Category: venting Page 4 of 5

Five Year Plan? I Hardly Think So…

On 28/03/2008

So (as with the cliché about historic events, good or bad) I remember where I was when – just over five years ago – Baghdad was invaded by US/UK Armed Forces. I was at a friend’s house, Sky News was on, and the coverage was … well, its rather jubilant nature made it feel like we were watching Fox News, just with a Limey voice-over.
“What do you make of all this?” my friend asked. “Blair, Bush – all this?”
“I…” For once, I tried to choose my words carefully. “I question their sincerity,” I said eventually.

And as I did then, I do now; five years on, and I don’t believe they had a plan to liberate Iraq, any more than I believe that they genuinely believed that Saddam had weapons that he was hiding from them. I think the whole damn thing was a lousy lie (or a major error of judgment, but either of those is cause for resignation to my mind), with Bush trying to look butch after the security errors that led terrorists (initially trained by US forces in Afghanistan, remember) to attack the World Trade Centre, and maybe trying to finish off the job Daddy started. And Blair being weaselly and spineless and ignoring wiser heads (not to mention what was, I think, the biggest mass protest march in UK history) and putting UK troops in the line of fire for no good reason at all.

Five years on now, and the people who thought the war was wrong-headed and ill-founded can perhaps take slight consolation in the fact that they were right all along – though those of us who questioned the sincerity of the pro-war argument at the time have now found that pretty much everyone you speak to pretends that they took the same stance at the time; people I know who swallowed the line that ‘anti-war’ equated with ‘Pro-Saddam’ are now, once the true meaning of ‘Mission Accomplished’ has sunk in, claiming that they were against it all along. It’s like the way aged cockneys claim to have been in the Blind Beggar pub that night, or Liverpudlians of a certain age claim to have been at the Cavern the first time a particular band played.

It’s the kind of re-writing of events that I’ve railed against before, and will, I fear, find cause to do so again; just as people are pretending they thought and said one thing about Iraq five years ago when in fact they didn’t, so China’s political leaders pretend that they didn’t invade Tibet in 1950, or that they didn’t order the shooting of hundreds of students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 (I think you can guess where I stand on these issues, but if you can’t, let me state: I’m on the side of the facts). And in the same way, people seem all too willing to forget that Donald Rumsfeld, one of the US politicians so very keen to go to war in Iraq (to the extent that he was thinking about a military strike in Iraq within hours of the 11 September 2001 attacks) met Saddam Hussein in December 1983 as an ally.

Relationships and allegiances change, of course, but I thought I’d post this picture here by way of pointing out that, despite what some people might have us believe, we have not always been at war with Eastasia.

And Don’t Even Get Me Started On The Standard Of Parenting In Coronation Street

By John

On 18/03/2008

In Link, TV, Uncategorized, venting, Writing

Now, I’m not any kind of expert on flirting (indeed, for some time I thought that, because of sharing the first three letters of the word, it was pretty much the same as FLIcking someone on the shoulder, albeit whilst adopting a come-hither look), but I do often find soap opera flirting almost painful to watch.

Much of the time, the dialogue’s to blame – just a bit too knowing and arch, and it sounds strangely like a blend of Mamet, Sorkin and Harlequin Romance novels, if you know what I mean; the characters have ready answers a tad too swiftly, as if they’re doing some kind of pre-rehearsed verbal dance. Granted, characters in fiction invariably talk quite differently from people you’ll actually meet (I think it was screenwriter/director John August who said that characters in films speak as we would in reality if we had five extra seconds to frame our words), often because they’re sneaking bits of exposition into the conversation or whatever, but sometimes it’s just a stage too far removed for me.

I’ve been mulling this over because the ‘flirty banter’ in EastEnders has been seeming clumsy to me for a while now, to the extent that the on-screen conversations (and the creaking of the rather visible plot levers) tend to get drowned out in Chez Nous by me yelling ‘Oh my GOD! That’s not how people talk! Ugh!’ at the screen whenever there’s a would-be wooing scene going on.

There are two main offending types of EastEnders ‘flirty banter’, as far as I’m concerned:

1 – HARD-BOILED: As exemplified by Ronnie and Roxy, the purported sex-kittens of the Queen Vic. Obviously, nothing says feisty and smouldering more than names which echo well-known members of the East End underworld, but it’s bolstered by the sisters acting less like femmes fatales and more like people who’ve seen too many Guy Ritchie films. The standard set-up tends to be that one of them (and you’ll guess from the repeated use of that phrase that, offhand, I don’t know which is which – the perils of having names that are so similar*) meets a chap who is, of course, a bit of a wide-boy and a geezer, not to be trusted, and so on. Thus, they are destined by fate and plot requirements to pair off, and the banter is usually something a bit like:

He: So what are you doing tonight, then?
She: What’s it to you?
He: Just wondering, that’s all.
She: Well, stop wondering, it’s none of your business.
He: Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. How does your husband feel about you being in the bar all the time, with all the male punters?
She: My husband’s dead.
He: Sorry to hear that. Boyfriend?
She: Are you offering?
He: Maybe I should be.
She: Maybe you shouldn’t.
He: Maybe you want me to.
She: Maybe I do.
He: Maybe I’ll do something about it.
She: Maybe I won’t be sitting and waiting.
He: Maybe you won’t have to.

… and so on. It’s the kind of dialogue which was prevalent in Moonlighting, but that TV show was a comedy, whereas EastEnders is meant to be based in reality, despite occasionally veering into melodrama and the realms of the East End underworld. That rapid-fire kind of dialogue reminds me of the old ‘Who’s On First?’ routine by Abbott and Costello or Murdock talking to Oveur in Airplane! – again, comedy items.

I referred to Aaron Sorkin above, and yes, there’s certainly an argument to be made that the speedy patter of characters in, say, The West Wing is unrealistic, but I think the ‘walk-n-talk’ sequences in that show are designed more to show the intelligence of the characters, who are able to assimilate information and respond in an unnaturally articulate fashion (plus, when you have a burgeoning romance between character in that show, it’s at least a continuation of those speech patterns, as opposed to the residents of Albert Square suddenly sounding as if they’re residents of Sin City).

Of the two styles of EastEnders flirty banter, this one is more prevalent – especially as EastEnders is full of characters who think they’re well’ard (despite that being the dog’s name), but a new strand has started to make itself known :

2 – ADULT-FEATURE-STYLE: Oh yes. Genuinely not that far from ‘I’m come to fix the shower’ or ‘I’m the pizza delivery boy’ school of flirting, this type of dialogue (so far) mainly seems to be allocated to the recently-returned character Clare, played by Gemma Bissix (who also played a character called Clare in Hollyoaks; I hope that isn’t some kind of condition of her agent passing scripts to her). Now, given that EastEnders is a mid-evening show, it’s unlikely to turn into an all-out nudey-romp-fest, and so the dialogue is less direct than in an adult feature, but it’s still not that far off. It often seems to run along the following lines:

She: Oh hello, man under fifty years of age.
He: Hello.
She: Is that the launderette over there?
He: Yes. Dot runs it, she’ll look after you.
She: Oh good, I need to do some washing.
He: It’s open seven days a week, I think.
She: Mmm, I need to wash my underwear, it’s all lacy and delicate.
He: Er, yes, Dot can probably help you.
She: Yes, my lacy g-strings and stockings need to be washed, or I’ll have no underwear to put on.
He: Well, as I say, it’s just over there, on the left. Push hard on the door, it sticks sometimes.
She: And my bras are so delicate and see-through I have to make sure I wash them properly. Don’t want them tearing apart.
He: In this weather, I can understand your concern. You don’t want to catch cold.
She: Oh, I’m so very hot right now. Mmm…
He: If you go to the caff, Ian’s probably got some canned drinks in the fridge.

… okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit there, but not really that much (from half-listening, Clare had at least two conversations about her underwear with male characters in her first week of returning to the soap, with the men looking as bewildered and scared as if Catherine Tremell had suddenly appeared and asked where the ice was), so please don’t go thinking I’m constructing a straw man argument.

I guess the underlying problem is that the real-world ways people banter and flirt aren’t actually very telegenic; people meet in pubs and bars or at work or in nightclubs, and the way they sound each other out and find they have similar outlooks or interests or whatever aren’t as dramatic as the TV camera, and the narrative drive, demands. Whilst it might be realistic to show people meeting at a club where the music drowns out all their dialogue to the extent that they’re more conducting dual monologues than having a proper conversation, it’s not necessarily going to make for good TV.

Which is probably why instead we see a lot of scenes like the above, which is a shame, as I think that actually properly showing some characters getting to know each other, and realise they get on, would make for a greater degree of audience empathy with them – something which EastEnders is wholly lacking to my mind at the moment, as there are very few characters who aren’t in some way stupid or venal or worthy of come kind of contempt; okay, maybe there’s Dot or Bradley, but her bible-bashing and sanctimony makes her hard to care for, and his refusal to move out of the Square after his dad slept with his wife looks less like the behaviour of a stable character and more a case of plot necessity.

And I genuinely believe that with likeable characters comes audience ‘support’ for them, so that they’ll have an emotional connection with them and want good things to happen to them. I appreciate that may sound simplistic, but I think it’s absolutely vital for an audience in some way to feel a connection with the protagonists. Whether it’s wanting Peggy to be made a Yellowcoat or Tony Soprano not to be gunned down by an old enemy, I believe that the audience has to – on some level – feel engaged and connected with the characters. Without that connection you’re trying to get an audience to spend their time watching a tale of things that never happened to imaginary people who the audience doesn’t care about, and thus has no emotional attachment to, so if they’re laughing or crying or flirting, it’s irrelevant, as the audience doesn’t give too hoots about the outcome, and may well be long gone before the resolution hoves into view.

I’ve perhaps strayed a little off the point here, but before I end this post, I want to make it clear that I think it’s entirely possible to have on-screen flirtation which makes you feel that the characters are both getting along and growing closer, whilst still speaking words that could come out of the mouths of actual people – there are many examples of it around, but perhaps the best example that springs to mind is the relationship between Jack Foley and Karen Sisco in the film ‘Out Of Sight’. Great performances by both the actors, and a terrific script too (I’m sure you can think of other films with good romantic banter or flirty stuff – feel free to post them as comments), showing that it most definitely can be done. And given that all you need for on-screen flirtation are two actors and a script, there’s no reason why TV soaps shouldn’t be able to create the same sort of sparks between characters as, say, Bogie and Bacall did. Budget should not be an issue.

Unless I’m missing something? If so, post a comment and let me know.
Maybe I’ll listen. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll agree. Maybe I won’t
You like that repetitious banter, eh? Well, wait until I start talking about my underwear, you’ll be twice as giddy. Apparently.

*And, for my money, also the reason the band Tony! Toni! Toné! never quite made the big time.

TRAVEL: The Lonely Death Of The Long Distance Travelling Salesman

By John

On 14/03/2008

In Personal, Pictures, Travel, Uncategorized, venting

This picture, taken last week, shows you the oh-so-luxurious segregated check-in area allocated to members of a famous hotel chain’s loyalty scheme. A lovely rope separates members from the proles, and they get the privilege of standing on a small mat as they check in. To be honest, I’d feel kind of guilty lording it up so much over the lower orders if it was me, but I’ve always been quite sympathetic to the finer feelings of my servants.

Anyway, I had to stay overnight in a hotel last week, for a meeting the next morning. And within a couple of hours of arriving there – despite it being a reputable chain (though one of its heirs seems determined to sully that legacy if possible) – I could understand why Willy Loman and Alan Partridge alike loathed being away from home so much.

The setting and reception were pleasant enough, but when I checked into my room and dumped my bag on the bed and looked around, I felt a sinking feeling; there was a TV, an ironing board and iron, a selection of menus and other bits of information for guests, and (oh yes) a Corby trouser press. I had, I suddenly realised, become that cliché, the chap who stays away from home overnight for work. I was thankful I’d travelled there by train and taxi, rather than driven there in a car with a suit hanging in the back and ‘Top Gear Driving Anthems 2’ on the stereo, that would have made the picture unsettlingly complete.

Deciding to eschew the bar or restaurant, I instead ordered some room service food, and settled down to see what was on the TV, by way of a mental sorbet. The standard terrestrial channels were there, along with a number of on-screen adverts for the fact I could pay £8.50 to watch Beowulf in glorious normal-sized-TV-o-vision. I decided that I’d rather either see it at the cinema for that cost, or even buy a copy of it for slightly more, and instead opted to watch a Batman cartoon which was on (for reasons which elude me, they had the Cartoon Network in addition to the usual channels).

The food, for the record, was fine, and a bit later on I chatted to my beloved on the phone, which made things feel a bit less grim, but there was something strange about the overnight experience; I was reminded of the narrator in Fight Club talking about his apartment building being a filing cabinet, and the food on planes being single-serving. The hotel felt the same – the room was functional but not luxurious or welcoming, and the miniature toiletries were like a plastic soap-filled summation of the transient nature of it all.

I slept all right, but when I went to breakfast the next morning, there were a couple of chaps in shirts and ties sitting at a table already, eating breakfast and talking about their sales targets. Just overhearing them, I swear I could actually feel my soul shrivelling like a slug in a saltstorm.

I took my tray, and its single-serving breakfast, and sat in the furthest possible corner of the restaurant.

Don’t Be Fooled By The Free CDs and DVDs, They Don’t Care If You Live Or Die

By John

On 29/01/2008

In Link, Pictures, Uncategorized, venting

As someone with a brain in my skull and more than a grain of love for humanity in my soul, I of course think that the Daily Mail is a morally repugnant, house-price-fixated, crypto-xenophobic waste of ink and trees. And if that sounds like an overreaction, do bear in mind it’s a matter of public record that they supported Oswald Mosely and his fascist group the Blackshirts in the run-up to World War II.

So, given this depth of feeling, I can only be delighted that someone’s gone to the trouble of creating the Daily Mail Headlineinator.

Simply add in a picture of something that the Mail might consider a threat to white middle-class suburban living (so, that would be anything at all), and the Headlineinator will condemn it for you. Immediately. Without regard for whether it’s actually to blame for anything at all. Just like the Daily Mail. As demonstrated above.

(Many thanks to Graeme for his permission to publish this link. He’s a gentleman, a scholar, and an acrobat.)

You’re Fired! (Work Your Notice)

By John

On 21/01/2008

In Link, Uncategorized, venting

Sometimes in life, you find yourself in agreement with people who you really wouldn’t expect to have any common ground with. For me, the latest example of this was when I read an interview with Donald Trump , wherein he said the following:

“…I just hate what’s happened to this country. We’ve gone to a country that’s no longer respected. We’re in a war that we should have never — and by the way, I’m worse than any hawk there is in terms of military and in terms of defending ourselves. But Saddam Hussein didn’t knock down the World Trade Center. He had nothing to do with it. And there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was nothing.”

And then he goes on to refer to Bush as a “total disaster”.

Isn’t there an adage about ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’? Well, it looks like I should now consider Donald Trump as a friend. Just hope he doesn’t get jealous of my naturally flowing locks.

Anyway, the good news for my new pal Donald, and the rest of the world, is that in one year’s time, George W Bush will be out of the White House. One year today, folks – let’s face it, whether Hillary or Obama or Guiliani or Lex Luthor succeeds him, it’s going to be an improvement.

Yes, You Can Guess What I’ve Been Shopping For In The Past Couple Of Weeks

By John

On 24/12/2007

In London, Pictures, Uncategorized, venting

Retailers! Tired of customers asking you the same question over and over again at this busy time of year? Well, it doesn’t have to be like that! With this handy print-off-n-stick-up notice, you can save your time and their goodwill! Happy holidays!

Get Me To The Church On Time

By John

On 20/12/2007

In Link, London, Uncategorized, venting

So, last Saturday, me and my fiancée and a friend set off for a wedding. It was the wedding of two good friends who’ve (quite frankly) been through the wringer in recent times, and yet they’ve always come out smiling and generally chipper, so we all wanted to be there for the wedding; clothes and new shoes were bought, a dinner jacket was hired by me (no sense in buying one when my current size of ‘fat sod’ is, I intend, merely temporary), and we hired a car to get us there.

The wedding was taking place near Uxbridge, which is on the west side of London, so let’s call it 9:00 on the clock face. As I’ve probably said before, we live in East London, so that’s at about 3:00 on the clock face. So, the logical route would be one which took us, as far as possible, from east to west in a straight line (though ideally avoiding the city centre). A couple of days before, I logged onto the AA Route Planner website, and – using our starting and destination postcodes, got a printout of our trip, which was estimated to take about 80 mins. We left just after midday for a 2PM wedding, which seemed a sensible margin. The hire car was new and full of petrol, and we all looked quite spiffy, and we set off along the route in an optimistic mood.

That mood lasted about fifteen minutes; I took a wrong turn in Docklands which send us off the wrong way (through the Blackwall Tunnel and almost to the Dome before I could turn around), and that lost us some time, but when we got back to the point of my mistake and started following the instructions again, it became apparent that my error was just the start of our troubles, as the AA’s suggested route told us to ‘continue straight ahead at the lights’ when in fact the road featured a roundabout, with no straight-ahead option.

We tried the various exits in turn, and it gradually dawned on us that not only was the route one which involved travelling on imaginary roads, but that it took us down towards 6:00 on the clock face before circling back up to around 11:00 and then down to a sort-of 9:00 direction. In short, it was hopeless, and driving it on a Saturday was an impossible task, so our friend navigated us to Islington, at which point we followed the Euston Road along to Baker Street, and then got on a main road to the location of the wedding.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with London probably won’t know or care what the above sentence, with the place names in, means, but it’s neither important to know or relevant, really, as the fact of the matter is it was nowhere near as easy as that sentence makes out. After all, we were in Central London on a Saturday.

It became abundantly clear that we weren’t going to make the start of the wedding, which was both annoying and upsetting, as we wanted to be there for our friends. Then, as we sat in the car in traffic which I could have outrun even in my present non-running condition, it became clear that we probably wouldn’t make the wedding at all. But maybe we could make it to the reception.

And indeed we did – though not after some trouble finding our final destination, because the AA Routeplanner kindly decided not to give us any kind of directions once we got to the village where the wedding and its reception were being held – despite me having put in the postcode of our destination. You’d think that in a village the size of Denham, it wouldn’t be too tricky to locate the Golf Club, and indeed it wasn’t too hard to find. Shame we found the wrong golf club first and had to wend our way to the right one – past the rather lovely church where the wedding had finished, and where the rose petal confetti on the ground outside the gate was yet another reminder of what we’d missed – so that by the time we actually arrived, it was three hours since we’d left home.

We arrived late, irritated, but most of all upset at missing a once-in-a-lifetime event. If we’d known that it was going to take that long, we would have allowed time for it, but we were misled by directions which were just plain wrong. This isn’t the first time we’ve been scuppered by the AA Routeplanner, I have to say – driving in Warminster a couple of months ago, the route map told us to follow a road which simply wasn’t there, and then missed out several of the final stages of our journey, meaning we had to call our destination and be talked through what to do, like something out of an old Airport film (though it could be said that it was more like Airplane!, though that’s open to debate).

Several people have said ‘well, you should get a sat-nav’, which I find a moderately moronic solution since we don’t actually own a car, and I’m inclined to agree with m’beloved’s assessment that next time, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way: by sitting down with a road map. I’m certainly biased that way after the journey home, which took about 75 mins. Granted, it was late at night, but we winged it in terms of the route, and somehow, without the help of major motoring organisation the AA we made it home safely and with no hassle at all, faster than their projected return time.

So, despite having linked to it in the second paragraph, I strongly recommend that you do not use the AA Routeplanner, as my recent experiences with it have shown it to be wildly unreliable. For those of you with a car, a sat-nav might well be the answer (though not necessarily) , or using a map might be old-school but prove oddly reliable. And of course, if you’re going to join a road recovery organisation, I recommend the RAC.

Still, it goes some way towards explaining why I recollect seeing members of the AA on the news urging the government to build more roads: clearly, they want the roadways of England re-shaped to match with the version of things that Routeplanner’s made up in its mad microprocessor mind.

Last Minute Christmas Ideas

By John

On 19/12/2007

In Uncategorized, venting, Writing

It’s that time of year again, when magazines fill up with ‘year-end round-up’ articles and ‘best of’ lists, but what if the journalist in your life has left it to the last minute to hand in an article? Well, don’t panic, because even at this late stage, there are still article ideas you can give them, for example…

Shopping For Women
This is a perennially popular theme, and you can’t really go wrong with it. Remember to start from the premise that all men are eye-rollingly gormless when it comes to this sort of thing – particularly the buying of underwear, when, left to their own devices, men inevitably buy red PVC basques in the wrong size.
Perfume and bathroom products are always a favourite, mainly because the nature of the items can’t really be conveyed on the printed page, and you can dupe the testicle-toting fools into buying something which is stunningly well packaged, but actually smells as if a mouse has died behind the radiator. Of course, an article of this nature implies that the gift recipient smells, and if the gift itself smells bad, it’s doubly insulting, suggesting that the revolting stench of the gift is none the less preferable to the woman’s natural odour.
Shoes and handbags are always a safe bet for an article, too – not only are there so many colour and style variables that you can probably make your word count easily just by dropping in a few big designer names and references to current trends (which you can always contort to fit your brief), but best of all, you can drop in a few references to how men don’t understand women and their love for shoes and handbags. God, men are stupid, aren’t they girls? Eh? Eh?

Shopping For Men
Again, very popular, and nice and easy. All men love all gadgets, so just take a look at a few websites and make up some stuff about ‘this year’s hottest trend’ or ‘really big in the USA at the moment’ or something like that.
DVD box sets are always a nice shelf- and page-filler, and as all men love Bond films, you can always recommend whatever the latest version of the Bond boxed set happens to be; this idea has the added attraction of enabling you to make some irrelevant but wordcount-upping comments about people having a favourite Bond actor (with examples), or about Daniel Craig being blonde-haired, or, if all else fails, you can refer to Ursula Andress in her bikini as ‘iconic’ (perfect excuse to illustrate the article with an appropriate photo, thus filling more space and increasing the sex-factor of the article. Ka-ching!).
If the journalist in your life is writing for something a bit alternative and wants to seem a bit edgy, then they may need to come from a less mainstream angle than the Bond films, so bear in mind that even though all men love Bond films, any men who don’t love Bond films will always love all Tarantino films. Don’t be afraid to write about the DVD releases of these, peppering the article with quotes from Pulp Fiction, speculation about what’s in the briefcase, suggestions that you’d always been a huge fan of Pam Grier’s work, and of course you can always refer to Uma Thurman in her tracksuit as ‘iconic’ (see above re illustrating article, etc).

Shopping Experiences
In the past few years, with the growth of the internet, we’ve seen an explosion of articles comparing online and real-life shopping experiences, and these are always a good way to fill the bits between adverts in magazines and papers. The benefit of writing about online shopping is that you can do all your research sitting at your desk, cutting and pasting from the websites in question, so it’s all in the comfort of your own home.
On the other hand, nothing really beats going out and doing all your Christmas shopping article research in real shops, as you can write about the shop’s décor, the crowds of people, the music of Wizzard and Slade pumped at you from speakers, and the rudeness of shop assistants and/or other customers.
This latter is an important element of the shopping experience article, as, unlike web-based shopping, what someone said to you in a shop is hard to verify, whereas with an online shopping article you might get some bored or nosey sub-editor actually looking at the website to see if what you’ve said in your article is true – which can be a nuisance if you’ve said that you can buy a brontosaurus from Amazon or something like that. So think carefully about whether online or real-life shopping is the experience for your article.

Shopping For Children
Although over 50% of the homes in the UK don’t have children in, it’s always a safe bet that an editor will accept an article on shopping for kids at Christmas. Like the ‘shopping experience’ article, this gives you a lot to work with – the store itself, the experience of trying to find something suitable, and if you write as if you’ve taken the child shopping with you, you can always end on an emotional note – such as:
“When we got home, Molly looked me in the eye.
‘I don’t mind about not getting the toy I wanted,’ she said, thoughtfully.
‘No?’ I replied. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I enjoyed spending time with you, Mummy. That’s all I want for Christmas, really.’
I turned away, so she couldn’t see my eyes fill with tears.”
Of course, you can also get a lot of mileage out of talking about the latest crazes amongst kids, and how you don’t understand them. You can either play this ignorant for humorous effect (‘Is an X-Box something to do with Simon Cowell?’) or faintly indignant (‘When I was growing up, we didn’t have games consoles, we were thankful if our Christmas stocking contained a mouldy tangerine and a hardened lump of grandma’s excrement’). Don’t forget, the semi-nostalgia angle article is like a present without wrapping unless you refer to Raleigh Choppers or Spacehoppers.

Party Season
Many people who work in offices or other shared environs have some kind of work ‘do’, so this is often a safe bet – as long as you write about it from the standard position, which is that December is an endless whirl of parties for which all female readers must buy new outfits, and at which all male readers will be trying to get a snog from a female member of staff (always try to make this sound like a given, or received wisdom, by giving an example of the sort of department the female in question might work in, but make it sound both casual and plausible – for example, ‘the pretty girl in HR’ or ‘the brunette in goods received’).
Regardless of the fact that most people will, at best, have one work do and attend one party thrown by friends, feel free to make December sound like a non-stop carnival of parties, at which all work bashes involve champagne flutes, cocktail dresses and refined environments (as opposed to a meal in the local Harvester, which is more likely to be the reality), and all parties hosted by friends are (if you’re writing for a female audience) like something out of a Helen Fielding novel or (if your readers are male) a National Lampoon film.

This Year’s Christmas Must-Haves
If you have a page to fill and no time at all, then the Nigella Express of articles is surely ‘this year’s must-haves’. Take pictures of items from websites or press releases, put in little details of stockists underneath them, repeating until the page is full. If you can find a picture of someone in the public eye using, holding or wearing any of the items, then so much the better.
Remember to use the phrase ‘must-haves’ in the title or subtitle, or the article will be unfit for print; ‘must-have’ is a magically-imbued phrase which renders your readers both susceptible and slightly disoriented, so that they’ll both feel somehow like they ought to buy whatever random tat you’ve given pagespace to, whilst simultaneously wiping their memory of the fact that, in the previous issue, you told them that items of an entirely different nature were things they ought to have.
If you do not use the phrase, the article will look like a haphazard collection of images that could have been assembled by an infant with access to a pot of glue and a copy of the latest Argos catalogue and your editor will not consider it a ‘must-have’ in publication terms.

Last Minute Ideas – Last Resort
If you have to write something shortly before Christmas, and genuinely have nothing at all to say, then the only route left to you is to take the ‘last minute’ route, and to either write about your own ‘trying to get gifts/cook a meal/whatever at the last minute’ experience (but do bear in mind this might actually take some effort to create), or – and this is easier – to write an article advising people on what they should do if they find themselves empty-handed (or empty-headed) at this time.
It might seem like a cop-out option, but in fact its timing makes it a sure-fire candidate for publication – not only does it look suitably aligned to the calendar, but the time of year means people tend to have other things on their mind, so the editor’s less likely to spot the absence of any real point or merit to the article, and the reader’s probably not going to realise that the whole things is just an exercise designed to waste their time and energy to no real purpose.

…Which, of course, applies to these words as well.

Another Reason To Wear Earphones And Try To Cut Yourself Off From Things, I Guess

By John

On 12/12/2007

In Link, Uncategorized, venting

Go and take a look at this article. Go ahead, read it through, I’ll wait.

Back now? Okay, brace yourself while I rant a bit.

It’s an interesting use of technology, sure, but the way that the founder of Holosonics seems utterly oblivious to any possible criticisms speaks, to my mind (though thankfully not into it), volumes about the way that marketing and advertising seems to work nowadays; he seems unable to grasp the idea that as you’re walking along, you might not want to have someone trying to advertise directly into your head. Sometimes, when people are doing things, they’re actually not ready to be sold or marketed to.

Despite the fact that a lot of advertisers and marketers see their work as some kind of artform, and have successfully duped a lot of people into believing this (testimony to their skills of persuasion, I guess), the underlying reason for their existence is to sell stuff. Call it ‘building brands’ or whatever you like, but they’re just selling stuff, not actually adding anything to the sum of human knowledge. And they seem oddly unaware of how sometimes, just sometimes, there are times and places when you don’t want to be advertised to.

This basic concept, it seems, is almost impossible for advertisers and marketers to understand; when I’m at home, I don’t want them to call me about books clubs or phone services, and when I’m walking along I don’t want someone beaming a message directly into my ear telling me about a TV show or something. The Holosonics development – which I’m hoping doesn’t really spread any further – is quite different from an ad on TV, radio, a billboard or even in print, as in all of those situations I have the choice to look away and curtail the advert if I’m not interested. If someone beams an audio ad into your head, then you have no choice as to when it ends. And that, it seems to me, is an unpleasant intrusion.

The specious comments about people ‘being sensitive’ to it, or comparing it with a loudspeaker annoying large numbers of people at one time (as opposed to individuals – what does he think large bodies of people are comprised of if not individuals?) show a slightly dismissive attitude to the idea that people might not want to be advertised to without permission, doesn’t it ? How would this chap care to be bombarded with ads for rival companies as he went about his daily business? Not much, I suspect.

I firmly and sincerely believe – and I appreciate this goes against current thinking in commercial and governmental circles – that there are some places which should be free from advertising and marketing. Schools are a key example – they’re places of education, not another potential market where Coke or Walkers or whoever can try to build ‘brand loyalty’ or some other nonsense. If the thinking goes that adverts should be allowed to go anywhere at all – and I can only conclude that this is so, if there’s a belief that beaming them directly into a person’s ear is acceptable – why are they not trying to advertise within churches, mosques and synagogues? I think we all know why.

There are, then, some limits on where adverts can be (and indeed, should be) placed, though these ad-free zones certainly seem to be on the decline. And I don’t find it in the least bit reassuring to see it implied – through the whole Holophonics sales pitch – that my ear canal is no longer seen as being a private place.

Who knows which orifice is next?

Perhaps Dali Should Have Called His Painting ‘The Transience Of Memory’

By John

On 07/12/2007

In Personal, Uncategorized, venting

Despite having what many people might consider a shaky grasp of reality, I like to think I have a decent memory. In fact, compared to quite a few people I know, it’s a very good memory indeed, because a startling number of people seem all too keen to rewrite events in their mind, for whatever reason. I understand that we often amend our recollections of the past to meet present emotional needs, but … well, that shouldn’t extend to blocking things out in their entirety, should it?

To take an unpleasant but true example, some years ago a friend of mine decided to break up with her boyfriend. He took it badly, to say the least, wrestling her into a nearby wardrobe and holding it shut – apparently in an attempt to convince her to stay (yes, that’s bound to change her mind, you violent genius! Well done you!). She got out of the wardrobe, got out of the flat they shared, and got on with her life, which is obviously a good thing.
However, not so good was the way she remembered these events a short time later.

“Oh, he wasn’t so bad,” she said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I near-shouted. “He was really awful to you at the end!”
“I don’t know what you mean. I think a lot of it was my fault, and I -“
“Look,” I cut in, “don’t give me that. I saw the bruises on your arms.”
She stopped talking then, and her face dropped as if something unpleasant had just dawned on her. Because, I realised, she had tried to forget his violence towards her, and put it behind her – to the extent that she’d convinced herself that it hadn’t happened.

I seem to come across examples all too often – I referred to an ex denying my involvement in typing her dissertation in this post – and it’s worrying to see how people don’t even need time to have passed for them to have reframed events; someone I know rewrote their partner saying “You’re not putting up that picture in my house” into “We need to have a discussion about the room you’re going to put that picture up in” within a matter of minutes.

I’ll be honest, I find it maddening and worrying at the same time; maddening because I believe that the present is the result of a gradual and inevitable accretion of events, like layers of paint added to a canvas, and that relationships and situations are examples of this – and how can you have any kind of healthy handle on a relationship or situation if you’re always blocking out the truth of it?
And I find it worrying when people seem to be unable to accept and process the meaning of events and actions as they truly are, because … well, that way delusion lies. There’s that old adage about ‘those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them’, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that – but I don’t want to have to spend a lot of time working around delusional recollections of empirically verifiable events, nor being treated like some kind of heartless swine because I insist on reminding people of what they actually said as opposed to nodding along with their rewritten version of things.

I appreciate that a lot of people suffer traumas which they’d sooner forget, and I can understand that, but what I’m talking about here are more everyday things, which should be more easily coped with; disagreements with partners or patterns of behaviour which people simply refuse to acknowledge, and all too often repeat over and over again.

What, you may ask, has prompted a lengthy post of such venom on this subject? Well, rather tangentially perhaps, I saw an advert for the Borne Ultimatum DVD which had the tagline ‘Remember Everything. Forgive Nothing’, and my immediate thought was “Hmm, I dunno if I remember everything exactly, but I remember a hell of a lot more than some people seem to, and as a result I end up forgiving them a lot…”

Well, if not exactly forgiving, then posting a big ranty blog entry, but you know what I mean.