Fear Grows for Growing Fears

"…the politics of fear subdues and suppresses the energy and dignity of ordinary citizens, making us too apprehensive to object as basic freedoms are whittled away in pursuit of some hopeless mirage of perfect security." -- Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman. (excellent article here)

Okay. It's time to tackle Fear head on. Let us grab it by the nuts and see what happens when we start twisting.

Here's the question. Are we scared because we are told to be scared, or have we so much to fear now that a thousand scaremongering headlines can scarcely do it justice?

No…that is too simplistic. The reality is that fear as a descriptive concept has mutated in recent years into a real being, with massive drool-laden fangs and an unwordly snarl. Whether we have more to fear now is irrelevant; the real question lies in the nature of the Fear beast itself, now that it is beginning to bite.

Frank Furedi argues in this article that the use of fear as a political weapon is hardly a new phenomenon; communism, nuclear war, immigration…all have been used in the last sixty years to promote a culture of fear. But he adds that, unlike today, "they were not preoccupied with fear as a problem in an abstract sense."

We have become comfortable with fear and being afraid. It is the 21st century way of defining ourselves against the rest of the world. Whereas once we used to worry about our own tangible problems, afraid of something awful happening to our families or running out of money to pay the bills, we are now afraid of the entire world and life itself. This twisted hunger is fed by our climate – not only through the dripping down of politics through the media prism, but through the fact that fear is an efficient tool for anyone who wants to get things done. The world and his dog now uses the war on terror as a reason for doing almost anything – usually to promote their own causes or goods. And it works.

"In the same way that very few people a few years ago could have predicted that Saddam Hussein would be overthrown in Iraq, his statues dragged down by jubilant braying mobs, who would ever have predicted the toppling of Cosmopolitan as Britain’s number one women’s monthly?" -- Periodical Publishers’ Association conference. (quote via Private Eye)

As times goes on, business models become refined and human behaviour is understood to a greater and greater degree. So if fear is shown to work as a marketing tool, they ramp it up to 11. Let us take an example…switch on the television in the daytime and pay attention to the advertisements. Tick off the terror…life insurance plays on the fear of dying, "no win no fee" lawyers play on the fear of not getting your fair share… Indeed, all adverts will make you believe that without their product you will be cast aside like the useless bastard you are, that you will be fat, unfashionable and unpopular if you do not spend, spend, spend.

And we are happy with this, because it is crucial to our modern way of thinking. It is how fashion works, marketing works, politics works…even entertainment. We navigate through waters of fear in our lives without complaint, and see those who protest as somehow old-fashioned and soft. There are many, many subjects we read about and hear about that, no matter what the present focus, if you slice open their bellies you will find Fear lurking inside with its claws buried deep into their intestines, hearts and brains. Over the years it has become fully assimilated into these subjects. Crime is therefore "rampant" and could be coming to a "street near you". Drugs could be in the hands of "your child, right now!" Terrorism is something that could happen to "anyone, anywhere at anytime." We begin to take the threat as read, and begin to see Fear, and its counterpart the Victim, everywhere. (related essay in PDF format here)

This suggests that emotion is becoming the biggest currency on the block, and in an supposed age of reason this is a worrying trend, especially when this emotion is manipulated politically into a permanent state of negativity.

"…[The government] is not only failing to combat, but actively promoting, a culture in which the core social democratic values of social solidarity and compassion cannot hope to flourish; and in which only reactionary forms of politics, based on fear, prejudice and suspicion, are likely to thrive." -- Joyce McMillan.

So our communities fall apart. We used to have our villains, and we would band together against this threat. Now our villains are intangible and float around in the air. We cannot put a pistol to their heads. So we retreat into our homes and pick up the Daily Mail and our eyes spin like washing machine drums as we are bombarded with worse case scenarios. Most people lift their opinions from a single media source and if that source can only frame news in the context of how it will fuck up your life, the pitch of its voice rising as hysteria grows and sales rise, then we will react in one of two ways. We can either hide behind the sofa or pick up the nearest crowbar and start taking fevered swings at thin air.

Ah, but does fear really split us up in this way? Fear can be a unifying force. We have seen this in action in the USA where the majority of the country came together to tremble behind Bush as he promised to righteously destroy an enemy that he took great pains to define. And it is the scared voter who is most receptive to these dark suggestions.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be a devastating from the standpoint of the United States." – Dick Cheney.

A worrying quote indeed. Cheney is a vicious creature and his mastery of Fear is impeccable. His kind of politician is thriving in the modern climate and the level of his power should be setting alarm bells off in every mind across the country. But when we are afraid of the Big Bad Something, we would rather unleash the lesser of the two evils. It hardly matters if we stand together or stand alone. Fear is a beast of many talents and is infinitely adaptable.

Indeed, and whatever kind of a beast Fear is, it roams all ours streets and is attacking everything it comes near. We are aware of our vulnerabilities like never before whilst people sit and laugh as they make money from our collective panics. Instead of a free and creative society we find ourselves bonding over common fears. We relinquish control over our own lives in the ineffective pursuit of security. We are all horribly compliant in all this. And that really is something of which we should be afraid.

The Player of Games

Unsurprisingly, the Blunkett allegations have been a series of small explosions that have created some ugly craters. We have moved on from a simple affair to a web of privilege abuse centred on former lover Kimberly Quinn. Now Blunkett himself has ordered an independent enquiry into the allegations.

But we must separate the crimes from the errors of judgement, or we will fall victim to the useless point scoring practised by our tabloids constantly and our broadsheets frequently. A list of the allegations and analysis thereon is here – notice how the bigger allegations are "difficult to prove" or "far-fetched" and the smaller allegations are exactly the same tawdry little tidbits that every MP dabbles in from time to time.

Many MPs get nervous at a time like this and it is for that exact reason…pulling on the corruption thread is likely to cause the entire political structure to unravel like a cheap jumper caught on a barb-wire fence. In politics, there is no such thing as paranoia. When the first shot is fired, many ministers hit the deck and refuse to do anything but mumble about the right to privacy. Today, Blunkett. Tomorrow, them?

So, an independent enquiry…why not? Surely there must be a few good men out there who owe Blunkett a favour...perhaps a law lord or two. Besides, whether or not he is guilty of the worst of his allegations, he will not be resigning over this. The smart money is on an apology over the minor crimes, an apology demanded over the unproven major crimes, followed by a crack of the whip and onwards with the identity card juggernaut. He has the power. And in the unlikely chance he does step down, then his foul sphere of control was an illusion all along and we never had anything to fear in the first place. But this will not happen. Control and the illusion of control are two sides of the same coin. As soon as you begin to bow down and accept a fallacy, then it is no longer a fallacy but our reality. The new logic. Boom!

A strange flaw exists in the already low characters of those who seek to deny the freedom of others and control their actions. They are always guilty, and frequently of the same crimes they want to stamp out in others. When power becomes a leech on the brain, the victim stops seeing fellow travellers as friends and enemies. Instead he begins to regard them as pieces on a chess board. Now their actions are all part of the same game, and whether they win or lose, what the hell…it's only a game, right? Sacrificing lowlier pieces, closing ranks, breaking ranks to head to the other side, only to grab the crown for him or herself and then tearing across the board until nobody else remains standing… The contempt for our reality is a grizzly thing to witness and nobody should have to live in a country governed by that kind of person.

Ah, but Blunkett is innocent until proven guilty…our newspapers may make some dark assumptions but the law does not. Our justice system is based on principals like these.

Well…sometimes.

Dark Highways of the Criminal Mind

New Cross, London, last weekend. In the front room of the house, beneath a plant with fat drooping leaves, there is a black container the size of a shoebox. It stands upright and exposes its contents to the world with an unworldly silence that borders on the obscene. This thing is weird.

But the thing also appears shabby and second-hand, and could be mistaken for junk if seen from the corner of your eye. That would be before some mechanism in your head snaps, and the full monstrous glory of the thing grabs your attention by the throat and vomits in its ear. This box is the stuff of nightmares, and it is tucked away in a corner, as if it did not matter one way or the other.

It is the property of Julian, an apparently upstanding citizen who was advising us on whether the area was a good place to live. But the dark side had seized him long ago; he spent fifty pounds on this artefact. Even today he stands by his decision to purchase the twisted skeleton of a rabbit, hanging in an iron-maiden style box where gruesome knives thrust through the bones, the whole damn thing appearing to be a fucked up parody of crucifiction. There is no Easter-style resurrection here...this is one man's interpretation of death and the nothingness that follows. No afterlife can be perceived here, just the leering edges of a few dozen blades.

And at the bottom corner, a little placard reads "pull me" above an extendable string tied to a metal loop. If you pull the string the box will speak to you and implore you to love it.

This is art, damn it. And where it comes from is a dark place indeed. We discovered that Julian bought the piece from a man locked away deep in the penal system. And the crime of this artist was so dark, so horrific, so shocking, that the other prisoners on the wing dare not speak of it. Ye gods. This piece of art came from somewhere inside him, a manifestation of some terrible parasite squatting in the belly of his soul. What the hell had he done? We will never know, and we are better off not knowing.

But Julian had his reasons to buy the rabbit. He knew that he must encourage the artist to continue creating his art. Many prisons conduct classes in art therapy and prisoners can come to terms with their crimes this way. Only by creating something can they bait the hook that catches the bad memories previously lost at the bottom of a very black ocean.

The benefits of these classes, whilst on the surface designed seemingly to enrage the reactionary taxpayer, are many and varied.

"Art activities can channel negative energy into positive results. [It] has been shown to reduce recidivism, assist professions in healing people with violent or tragic pasts, and help inmates gain some control over their lives." -- Dr. Rachel Williams, Ph.D (full article here)

The process of creation is much more important than the final result - clearly, most of the pieces created in this manner do not stand up to critical gaze...at least, not without knowing the story behind the creation. Our dead rabbit is not an appealing piece and only a bug-eyed lunatic would want it in his front room. But to know each of the blades are made up of sharp screwdriver heads that some twisted bastard had to smuggle into the prison workshop past the guards... this is what I remember when I think about the piece, not the physical end result. It gives the piece flavour.

Sure, given enough time your average Young British Artist could throw together a telephone box full of fake foetuses covered in blood that light up at random. And people would be shocked and give them lots of cash. But those are hollow pieces with no depth. Our dead rabbit is different. It is much, much darker, and all the better for it.

Stock Phrase Market Update #1

Raft of Measures: 97 (+1, Hi 97, Lo 96)
So To Speak: 1770 (new)
The Holy Grail: 753 (-31, Hi 784, Lo 753)
The New Black: 144 (+2, Hi 144, Lo 142)
The Rest is History: 334 (+17, Hi 334, Lo 317)
Will Never Be The Same Again: 82 (new)

Source: Number of result from the Google News search box. Phrases are entered in quotation marks.

The smart money today avoided The Holy Grail, whose stock fell sharply in the previous twenty four hours to 753. But there was good news for The Rest is History, thanks to a motley collection of news stories about everything from an epidemic in Quebec to low cost, reliable and efficient bar code scanner modules.

There were two new entries in the stock phrase market today – Will Never Be The Same Again, a poor performer since the aftermath of Princess Diana's death subsided, and So To Speak, currently riding high at a massive 1770. Elsewhere in the market, Hell in a Hand Cart was somewhat disappointed to register merely a single result. What with Britain chock full of political correctness going mad, paedophiles, falling house prices, straight bananas, rampant gun crime, antisocial yobs, lesbians, liberals, bleeding hearts, communists, johnny foreigner and insufferable morons whose opinions are different to mine, this is a shocking result indeed.

Familiarity and Contempt on the Street of Shame

For the last few years, Private Eye has run a feature called The Neophiliacs, listing uses and variations of the cliché "X is the new black" in the previous fortnight's media. The phrase is hackneyed beyond belief but still remains an essential tool in the lazy writer's arsenal.

Other newspaper watchers have noted a wider range of cliches, each of which have their own particular lifespan. A demonstration of this can be carried out through the pages of Google news. Specifically, the search box. Results will change every day, so let us examine a few contemporary examples and offer the number of occurances of these cliché as of right now.

Raft of measures (96 results)

"Her Majesty unveiled a raft of measures aimed fighting terror, crime, anti-social behaviour and identity fraud" – politics.co.uk

"Only transparent information and products will create a truly competitive market. Which? is calling for a raft of measures…" – guardian.co.uk

"…the whisky industry has followed suit with a raft of measures." – The Scotsman

The new black (142 results)

"Orange – it's the new black" – Longview Daily News

"When it comes to PPP, green's the new black" – The Scotsman

"Bottled Water – the new black" – Jamaica Observer

"First it was gold, that was closely followed by platinum, then black, and now purple which, as everyone knows, is the new black." – The Scotsman

Bouncebackability (62 results)

"I have belief, I believe in Bouncebackability" – The Holmesdale Online

"You can put your shirt on bouncebackability" – Croydon Guardian

"It's not our word Nicholas – 'bouncebackability' is the campaign of the people to improve and develop the English language. I went to see a Shakespeare play on Saturday and I tell you, language needs to develop because that was rubbish!" – Tim Lovejoy, The Sun

---

For those interested in the overuse of clichés in modern journalism, give this article a read. It lists the seventeen worst clichés, including "the rest is history" (317 results on Google News), "the holy grail" (734 results) and "welcome to the world of…" (99 results).

A writer who resorts repeatedly to clichés should have the image of a dunce cap burned onto their foreheads with a branding iron. They are supposed to be putting something new into the world through their words, and must realise that the use of clichés is one of the many sentinels keeping watch on the thin line between the Writer and the Hack. This applies even when used with self-awareness…in the same way that a politician declaring an interest before speaking doesn't absolve him.

But I don't want to keep blowing this smoke around. To attack bad writing in writing is a dangerous sport and I am too scared of being charged with hypocrisy.

Ah, what the hell. These people need to be told.

The Christmas Television Problem Solved

We have had the first snowfall of the winter. But worse is to come. We shall soon have the first newspaper Christmas television guides of the year falling through a million letterboxes. This is your last warning…buy packs of earplugs whilst you can, because the wailing and gnashing of teeth that "there is nothing on television this year" will soon be deafening.

To hell with the complaining. All television broadcasts should cease sometime after noon on Christmas day and not resume until December 27th. This move would be unpopular…but hell, you say there's nothing on? You ain't seen nothing yet…

Nobody needs television after their Christmas dinner. Before dinner there has to be a morning of good programmes for the sake of the cook, and for one day only the watershed should be revoked. Anything can go on Christmas morning…think of it as a present. Children will be surrounded in wrapping paper and the old folks will stink of sherry, unable to comprehend the time of day let alone the filth on the television screen. Which leaves the cook to haul the television into the kitchen. Imagine the poetry, the sheer rhythm of stuffing a turkey along to some sweaty and pounding sex scene, or watching Sharon Stone being interrogated in Basic Instinct as you wrap the turkey's legs together and start drawing some uncomfortable parallels…

What? Nobody wants to read that. Besides, the morning is fairly unimportant in my scheme. Indeed, the afternoon is when the real fun begins. All television channels will cease broadcasting at 1.00pm on Christmas Day, but at 3.00pm a new channel will begin to broadcast, and this channel will be called the Democracy Channel.

For eight hours the Democracy Channel will show live floggings of every MP who has cynically and greedily screwed up his role as representative of the people. Politicians with disagreeable policies are not at fault here…it is the politician who, in the past year, has bent democracy over the stove and shafted it until it bleeds who should have the Fear right now. That will be a mighty Christmas present for us all, payback for taking our votes and pissing on them for the sake of a few bungs, a million fallacious expense claims, and the right to feather their corporate friend's nests in return for a seat on the board.

To many people this will hardly matter. The people who have received expensive new plasma televisions won't have managed to wire the damn thing up by New Year's Eve, let alone December 27th. Those who are busy shooting the breeze with the family over a hundred glasses of mulled wine won't even notice the static on the screen. And if you're spending Christmas alone? You can pour yourself a generous gin and tonic and enjoy David Blunkett's screams puncturing the evening as he is thrashed repeatedly on television with a novelty six foot long identity card.

Meanwhile, the Queen will have discovered her Christmas message is not being broadcast. So she will have to find her own way of broadcasting her message. She will have to work for the right to cough up her annual flem, to bombard us with the royal equivalent of a round-robin Christmas card letter. So, this year, if you find a bunch of balloons floating past your house with a royal stamp on the jolly red exterior and a scroll attached to the string, you can choose whether to indulge your false interest in this baffling family, or break out the BB guns and give your children some target practice. Now that's democracy.

Besides, who needs Christmas television when you have these?

Myth-Direction

The spirit of Sisyphus is flowing through me. Again the boulder has rolled back down on me…but unlike the original punishment dished out for squealing on Zeus, this is my choice.

It is this damned job. Forever on the verge of finishing, but there's always another week or two to go. They keep asking, and I keep fretting about having enough money. This time I have elected to stay in the belly of this beast until the middle of December, despite tearing an escape door in the beast's flesh that would have seen me out of here on Friday.

But I have my distractions. A shiny box of ten James Bond novels appeared on my doorstep a few days ago from The Book People, which means I can finally get to grips with Casino Royale without wishing there was more Woody Allen in it.

Hmm…Casino Royale. That was a bizarre film and few people can account for it. The film was awash with directors, but none of them could stop Peter Sellers pulling a vanishing act half way through filming. It was that kind of production…a gross, monumental folly where critics could only gasp at the chutzpah shown by the makers in shovelling so much money onto the fire in such a short period of time.

It was also one of the most surreal films of its day. "Peter Sellers is tortured and for no apparent reason thrown into a dream sequence filled with Scottish pipers, one of whom is Peter O’Toole who asks Sellers if he is Richard Burton, to which Sellers’ reply is no, that he is Peter O’Toole." -- Richard Scheib, 1991 (full article here)

Most critics wouldn't even grant it the status of curate's egg. Besides, the curate would smash their balls with a sledgehammer for the insult. But on a cold day with a warm fire nearby, it is possible to gain some enjoyment out of the film. Burt Bacharach's music is excellent. Lopping off the first half an hour would help the film's cause no end. And…no, actually, that's about it. The film is an example of all that is rotten about Hollywood's bloated ego…it is easy to see how too many people trying to stamp their brand on a film can result in some nasty burns, and it remains a lesson in vision. Many people can stand in the same place at once, but they can all be looking in a different direction.

Ah, but I have watched it more than once before and I expect I will watch it again. As I was trying to say in the previous paragraph, Casino Royale can be enjoyed in the right mood and preferably whilst in the grip of something intoxicating that will fuck with your time perception and tickle your incredulity when you find yourself swearing that Ronnie Corbett is leering menacingly out of your television and about to burst through the screen and headbut you in the kneecaps.

James Bond…surreal? Surely not…but then accepted wisdom states that Bob Holness was the first James Bond, appearing as Bond in a radio adaptation of Moonraker in South Africa back in 1956. But is this even true? Or is this some cruel urban myth designed to feed our love of messy and bizarre trivia? It has become impossible to separate truth from fiction because the Internet is our first and last and everything, and we have forgotten how to research properly. Just throw a net into the Google sea and let a hundred tonnes of junk get caught up inside.

Thanks to the Internet, the average urban myth these days can spread in seconds, given the right combination of the weird and the only-just-possible. There are some important lessons in gullibility and research we can learn from this…Let's say for instance that, in the course of one year, eight spiders crawl into your mouth whilst sleeping. Sounds possible, doesn't it?

But this is a myth that was "invented as an example of the absurd things people will believe simply because they come across them on the Internet." -- snopes.com (full article here)

Well…I appear to have wasted a surprising amount of time writing this nonsense. I may have more than two weeks left of this job, but as I said somewhere in that mess above, I have my distractions…

Dark Moods on White Roads

The sky had brooded all afternoon and finally the clouds burst as rush hour was about to commence. But the weather was in a black humour and went dramatically sideways not long after we had had crammed onto our respective buses. It was a cold evening; I leapt onto the bus in the middle of a downpour and leapt off in the middle of a snowstorm. Ye gods.

My umbrella was hopeless; this stuff was being blown horizontally. Fat, glistening snowflakes tore across the suburban skies, catching the sodium streetlights as they fell to create beautiful fountains of sparkling orange light. But there is very little poetry in having to grit the pavements and scraping ice off the car windscreen. For adults, snow is something to be appreciated from afar and certainly not when travel is involved.

I turned on the television and found pictures of blizzard-swept Derbyshire on the news. I was surprised...normally, the rest of the country can be under six foot of snow, but the news will only take notice once the first snowflake hits London. Then chaos breaks out, and a hundred hysterical news features are launched to an uncaring nation like balls from an old cannon... Coronation Street will be dropped to be replaced by a two hour special on the history of snow, the newspapers will print nothing but pictures of Londoners ditching their cars, running around in circles and shouting "aiiee!", whilst the weather forecast will feature a tired and emotional Rob McElwee punching Michael Burke in the teeth and screaming for the end of the world.

By this morning the snow had turned ugly; after dumping their white load on Thursday evening, the clouds melted away to leave a freezing cold night, turning the snow to ice and promising a bollock-squeezingly awful commute for we happy workers. The traffic reports were grim…I set off for work across the ice with a heavy heart, losing my balance somewhere in the region of every four seconds. In my mind all I could hear was a manic sound effect from some old cartoon that ended with an almighty and painful drum crash.

So I was astonished to see that not only were the roads clear of ice; they were also remarkably traffic free. It was the fastest commute for months, and I was baffled. But what the hell. I am due some commuting karma after a week of suffering…bad weather, late buses and abysmal traffic has put me in a foul temper every other night this week. By Wednesday I was considering breaking into the headquarters of the First bus company and tearing the managing director limb from limb. I would have then put his head on a spike and paraded around Sheffield, to a barrage of whoops and cheers from a city full of pissed off passengers.

That feeling is gone now. The air is now crisp and the sky is blue. Perhaps tonight I will be cursing and bellowing and making twisted torture plans, but for now the world seems all right. Just don't snow again until I finish this job next week, y'hear?

The Funeral of Fred Dibnah

Some pictures from the funeral of this great man here.

A true enthusiast, a warm-hearted eccentric, and one of the vanishingly few people who were on television for being knowledgeable, interesting and in love with his subject matter.

When I saw him perform in Leeds a year or so back, he kept the audience enthralled for more than two hours despite the theatre being overheated and cramped. And the only props he needed was a stool, a pint of Guinness, and a head full of memories.

Bye Fred.

The Hot Air Balloon Hero

Recently I have been discussing the concept of inactive fictional protagonists at Philip Purser-Hallard's Peculiar Lives, and I have been thinking how this applies to the novel and storytelling in general.

What we are talking about here are characters that do not actively affect the story through their actions. As Philip puts it, citing criticism of his novel Of the City of the Saved…,"the protagonists don't seem to do all that much -- they mostly just move around from place to place, experiencing things and having revelations made to them."

Can this kind of protagonist be an asset to a given story? It is a tough call, and it will depend on the nature of the story. Some of the best journalism tells some great stories without pushing people through a series of hoops leading to a resolution; the relentless march of world events and their effects on certain people can make gripping reading. If we say that a story can be characterised by certain emotions, then despair and hopeless defiance are as valid as any other.

Notice, however, that this begins to question the nature of journalism as well as fiction. This does not matter, though, if we go with the gonzo theory that journalism and fiction are two sides of the same coin. But where do these approaches leave the average reader? Let us take a short diversion into television. Take the average script, and examine how any decent plot almost always involves a situation either created by the characters or one that swallows them up involuntarily, which is then fought against until the actions of the characters creates a resolution. The viewer normally feels cheated by the deux ex machina…bearing in mind that the average viewer has watched thousands of hours of television and is wise to many of the tricks. If the writer forces the ending, the viewer senses it.

And yet, an ending unaffected by the actions of the characters can work dramatically, providing that this is the point of the story. The key is to satisfy the viewer, to make him or her feel like the ending was inevitable, no matter how surprising.

This suggests that the plot of a novel is far more important than the characters within it, which is a dangerous notion. Surely what we remember from the best novels are the great characters? Your Gatsby, your Yossarian, your Reginald Perin… But to separate out the components of a novel is poor practice. Reggie Perrin is a creation of true magnificence, but he is also a creation of the time and place David Nobbs wrote about. Without them the character would be irrelevant.

Hmm…I am beginning to realise just how massive this subject is. I will have to leave this post unfinished so that I can lash together my diverging thoughts on the matter without the whole thing exploding in an unfocused mess. All I can say in conclusion is that the rules in force in one brilliant novel will likely be broken abundantly by the author of the next brilliant novel, so all we can hope for the writer to be true to this thing we call reality. Even if we don't believe the story is true, we need to believe in the story. The one rule that cannot be broken is that the writer must never get lazy in their writing. The reader is not stupid...a fact the writer ignores at his peril.

Glory Box

"You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one." -- James A. Froude

What is it about the humble toolbox that brings out the inner man? I was pondering this last night as I removed the philips head from my socket screwdriver with my teeth.

Most of what is considered to be the modern man is a façade, a smokescreen, a line of two-dimensional shop fronts on the film set of a cheap western. We do not want books about relationships and digital access to BBC4… What we really want is to have a damned big box full of things with which we can twist, hammer and wrench other things. Only then can we feel at once with our antecedents, an atavistic bond with the entire male line more powerful than any social conditioning.

Hauling a toolbox around is the closest we get to being a modern knight, only with a flat-head screwdriver instead of a 37 inch broadsword. Even now I cannot pass a toolshop without wanting to scamper inside and fondle a rack of expensive and shiny spanners.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but the satisfaction you can get from fixing something -- working with your hands and a box full of tools -- beats anything you can do with a computer. I am sure there are a hundred articles out there on the Internet about how this is all genetic, that it stems from the behaviour of club-waving cavemen, but I bet none of those lumbering idiots never had to grope around for a spare fuse in the dark.

What? Never mind. But in these civilised times the average man has to put in a genuine effort to overcome his genetic programming just to be seen as acceptable in society…how long before we all have to moisturise simply to avoid being laughed at in the office? Ah, but enough slippery-slope reasoning… The bottom line is that nobody really wants to revert to a kind of caveman thug mentality, but it is nice to have something we don't have to think about too much…a big box of tools makes an excellent substitute for the human male brain. And cheaper to replace too in the event of an electrical explosion…

The I-Spy Book of Arguments

A few years ago I wrote a small piece on how letters to local newspapers made absolutely no sense when deconstructed even slightly. (here)

I look back on the section on "arguments" with interest now that I have discovered this comprehensive guide, by Michael C. Labossiere, to fallacies within arguments. My piece pales into insignificance when placed in the shadow of this fascinating site...and I am intrigued to see that some of the points I make have genuine, real-world titles. I had no idea, for instance, that when I wrote:

Crap extrapolation - usually a nightmare future is derived from a perfectly innocent development, eg "I see scientists have cured cancer. What next? Robots taking over the world?"

...that this, in fact, an example of what is known as the slippery-slope fallacy.

Sadly, these fallacies, or errors in reason, are pumped out by every man, woman and child every day. Sometimes they are genuine mistakes, but mostly they are used with a deep cynical intent as a dark bag of tricks to win arguments. We are surrounded by this...if you don't keep your wits about you, every argument you make will be destroyed by illusory weapons. Which is why this site is invaluable. The knowledge it contains are true weapons, and with them you are armed. Use them well.

It is not just a multitude of perverse arguments with which we are bombarded, however; there is also the tsunami of gibberish and bullshit that threatens to overwhelm us. But we are not defenceless against this either...it is gratifying to see that there are people out there constructing machinery to break down these walls. There are some good books coming out on these subjects and Francis Wheen's recent book, How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, is an excellent example (related article here).

What must be understood is that attacking this kind of bullshit isn't just an exercise in liberal intellectualism. This affects all of us. These mumbo-jumbos form the foundation of lies that some very dangerous towers are then built upon. Politics, media, day-to-day relationships; all of them find themselves in the shadows of these towers, and until people learn to argue properly, this is where they will remain.

An Inverted Pyramid of Piffle

Trying to pin down the character of Boris Johnson is a foolish business and has driven many a political commentator to despair. The news that he has been kicked off the front bench for "misleading Michael Howard" over his four-year affair with Petronella Wyatt is another example of how difficult it is to predict the man, but there are certain patterns that are unavoidable.

The "buffoon" element is a useful armour, and can protect him against all sorts of crimes… ordinary men weep at his ability to shrug off mistakes for which other people would be vilified. He is undiplomatic and politically unaware, but it is the extent to which he shines in certain ways that solidifies his foundation.

Undoubtedly he has the qualities required to edit the Spectator, despite his massive error in allowing the Liverpool article through. And he has long since discovered that public school charm is worth a hundred talents, bearing in mind how much this is likely to resonate with most similarly public school educated establishment figures. Hell, it opens doors. It is a freemasonry of body language and words; and if a few Liverpudlians are incensed, it hardly matters…there are plenty of people in the media ready to come out in his favour and write off Liverpool as a sentimental city of idiots. It hardly matters if they have never even been north of Watford, because after all Boris is so charming that he can't possibly be in the wrong…

The most worryingly parts of this story are these defences of Boris. Many reports and comments over the weekend explained why he should not be sacked. They said that Boris is an honest man who speaks his mind and doesn't care whether people will agree with what he says…making a change from all those politicians who only say what he thinks people want him to say. But we must face an important fact. If what he is saying -- no matter how honestly -- is gibberish, he should not be applauded.

This deference to character and "charm" over anything else, including political deeds, is astonishing. He is there as the representative of the people who elected him, not as a damn sideshow. To remove the leash and let him roam around the field, doing exactly what the hell he wants, pissing on lampposts and foaming at the mouth every time somebody comes near… Jesus.

Whether he likes it or not he is mired in the heart of politics and cannot get away with being a bad politician. Of course his private life is his own, but his character is a flawed and baffling one, and his affair was a manifestation of these flaws. The one question to be asked is not why did Michael Howard sack him over the affair issue…but why the hell was he there to be sacked in the first place?

Boris Johnson is not a loveable buffoon. He is a rotten politician who has, by accident or design, the ability to bamboozle millions of people into seeing him as a "character". Bollocks to him, and for the love of god please keep him off the damn television.

Mud and Metal Mixing Good

Does a rat ask to stay in the maze? Does a prisoner deliberately miss his own parole hearing? Man must never stop questioning his environment. Today I am asking the question "why have I just decided to stay working here for an extra week?" So far the environment is quiet on the matter. It just sits there and buzzes.

Ye gods, what was I thinking? The answer comes at the bottom of a hastily-scrawled balance sheet that now sits forlornly in the bin. Money!

The way I figure it, another five days at the bottom of the food chain in this industrial eyesore will buy me a shiny, 28 inch widescreen television. I am normally left cold by spending money on such things…I get no comfort from the act, some say art, of shopping. I ask myself…is this going to improve my life to such an extent that I won't miss the money that's no longer in my account? But the question is absurd. The figure that is my account balance is an abstract thing and I feel no better or worse how much the needle swings from black to red and back again. Hmm…there's a roulette analogy in there somewhere….but I am not a gambler, at least not for high stakes. In the universal game of poker, I'm the one who calls.

However, this television would be a symbol; I will be moving into a new flat very soon and want to put my past relationship with bad technology behind.

Recently, I have been getting by on a scrapheap of defective equipment that gasps for breath and wonders every morning whether it's worth waking up at all. The last three CD players I have owned have all been hopeless and skipped around a disc like a goddamn Morris dance; during the time I reviewed new music for a university newspaper, I remember ploughing through an album by a group called Pan Sonic. Their forte was art installation-style music. Half way through the disc the CD player gave up, getting stuck and beeping and hissing as it failed to play. Such was the nature of the music, I didn't notice for 10 minutes. I reviewed the album accordingly.

And I have just replaced the guts of my PC after becoming so frustrated with the damn thing overheating that I attacked the processor with a screwdriver. I am comfortable with operating technology and don't stress easily…but what chance do I have when the technology goes out of its way to spend its days shedding functionality, the scientific equivalent of a moulting Red Setter?

I can no longer tolerate these things. I will buy good things that use cable types I've never even heard of. Purely because I hate the anxiety and sense of depression that comes with a cheap and nasty pile of junk. I want to know that the damn thing won't spit out a circuit after three months and start emitting a high pitched whine, something guaranteed to be unfixable without replacing the entire unit.

The prestige of the technology does not interest me…anyone who buys one of those absurd and monstrous American-style fridges with built-in ice-maker, holes them up in some tiny kitchen in a mid-London studio flat and then sits back to bask in their friend's admiration… well, to hell with them. They are idiots and have forfeited their right to come near society without being hit on the head with a chair. Same goes for anyone who spends that extra £50 or so just to get the biggest, most unnecessary hard drive for their poxy portable mp3 jukebox.

So I feel I can justify buying this television. It's a health thing, damn it… when I own that beast the stress will just melt away. So yeah, on reflection I think I may be needing that extra week's pay.

I'll Die with the Black Fly Picking my Bones

"What a dust do I raise!" says the Fly, "upon the Coach-wheel?"
-- Laurentius Abstemius, ~1492.

It began a few weeks ago. This perfectly sealed environment, with her barred windows and industrial air conditioning, was breached by a fly.

"In October?" I bellowed at nobody in particular. The fly looked at me inquisitively and threw up on my sandwich.

Now, we put up with this irritation in the summer when our wits are dulled and our armpits are clammy. But in late autumn, it feels like a massive violation of nature and privacy. Like opening a bag of foiled-wrapped crisps to discover a tiny man inside indulging in a furtive fart in the assumption that nobody is looking.

Since then, the problem has worsened to the extent that we appear to be on some kind of lockdown. Leaving a door open is now punishable by death, and there are rumours of as many as three flies in the kitchen. The Book of Revelations is a goddamn fairy story compared to this plague.

What is required is some kind of fly trap, and I am armed with ideas.

1. Fly Paper. A traditional method in which we would leave copies of the Daily Mail lying around. The fly comes in, sees the paper and starts to read it. Whilst the fly is distracted, we swat the bastard. This method works primarily because flies are attracted to shit.

2. The Honey Trap. We sellotape a picture of a nice, juicy steak to the wall, and when the fly lands on the picture, we hurl a jar of honey at it.

3. The Mousetrap. Instead of using cheese, we use a freshly-laid cowpat as bait. The main drawback with this idea is that we would need a herd of cows to obtain the cowpats. Once the flies were gone we would be stuck with swarms of cows. And if you have ever tried swatting one of them, you'll know that nothing less than a mattress tied to a fireman's pole will do. And then you're stuck with firemen. The only thing they're scared of is flies, and so the cycle repeats.

4. Julia Sarpong. Even flies have some taste.

The bitterest pill to swallow is that they appear to operate a dead man's shoes policy. No sooner as one fly is dead, another turns up ten minutes later. As if the sons of bitches were operating a timeshare, or something.

"Shit! Did you feel that, squadron leader? A disturbance in the force…"

"Hell yeah, I felt it. Sons of bitches. Fly down! Fly down! Get another fly in there at once! And don't forget to tell him that once inside he must avoid all obvious exits, keep landing confusingly on the ceiling and attempt to climb into people's earholes at every opportunity."

"Ten-four, squadron leader. And tell whoever goes that it's tuna sandwich day in the office, so if you puke on the food nobody will notice."

Well…perhaps. For now, though, we are stuck with the world's worst fly spray, a kitchen we can't use in case we are skeletonised by the three fly swarm, and a rabid fear that our foods will be vomited on when our backs are turned. (Although that started happening before the flies arrived, but that's not for now).

Scientifically speaking, flies could rule the world, you know. They're just lazy.

Schoolboy Error #94

I am hoping like hell that my kids don't find out that their father is part of…"the new wealthy elite." – David Aaronovitch, the Guardian.

Fair enough. I suppose it could be embarrassing if they found out. Just be careful not to do anything silly like mention it in the first line of the first paragraph of an article in a national newspaper. For instance.

The Day The Americans Came To Stay

That title is the front page headline on the Independent today, and it wasn't the only broadsheet in a philosophical mood today. Fallujah is in the middle of a gruesome urban battle between the attacking US Troops and the insurgents, and the Times was describing the battle this morning as a "savage dance of death". (full story)

It is difficult to know what to make of it. What we are getting from Iraq are facts and figures from the military, and even the television reports we see over our morning coffee are monitored and restricted. The media has become a strange presence in modern warfare, and the numbers involved are huge and increasingly leading to resentment; so your arms have been blown off, you're lying in the street gushing blood and screaming for help, and a guy sticks a microphone in your face and asks you how you feel? Your picture will be on the front page tomorrow, so give us a smile… But despite the blanket coverage on a hundred papers and a thousand channels, we still don't have a clear picture and we feel more remote from the conflict than ever.

It's not to say the standard of reporting has dropped, because it hasn’t. But the middle east has been a battleground for many, many years now. We have become used to watching these distant battles between a massively superior force and small armies of angry, proud warriors, knowing in advance that the result will be an obscene and bloody mess in which the Americans win the battle but prolong the war. We have seen computer graphics mocking up battle plans, shocking photographs of mass graves, missiles flying through the night sky and statues being toppled…but we are unshockable nowadays and prefer to get into dinner-party slanging matches over military ethics and American arrogance. But this is not an indication of a nation's rotten heart. It is the result of the ubiquitous media opinionating and speculation with which we are surrounded. We tend to talk about whatever journalists want us to be talking about…the most important topic of discussion for us all today being the size of a film character's pants in the non-event sequel to a deeply dull film, if the tabloids are anything to go by.

That's a point. Does anyone anywhere give a good goddamn about film premieres? These horrific, bloated evenings of self-congratulation do nothing for the film-goer except clog the papers with pictures of actresses in sparkly dresses. The main thrust of the "news" about the Bridget Jones premiere, for instance, seems to be "rain falls from sky – some people about to watch a film get wet. See pages 2,3,4 and centre pages…"

Okay, it's anybody's guess where this is going, so I'll conclude this by saying that after weighing up all the information at my disposal, there's still one thing I don't understand…Einstein's general theory of relativity.

(Sorry.)

Shadow of the Cyclone

Well. I now learn something new about the ride at Alton Towers for which we spent two hours queuing for, a week or so ago. Once we got off the ride, we noticed that the queue had swelled even further. Poor bastards, we thought, before heading for the bar.

Thirty minutes later, with the queue surely edging toward the two and a half hour mark, the ride threw a gasket and stranded its riders in the sky for the best part of an hour. To compound the torment, as the guests sat jabbering in frustration over the heads of a thousand staring idiots, members of staff scaled the ride and wrapped them in silver thermal clothing, like turkeys dressed for the oven. We have to assume that this was an act of kindness rather than fodder for the ride camera.

After all, this is Alton Towers, and risk is not an option for these people. They are a brand, and for some inexplicable reason, killing off your punters tends to be poison for the image. Modern theme parks are one huge exercise in risk elimination – failsafes, computer control…even the backup sensors have backup sensors.

Not every park is so technologically gifted. A few years ago I worked for a theme park in America, one year after one of their rollercoasters killed a rider. In retrospect, even when I was there, safety was not the first thing in the park owners' minds. Very few of the rides had any way of the ride operator to contact another member of staff – telephones were few and far between, and only senior staff had radios. So if anything went wrong, ka-boom! Helpfully, one of the most important safety guidelines we were given was to never leave a ride unattended under any circumstance. Therefore, if the ride was going nuts and raining fiery bolts down on the guests, so long as you just sat there trying not to die whilst waiting for a supervisor to spot the plumes of smoke, you wouldn't be hauled in front of the managers and beaten.

Meanwhile, the chair-lift – the sort of stripped-down cable car consisting simply of a seat and a safety bar – claimed a few scalps of its own, mine included. The damn thing required the operator to hurry the guests out in front of the chair, squeeze them in, spit out a generic welcome, and yank the safety bar down, hoping that they weren't too damned obese for the ride. (Now there was a conversation you did not want to have.)

It was a swiftly executed procedure and if you were careless you could easily bring the safety bar down and snag a fold of your t-shirt. When it happened to me I was dragged about fifteen feet into the air, holding desperately onto the side of the chair and shouting down at the witless operator on the other side to stop the ride. She was, like most of the American ride operators there, an end-of-season temp who screwed up the job constantly and paid no attention to anything at all except to ensure that they were not struck on the head by their ride. Hey...now I think about it, that isn't an exaggeration. I have a photograph somewhere of one American guy called Luis posing in front of this ride, arms folded in self-satisfaction, precisely one second before a chair came up behind him and walloped him in the back, knocking him face down into the mud. Man alive.

Okay, I have wandered a little here. Anyway, it was only after I had shouted down at her five times that she stopped chewing her gum and responded to my calls to "stop the damn ride!" Soon enough it occurred to her to stop the damn ride. She pulled out the safety cable and the ride shuddered to a halt, allowing me to get a foothold and free myself. I leapt athletically to the ground, and the newly assembled crowd of onlookers offered me an ironic round of applause. I glowered back and went to have a break in peace.

So guests may have it bad, but ride operators can get the rawest deal. If you consider being dragged into the air by a chairlift and dangled like a side of meat on a butcher's hook, being stuck on a British rollercoaster for an hour dressed like an extra from Flash Gordon doesn't seem too bad.

My Poppy's Bigger than Yours

Dear celebrity,

Thank you for requesting your copy of the 2004 Celebrity Poppy Catalogue! I'm sure you'll agree that it is a wonderful publication, and I urge you to take your time in browsing it. Here are some of the catalogue's highlights:

Super-Sized Red Poppy

For those people frustrated that the size of the poppy does not automatically increase with the size of their donation, this is the solution. This massive red poppy has a base size of 36 inches and comes complete with a large number of attachable leaves. You can keep building the poppy outwards until you believe your generosity is being amply demonstrated to the world. Comes complete with a tub of gold-based paint and a special pen-shaped applicator so you can write the size of your donation across the poppy's sturdy wooden middle section. And for just £59.99 extra, you can purchase the optional voice recorder, speaker and remote activator, so that you can let everyone, including the blind, know about the extent of your generosity at top volume. It's the all-in-one package!

White Poppy

For those of you who are better than the rest of us, the white poppy proves to everyone that you care more than those who wear the red poppy. The unique colouring of this poppy will create a talking point at any Hoxton gallery, branch of Starbucks or celebrity panel game. When people ask you why your poppy is white, you can launch into the spiel detailed on the free booklet included with every poppy. Don't forget to tell them how much more you donated than them!

Green Poppy

Are you frustrated that the Royal British Legion do not do enough for our beautiful Mother Earth? Do you despair at the petrol miles wasted in transporting troops overseas in the second world war? Unbelievable, isn't it? Now you have a chance to let the world know that you are unwilling to donate money to a bunch of hooligans, because you are a better person for not raping the environment. Comes complete with a sheet of transfers depicting a cross-legged woman looking up to heaven and sighing at the cruelty of man towards nature.

Media Poppy

This special metallic red poppy is over five foot across and lights up in synchronicity with the red light on the camera when you are going live. So make sure you wear this poppy every time you are going to speak on air! Warning: if anyone else in the studio is wearing the Media Poppy, then you will be unable to prove your undoubted charitable credentials. In this case, please consider upgrading to our deluxe model, which is ten foot across, has a 85 dB klaxon attached and comes complete with an acid gun that automatically squirts anyone else in range who is wearing a poppy. That'll teach them to upstage you, the self-aggrandising curs!

Red Poppy, normal

Jesus. What is it, don't you care? You can buy one if you want, but seriously…there is no set donation, so poor people can buy them too. So think carefully before you waste your money on this, you undignified wretch.

---

Seriously, give something and wear that simple little poppy with pride. And every time you see somebody on television who has forgotten that the poppy is a symbol of remembrance and not how generous the wearer is, don't forget to wallop them around the head with a rowing oar.

Small Rebellion

A short fiction about nothing at all...

Tony was rustling through a pile of mud-stained invoices when Jack swept past, lighter in hand.

"Hold on, Jack, I'll get my coat," said Tony, knocking the invoices into the bin with a deft backhand.

Jack grabbed the hatstand and executed a perfect 180. He came to rest in front of Tony's desk, where he leaned forward and snarled. "What are you talking about?" he raged.

"I'm coming. You get eight fag breaks a day and I get none. Well, bollocks to that."

"But you don't smoke, you obscene pigfucker!"

"That's not the point," said Tony, taking his coat off the hatstand. "Effectively you have half an hour of extra paid break than I do."

Jack shook his head and began to walk away. "You idiot," he said. "It's an addiction, not a chance to skive…and you want to scream blue murder for the sake of the odd five minutes? Why do hell do you want to throw that particular hat into the ring?"

"Goddamn you. I am going to take this fag breaks, and I am going to stand outside, not smoking, and there isn't a damn thing they can do to stop me."

"Sure there is. You'll be whipped like a transvestite in the Vatican. You can't take a fag break and not smoke…the very idea is imbecilic!"

"Rubbish," Tony bellowed, poking Jack in the nose with a paperclip. "If you sit in a smoking part of restaurant, or sit in a smoking carriage in a train, are you forced to light a cigarette? Of course not."

Jack snorted. Together they headed toward the exit, Jack fingering the packet of Silk Cut in his pocket, unwilling even to look at the self-righteous idiot marching beside him.

"You're either a lazy son of a bitch or a fool, Tony," he said, eventually. "Hey, I know. Want one of mine? At least it'll then be legit."

"No thanks. I know my rights. Besides, if I don't get equal fag breaks I'll miss out on all the latest gossip and what's happening in the soaps."

Jack and Tony paused at the door. Tony frowned as he considered what he had just said. He then slapped his head.

"Jesus, you're right, what the hell was I thinking?" he said, beginning to head back to his desk. "Here, you bugger off outside. I'm going to surf the net and scratch my balls for 5 minutes."

Prince Bush - The Machiavellian Viewpoint

All quotes from The Prince by Machiavelli.

Kerry and Bush

"It makes [the Prince] contemptible to be considered fickle."

"…Princes cannot help being hated by someone, they ought, in the first place, to avoid being hated by every one, and when they cannot compass this, they ought to endeavour with the utmost diligence to avoid the hatred of the most powerful."

The War on Terror

"A wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful."

"He ought never…to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war."

American unity

"…a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved."

Election campaigning... and crushing criticism by citing patriotism

"…It is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic [of being a fox], and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived… Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result."

Election finance / not that it ever stopped Bush…

"…You have enemies in all those whom you have injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends who put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to them."

Domestic policy and tax cuts

"For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer."

The right to bear arms

"…by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents."

Tony Blair

"A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral…he who conquers does not want doubtful friends who will not aid him in the time of trial; and he who loses will not harbour you because you did not willingly, sword in hand, court his fate."

Comedown

As I write this I have several unwatched TV programmes relating to the US election sitting on various video tapes at home. I no longer have the heart to watch them, to wallow in information that in the space of a few days has become hopelessly anachronistic. Once the result was confirmed, like a flicked switch the world stopped caring about everything it had been pursuing so passionately for what seemed like forever. The polls, the scenarios, the minute-by-minute updates…even that sense of hope that we could be rid of Bush that swam around like low level fog, obscuring the cold reality that when it comes down to it, more Americans simply like George W Bush. Not necessarily his policies – mainly his hokey Texan idiot-boy smile and dark conservative recidivism.

So to hurl myself back into that acid pool would do some strange and gruesome things to my state of mind; those videos will remain exactly where they are. In fact, I am surprised to find myself chucking words onto the screen about the subject even now. But this is part of the comedown, the cold turkey of political addiction. Part of some kind of twisted version of the Twelve Steps, perhaps…but that would require us to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves who could restore us to sanity…who, Bush? Cheney? Fox News? To hell with that. The world is being led into insanity, we're all becoming gibbering inmates ruled by a faceless power, and as each day passes those powers find out more cruel facts about the human mind and mob mentality that allow them to force us down some very bad pathways. These paths are shrouded in the blackest night and will soon lead us into that ultimate conservative nirvana where authority is all and nobody has the heart or balls to challenge a damned thing…100,000 Iraqis dead? Who cares when Bush has promised to cut your taxes…now keep eating your Soma, and don't forget to leave the television set switched on at all times…

Jesus…where did that lot come from? Page one of Orwellian Rhetoric for Dummies?

Well, I don't know. We have discovered this week that Bush's first election success was not a historical blip thrown up by a weird electoral system, and that there are many, many Americans who believe that Bush can keep them safe in their beds at night and to hell with the world beyond their shores. A week or so ago I wrote that anything is better than the uncertainty of a dead-heat campaign. Four more years are going to tear that statement to bits like a child ripping a cranefly apart, limb by limb.

We Few Angry Lights

In every democrat's heart is the knowledge that there will be no provisional vote miracle in Ohio over the next few weeks. No matter how fast they run down the platform waving their arms about, convinced they are not too late, the train has indeed pulled out of the station. Throughout the last few weeks the smart money was as bewildered as the rest of us, but in the end, the ugly truth is that most Americans feel most comfortable with an idiot than a cypher. So every man, woman and child in America is stuck with Bush, and the world is stuck with the consequences.

One consequence is the possibility of a 2008 Hilary Clinton campaign; and if that gathers any momentum at all, it will be one hell of an election. But let us not start hand-waving just yet...a country happy not just to elect but to re-elect the horribly atavistic George W Bush is unlikely to fill its heart with enough progressive thoughts in the next four years to allow a woman in their beloved White House...right?

One Pie, One Vote

"Pie has the power to turn despair into hope" -- advert in the Boston Globe.

Well, it's as good a slogan as any Bush and Kerry have come out with.

Here's a strange thing. I enjoyed Newsnight so much last night that I could only watch it whilst pacing back and forth, unable to sit down. And that's a phrase normally so absurd that Dali himself would slap you haughtily in the face with a melted clock for being too surreal.

It was the reports on the US election, of course. And I still cannot explain myself properly…why do I care? I have never cared for British politics, and certainly no further abroad before. Perhaps the reason so many non-US citizens are fascinated by this election is the same as why voter turnout is going to be so high in the States; that damned divisive president-ape Bush. The whole world is feeling the Fear this time round.

As for myself I haven't been particularly interested in following what he's been doing in this campaign and what rains of fire and havoc he'll bring down on us all if he wins another four years – rather, I fear I am becoming hooked on the stats, the waves of analysis, the politics itself. The simple fact that the race has been close has helped, too. The result of some kind of voyeurism-induced adrenaline perhaps…

Yikes. I'm making the US election sound like dogging. Maybe this is an apt moment for a joke about standing in a car-park watching Bush screw the US…or maybe not. This election has been ill-humoured at best. Although I did enjoy, for all the wrong reasons, a comment by Bush that said John Kerry was set to enter "the flip-flop hall of fame." Worst Blackpool attraction ever.

The Highest Rollercoasters are at Alton Towers

This weekend saw the end of the Alton Towers season for 2004 in which the theme park went out in a barrage of impressive, expensive fireworks. But blue touchpaper wasn't the only thing being lit that Saturday night…the whole place smelled overwhelmingly of weed for most of the day. What can this mean? Is there a new subculture of rollercoaster dope heads, who queue up giggling for the ride, climb aboard, then get higher and higher and then never come down again? Or were they just killing time until they could chill out to 20 minutes of pretty lights and cool explosions?

I pointed this out after the fireworks were done and we had joined the Nemesis queue in the vain hope of squeezing in a final ride before the coach left at 9.00pm.

"Yes, I was just thinking about that myself," said Brian. "But never mind that, enjoy your beer instead."

I nodded, and took a swig from one of the bottles we had recently smuggled out from one of the several bars.

Since suffering through a 2 hour queue earlier in the day, we had ditched the plan of alternating a ride with a beer, and had begun squeezing in more of the latter. By 5.30 we were sat at a table in another bar, nicely toasted and staring out at a sideshow that enticed passers-by to fool the guesser. The rules were simple. You paid your money and challenged the guesser to guess your age (to within 2 years), your weight (to within 2 pounds) or your birthday (to within 2 months). If he failed, you won a prize.

"He's very good," said Jamie, watching him beat another punter.

"Indeed," I agreed. "He's guessed loads right so far, and the ones he hasn't he's been very close."

"Okay," said Brian. "One of us should do it. Andy doesn't look his age, send him up there. I can't do it, I look my age and I look my weight. Or you could do the weight thing. Here, put this coat on top of your coat, maybe we can disguise your beer belly."

"What's the point?" I said. "It costs two quid. Look at the prizes. Either a stuffed toy or an inflatable hammer. They're rubbish."

"Yeah, your average bloke wouldn't choose a crappy cartoon rabbit stuffed toy, would he?" said Alan. "He'd choose the crappy inflatable, which that guy probably bought for a few pence from a crappy inflatable wholesaler."

"But we could win this," insisted Brian.

"But even if you win, the prize is rubbish, and you've just spent two quid."

"Yeah. In effect he's selling them…buying them at a few pence and selling them at two quid. That's a shitload of profit, even if he was rubbish at guessing."

"But it would be cool to beat him, even if the prizes are crap."

I considered hitting Brian on the head with an empty bottle.

"And you want to spend two quid just because you'd enjoy beating him?"

"Hey, wait…it costs two quid?"

Everyone at the table rolled their eyes.

"Another round?" he said.

In the end we only managed to get on five rides during the whole day. We had been told it would be the busiest day of the year, but it never seemed to register until mid-afternoon when we queued for the Spinball rollercoaster. Now, two hours is a bad number no matter how you look at it, but it was a new ride, so we bore the wait with good grace and a few wild bets on our expected ride time.

By the time we left the ride, the queue had swelled again by a hundred or so people. It was appalling; there was now a queue just to join the queue, and the haunted looks on people's faces were getting hairier by the minute. And then I realised…this was why the place smelled of weed. What better way was there to keep on top of the stress of constantly being surrounded by a thousand angry parents, wailing kids and whining teens, all going out of their heads for a minor, minute-long adrenaline rush?

I may go again next year, perhaps during the rainy early season when it's not busy. But whatever happens, I think I'll be taking the Rizlas.

Dull Aches and Sudden Pains

Throughout the world a billion hearts sank when they saw Osama bin Laden on their screens…not because he terrifies us – we knew that he was still alive and we know that terrorists are still out there with itchy trigger fingers. No, it was the dull ache that comes with the realisation that this could be the biggest knee to the groin the anti-Bush movement could have feared.

Ah…but how bad is it really? Bush and Kerry in this campaign are like two metal balls joined by elastic – one candidate tries to pull away only for them both to snap back together with a dull thud. Even the bin Laden video has failed to clear the waters of mud. The video was close enough to the election for its effects on voters not to have dissipated, bearing in mind that terror threats have tended to increase Bush's popularity for a small time in the past…but it is so close to the election that there may not be anyone left to persuade to alter their vote. Secondly, the "Bush as war leader" motif may have been strengthened by the video, but on the other hand it shows him up as to have failed to beat bin Laden at the time.

I give up. There's too much craziness in the air and I believe this strange atmosphere can only help Bush, to whom deception and fear are not things to be afraid of…they are his weapons, and he is armed to the teeth.

The retrospectives, hindsight, what-ifs and I-told-you-so's will soon be a flood that will sweep through the media, smashing all in its wake. But there are still a handful of hours in which to stew. So for now there is one way of finding out for yourself the outcome of this, and indeed any, election. Find yourself a darkened room. Read the candidate list out loud. And that grim, twisted knot of fear you feel in your stomach when you read out one of the names? That's your signal; you've found your winner.