When I started this blog all of six weeks ago, I had some vague idea that it might, amongst other things, provide me with some sort of outlet for all the amassed crap in my life that even my closest drinking buddies have gotten sick of hearing me vomit into their ears (could you actually hear someone literally vomiting into your ear? Or would the sound of the experience be muffled by the chunder now clogging up your aural canal? Why doesn't science stop fucking around with dark matter and investigate something useful?). Since then, I've begun to wonder whether or not this is a particularly good idea. By and large, I dislike the idea that the only difference between a blog and a diary is the medium in which it is stored, and by the number of people who read it (I should probably say who could potentially read it, I'm hardly The Onion or anything). It isn't. Anyone who writes their diary hoping someone else will read it is, I suggest, a tool. It immediately lends itself to warping your recounting of events (by shifts in emphasis, sneaky editing, or downright lying) in order to impress other people. And it won't work. Even if I do find a given person sufficiently fascinating, the most I'll do is read their autobiography (current number of autobiographies read by SpaceSquid: 0). I won't suddenly feel the need to trawl through their endless scribblings about the day the post was late or their wife forgot to get the kind of marmalade they like best. This is not to say that a diary cannot be of historical interest, to those studying the writer. And sure, some people are so talented in their writings that even diary entries (properly edited) can be entertaining or thought provoking.
But those people are famous already. In every case of which I am aware, a particular diary is of arguable interest because the person involved was extraordinarily important, extraordinarily talented, or in the case of Anne Frank, an ordinary person living in an extraordinary time (for all the wrong reasons, of course, and I'll happily concede that by living through what she did she was in at least some sense extraordinary herself). Diaries are supposed to be a record of your life so that you can benefit from it, the prose equivalent of looking at old photo albums and sniggering at your ridiculous hair-styles. There's no point in hoping that if you draw enough pictures in the margin or write enough poems filled with awkward cadence and Gothic imagery you will one day be recognised for who you were. It's just an attempt to feel you are doing something of worth without actually exposing it to outside criticism (which I know something about, believe me).
Blogging, on the other hand, is supposed to be about keeping other people entertained, or interested, or informed. Whether or not I actually manage that is entirely up for debate, but the attempt is there. A strange attempt which mixes jokes with poems with cod-philosophy with political commentary with miscellaneous observation, but an attempt nonetheless. And I think I'd be actively sabotaging that idea if I continue to post up windows into my private life; unless they in themselves seem to be interesting to the non-me members of the blogosphere. In my heart of hearts, I doubt anyone reading about the endless struggle with the mysterious DB (which, on the off-chance someone was wondering, has become less of an issue of late; proof-positive that there is no problem on Earth that cannot be solved by drinking until your brain no longer recalls the basic shapes of the object that has offended you), unless in the process it throws up a hilarious escapade or an insight into the human condition, or something.
Anyway, I mention all this because I'm about to entirely contradict it. The ongoing illness of Dr P is, in all likelihood, of no real interest to anyone reading this. On this one matter, though, I have chosen not to care. She's back in the hospital again and the signs point to her never leaving it again, and it feels like I have to mark that here. I haven't seen her in three months, and only spoken to her once in all that time, since she is now too ill to use a computer. The experimental medicine doesn't seem to have worked, and if there is any other option, Dr F didn't mention it today. It looks like this may finally be it.
Anway, I reserve the right to post up further updates on her condition, because the only reason you don't find this of interest is that you never knew her, which is your loss. Otherwise, take comfort in the sudden reduction of self-indulgent whining, which will be compensated for by an upswing in self-indulgent social commentary and dick jokes.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Monday, 21 April 2008
What I Learned This Weekend
Five things I learned over the weekend, in the order in which the knowledge was inserted into my brain.
1) Oxford reminds me a great deal of Durham. So much so that for the first twenty minutes I was absolutely convinced that instead of visiting jamie I should have just set fire to a hundred quid and then walked to my local pub. At least I could find the way back home whilst drunk out of my head. On the other hand, it's always a pleasure to meet new people, and label them as racist. Everyone up here is so inured to my abuse that I'm always surprised by the reaction gained from viciously heckling those who have yet to build up a resistance to it.
2) My devotion to the interweb has now reach such embarrassing heights that the merest suggestion of new Facebook friends requires an immediate Spring cleaning session to ensure my profile is impressive enough to receive visitors. For a man who understands computers little, and likes them less, I seem to be disturbingly happy to use them as a social crutch.
3) The new Mario Kart is awesome. It's hard to convey the enormous sense of satisfaction gained when three old gaming buddies all manage to not totally fuck up at the same time, and that feeling is only heightened when two of you are reptiles on motorcycles.
(Be warned, however, that the steering wheel add-on might as well be a paper plate with a remote sellotaped to it, for all the advantages it confers upon you).
4) James continue to "bring it", as I believe the kids are saying these days [1]. If a band that's been going on for twenty seven years (well, with six off for good behaviour) and released eight studio albums (six of which people actually bought, sort of) can pull off a set which (pre-encore at least) contains 50% new material and it not seem like a Rolling Stones-esque "Please Christ don't let it be anything post Exile..." type of affair, then you know things are going well. Only the fact that the gig was seated and that our seats were atop a balcony which STARED INTO THE VERY HEART OF THE ABYSS prevented some truly epic getting-down, as I believe the kids are saying in my 1981 Blake's 7 annual [2]. Well, that and the fact that my sister's epileptic seizures boast more rhythm to them than my shape-throwing can.
Also, bonus points for the audience sing-along finale. Anyone upset by the portly guy in row C screaming "Somtiyiyimes, I look in your eyes and see your sohl!", I apologise entirely. Unless you're jamie, with whom I accidentally formed the world's most appalling a capella cover-version double act. Cheeky-Girls-in-a-power-cut kind of level, we were. Only ugly men, without any sexual connection to Lembit Opik. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
5) There is a bizarre kind of person in this world convinced that failing to bring adequate (i.e. any) entertainment for a four-hour train journey makes the poor sod sat opposite them (i.e. me) morally bound to engage them in pointless conversation. This strange sub-species reveals this idiosyncrasy by phoning their friends one after another and loudly complaining that those surrounding him (i.e. me again) are too busy reading books to have a chat with total strangers who are possibly drunk and certainly foul-smelling (should I feel bad about not wanting to swap small-talk with people whose breath smells like the corpse of an alcoholic dog? Comments welcome). "The art of the train-ride conversation is dead" he loudly proclaims to his presumably long-suffering wife, with whom he occasionally discourses in pidgin Spanish (perhaps believing this to be romantic). Good to see the art of the train-ride act-like-a-total-fucking-tool is still going strong, though. On several occasions our subject complained that his lack of preparation was down to him eschewed train travel for the last twenty-five years. I don't really remember what rail travel was like back then (being all of three years old), but I'd hazard a guess that it was unlikely to feature party clowns wandering the aisles and brass quartets in the vestibules.
[1] They are not.
[2] Presumably moments before they're all gunned down by faceless Federation troopers. I always figured B7 was ripe for a BSG-style makeover, partially because it's the only sci-fi series I can think of for which the remake producers would seriously have to consider lightening it up as the first step.
1) Oxford reminds me a great deal of Durham. So much so that for the first twenty minutes I was absolutely convinced that instead of visiting jamie I should have just set fire to a hundred quid and then walked to my local pub. At least I could find the way back home whilst drunk out of my head. On the other hand, it's always a pleasure to meet new people, and label them as racist. Everyone up here is so inured to my abuse that I'm always surprised by the reaction gained from viciously heckling those who have yet to build up a resistance to it.
2) My devotion to the interweb has now reach such embarrassing heights that the merest suggestion of new Facebook friends requires an immediate Spring cleaning session to ensure my profile is impressive enough to receive visitors. For a man who understands computers little, and likes them less, I seem to be disturbingly happy to use them as a social crutch.
3) The new Mario Kart is awesome. It's hard to convey the enormous sense of satisfaction gained when three old gaming buddies all manage to not totally fuck up at the same time, and that feeling is only heightened when two of you are reptiles on motorcycles.
(Be warned, however, that the steering wheel add-on might as well be a paper plate with a remote sellotaped to it, for all the advantages it confers upon you).
4) James continue to "bring it", as I believe the kids are saying these days [1]. If a band that's been going on for twenty seven years (well, with six off for good behaviour) and released eight studio albums (six of which people actually bought, sort of) can pull off a set which (pre-encore at least) contains 50% new material and it not seem like a Rolling Stones-esque "Please Christ don't let it be anything post Exile..." type of affair, then you know things are going well. Only the fact that the gig was seated and that our seats were atop a balcony which STARED INTO THE VERY HEART OF THE ABYSS prevented some truly epic getting-down, as I believe the kids are saying in my 1981 Blake's 7 annual [2]. Well, that and the fact that my sister's epileptic seizures boast more rhythm to them than my shape-throwing can.
Also, bonus points for the audience sing-along finale. Anyone upset by the portly guy in row C screaming "Somtiyiyimes, I look in your eyes and see your sohl!", I apologise entirely. Unless you're jamie, with whom I accidentally formed the world's most appalling a capella cover-version double act. Cheeky-Girls-in-a-power-cut kind of level, we were. Only ugly men, without any sexual connection to Lembit Opik. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
5) There is a bizarre kind of person in this world convinced that failing to bring adequate (i.e. any) entertainment for a four-hour train journey makes the poor sod sat opposite them (i.e. me) morally bound to engage them in pointless conversation. This strange sub-species reveals this idiosyncrasy by phoning their friends one after another and loudly complaining that those surrounding him (i.e. me again) are too busy reading books to have a chat with total strangers who are possibly drunk and certainly foul-smelling (should I feel bad about not wanting to swap small-talk with people whose breath smells like the corpse of an alcoholic dog? Comments welcome). "The art of the train-ride conversation is dead" he loudly proclaims to his presumably long-suffering wife, with whom he occasionally discourses in pidgin Spanish (perhaps believing this to be romantic). Good to see the art of the train-ride act-like-a-total-fucking-tool is still going strong, though. On several occasions our subject complained that his lack of preparation was down to him eschewed train travel for the last twenty-five years. I don't really remember what rail travel was like back then (being all of three years old), but I'd hazard a guess that it was unlikely to feature party clowns wandering the aisles and brass quartets in the vestibules.
[1] They are not.
[2] Presumably moments before they're all gunned down by faceless Federation troopers. I always figured B7 was ripe for a BSG-style makeover, partially because it's the only sci-fi series I can think of for which the remake producers would seriously have to consider lightening it up as the first step.
Thursday, 17 April 2008
A Plan Forms
Overheard in our living room during an impromptu showing of Silence of the Lambs. All is calm until the moth-drenched finale.
SS: Argh! A soul-searing encounter with my greatest fear!
Big G: I'd forgotten your idiotic fear of small harmless creatures.
SS: There are so many. So many.
Big G: Is it a volume thing, then? Would a single solitary moth freak you out?
SS: Only if it flew at my head. Or was a giant moth. Like Rodan.
Big G: You mean Mothra.
SS: Yeah. That was a fairly obvious mistake, now I think about it.
Big G: So you don't like insects near your face?
SS: I don't like anything near my face. Or neck. Insects, seatbelts, women trying to kiss me.
Big G: That explains a few things.
SS: That's why I never wash my face, either.
Big G: That explains other, somewhat unpleasant things.
SS: Beetles are the worst. Hideous arthropodic gits.
Big G: What if a moth came at you carrying a beetle?
SS: Beetles can fly too, as a general rule.
Big G: I suppose. Have you considered aversion therapy?
SS: Do I get to kiss a lot of women?
Big G: My plan was more to keep kicking a football at your face.
SS: This is exactly why I don't like you watching this film in the house. Can't we watch Red Dragon?
Big G: Is it any good? Because Hannibal was so bad I almost ate someone.
SS: Sort of. It's entirely thanks to Red Dragon that I know you can arrange for a blind woman to stroke a tiger and in return she is immediately required to perform fellatio upon you.
Big G: Is this legally binding?
SS: It is. Of course, setting up some kind of big-cat-feeling session isn't particularly easy, so our secret knowledge doesn't really get us very far.
There is silence.
Big G: We could use a cat.
SS: Too small.
Big G: We could keep moving it around, I guess.
SS: Tricky.
Big G: Erm... we could bind the cats together?
SS: I think the law would have a few things to say about stitching cats together.
Big G: Velcro would be a more obvious choice, surely?
SS: Excellent! The RSPCA will be powerless to stop us! Bring me thirty tabbies and your most attractive blind friend!
Exeunt stage right, carrying twelve cans of Whiska's and two very disturbing leers.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
In Your Face, Free Will
Over the last few years I've had a number of discussions with friends (jamie and C spring immediately to mind) as to whether or not any of us have free will. Now, I don't believe in destiny, mainly because as I understand the term destiny implies a deliberate or at least consciously directed path for our lives to follow (the fact that destiny is generally invoked by those seeking to justify what they have, justify what they want, or justify the damage they've done in getting what they have or grabbing for what they want, is another story). You could extrapolate the word to cover any philosophy that we're stuck on rails and can't get off, but I prefer the term "determinism". It's the difference between believing America was deliberately created, and knowing that I find it if I hit the Atlantic and head West.
(Well, I'd almost certainly drown or get lost were I to try it; but you get the point).
My belief in determinism stemmed from the assumption that there is no such thing as randomness in the universe. There's a lot we don't know, and as Heisenberg reminds us, much that we physically cannot know. Unknowable and random are not the same thing, though; and if every action has a non-random consequence, then the universe just becomes one big horribly complex game of billiards, and nothing ever knocks us off the rails.
People tend not to like this argument, for obvious reasons (much like those people who insist on believing in God because the alternative is too horrible to consider; I'm looking at you, Big G). But the only convincing point against it I've heard is the argument that most scientists think that when you get down to the quantum level things really are happening in a messed-up way that is genuinely random. Whether these microscopic slow dances of elementary particles can possibly affect us within our lifetimes (as oppose to the coding in our DNA and our upbringing essentially ticking all the boxes in advance) is an interesting question, but it does invalidate the idea that there is no such thing as the truly random.
I note with interest, though, that New Scientist (I nearly wrote this week's New Scientist, until I remembered that I found it in the coffee room this morning and for all I know it was months old and only just been released from the office of whichever staff member keeps stealing them) suggesting new evidence has been found that this stuff might be deterministic after all. I only had time to read the first few paragraphs, and I recognise that for a magazine dedicated to science, NS tends to play fast and loose with anything so inconvenient as a fact, but this might bear a closer look.
Maybe I was right all along, and we have no genuine control over our lives. But as an old friend pointed out to me years ago, since there's no way we can predict what will happen, and since I don't believe anyone or anything intended for my life to take this path, then what exactly does it matter?
Update: I went and checked. It was the 22nd March issue, and essentially said "We haven't yet disproved causality, despite what those douches over in quantum theory keep saying". Good to know.
(Well, I'd almost certainly drown or get lost were I to try it; but you get the point).
My belief in determinism stemmed from the assumption that there is no such thing as randomness in the universe. There's a lot we don't know, and as Heisenberg reminds us, much that we physically cannot know. Unknowable and random are not the same thing, though; and if every action has a non-random consequence, then the universe just becomes one big horribly complex game of billiards, and nothing ever knocks us off the rails.
People tend not to like this argument, for obvious reasons (much like those people who insist on believing in God because the alternative is too horrible to consider; I'm looking at you, Big G). But the only convincing point against it I've heard is the argument that most scientists think that when you get down to the quantum level things really are happening in a messed-up way that is genuinely random. Whether these microscopic slow dances of elementary particles can possibly affect us within our lifetimes (as oppose to the coding in our DNA and our upbringing essentially ticking all the boxes in advance) is an interesting question, but it does invalidate the idea that there is no such thing as the truly random.
I note with interest, though, that New Scientist (I nearly wrote this week's New Scientist, until I remembered that I found it in the coffee room this morning and for all I know it was months old and only just been released from the office of whichever staff member keeps stealing them) suggesting new evidence has been found that this stuff might be deterministic after all. I only had time to read the first few paragraphs, and I recognise that for a magazine dedicated to science, NS tends to play fast and loose with anything so inconvenient as a fact, but this might bear a closer look.
Maybe I was right all along, and we have no genuine control over our lives. But as an old friend pointed out to me years ago, since there's no way we can predict what will happen, and since I don't believe anyone or anything intended for my life to take this path, then what exactly does it matter?
Update: I went and checked. It was the 22nd March issue, and essentially said "We haven't yet disproved causality, despite what those douches over in quantum theory keep saying". Good to know.
Outside Interest
Hurrah! Only one month in and I have comments from actual real people!
Well, one real person, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. A shiny gold star to jamie.
Coming up next: we discuss the universe at the quantum level, and why I might have been right all along.
Well, one real person, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. A shiny gold star to jamie.
Coming up next: we discuss the universe at the quantum level, and why I might have been right all along.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Hormone Control
After the latest hilarious series of misunderstandings in what is laughingly called my love life (the laughter being at a Black Books level of bitterness, obviously), I've been wondering as to whether life genuinely would be any better if we could consciously decide who we were and weren't going to find attractive. I've heard the idea suggested before as something that would do away with all the irritating pissing about, which admittedly wastes a lot of time which could be more gainfully employed drinking my liver three feet outside my torso. Of course, though, nine times out of ten (at least), what people implicitly mean is actually "Life would be better if people chose to find me attractive". I personally have been at the end of at least one teeth-grindingly hideous speech about how someone is "sorry" that they couldn't give me what I wanted, and the subtext was never "If I could flick a switch, I could" so much as "Holy Hell I wish this had never come up; I just wanted someone to lavish me with attention until I found myself a real man". Who's going to have some hideous, foul-smelling idiot sidle up to them and offer to buy a drink and think, "Right, I am so totally activating my horny chip for this one."?
No, I'm pretty sure that the level of rejection people face in this world would remain essentially constant. Only now, it's much worse, because when somebody knocks you back it's no longer "Those idiot hormones I can't possibly control say 'no', and I am helpless against them," but "I could find you attractive if I wanted to, but I am making the conscious choice to hold out for something better". You start getting rejected on paper, rather than in the confusing swirl of battle. It might be of more use when a long-term relationship starts going south, but then of course it's at least arguable that a decrease in the degree to which you find your partner attractive is symptomatic of a larger problem, and I'm not sure shooting yourself up with Puck's love potion (a classical reference! I am so smart!) is going to do anything than fuck you up worse in the long-term.
Which leaves us with the genuinely useful aspect of this hypothetical application of human pheremone: allowing the last pathetic remnants of the human population to fix themselves up after all the people who are just not naturally repulsive have left the singles bar. Of course, the cynic in me tells me that this tends to happen anyway. I guess in a few years, when I leave my twenties forever in tears, and my scalp finally gives up clinging to the increasingly irrelevant remaining patches of servicable follicles, I shall find out.
Fingers crossed...
No, I'm pretty sure that the level of rejection people face in this world would remain essentially constant. Only now, it's much worse, because when somebody knocks you back it's no longer "Those idiot hormones I can't possibly control say 'no', and I am helpless against them," but "I could find you attractive if I wanted to, but I am making the conscious choice to hold out for something better". You start getting rejected on paper, rather than in the confusing swirl of battle. It might be of more use when a long-term relationship starts going south, but then of course it's at least arguable that a decrease in the degree to which you find your partner attractive is symptomatic of a larger problem, and I'm not sure shooting yourself up with Puck's love potion (a classical reference! I am so smart!) is going to do anything than fuck you up worse in the long-term.
Which leaves us with the genuinely useful aspect of this hypothetical application of human pheremone: allowing the last pathetic remnants of the human population to fix themselves up after all the people who are just not naturally repulsive have left the singles bar. Of course, the cynic in me tells me that this tends to happen anyway. I guess in a few years, when I leave my twenties forever in tears, and my scalp finally gives up clinging to the increasingly irrelevant remaining patches of servicable follicles, I shall find out.
Fingers crossed...
Sunday, 13 April 2008
In The Interests Of Balance
Just because I ragged on it so hard last week, I thought I'd mention Dr Who was actually rather spiffing yesterday. I would qualify that, but I've learnt in this week's SFX that when you like something, you aren't allowed to criticise any part of it whatsoever.
Seriously, I've never known any magazine so desperate to push the idea that critical faculties are a bad thing. One wonders why they bother having anything so complex as a five-star rating system, since apparently all art belongs to one of the binary states of "awesome" and "shit".
Seriously, I've never known any magazine so desperate to push the idea that critical faculties are a bad thing. One wonders why they bother having anything so complex as a five-star rating system, since apparently all art belongs to one of the binary states of "awesome" and "shit".
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