Tonight is the time to sort it all out

A quick hello again, everyone. Regular blog updates will be had -- once more -- every week by Sunday, with my Video Gaming news in between when I can fit it. That way I can pretend I'm a real Journalist with responsibilities and everything.

I might even have to start wearing a hat.

So doing Philosophy, a question I get repeated a lot at me is the some what Derisive "What's the Meaning of Life". I think the people that ask this never actually want an answer; I think they just want to make me hate them. This is a very successful gambit, so far. Regardless, I now intend to address the issue here, simply so that I don't have to try to explain it ever again.

Chekov once said something along the gist of life being like a carrot, in that it is pointless trying to compare it with anything. The only thing it makes any sense to view it with are other carrots; and then the only conclusion you can come to is that "Yes these are carrots, and some are mildly different but they are all essentially carrots". So that is the only conclusion we can have. Carrots are. There are no nega-carrots or anti-vegetables to contrast them, we only have Carrots or no Carrots. There are plenty of things that aren't Carrots, but they are entirely unuseful for our understanding of Carrots.

Buckle yourselves in, Ladies and Gents, for an extended Carrot Metaphor.

Whenever you want to consider something about life, I wish you first to consider whether the question would apply suitably if you substituted 'Life' for 'A Carrot'. "What is the meaning of life?" becomes "What is the meaning of A Carrot". This is a stupid question. We know this is a stupid question. Carrots do not have meaning, they are a thing that is. Things aren't necessarily things because of or due to something, they are just existences. Life, then, is meaningless. But so is A Carrot, and they seem to do just okay thanks.

What sort of questions can be asked about life then? Well, let us subtract the meaning, and ask "What is life?". This is a more substantial question certainly, and one with perhaps a real answer. But, as it can be asked the same as "What is A Carrot?" it can be answered the same also.

You know what a fucking Carrot is, now don't be an idiot.

: 27 Aug 2009 15:37 |  Tags: Carrots Chekov Life Meaning Philosophy Questions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Scar Tissue

So I think I've abandoned the idea of regular updates now. I'm sorry, reader, but I'm really not in a great place to be putting a great deal of work into something which doesn't directly affect academics. I'm not moaning -- yet -- but I simply can't use this blog as anything more than a convenient output for my thoughts as they come and when they come. I'll try to be more regular over the summer, I promise.

Vague news concerning me: due to an unfortunate kitchen-related accident I've ended up with a rather messy chunk taken out of my face. Fortunately I got to the hospital, and now they've stitched it up. I personally think I look rather badass with eleven stitches in my face. That may, however, just be me.

Everybody seems to have personal problems at the moment, I feel like with a massive disfiguring scar I'm actually doing rather well out of my friendship group. I've noticed a vague trend in my posts to descend into the whiny and self-pitying. I'd better get that resolved here and now, lest I my keyboard be bathed in a sea of my own blood and tears and I can only manage to type in between listening to My Chemical Romance and straightening my hair.

Lot of conjunctives in the last sentence. Oh well.

I've noticed how little time I've found to do things I actually enjoy, recently. I haven't had a chance to act for nigh on over a year; I've stopped writing poetry almost entirely, I simply can't play video games anymore due to a lack of materials.

A brief side-note, I think, on poetry.

Why is it everyone seems so ashamed to say they write poetry? It's like something everyone does but no-one wants to admit to. I suppose in a sense it's a type of masturbation, another of those pleasurable but guilty pastimes. Except people joke about masturbation, so I suppose in a sense it's worse. It's like masturbating to pictures of children whilst covered in unicorn blood and listening to Girls Aloud songs.

But I'm running out of Unicorns.

The point I'm trying to make is that poetry is a thing people do, even if they don't really know about it. Even if we just think of little couplets in our head, or just become over flamboyant with a description, everybody commits to poetry. Like masturbation, so do it more than others; and like masturbation some do it better than others, but the point still stands. Though I do forget which topic I was making the point on.

Yes I write poetry when I can. No it's not the stupid gothy sappy poetry, but if it was there'd be nothing wrong with that, provided it was written well. Which it generally isn't. But sometimes that's funny too.

The point is I'm not really doing fun stuff anymore. I mean, fun stuff by myself. I still go out for drinks with friends, and play pool and all the standard razzle jazzle, but none of it is really for me. I don't get much leisure time anymore, so it's come to be a carefully spent rescource. If I have three hours of it in a day, those will be a fantastic three hours. You have no idea the kind of shit I can pull in three hours now, brother. I can read three lovecraft stories, play forty games of minesweeper and punch Hitler in his stupid face.

So you understand, I hope, that blogging is low on the priority list, despite how I enjoy it. Comments may induce summary posts, but otherwise I'm afraid you're just going to have to sit back and wait until I'm in Warwick. Stay safe, chil'rens.

Also: I know I don't deserve it, but you do. If you want, check out 'Good News for People who Love Bad News' by Modest Mouse. You'll thank me for it.

: 03 Mar 2009 02:25 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Overdue

Yes, Yes I know.

I KNOW

This is it then, I've been delaying upon delaying upon delaying, due to a combination of poor planning and an inhuman workload; so there really is a great deal of pressure to make this a full and frank disclosure of my adventures as so far. I start, then, with an analogy:

Canada is like the snooker theme tune

You know the one I mean. If you don't, look it up on youtube. Relaxing but adventurous, with a sense of existent familiarity that transcends any actual familiarity. The snooker theme tune isn't quite as fundamentally cold as Canada, and fails to grasp the exact scope of the place being as huge as it is, and I guess it doesn't actually show the massive division of the people between extremes of maturity and immaturity. I suppose, in retrospect, the analogy breaks down. Let me try another one:

Canada is like another hour in bed on a remarkably cold morning.

Comfort and Cold are the two things I've come to associate with this place. Well, that and heaps of work. I suppose if you spent the extra hour in bed working. That, however, would be less comfortable.

I'm not sure I'm trying the right tack at explaining Canada, mostly because my experiences are entirely relative to me. Derren Brown once showed without any tricks or magnetism or double headed coins or camera cut-outs on television himself getting 10 heads in a row, when flipping a coin. This has a probability of one in one thousand and twenty four of happening, yet he still did it. He then showed how.

He spent nine hours in front of a Camera flipping a coin over and over and over and over again until finally a run of ten heads came up. He achieved the probability of one in one thousand and twenty for by performing the act one thousand and twenty four times, approximately. He was making, through what I'm sure was an incredibly tedious route, a point to do with the fact that experience is nothing if you don't know the context in which it was achieved. Unless you understand the perception and bias of the observer, you don't understand the result.

So now I'm going to tell you about myself.

Not the standard things that many, if not all of you, would know about me -- as that would be entirely pointless for them. Instead: I'm going to list ten things that make me me that many of you won't be aware of. Here we go:

1. I don't really care about changing the world anymore. I used to so much it was basically my defining force. Full of ideals, full of revolutions; I was quite ready to get into power and overthrow the shackles of society. Since then, I've become more weary and more passive and more cowardly. I suppose the only positive way to spin this is by telling you that my new wish is to understand the world. Properly. Actually figure out somethings that other people haven't figured out. I hope it will allow people with more fire than me to know exactly HOW to change the world.

2. I'm not as entirely disdainful of people as it may seem. To be honest, the more comfortable I am in insulting and belittling people the closer to them I feel. Knowing a person involves knowing their flaws, and the best way to show this is by exploiting them.

3. I don't actually like Left 4 Dead. I'm sorry.

4. I like being alone, and being with people in equal measures. I think this comes from the bizarre juxtaposition of my parents, but depending on my mood I'm liable to be encouraging a five hour long pub-crawl at 1am on a Tuesday, or sitting in my room sipping at tea and reading Edgar Allen Poe and not answering the phone for the entire night. Hegel said that there was no such thing as the private human, we are utterly and entirely defined by our relations to others. This may be true, but sometimes I quite like not being a person and simply being a vessel for poetry and caffeine.

5. I really miss my Year 12 and 13 days, where everything was a little less complicated. I was too irritating and energetic a child to really fit into a stereotypical idyllic and innocent perception of my younger days, and since then university issues and work have spiralled up like nothing before. Those two years of bomberman in the common room, however, provided a brief respite. Some of my best memories are from that time.

6. I think slightly too much about my hair for a healthy hetrosexual man.

7. I'm beginning to lose my faith in Philosophy. I used to know I was the best of the best, and that I could take on Descartes and Kant in a battle of the rational. I'm less certain these days. Revelations seem to lack the spark they once did, and I don't seem to be able to argue as much. Maybe this is the move into a more regurgatory form of learning in Canada, but I felt it at the tail end of my year in Warwick. We'll see how my final year plays out.

8. I really don't like watching sports of any kind. Except snooker.

9. I'm pretty sure Swearing is God's gift to a pious mankind. It's fucking fantastic.

10. I pretend that girls don't confuse me but they really do. I think they must confuse themselves. They're a personification of Chaos theory. 

So there you go. That's me to see, naked and shivering (if indeed any of you would like to see me naked and shivering). Put yourself in that mindset, if you can, and bear with me as I travel over my exploits in Canadaland.

One thing that I have noticed is a lie is the repeated and I think genuinely held proposition that 'Girls dig English Accents'. They really don't guys. The only type of girl swayed enough by a British Accent is the giggly 17 year old blonde type that you daren't put your penis into lest stupidity turn out to be a sexually transmitted disease. Weirdly enough, British Accents aren't enough to turn most girls, or at least mine isn't. My slightly scholarly always sarcastic and wonderfully pronounced accent isn't the type of accent girls are looking for. I simply sound like a Bond Villain. Girls do not want to sleep with Bond Villains, they're always worried about the Magma.

This is not, of course, to suggest that my trip over here has been one long American Pie style quest for booty. If anything, I've been pretty relaxed on that front. I'm not entirely certain why I'm sharing this with you, world, but there you go.

As well as this, I'm spending more and more time with the international students. It may be the sense of shared adventure, or it may simply be the fact that we're all grouped together in one residence and therefore have no choice but to bump into each other; but the fact of the matter is that sometimes the whole Jaunt feels more like Joseph's Techniculture Dreamgroup. I see and know Canadians, but not as well I guess. Not as well as I used to anyway.

I feel very seperated over here, and not just from the Country. Out of all the fantastic Scottish and Irish and Dutch over here I don't feel that there's a single one that actually knows me. This isn't a moan, I'd like you to understand, but simply an observation. I still haven't felt the connection I did at Warwick, or the friends I have in Jersey. All the people here are perfectly eager to invite me out, and I always enjoy their company a lot, they are by no means distant. I realise, in retrospect, that I've been the distant one. I'm alone here. Happy, but alone. There's nothing wrong with that.

But of course, my time here is by no means over and everything here stated could change.  I promised you a full disclosure and a full disclosure you have. Of course I've loved my time over here, and if given the chance I'd take it again. But I do miss my friends. Being back in Warwick and Jersey over the Christmas made me realise how much I miss them. Of course, the fantastic thing is I get to see them again, and regale them with tales of adventure and moose. If you are one of them, I'll see you very soon. If not, why haven't you introduced yourself to me?

Whoever you are, see you soon.

: 02 Feb 2009 02:49 |  Tags: Canada Exchange International Philosophy Queens Students Summary Time |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Guess who's back, back again?

They got a message from the action man
I'm happy, hope you're happy too
I've loved all I've needed love
Sordid details following

The shrieking of nothing is killing
Just pictures of jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair
But I'm hoping to kick, but the planet it's glowing

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heavens high
Hitting an all-time lowwwwwwww

Yeah so that was pretty much my Christmas present to myself.

Hello! Greetings once again, I am definitely back and alive and blogging. I trust you are all the same, except for the blogging, except for those of you who themselves have blogs (if so, link me!). Only two sentences in and I'm already using up my quota of commas, which I swore I would resort to less these days. To all of you that have been awaiting this, I'm sorry. I know you've all been emailing me and swearing at me and phoning me to try and get me to be something like consistent. For this: I apologise. I'm terrible I know. With that said, shall we continue?

I'm back. It's cold. When it used to rain in England my Gran referred to it as "Nice Weather for Ducks"; this weather, however, has no upsides. Polar bears down here complain that it's a bit nippy. My frostbite is getting frostbite. The tic-tacs by the side of my bed are turning blue. Any inch of flesh left exposed to the elements protectively loses all semblance of feeling, and you're left nursing it for the next six weeks. My cheeks and nose are so rosy I've frequently accidentally acted as landing lights for aircraft. I saw a squirrel fall out of a tree yesterday; it went 'clink'.

I could go on.

I really am out of my element here, it's just too cold. It has become the case that the outside doesn't really have a temperature anymore, but rather just a degree of pain. The weather is relatable in terms of "Jesus Christ"s on coming indoors. Warm is simply a "Jesus..." whereas today's temperature relates better in terms of a "JEeeeesus CHRIST"

I've just realised I did go on.

The point is this: it's cold.

Also: I promise you, and I do actually mean this one, a full and frontal exploration of my first semester in Canada this very Sunday, but it's hard to type through a veil of Cold and work. When things settle down a little, a real update will be available. Patience, young ones.

In other news: an article I wrote concerning the effect of Achievements in games and game development is being published in The Escapist. I know! Hooray for me. Look for it on the 7th of April.

: 15 Jan 2009 00:42 |  Tags: Canada Exchange International Philosophy Queens Students |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Half–Time

I leave for Jersey again on Friday, chil'rens, busy with exams and goodbyes and packing. I offer wrap up thoughts for when I am back at home again, but for the main part I'll see you again in January. Have fun!

Peace

: 16 Dec 2008 08:45 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Robo–Mold

Writing about web page http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8718

We interrupt our regular programming to point out this, which is so awesome it actually makes me cringe.

: 10 Dec 2008 00:43 |  Tags: Mold Robotics Science Slime |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

(Procrasti)National Pride

My bedroom, usually in a state whereby bomb detonations would be a marked improvement, is pristine. All of my laundry for the next three weeks is done, folded away and hung up. My diet now consists of, instead of Bacon and instant soup, lavishly prepared three course meals gently roasting away in the stove. I reply to emails on time, I respond to optional surveys, no job for a friend is too big or too small.

What does this tell you reader? It is exam time.

I procrastinate at a superhuman level. I think this is something to do with the discovery I made as a child that if it was easier to do something yourself than to wait the eons it would take for me to perform said task; no-one would ask you to do anything. Charlie Brooker, who I feel a sense of innate companionship towards, once said that it took him three weeks to change a lightbulb in the kitchen. I mean him no offence, but three weeks is copping out too early. Learn to love the dark.

Hell, even as I'm writing this blag I'm checking Facebook and Gmail, reading webcomics and buying things I don't need or even want off of ebay. I only started this blog to get away from doing the washing up, and I only had a meal so I had an excuse to stop revising. I am four layers into recursive procrastination. That's got to be some form of achievement, even if it is a retarded kind.

I am possibly the worst person at revising in the world, including the deceased. My notes are always scrawled onto random sheets of paper as if a drunken spider covered in ink was crawling across the page, and then organised chronologically. I am using 'chronologically' in this context to mean 'not at all'. I then lose them, where they are compacted into blocks of wood which have friezes of the baby Jesus carved on to them. This is, of course, conjecture -- but they might as well be. Heavens be damned if I know what I did with them.

So of course I go to the library, take out twenty-seven books vaguely related to the topic and arrange them on my shelf back at residence, and watch as they slowly accumulate late fees. I assume everyone else does this too. Sometimes I'll open one at a random page, read about four lines of it, and then I will have finished the book, without reading any of it at all. I will simply be turning pages whilst in my brain I kill Orcs with a Thomson Submachine gun.

I suppose this is a direct result of the type of brain I have, which would rather explode in a fit of rebellion than stay on one topic for more than twelve consecutive seconds. The stupidest thing is that I spend half my time wondering about philosophy, but just the wrong kinds of philosophy. The day before my test on Kant, I'll spend considering the metaphysics of Frege; the day before my philosophy of language exam I'll ponder the categorical imperative. It's almost as if my brain is actively trying to sabotage itself.

Also: as a sidenote, to all of you that were worried about my safety when the blog failed to update last week (i.e. none of you) everything is cool. I'm sorry I missed a week, but I was in Toronto. Was it fun? Yes it was fun. I hope this won't come between us.

Of course, the fact that I'm in the middle of a massive insomnia attack doesn't help with revision terribly much. A common misconception about insomnia is that it is the condition of being constantly awake. This is not true, rather it is the condition of not being able to sleep. When you have insomnia, you're never really awake either. You exist in some bizarre fugue state of existence, where it is almost impossible to remember anything. After periods of insomnia, things you've done surprise you. I've literally forgotten about conversations I had, people I saw, in one case even a movie I went to the cinema to watch.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll go into more detail in some future blog post, but let it be known I'm over the worst of it. Naught but two days ago I had a fantastic thirteen hour long sleep, and one of the coolest dreams I've had for years. I was back at my old house in Jersey, with some friends from both Canada and Warwick, and we fought a Tyrannosaurus Rex. For those of you that knew him, Sundeep Watts was there, and delivered the killing blow to the beast. This will be his Eulogy in my mind. Sundeep Watts: Kicking the ass of Dinosaurs all the way from heaven.

Anyway, to leave on a high, or at least mid-level, note -- I'm going to be okay. I know this because I always am with these things. I won't revise nearly enough, and it'll scare me, and I'll do more work next term. I know this will happen now, and yet I still wait for it. On the plus side, my room really is spotless.

'Howl' by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Their Awesomeness is directly proportional to the amount of constanants in their name. Check them out now.

: 08 Dec 2008 04:19 |  Tags: Canada Exams Exchange International Philosophy Procrastination Queens Revision Students |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Poetry

As a brief note I'd like to apologise for last week's abomination; I really should stick to writing non-fiction. In my defence, I had little else to give, and now I've started updating I feel a certain sense of -- as Yahtzee put it -- 'blogligation' to make sure I have something at the same time every week.

A long while ago now, when I was nary more than a nipper at the teat of education, my A Level English teacher introduced me to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is hard to explain the effect this had on me really, especially since I had been incredibly interested in poetry before, but I will attempt to do so anyway. All good poetry has an effect on you, as a person. D.H. Lawrence's verse embeds itself within you, it stamps out words like engraved ink on bronze across your brain; Siegfried Sassoon's visceral poetry is almost tactile, thudding itself with great guttural blows to your head and assaulting your senses; Hopkins -- though -- Hopkins' work burns its way through you like a white-hot trail on your soul. Every carefully constructed line flies out like shards of napalm screeching their way across your core, and you are left -- bare, naked and burning.

Douglas Adams once said something similar of the music of Bach, but Hopkins' work truly speaks to the personal element. When you read Homer you know what it is to be a hero, when you read Browning you know what it is to be Browning, but when you read Hopkins you know what it is to be human.

It's difficult to understand what it is that makes me connect so much with Hopkins, especially because we are -- on the face of it -- so dissimilar. Hopkins, for those of you who don't know, was a man of massive faith who rejected his family to become a Jesuit priest, and then was sent away from his friends and colleagues at Oxford University to become a teacher in Dublin. He wrote poetry for most of his life, though he burnt much of it in his massive fits of self-doubt, but it is the poetry written at this stage, at the very ends of his life, that interest me the most. The so called 'Sonnets of Desolation'

Hopkins wrote that in moving to Ireland he was at a "Third Remove" from his old life, but not "in all the removes [he] could get". The final sonnets of Hopkins' life detail his desperate and faltering belief in God.

At first, all Hopkins expresses is his anger at God for his situation, but the tone of the sonnets become slowly more questioning -- and eventually pleading. I cannot nearly communicate how incredibly fantastical these poems are, your only recourse is to read them; and thank me later. Hopkins captures impeccably the feeling of howling loneliness, of utter and total abandonment as one by one of all the things that keep his life tethered disappear. All his connections to reality slowly fall away, and to read the final sonnets before his death is to see the look of desperation in a dying man's eyes as he fruitlessly scrabbles at the cliff edge.

This is, of course, somewhat depressing as you might imagine; and not something I would recommend for light reading. If ever you want to know what poetry should be, however, Hopkins really is the place to start. It almost details the fall of a man, as you read each poem detail the gloriousness and true awesomeness of God (I'd recommend 'God's Grandeur' or 'The Windhover' for this stage) and see the true hopelessness as the poems decline in mood, and then decline further; and finally: stop.

Why do I choose to write about this now I hear you cry? Well, I am in Canada now, I am at a first remove. I'm not one for large groups of friends, I typically find a few select people I really care about and latch on to them like an irritating -- but loving -- barnacle. This is why I really don't like loss of connections. It is happening, now, not in great numbers nor in any way definitively but it is happening. I'm drifting apart from people that used to be major parts of my lives, people that at other times I genuinely could not imagine living apart from. It is true, certainly, that I am forming new connections constantly, and there are plenty of people here in Canada I find myself honestly attached to. You never really, truly, forget the people that formed stages of your life: how many of you can still remember some of your kindergarten friends? We grow into life, around the mould that other people imprint upon us. I don't like losing these connections, but I suppose I am. I don't like losing people, but I suppose I will.

There's not really any cause for me to moan about this. I'm worlds away, and it's a decision that I made. As well as this, making new connections all the time does blunt any accusations of loneliness I might field. Me losing people was always inevitable, and I was always aware of it as a consequence. I left Jersey, then I left England, and soon I'll leave Canada (too soon) and I don't suppose I thought that I was going to stay close to everyone I knew. That doesn't mean I have to like it though, and that it doesn't mean I'm not going to take advantage of your time, reader, to bitch about it. It just leaves me in a state of nostalgic depression, as if I were indoors by myself with a mug of hot chocolate, wistfully staring at the beating rain outside. Unfortunately it tends to snow here, so that option is out.

Things will be better, I assume, when I get back to Warwick and get to talk to my old friends back there. I'll bet you, however, that around this time next year I'll be bemoaning all of my friends in Canada that I'm fading away from. That will be until I come back the year after, of course. Watch this space.

Christmas time, Chil'rens! I think a new theme will develop in these latest album recommendations. I suggest 'We Three Kings' by Reverend Horton Heat. Check out some of their other stuff too. Also: feel free to suggest bands for me, I don't want this to become a one sided relationship.

: 24 Nov 2008 20:40 |  Tags: Bach Canada Exchange Friends Hopkins International Philosophy Poetry Queens Students |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Busy Busy Busy

Writing about web page http://www.scribd.com/doc/8036109/RJareadventurers

Adventures to pursue, essays to write and mysteries to solve, dear children, I have absolutely no time to blag. In the meanwhile, here is a short story I wrote many an aeon ago, tell me what you think!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8036109/RJareadventurers

: 16 Nov 2008 20:50 |  Tags: Canada Exchange Guildenstern International Philosophy Rosencrantz Short Story |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The AnswerPhone

There's a constant and relentless flash from the corner of my room, that's been there since week one; a little irritating red light taunting me on, and off, and on, and off. This is a psychological form of torture for me, as the phone knows my weakness. The phone knows of my lack of perseverance and anger at unfriendly interfaces, the phone knows how hard it is to operate and it laughs in this idyllic niche.

On first discovering I had a phone message, in week two, I eagerly pressed the little button next to the flashing light that read 'messages' in the hope that this would direct me to the messages. Apparently, in Canada the word 'Messages' means 'Scream Static into my ear'. That option was a no go, so I asked a friend how you accessed the message inbox. He then set off on an explanation so ridiculously lengthy and specific I began to wonder if he was still talking English. The sheer amount of numbers he detailed made me consider whether he'd just switched into binary and was directly ordering my phone to give me the messages.

Sadly, this was not the case.

I need to know something like three separate extension numbers along with my phone number and student number and student pin and the value of pi up to 74 decimal places and the exact score of the word "Salubrious" in Scrabble, provided the 'b' is on a triple letter score. I don't know these numbers. I don't like these numbers. I don't know anyone that would be able to memorise these numbers.

Assuming you can remember all the numbers, which you won't, and get them all in the right order, which is impossible, there are still thousands of hurdles to be cleared. The talking speed of the robot lady at the other end, for example, makes geological drift look playful. This coupled with her awful habit of leaving gaps at the most inopportune places (If you would like to access your message folder, please input your student number............ preceded by a hash) forces me to believe that she is the spirit of the phone, and laughs at how much misery her petty existence is enforcing upon my life.

The flares of red are irritating, the numbers you need to remember are inhuman, the controls are unintuitive, the woman is unhelpful, for some utterly arbitrary reason the '5' key is smaller than all the other numbers which makes me feel sorry for it every time I use it and thus reluctant to use it too much; the phone itself is positioned so that you need to lift the base of the phone to you to use if and for those of you who realise that the other hand needs to be fixed on the receiver you'll see the clear and apparent problem this poses for the pressing of buttons, I still haven't worked out how to use the volume control which means that slow-voiced-robot-lady is constantly yelling at me -- albeit it in a bland and preprogrammed voice, and it is connected to the wall by three separate cables. Power: yes I can get behind that, Phone Cable: of course necessary for your existence as a phone. Where does the third cable go? It just happily trails off directly into the wall with no apparent purpose.

I have not yet ruled out the possibility that this phone was placed here from the future.

This damned phone will be the death of me. I know as soon as I finish writing this piece the phone will flash and flash until eventually I cannot withstand its taunting and break down; and I know that my breaking down will at first be calm and organised, and I will slowly write down all the numbers I require. Bit by hellish bit I will realise that I've written down one number wrong, or one in the wrong order and I have to listen to the dull monotonous robotic daemon-woman trail off on an epically slow rant. My patience will wear thin. I realise I will finish the night at 4am wearing only my underwear, phone in one hand and a half-empty bottle of Jack-Daniels in the other, screaming "MESSAGES!" into the receiver whilst weeping to myself.

The world has, however, gotten a little bit better recently. I'm fairly certain one of the inaccessible messages in my answerphone is one of many well meaning Canadians screaming 'YES WE CAN' at the top of their voices. Despite sharing the same slogan as Bob the Builder, the Democrats are in. The good guys won. The teaming of Miss "So ridiculously stupid and incapable it's a wonder she's trusted with a can-opener" and The Emperor from Star Wars proved not as attractive as hoped to the American Public. It has to be said though, Palpatine's concession speech was remarkably graceful, well formed and timely. He seems to be the first Republican candidate I don't actively hate, rather I just disagree with him. I suppose I have to buckle and admit I don't really hate Palin either, she's so vapid there's not really enough there to form any opinion about. I admit it would be funny to see her running a country, provided it was one of the smaller ones with no nuclear capacity; and if the only residents were Hitler and Barry Scott from the Cilit Bang adverts.

I don't really have anything particularly interesting to say on the topic, other than this: doesn't Obama have something of the messiah about him? There's something so innately noble of the man that I feel as though he was in some way destined to lead. If he found a soapbox and started claiming he was leading us to the new Babylon I can't honestly promise I wouldn't follow. Fortunately he seems responsible with the power he wields, and his values are so incredibly well formed that not obeying the man seems almost literal sacrilege. The number of people I've seen with 'Obama' t-shirts could easily form a fair sized cult. I'm just glad he's a good leader, as well as being a good leader.

We're in something of a depression right now, everyone knows, and I suppose it's fair to say that it'll get worse before it gets better. Maybe it will get better, though. Maybe Obama's slogan is right, maybe we can. Have hope.

Today I would like you to buy 'Wreckage' by Overseer. This may be slightly well known, and as such ruin my indie street cred, but fuck it, it's a fantastic album.

: 10 Nov 2008 01:27 |  Tags: Canada Exchange International Philosophy Queens Students |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem