Life vs Academia
Since recently applying for a number of highly prestigious Journalism MA’s, Pg/Dp’s, DpMaPg’s/B&Q’s it’s become apparent that the jury is still out on academic marks. By ‘jury is still out’ I mean I am beginning to regret not currently being on a First. The reason for me being extremely unlikely to obtain a First is because I have spent three years concentrating on extracurricular, life-enhancing, CV-boosting activities which now begin to look a little bit green and sickly, like a plant kept in a cupboard. The cupboard of my Module Breakdown Documentation. Yes, I am probably going to get a good 2:1. I predict around 66. In fact, if I get below 66 I will probably do something alarming like spurt lava out of my ears.
Applications for Journalism are focussed on work experience, something I couldn’t afford to do because I had to spend 9 hours a day pot scrubbing in order to stay at Durham. Instead I did the student newspaper thing, the radio thing, the theatre thing, the online magazine thing… but NONE OF IT IS PROFESSIONAL.
Should I have done nothing? If I had done nothing I would have got a First and would be a lot less reticent to send institutions my Module Breakdown Documentation.
I have no answer. I also am completely aware that this is probably the most boringly personal I am likely to get on here, so expect a lighthearted commentary on new ITV dating programme Take Me Out imminently…
Auntie Google
Apparently people are misusing the Google search engine. And by misusing I mean, of course, treating it like your crazy-yet-personable Auntie. If you want to search for Empire Magazine’s online site, if you want to look for which food products can make your skin glow and if you want to watch some casual porn then, yes, Google should provide. However, this disturbs me somewhat:
Incredible. It’s not the subject matter, relationship advice on the internet is a no brainer for those who aren’t willing to fork out £7 for He’s So Not Into You, it’s the phrasing. As though adolescent girls, or even more interestingly, middle aged singletons, are seriously pleading Google to help them. Google is a search engine. Who types full questions like that into search engines? Surely ‘relationship advice’ would be better?
It’s the humanising of Google that makes this so bizarre; perhaps the seeker is envisioning a four foot tall furry cloud-like and cuddly creature with googly eyes (Googly! As in Google-y! As in.. alright) waiting to impart it’s knowledge ‘pon those polite enough to ask nicely. If you asked it to ”Give me a review of Sherlock Holmes you massive Tit” it would make no difference. Except that, in the event of SafeSearch being disabled, there may be a few choice sites sprinkled amid the Imdb’s and Rotten Tomato’s. It wouldn’t even raise a cyber-eyebrow. And if Google was a person, can you imagine what sort of hideous pervert he would be? Note that I automatically classify it as male, which is completely for the grammatical purpose of using a pronoun other than ‘it’. Google would be a sex-mad knowledge obsessed schizophrenic, one minute giving you a comprehensive background of Tower Bridge, the other reeling off ridiculous conspiracy theories and attempting to pass them off as fact. He would lie compulsively, show you pictures of boobs when you’d least expect it, and try to scam you for as much money as he possibly could. Why don’t we go play poker AGAINST SOMEONE WHO IT IS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAT? Aha! He’d keep all your accounts safe, all your bank details stored away before quickly whipping them out, tattooing them on his ever-changing form and dancing naked in front of an array of criminals. In other words, he’d be an utter dick.
So don’t bother wasting valuable time attempting to phrase search engine criteria in a polite manner.
Personal.
As an aside, I think the name Hubble is the most ridiculous name I have ever heard in my life. I doubt if I met someone called this, regardless of how attractive they were, I would ever be able to stop laughing long enough to engage in some sort of relationship. ‘Do you want to go for coffee, Hubble?’, ‘I love you, Hubble’, ‘Hey… Hubble’. No. Then we would be at a garden party with some younger relatives or friends who had children, getting involved in some kitsch childhood games: ‘Blow a bubble, Hubble’. Bye Hubble.
Names are important. I have a male name and this means I got the blue card for the dentist when girls were supposed to get the pink, I get more respect when dealing with people over email until they befriend me on a social networking site and see my picture, I couldn’t count the amount of times I have been asked what my name is short for, but quite a few people say ‘oh… that’s a cool name’. Which is not as completely useless in life as it first appears to be; if my name was Hubble, I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with myself. Additionally, I wouldn’t expect anyone to have a relationship with me either. Same if it was Agatha. Or Steph. These are more irrational choices than Hubble because they are essentially normal names. Hubble is a terrifying name.
The point of this post was to quickly slot some suitable new years resolutions into the mix. Apparently the top two in Britain are, and it seems highly unlikely this has come from a mass census and more probable that it is complete speculation, ‘Lose Weight’ and ‘Be Happy’. One is obvious, for as Patrick Bateman states so succinctly in American Psycho; ‘You can always be thinner, look better’, and the other is fairly empty owing to it’s magnanimity. A ridiculous paradox. How would you even go about that? And surely isn’t that what everyone wants, but nobody can really achieve owing to the human condition? Isn’t that why everyone is desperately clinging onto each other, getting drunk, taking meditation classes, buying puppies? I have discovered that a large hallmark of my writing style is posing everything as a question, if you can call that a writing style. Which I wouldn’t. The other is ending a longer, more complex sentence with a shorter, more succinct one for extra emphasis. Like this.
Anyway. Resolutions should be practical, such as: (1) Take a daily multivitamin (2) Exercise at least four times a week (3) Drink a bottle of water daily. These are all useful and can easily be achieved as opposed to massive umbrella terms like ‘Be Happy’. You might as well resolve to ‘Not Die’. A friend of mine has resolved to ‘Get A Boyfriend’ which is, though incredibly Bridget Jones, completely pointless. A few weeks later she changed it to ‘Make Paul My Boyfriend Even Though He Doesn’t Know It Yet Or Particularly Want To Be Made To Do This’ (names have been changed to protect certain identities) which is a great improvement. It has to be specific. And no, that ‘friend’ isn’t me, signified by the lack of a preceding bracketed number. (4) Do Not Dwell On Things That Have Happened. I think this is the single most important resolution people can make; too much time is spent regretting what nobody can change, and too much time is spent trying to atone for past mistakes.
However, if none of these sound any good then you can always lose some weight I suppose.
First Impressions
I grew up in the middle of Cheshire (Small town. North-West. Between Liverpool and Manchester), and went to University in Durham (Small town. North-East. Between Newcastle and York) so my recent stay in London was a real experience. Of course I spent the four days attempting to conceal this through the purchasing of an Oyster card. Whilst watching fumbling ‘tourists’ struggling with their tube tickets I swiped said Oyster card in as nonchalent a manner as could possibly be achieved. The moment it malfunctioned and I found myself trapped on the other side of the barrier, all pretence flew towards the Way Out sign, and I became a frozen northern rabbit caught in headlights, clutching my bag and bleating vague expletives. My cover blown. Look at the poor little tourist, unable to use her card.
Why the nonchalence? Determinedly staring into the middle distance on the tube instead of excitedly peering at the fatigued row of faces, the electric-white light highlighting every wrinkle, freckle and pimple. Walking with purpose down the left-hand side of the escalator instead of waiting on the right. Point blank refusing to take pictures of Waterloo Bridge, of the Fortnum & Mason Christmas window displays, of a Pigeon eating a donut. Stabbing innocent women with umbrellas. Why? Because there is something undeniable cool, irrepressibly sexy about the image of a twenty-something casually zipping around on the tube, grabbing lunch in Oxford Circus, rolling their eyes at the swarms of gibbering tourists ogling every red telephone box they come across. Especially to someone who grew up feeling cosmopolitan in Knutsford. And don’t even mention the Arndale Centre.
In Cheshire, if you deign to travel by bus then there is a 70% chance an elderly man will share his mint imperials in return for a listening ear as he regales stories of his son who is working in Watford of all places… that’s down south don’t you know? The eye-rolling tube-zipping twenty-something would find this hysterical. I find it normal.
People complain about rudeness on the tube because of the lack of communication. It isn’t rude. It’s efficient. If you had a conversation with someone every time, then you’d acquire far too many friends. Who wants to enforce awkward small-talk conversations? It’s bad enough in Supermarkets (I refer to the Supermarket Syndome wherein an acquaintance is met, awkwardly greeted, thankfully left, met again in aisles 1 through to 12, and again in the queue wherein money is lent owing to an absent debit card) so why extend them to public transport? And what happens if they get off at the same stop for crying out loud?
On the streets, people still push into you, especially if you’re speaking loudly in a Yorkshire brogue, but if they didn’t, they’d be late. In the boroughs, this doesn’t happen so much; I only got pushed around in Knightsbridge when the Harrod’s sale was on (apparently ‘There’s Only One Sale’ so I forgive the crowds of bloodthirsty bargain-hunters). My London- based friend instructed me to ‘be more ruthless’. I genuinely almost gutted a woman with my umbrella. She made a ‘HYEURGH’ noise and everything.
What else? Oh, it’s scary. Battersea Park after sundown when you’re not sure of your location, and you’re being followed by two fairly vocal Asian men is anxiety-provoking. Finsbury Park, when you try two of the three exits, find they’re both wrong and that they lead you to various isolated underpasses, is frightening. Chelsea is quite nice.
So that was my main impression of the big LDN. Exciting. Cool. Ruthless. Scary. Now I’m sitting in Cheshire, having not left the house in three days (there’s nowhere to go) or got out of my pyjamas (nobody is going to see me) and I can’t wait to move south.
Literary Digestion
The Guardian’s Digested Classics take classic novels and condense them into a few paragraphs. Some are better than others, but most are amusing. If a little long. The idea of condensing books into a few sentences is a good idea for a book in itself… perhaps there is already one out there.
Mrs Dalloway: Big Ben struck twelve. Clarissa wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. And yet.
The Great Gatsby: I have a vague job to distinguish myself from the wealthy people I am following and appear to be the same as, but I’m not. Oh look, there is a green light.
Mao II: Mass production and the image are quite important these days.
Heart of Darkness: We all get cabin fever.
Sons and Lover: His loins burned, his body ached for her. Despite the fact that he had felt and been described similarly with thirteen other girls in previous chapters, it felt…different, so different. Then he realised he only wanted his mother.
The Rainbow: If only he had read Sons and Lovers. Then he could have avoided, avoided this similar plot. And then a rainbow appeared and showed hope, hope but at the same time destruction.
American Psycho: I take a bottle of Evian out of the HDV chrome Refrigerator, moving Christie’s head to one side in order to grasp the bottle correctly. Except her head isn’t there because I didn’t actually kill her. On the Patty Winters Show a small vole does a backflip.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: ‘Oh,’ said Harry, ‘it turned out exactly the way everyone under five wished it to.’ He patted little Sirius Dumbledore Fred Lupin on the head, as his son ran to the Hogwarts Express. In tow was his sister, Mad-Eye Moody Snape Tonks, crying slightly as fellow students bullied her. Ginny and Harry held hands as did Ron and Hermione and Neville and Parvati and everyone else.
The Wasp Factory: I’m a girl.
The Catcher In The Rye: But they’re all phonies, and I hate movies except I’ll talk about ’em loads because I’m an unreliable narrator which just about kills me. I won’t mention the words ‘depression’ or ‘mental breakdown’.
Pride and Prejudice: ‘I find you incredibly rude.’ said Elizabeth whilst running around a field in a revolutionarily scampish manner. ‘Well, I apologise for that.’ Mr Darcy said, rudely, ‘Will you marry me?’. Elizabeth stopped scamping and slid into a stereotypically feminine role, ‘Yes,’ she replied.
Etc.
The Digested Classics are a lot cleverer than this.
What Ever Happened?
Okay, so everyone is aware that reality television was a vaguely popular feature of the Tensters (there was the eighties, nineties, noughties and… what? The tenties? The double-zero’s? Cosmopolitan magazine will find a neater coining but, to be honest, the Tensters sounds so much more kitsch, faux-hip and stupidly ridiculous) but what about it’s terrifying subcategory: The Desperate Love Programme (DLP)?
Blind date used to be risque but since the Reality TV Dating genre moved on, it seems as innocuous as Bill Oddie’s Midnight Badger Watch. Alright, so sometimes the badgers got a bit shirty which can make for high-octane viewing, but for the most part, Blind Date just couldn’t slake our lust for, well, on-screen lust. So enter the Americans with so many updated, modernised, sexier versions that it would be pointless to name them all… therefore I will choose a couple of examples:
The Bachelor
What happens: The one that started it all. A mansion with women all competing for a marriage proposal from a wealthy young man… America was hooked as hearts were broken each week and normal people everywhere vomited into their mouths.
Why this is funny: The Bachelor was the first of it’s kind and so there is real optimism here. The naivety is hysterical.
The Age Of Love
What happens: There are forty year olds. There are twenty year olds. They are all put in separate apartments whilst competing for the affections of a thirty something bachelor. Who happens to be ex-tennis player Mark Philappoussis.
Why this is funny: Because it happens to be ex-tennis player Mark Philappoussis.
Beauty and the Geek
What happens: There are “beautiful” , unintelligent girls (read: blonde, terrible actresses). There are “unnattractive”, intelligent guys (read: males who do not resemble Christian Bale in American Psycho) and they both perform tasks and hilarious challenges in the quest for love.
Why this is funny: It is probably the most sexist programme on television and would potentially provoke even suburban fifties housewives to take Ergonomics evening classes.
Flavor Of Love
What happens: Drunk girls fight, guys return season after season to find the latest fling and nobody really wants to find love. Finally, a programme containing everything the viewer secretly wants.
Why this is funny: Because it’s so depressing.
There is something deeply disturbing about watching a thirty something year old man genuinely attempting to find love on a television programme. Why is this acceptable, and yet cyber-dating still carries a stigma? Why do women go on these programmes? Is it because they genuinely feel they will find love? Is it because they want their 15 minutes? Why doesn’t anybody realise that Spencer from The Hills, married to Heidi, is very probably gay and that the whole thing is acted?
Because this is what we do. As a population, we prefer now to watch simulations of reality provided we are told it is “what really happened”. These programmes are heavily edited; there is absolutely no way they truly represent life and do not deserve to be named ‘reality’. This is not real love, or real life. This is a procession of those desperate to see their faces on telly, to be stopped by fifteen year old girls in Tesco for a few days, to SkyPlus their appearance and replay it when they are fifty and working in Barclays. But people watch it, so it will continue.
Bring on Bill Oddie, is what I say.
Cosmoretto 
Charlie Brooker and The Cult of Rudeness.
After exhausting all that Youtube can offer with regards to Charlie Brooker (who should never have abbreviated his name to “Charlie” which conjures up images of small puppies gambolling around wooded hamlets) it has become evident that a) he is very, very funny and b) he is only funny because he is very, very angry. But rudeness, arrogance and expletives are funny.
Dragon’s Den wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining without Theo Paphitis and his amusingly harsh cockney-boy witticisms. The Apprentice wouldn’t be nearly as successful if Richard Branson was kindly informing people they had ‘lost their job’ over a strong cup of Earl Gray. Simon Cowell’s bank balance wouldn’t be nearly so sickeningly gargantuan if it wasn’t for the range of withering insults his oddly-shaped head can dream up. All the public wants, it seems, are angry men, preferably one who sits in a room watching TV and telling reality TV stars to f*ck off. Why is this? Why is Charlie Brooker so funny? The edited skits in between the swearing are always good value, but what we really want is to see him staring disgustedly at a ventriloquist on Britain’s Got Talent mirroring what we all think, but are too English to express: that the world is a bit, in the words of Brooker, effing sh*te.
It works in social situations too; the rant is one of the best forms of conversation to have, especially when staged late at night in a room of eight similarly-minded grumps who want nothing more than to express repulsed disbelief at the same aspect of humanity. It beats talking in high voices about tea, at any rate. The rant shows spark, reveals fire in a personality, renders someone that bit more interesting. Sadly, too many people are afraid to indulge, and so the world appears to be full of vaguely content, incredibly boring men and women who appear to have very little interest or engagement in anything. To be angry is, at least, to be engaged.
Evidently, as illustrated by the success of The Apprentice, Dragon’s Den, Charlie Brooker et al, there is rage simmering below the surface of more people than one would expect. I say let it out once in a while. You’ve not lived life until you’ve harped on for three hours straight about it, using all manner of expletives and spilling Bovril down your checked pyjamas.