. Time to shake off that mentality I’ve had towards birthdays since I first popped into this world 22 years ago and demanded a party hat and a cigar.

Or I could just lie and claim to be 21 for the rest of my life. People do that. I’ve seen it in films.

Itchy Feet

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