Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, unless you are a minger.

As my friends and acquaintances know, it is a rare day indeed that I am faced with something so outrageous that I am rendered speechless, jaw dangling and brows knitted like a pair of caterpillars in a pitched battle to the death, unable to frame and contain my outrage with a barbed wire fence of neatly linked words.

This ultra rare, gold titled and holofoiled moment, this once in a blue moon phenomenon occurred this week when I saw the latest news item about that rotten little band of Narcissuses and would-be contestants for the Judgement of Paris that make up the charming community of BeautifulPeople.com.

You may not know (or perhaps even care) that the entire premise of this exclusive dating site is that it the members are ‘beautiful.’  These poor delicate Socratic Ideals of the human form must not have their sensitive eyes birsmirched by crocopigs and thus any poor supplicants attempting to cross the threshold of BeautifulPeople.com have to fling their prostrate forms before the members of this society who will then decide by vote if he or she is delicious enough to skip through the fields of gorgeousness or is in fact a hideous troll (there shall be no clemency!) who needs to be shoved back under the bridge from whence he or she lurched. 

Ok!  You, dear reader, are extremely gorgeous and charming and so we will assume that you would have immediately been voted into the hallowed gang (although we all know, dear reader, that you have far too much going on in the cranial department to put yourself through the humiliation of being judged by people who think the plural of product is product, when talking about haircare).  This doesn’t mean you are safe. Thanks to 6.7 in the terms and conditions of the website yours remains a life of uncertainty.

“BeautifulPeople reserves the right to move member profiles back to the BeautifulPeople rating module to be voted on by existing members. As a consequence such action could result in removal of member profiles from the website. Such action can take place from time to time or as BeautifulPeople in its sole discretion deems this a necessary action.”

See?  Even if you are deemed beautiful enough to get in through the door, there is no such thing as certainty in the beauty stakes; you are ankle deep in the colloid hydrogel of public opinion and you will never know when that capricious harlot will shove you arse deep into the mire of rejection from the “exclusive virtual world for the aesthetically blessed only”.   

This very disaster befell a number of members in January 2010, when they were required to resubmit themselves to the vote, after observant members put in a series of complaints about some people letting themselves go over the holidays:

"We responded to complaints by moving the newly chubby members back to the rating stage. This is the same as having them re-apply," said Greg Hodge, the managing director.

So judged they were, and only a few hundred were permitted to keep their chufty badge of beautifulness.  5,000 individuals were deemed simply too grotesquely fat for the members’ delicate sensibilities and were duly requested to sling their pudgy, repellent hooks.  It puts me in mind of that scene in Mary Poppins, when Mr Banks has to do the walk of shame, which included his brolly being inside-outed and his bowler hat being punched through.   Imagine the erstwhile beauty being forced to hand back her hair straighteners and have her eyeliner pencils snapped in half before her very eyes.  She is obliged to relinquish her designer clothes, which are to be replaced with a capsule of High Street outfits, accented by some pieces that have been “designed” by Kate Moss.  Humiliating!

This is all well and good: idiot turning on idiot like rabid dogs in a pit of offal is extremely entertaining and has been many a TV show’s raison d’etre, but is it real?  Is it a cautionary tale against thinking you are all that and a bag of chips, eating the chips, becoming a chubber and then being treated like a leper, shunned by your community and doomed to wander the streets of averageness and mediocrity for ever more?  Or is it an awesome PR stunt? 

Please be upstanding, Golden Goose PR.  Yes, dear reader, I am saddened to inform you that it was indeed a very clever piece of PR called Festive Fatties.

“Festive Fatties was a moment of inspiration on a wintery walk through Hyde Park. We spotted some good-looking couples stuffing themselves with fairground food from Winter Wonderland.  It made us think of the Beautifulpeople.com members and whether they would be pigging out like the rest of us this Christmas.” said Miki Haines-Sanger, Co-founder, for the PR Week article .

And, boy oh boy, did it work!  They maximised every penny of their measly budget of £10,500 (plus $20,000 for PR Newswire) to get the kind of results that would leave your average marketer or PR person wracked with tears of bitter jealousy:

“Within 24 hours, there were 48,000 new applicants to Beautifulpeople.com. During peak times, the site experienced 700 applications a minute. It received more than 2.2 million hits in the days following the story.”

And it gets better:

“Ad revenue increase of 400 per cent in the three days after the campaign launch

- Traffic increase of 700 per cent between January and April 2010

- Increase in overall revenue of 900 per cent between January and April 2010

- In January 2010, Beautiful-people.com was ranked at 9,345 in Alexa's list of most visited sites. By February it had climbed to 1,700”

In essence, idiot baiting, using idiots as the bait. And making $25 per month from every Idiot that made it over the wire. I salute these brave PRs for this fantastic effort, in giving us a bit of a laugh at the expense of the Idiots as well as perhaps taking the worst of the Hollyoaks and WAG wannabes off the streets and out from under our feet.  But…and it is a big but:  it does make me a little wary of the latest story of humiliation at the hands of the beautiful people.

Apparently a disgruntled ex-employee lodged a virus in the old system which allowed 30,000 fuglies to flow out of the shadows and into the light, like a wave of cockroaches scuttling towards an open refrigerator, and gain membership to the site without having to go through the tiresome voting process.  This could not be put up with, as was explained by that perennial charmer Greg Hodge "We have to stick to our founding principles of only accepting beautiful people – that's what our members have paid for…We can't just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet."

Imagine the bump that would cause.

All 30,000 little cockroaches have been forcibly removed from the refrigerator of gorgeousness and paid back, but head exterminator Hodge still felt bad for "unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and believed, albeit for a short time, that they were beautiful".

Rather than relying on traditional methods of pest removal, Hodge has gone for the option of sending the swamp donkeys a “carefully-worded email, trying to be as sensitive as possible” and, for those folks who are finding it hard to come to terms with the fact they have a face that is more akin to a melted welly than a work of art, they have kindly and sensitively set up a helpline to help the Morlocks face and accept the fact that they are fat and ugly.  These people are all heart.

Oh, yes, and did I mention that the alleged virus rapidly became known as the Shrek virus?

This latest story surrounding this website, its ridiculous premise and even more ridiculous attitude to the world, makes me want to throw my hands up in despair.  Is this what we’ve come to as a species?  If I wasn’t so plain lazy, I would invent a time machine so I could go back to that day when the first little fishy thought ‘Sod this water lark! Let’s get with the air and walking thing’ and tell it not to bother. 

As it stands, I’ll simply try and wedge my jaw back into my face, put a restraining order on my eyebrows and try to forget that this dreadful website exists. And maybe get some guidance on what real beauty is from someone whose thoughts I actually respect.

On the bewildering nature of jobseeking

Occasionally I am hit by a feeling, as I am sure most other people out there in the world are, that I am doing the wrong thing.  This tends to happen when I have had a frustrating day at work or when I hear about someone else doing something so indescribably awesome (living in Barcelona but also sailing the high seas; being a trapeze artist; chucking it all in and taking up surfing professionally) that I cannot help but indulge in a small session of lot bewailment and wondering what I am doing in all the other places in the Multiverse. 

Don’t get me wrong: I am pretty good in my chosen career and I love the place where I work, but after listening to a particularly scathing attack by the much vaunted and deservedly celebrated Rhod Gilbert, (a person whom incidentally I admire above others due in no small part on his ability to sustain high levels of vitriolic and eloquent fury, when lesser mortals would self-immolate due to the power of their unbridled rage) on my profession of choice, I did wonder a bit what does a grownup do if they what to change careers but have no idea what they would do instead.

Because, you see, there are all sorts of careers advicey resources and places that young people can access, but I am told most of the good ones/free ones are totally ageist and rubbish and don’t let older folk at the goods.  And I have memories from trying one of those services ‘cough cough ahem’ years ago, when I was doing my A-levels (note I didn’t say A1/A2 or whatever they are called nowadays, which fairly accurately reflects my age, when qualifications were straightforward and all was nought but fields).  

I went along to the careers advisory place in town, and I got to use the latest technology and answer a series of questions on a computer which would then analyse my responses scientifically and then give me a shortlist of jobs I could consider.  Unsurprisingly, the list that the special scientific computer programme returned was more of a ridiculously long list incorporating every mortal thing from funeral director to stockbroker via event manager and accountant. 

I recall sitting at the workstation, feeling simultaneously under- and overwhelmed.  Underwhelmed by the basic usefulness of the program which took 45 minutes of my young life and did not help me in any way apart from giving me a massive list (I suspect the “program” may just have been a spreadsheet list of all careers possible, for all the scientific analysis it performed) and overwhelmed by the sheer size of the list and the number of careers that I hadn’t thought about let alone knew existed, leaving me with the onerous job of finding out what the heck a Wrinkle Chaser, a Pathoecologist, an Ocularist or any number of other odd careers were.

Suffice to say, I generally ignored the ‘advice’ that I was dispensed – n.b. for ‘advice’ please read ‘epic list from a computer’ as that was the extent of the support given by this place, because the human being at the counter by the door gave me more or less the same level of help as the pot plant standing next to the workstation – and decided to make my own way in the world.  Which was cool and has worked in its own way. 

But now what does one do?  Where can one go to find a new career path? I Googled the phrase “Job hunting”.  On the first page I was greeted with the Wikipedia page, whose initial description left me feeling little short of depressed:

“Job hunting, job seeking, or job searching is the act of looking for employment, due to unemployment or discontent with a current position. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain a job interview with an employer which may lead to getting hired. The job hunter or seeker typically first looks for job vacancies or employment opportunities.” 

And left me with the suspicion that the type of person who needs to look this up in order to understand what job seeking actually means is probably not the person whom anybody wishes to employ.

So what are your other options?  Thankfully the internets has a suggestion or two. You could use one of those new whizzy careers programmes which seem to be, in essence, a slightly slicker and faster version of the careers list.  I just tried the University of Kent's Careers Explorer and got this uninspiring list of potential careers:

Bank Manager - Retail

Purchasing Manager

Retail Merchandiser

Secondary Teacher

Chartered Accountant

Management Accountant

Operational Researcher

Banker - Investment/Securities

Marketing Manager

Systems Analyst

I am one of these already and, as for the rest, I would rather pull my own face off rather than do any one of those careers.  Do I look like a gitwizard?

What next? Traditionally if a man wanted to ‘forget’ all he had to do was rock up at the gates of the local branch of The Foreign Legion, sign up with a fake name so that he could escape his past, and spend the next however long sweating in the sun and forgetting whatever it was that originally made him think that signing up to the Foreign Legion was a good idea.  Times have changed and as you can see, the Foreign Legion has a pretty swanky website, and, seemingly, some quite good recruitment packages and a good monthly wage. But you do have to give you real name these day and (and this is a very big but) I don’t think they allow girls in.

Inspired by the young man in a poem by Michael Rosen poem from the fantastic ‘You Can’t Catch Me’,  which involves running away and joining the Merchant Navy (I can’t find the poem online, but if any of you can, let me know.  It is wicked!) I thought about living the life travelling the world and getting to wear supercool white outfits.  But while this would please me greatly for a short while, I think I’d be happier following the actions of Rosen’s young sailor and coming home the very next day and drinking up all the gravy.

Rapidly running out of ideas, I started typing the phrase “how can I become a mercenary” into Google, somewhat unnerved by the rapidity of the predictive text, fully discombobulated by the 9,000,000-odd results that appeared, and deeply irritated by the fact that most of the people posting these questions up couldn’t spell for toffee.  I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t like any mercenary type work being done to me by someone who couldn’t even write their invoice properly.  I think my ability to wield my words bedecked with mostly correct spelling and grammar makes me overqualified for the job.  That and the minor issue of having no warrior skills in particular to boast about, preclude a career as a soldier of fortune.

There’s nothing for It, I simply have no other option but be grateful for what I’ve got.  Considering all the other jobs I am doing in the Multiverse, the really awful ones - Puzzle Piece Checker, Flatulence Analyst, Cat Food Quality Controller or any of the other jobs listed in the 8 worst jobs shortlist  – things could be worse.  A lot worse.

I could be a traffic warden.

What colour is your rhino(virus)?

After a fun yet possibly ill-advised Friday evening in the garden without my scarf and woolly hat, I have fallen foul of the dread disease known as the summer cold.  This germy foulness is undoubtedly one of the most annoying weapons belonging to the gruesome Pestilence who, whilst not being as superbadass as Death, is still able to make life a misery via a number of poxy afflictions on the world: ingrown toenails, e-coli (beansprouts in Germany: a sign of the Apocalypse?), Kerry Katona (a little bug that latches onto the pre-frontal cortex that inhibits the ability to make any sensible decisions and causes the sufferer's reading abilities to instantly flatline, and Sepp Blatter (a vile disorder which stops the secretions from the conscience gland).

I am also dealing with the great blocked nose switcharooo, which is apparently a good thing according to certain meditation folks, who also say it is good to force your face to switch between nostrils when rattling air in or out, because:

“When the right nostril is dominate [sic], it's the better time for physical activities, eating, asana, *doing.* when the left is dominate [again, sic], mental activities as well as resting, meditating, *being*--studying--included!”

Alternate nostril breathing is only one of myriad pastimes for folk who like wearing loose linen and sandals whilst trying to achieve oneness and a dialog with the self or other such time-fillers which are supposed to be good for you, but in the case of the nostril domination game, my right nostril is completely stuffed and not even the insertion and prodding of a puffer fish with string tied around its little fin) will unblock it.  So I’m stuck with the “resting and meditating” nostril which may go some way to explain why I feel less than dynamic.

But what is the common cold?  According to Medscape Reference, rhinoviruses (RVs) are small (30 nm), nonenveloped viruses that contain a single-strand RNA genome within an icosahedral (20-sided) capsid. Rhinoviruses belong to the Picornaviridae family, which includes the genera Enterovirus (polioviruses, coxsackieviruses groups A and B, echoviruses, numbered enteroviruses, parechoviruses) and Hepatovirus (hepatitis A virus).

All of which sounds far more unpleasant than my visions of sneeze droplets being filled with the tiniest rhinoceroses floating about like dandelion clock fluff which, on being inhaled by an unsuspecting person, become the angriest tiniest rhinoceroses that bang about in your head. 

Under this circumstance, you’d just better pray that you had a white rhino in there, as it is more chilled out than its almost identical relative the black rhino, but maybe you can tell by the severity of the cold. Perhaps you could try stuffing some leaves up there – they like leaves, I am told – or approaching it slowly, but mollification of a black rhino is unlikely and foliage up the schnozz is not a good look.

With this in mind, I looked at other ways of persuading the cold to vacate my face and was surprised to learn that over my thirty something years on the planet, during all the colds I have suffered, I have been blowing my nose all wrong! 

I didn’t even know there was a right or wrong way of going about these things. In my screaming ignorance, I assumed that as long as you used a tissue not a wall or a yak, and that said tissue was in the region of your conk, all you needed to do was have a good toot and all would be well.  Thank you to WebMD for disabusing me of my preconceptions, for showing me the error of my ways and teaching me how to blow my nose:
 

“It's important to blow your nose regularly when you have a cold rather than sniffling mucus back into your head. But when you blow hard, pressure can move germ-carrying phlegm back into your ear passages, causing earache. The best way to blow your nose is to press a finger over one nostril while you blow gently into a tissue to clear the other.”

Sensible, yes, and certainly a little patronising (although if a grown person needs to be advised as to how he or she is to blow his or her own nose, I do wonder if they should be allowed the internet or even outside) but the rest of website has some pretty good advice - I would say that, it is telling me to eat some of my favourite foods – which a reasonably sensible individual may choose to follow.

A word of warning, however, on indiscriminately taking advice from ‘experts’ whether on the nets or not.  Any person that tells you to ingest/rub on/sit in a natural ingredient because the anti-bacterial nature of said ingredient helps treat viral infections, is clearly a nit and should be ignored, or for that matter, anybody who swears by antibiotics.

I shall be taking the advice of Ben Goldacre, and accept that there is really nothing that can be done.  I will wait for the tiny nostril rhinos to get bored stomping around and pretend to myself that I am doing something ‘good’ by following my tried and tested process:

Ingredients

100 ml of whiskey

Honey

Lemon

Method

Take the honey and lemon.  Throw them in the bin.

Drink the whiskey.

Go to bed.

Repeat as necessary.

And I can bet that, thanks to my rigorous regime, in a few days -  maybe up to a week -  I will be feeling fine and dandy once more.

Gazing into the Apprentice Abyss

This week has been a week of watersheds, new discoveries and regret.  And all three of these culminated into one moment in time.  The critical point at which my life would change forever came about at 9pm on Wednesday when I wandered into the living room and noticed that the other half had put The Apprentice on the goggle-box.  Up until this time, I had managed to avoid this travestuous excuse for entertainment: I didn’t even know who Stuart Baggs was (although subsequently it pains me to have to for once in my life agree with the purveyor of darkness that is Piers Morgan when he said he had the business brains of a lobotomized aardvark). 

“Welcome to the nadir of your miserable life, ladies and gentlemen.”  The announcer didn’t say.  “please leave your standards at the door and listen to the sounds of souls shattering as they debase themselves before the grand throne solely for the sport of the Dark One himself, Lord Sugar, the twisted evil pubic gnome and his chattering minions.”

But he may as well have done because, as I sank into my seat, I felt the black waters of despair begin to lap about my feet and start to rise with a slow inexorability only seen in the movement of glaciers. 

The line-up was an unprepossessing gaggle of cretins and lickspittles.  I have nothing to really compare them with, having previously taken the policy of jamming my fingers in my ears and shouting “Lalalalalala! Go away!” whenever anyone tried to discuss the toadying lackeys that grasped and clawed at the coattails of the Dark One on previous series, but if the brief was to scrape the bottom of the barrel of humanity I do believe they managed it.

So there I was, stuck on the sofa, watching two groups of people who are allegedly highly successful business wizards with all the mad skills a business ninja requires to be the superest best ever display anything but.   The shambolic nature of, well, everything they did, made me wonder if any of them had ever given a presentation, pitched an idea, worked on a project or, for that matter if any of them knew how to spell the word ‘business’

But on to the task at hand: create an app with a global appeal with the winners being the team whose app has the most global downloads.  With a silent Banzai charge floating around their collective ears and very little going on between aforementioned lugholes, they ran at the project with a level of enthusiastic incompetence that would make Raglan and Lucan of the Light Brigade say “Gosh. Steady on chaps.  Perhaps we should think it through.”

The boys’ room was one giant love-in, with lots of stroking and positive reinforcement and self-congratulation (“Aw we’re brilliant!  Nice one geezer! Go us!  We’re like totally amazing!”) whilst they devised an app of such naffness that only salesmen, readers of redtops, estate agents and recruitment executives would enjoy. Oh and people who buys a certain type of app to then show all their mates:

“Look!  Look!  It’s a pint but on my Iphone.  Brilliant!  But check this out, when I tip it, it’s like I’m like drinking it.  Look! Look! The pint’s emptying.  Awesome.  Wasn’t that cool.  Brilliant.”

The girls were not faring much better, but were working in a far healthier, challenging, confrontational (some might say bloody-minded and argumentative) way:

 “Oo - i had this idea where we can do a thing and get you know, people to, erm, join the thing and it's a thing with, erm, tiddley-faddley rinky-dink bits…”

“Shut up.  Stop talking.  Now.”

“Let me tell you about my idea.  I want to tell you about my idea.  So you’re sitting next to the person and he says, uhh, no wait, he asks you, um like where are we and then you can like, um, no wait, um.”

“Shut it. Don’t test me.”

“But…but.”

“No. Can it.”

(Much glaring and planning of epic slagging off session later.)

Stuff happened and people said some stupid things – the default setting, I believe for the cringing whelps desperate to show Dark One their worth by offering up their own dear granny for the trampling over, by stabbing of as many backs as possible and fighting each other to get to the ultimate boot licking position.

And the result? A couple of crappy apps which managed to get the perfect balance of banality and naffness that would get Idiots from around the globe stabbing furiously at their portable devices and one of which even incorporating a side serving of lazy racism – Welsh people, valleys. Geddit? – that would only appeal to a few lobotomized aardvarks across the world.

We also saw a few bloody noses and bruised egos, the beginnings of a few hate campaigns and a raft of mind-meltingly stupid quotes that are already being jotted down and snickered over by the highbrow and lowbrow alike. 

“'I'm not a show pony, or a one-tricky pony. I'm not a jack-ass or a stubborn mule, and I'm definitely not a wild stallion that needs to be tamed. I am the champion thoroughbred that this process requires." 

And there was me, Jim Eastwood, thinking you were an idiot.  Note to self: Champion thoroughbred.  Not nitwit. 

"My positive approach and very good looks make me stand out from the crowd." 

Thank you Vincent Disneur, for your modest self-appraisal. Was that sweat or essence of handsomeness oozing out of your pores when you were tanking your pitch?

As the episode wound up, the Dark One was positively crackling with malevolent glee, as the spineless project manager vacillated between his choices for who was to get the superkicking in the Boardroom (a place that is mentioned in hushed tones, we are on sacred ground doncherknow?) and having delivered his opinions in a manner that put me to thinking of a West Highland Terrier chewing on a dead snail, the Dark One did his mystical pointy finger thing and uttered the magical words:

“You’re fired.”

And, before our very eyes, one sweaty contestant was consigned to the dungheap.  But what of the rest?  A collective mopping of brows, feeble attempts at self-justification and the working out of which fellow-competitor to screw over next.

As the closing credits rolled, my head was buzzing with thoughts and questions. They do all this for a measly quarter of a million?  Is your dignity and professional pride worth £250,000?  What on earth could possibly be the job prospects for an Apprentice reject?  Surely nobody in their right mind would employ a person who not only displays stunning incompetence but also clearly hasn’t got the nous to keep his or her uselessness under wraps?  How can such nincompoopery be permitted in a public forum?  Do I even care? 

As Neitzsche said in Aphorism 146 of Beyond Good and Evil:

“When you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

I’ve watched the Apprentice now, and my soul has been dirtied and some kind of dirty you just can’t scrub clean.

But why tea lights? Why is it always tea lights?

Yesterday morning at 10.20 am I found myself standing in the dark, staring at a door like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl.  Like the little Match Girl, I was hovering in the gloom feeling cold and desperate, but unlike the protagonist of the sad story about the dreams and hopes of a dying girl I was not alone. No lonely vigil for me: that morning I had easily 100 people standing in the shades of artificial crepuscularity waiting and yearning to get through the doors.

My presence in this place was entirely unplanned: my morning was supposed to consist of noodling about in the sun, not this.  Not lurking like a troll under a bridge on a perfectly good day.  Certainly not standing in a line of cretins whose idea of a good trip out on a Sunday morning is going to IKEA and, to be extra certain that they do not miss a single moment of the experience, have arrived long before the shop actually opens.  Why would you do this?  Why, if you know the shop opens at 10.30, would you arrive up to half an hour early so you can stand around in the dark? What kind of insanity brings a person to do this?  I suppose the kind of insanity that leads people to queue overnight for a lousy half-price sale at Currys or swarm through the doors of Selfridges to try and snag that once in a lifetime bargain or, the Saints preserve us, to camp overnight to attend a JLS book signing.

The reason why I was lurking at the entrance to IKEA, with the thought “Man, I hate IKEA!” running repeatedly through my head is neither here nor there, but I must emphasise at this juncture that I was in this queue by mistake.  I had absolutely no intention of getting there super early, as can be evidenced by the fact that I thought the place opened at 10 and so was quite taken aback when we pulled into the car park to find it pretty empty, with cars circling like vultures round the concrete pillars, their lights sweeping across the entrance and bouncing back from the startled eyes of the expectant Morlocks; only the promise of brightly coloured, affordable homeware keeping them from scattering further into the darkness. 

I parked up and drifted across to the Gateway to Heaven beyond which could be found the Escalator of Destiny, the Hallway of Unimaginably Fabulous Lifestyles, the Caverns of Unintended Purchase, the Maze of the Wizards of the Storeroom and finally the home of Nommi, the Norse God of Meatballs.  Mmm, tasty tasty meatballs.  So popular, they have their own Facebook page.  But I digress.

What is this phenomenon?  Why are we prepared to go through the stress, disorientation and misery and the innumerable bags of tea lights and spoon covers that we somehow find ourselves clutching onto when we emerge exhausted at the other end?  What is it about the place that gets under people’s skin? Why does it make people act weirdly, and I mean seriously weirdly? With people actually dying?  Where even ’celebrities’ fall foul of the urge to buy tea lights, which just going to show that nobody is immune to the unintended purchase effect.

Because it’s IKEA, that’s why! We flippin’ love IKEA.  Everything. Especially their delightful naming conventions, which seems to be a great argument against nominative determinism.  Charm the egg slicer and Fantastisk the napkin, are two golden examples of the product not really living up to their names.

So it is perhaps understandable that, back outside the Gateway to Heaven, excitement was at fever pitch as the hapless security chap switched on the Escalator of Destiny, wandered over to the door and fumbled with a large set of keys.  An actual cheer went up when the doors finally open and I, with my eyes rolling like a fruit machine, joined the throng of mong disappearing through the entrance, eager to part with their cash on things that they never knew existed, let alone wanted.   

And one hour and forty precious minutes later, I emerged battle-worn but victorious, having successfully negotiated every obstacle, even the deadly Sirens (cheap coffee and even cheaper hotdogs).  With dignity and wallet mostly intact, I stepped into the light and back to humanity with only one thought on my mind.

“Man, I love IKEA!”

If you can't live as a good example...

So, today it was announced that Coca-Cola has politely, but firmly, dissolved its relationship with Wayne Rooney.  For some reason, the soft drinks giant doesn’t want to spend £600,000 per year to have its brand associated with him any longer.  A sad day for Mr Rooney, who has been raising awareness of the fizzy goodness since 2005.

It was a beautiful relationship to start with.  A true marriage made in heaven.  Coca-Cola loved their dear boy, as evidenced by their webpages dripping with crawling sycophancy with the sole aim of trying to prove to the world that the product was in actual fact BFFs with the “super-talented striker” who is “internationally respected for his outstanding football skills.”

According to stats on Wikipedia, he has had a 41% success rate (appearances v goals) in his club career and 37% in his International career.

This seems to me (a complete know-nothing in the realms of football) like reasonable number, and there was that bicycle kick thing that apparently did the thing and the world was won and there was jelly and ice cream for all or some such.

Anyway, the point is, Coca-Cola really cosied up to this guy and he was more than happy to reciprocate.  After all, if one partner says “I love you” it would be rude just to say “erm, thanks.”  That way tears and recrimination lie.  So there we are, all nice and jolly, with Rooney saying nice things back, and being in their adverts and everything, and probably even remembering their anniversary.

But then the honeymoon period passed, and Wayne let himself go and started doing those little things that upset the marital bliss such as the alleged sleeping with ladies of the night while his wife was pregnant which, according to insiders, did not sit well with the top bods of the company.

“They were bewildered by the stories and found reports of his conduct disgusting. There have been stories of him cavorting with prostitutes and he was even photographed urinating against a wall." (This is Money Website)

And then the swearfest of the weekend.  His potty mouth is nothing new: last year he was booked for shouting “effyou” at referee Jeff Selogilwe during a World Cup warm up match yet despite this and the other alleged scumbaggery taken into consideration, we are surprised that he swore publicly, on TV and everything? 

The internet is awash with indignation, disgust and outrage.  How can this person, whom every single child in the world nay, the universe, looks up to have done something so foul, so heinous and so terrible?  Swearing and everything like that!  On telly too? People are questioning his position as a role model and even Marie-Claire (that well-known sports rag) is getting in on the action. 

I am just stunned that we have been collectively surprised.  Who knew that a sports star might act like a total jackwaggon, given the fact that he (or she – unlikely, but still need to be fair) is told on a regular basis that he is a total legend, is generally fabulous, better than mere mortals and are exempt from general good behaviour rules because of their ability to boot a sheep’s bladder about accurately?  Quick!  Tell the papers that some sports star has done something unacceptable!   

I am a little surprised, however, that he got dumped over dropping the F-bomb, but somehow the allegations of evenings with women of negotiable affection was not a dumping offence. In terms of rottenness, I would have thought that one was worse than the other.  Perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Either way, the deed has been done, he’s been asked to leave, and the Coca-Cola has changed the locks and will immediately have a haircut or something to make itself feel better and, given time, will undoubtedly be looking for another upstanding young football of high moral fibre and with no murky past and GSOH for friendship, mutual promotion and maybe more.

As for Rooney, nothing much will change.  He’ll continue with his football, cussing and public micturition and probably get more sponsorship deals with less queasy companies but, most interestingly, he has made it into an educational video to teach children about fair play, sportsmanship and how not to be generally foul and bratty.

If you can’t live as a good example, you can serve as a dire warning.

Cultural urban what?

On a couple of occasions recently, I have been presented with the idea of going out on a Friday or Saturday night with the aim of booze, banter and possibly a boogie thrown in for good measure.  This is obviously an excellent way of frittering time and money with people you love, but I have found myself, after a few minutes’ thought, declining the offer of a good time.  I don’t say no for reasons of skintness or on health grounds, but for reasons of extreme misanthropy.

I don’t want to go out and play in town because I know, in my heart of hearts, that Town is chock full of idiots.  I believe the last time this topic was raised, my response was along the lines of:

“Yeah, it’d be great to go out dancing: I really fancy throwing
some epic shapes, but you do forget” said I to my companion, “town is full of idiots, clogging up the bar, knocking your drinks and having many opinions on subjects for which they have little to no clue.  Don’t get me started on their haircuts.  Who the hell gets their hair cut to look like that?  Do not even speak of their clothes. Moreover, do not mention in my presence those stupid slatty sunglasses and every other accessory that they flaunt along with their ill-placed sense of superiority they vaunt whilst and about in Town.  No.  No, I’d rather die a thousand deaths of a thousand flying weasels, than find myself in a bar with the idiots.  Remember what happened in Manchester?”

Companion remembered, and gently let the matter drop.

It is not just because I am getting old and don’t understand the modern way of youf - I know what ROFL and LOL means; I have heard of Tinchy Strider and I do do Facebook and everything – but, to borrow a phrase allegedly coined by Winston Churchill, "This is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put!"

Let me explain.  The world is peopled with Idiots of varying types. We have the Village Idiot, equally loved and laughed at around the world.  In Germany they would be ‘Dorftrottel’, the inhabitants of Finland call theirs ‘kylähullu’ and even the chilled out Dutch have a name for these people: ‘Dorp idioot.’  We love our village idiot and we’ll take exception to anyone from outside our village tacking the mick.  S/he is ours and ours alone to laugh at.

We also have the eejit.  As part of his set, an Irish comedian said that every group of friends has a feckin’ eejit and if you thought that there wasn’t one in the group then, like as not, you are the feckin’ eejit.  I’m not sure if I completely concur, but have a suspicion that if, on more than one occasion you have found yourself with both feet wedged in one trouser leg, or you notice your friends rolling their eyes and muttering “feckin’ eejit!” then chances are you may be one.   This is ok though, because we all love our feckin’ eejits, we really do.  Unless, that is, they set fire to Aunty Jean’s chair whilst she’s still in it.  We frown upon such things.  Generally the feckin’ eejit is a truly loveable creature and, like the Village Idiot, allows us to feel superior in an extremely benevolent manner:

“Sure, he can’t tie his shoelaces or talk to girls to save his life and there was the incident with the hose, but he’s a good lad really.”

Another strand in the evolution of the idiot is the Chav.  The chav, when viewed from the safety of my middle class haven, is rather entertaining in its monosyllabic, glued-down-hair, Argos-jewellery wearing ways. If you are at a loose end on a Saturday night, you can indulge in a low cost safari through the centre of town where, in the comfort of a cab, you can witness the actual behaviour of the Chav in its natural setting.

Witness the timeless dance of the female wearing tiny shreds of man-made fibres, daubed bright orange and squawking and shrieking to attract a mate.  Marvel at the male of the species, with his oddly-groomed eyebrows, and his use of cut glass that dribbles down his t-shirt like someone has hocked a massive sparkly loogie at him, that signals to the female his ability to build a good nest with a proper flatscreen and everyfin.   One can do the expedition on foot, and really experience the safari first hand, but this is not to be recommended, as only experienced individuals can deal with the overpowering scent of the celebrity-inspired perfumes worn by both the male and the female.  Moreover, only professionals can avoid becoming surrounded – the one time when the chav is at its most dangerous.  Better to go by cab.

The Idiots mentioned above are merely a small sample of the safe Idiot.  I could go on, building a list of cheery or entertaining cretins, but these people do not make me want to poke my eyes out with a stick.   The Idiot that makes me happily opt for a terrifyingly hideous weaselly end is the Scenester.

scene·ster/sēnster/
Noun: A person associated with or immersed in a particular fashionable cultural scene

Everything they do feels like a personal insult.  Phrases such as "The global scenester stays on top of what's cool worldwide by reading such urban culture despatches as The Cool Hunter”
are as a cheese grater to my soul.  The Scenester is the cause of this.

Everything about the Scencester annoys: their unshakeable certainty in their unending coolness which flies in the face of actual evidence: fixie bikes, ironic statement clothes and deck shoes without socks are not cool.  The Scenester accessories are awful – I wouldn’t palm those off to an acquaintance for fear of it looking like an insult.  More dreadful is their painfully coiffed hair and their modern look with a retro twist of Dayglo Twerp meets Geek.  Don’t dress like a Geek if you haven’t got the IQ for it.  You are advertising your stupidity like a crazy old man wearing a “the end of the world is nigh” clapboard and we, mere mortals, are laughing at you just as much.

Their studied indifference to anything is irritating, as are the waves of ennui and sagacity that flow from their very persons.  Listening to them you would think they know everything about everything, ever. That is the magic of their staggering levels of self-assurance, none of which is earned.  They are generally talking a load of rot, in a spectacularly misinformed manner.   It can be quite entertaining listening, as long as you haven’t broken your hands by the clenching of your fists under the table and your eyes haven’t rolled all the way back into your skull and got stuck.

The Scenesters are everywhere now.  They are global and you cannot escape them, but fortunatiely they are easy to spot.  As the old saying goes, if it looks like an idiot and quacks like an idiot and it wears lensless glasses like an idiot…

Yestradamus or Nostradamus?

The recent tear-ups in Libya and other countries, where the populous is sick and tired of the existing regime and is now up and shouting and demanding something different, has left politicians around the world standing round, puzzled as to how to approach this difficult situation and often trying to pretend they were never friends with <insert name of dictator/head of regime>, that they never hung out together and they always thought that he was Bad Hat.

Now while we all watch the developments in these countries with our fingers crossed, hoping that outcomes are as good as possible, my mind was drawn to that jolly old soul Nostradamus and his works. 

I recall one day at school, when I was but a young’un, someone mentioned this fellow’s name and, in hushed tones, explained how he had predicted all sorts of things like the two World Wars and comets and stuff and how he had predicted the end of the world.  Being of an age when all things supernatural hold a certain allure, all the listeners (myself included) were duly impressed by this stuff and the standing within the group of the teller of these mystical tales duly grew.  However, sheer laziness on my behalf precluded any further research, along with the feeling that vampires and stuff were way cooler anyway with their teeth, handsomeness and general dark fabulosity that makes them mad, bad and dangerous to know (catnip for teenage girls).  Some things change with time, but the phenomenon of teens loving vampires is eternal. Oh, and just to make something clear: Lestat could kick Edward’s arse any day.  Edward would be a smear of grease on the floor. In your face, sparkleboy.

The memory of Mr Nostradamus has obviously been lurking around in my brain since then, as today for some reason he popped back into my head, albeit wonkily as a conversation I had illustrates:

“Who’s that predicting fellow?  You know, the one from the past who predicted all those things?”

“Umm, I know the one you mean.  Not sure though.”

“It’s definitely not Nosferatu.  It’s a Nos- something.  I’ll check Google.  Bingo!”

Anyway, the reason why his name fell into my head was that when things are going a bit bonkers in the world, people quite like to look for a doom-laden reason.  A quick Google search of the man’s name and 2011 gave me a satisfyingly long list of individuals predicting various huge events - I couldn’t be bothered to actually go into any of the sites as the info under the entry in the Google listings seemed sufficient to give me a flavour of people’s opinions and I doubted if it was worth getting in an actual stew about when the world is allegedly going to end.  Should we be worrying about this sort of thing? 

Yestradamus or Nostradamus?

Consider this, if you will:

Apparently people have identified in his works a whole list of major world events but, crucially it would appear that the identification has taken place after these events have happened, something which could be described as postdiction - an effect of hindsight bias that explains claimed predictions of significant events.

And this, pinched from the Wikipedia article on the man himself:

“The latest research suggests that he may in fact have used bibliomancy for this—randomly selecting a book of history or prophecy and taking his cue from whatever page it happened to fall open at.”

Interesting. I think I’ll avoid getting worried by any of these predictions, despite the fact I do occasionally get freaked out by tales that predict the grim future of the world. 

The film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, with its dropping temperature and general feeling that humans can do nothing about the massive kicking about to be bestowed by Nature, left me feeling pretty drab.  Fallout 3, a computer game set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic wasteland, made me think that the future looks pretty mucky and horrible.  These are just stories and game, designed to freak out and entertain in equal measures. 

If one was to think really closely about the actual real things out there that are actually, really happening (pollution, droughts, the butterflies and bees disappearing, climate change, overfishing until the seas are emptied, oil spills, poverty, uprisings, wars – on could go on and on) one quickly realises that there is plenty of evidence-based stuff to properly freak out about. 

So, on balance, I think I’ll spend my time worrying about that stuff rather than about the advent of a certain comet and what that may mean. 

Meta-thoughts on Catharsis

I was caught out this week at work when Johnny Cash’s cover of NIN’s ‘Hurt’ came on whilst I was innocently listening to Kerrang! Radio and, of course, bouncing about at my desk bobbing my head like a demented string puppet, or a Bobblehead.

This practice of occasionally very quietly Rawking Out at my desk is sometimes the only thing that can keep me from repeatedly smacking my forehead against the desk and is generally performed during about hour 72 of a particularly frustrating spread sheet and has so far stopped any Falling Down-esque Michael Douglas moments:

“What about the brief case? You forgot the brief case! I'm going home! So clear a path, you mother****s! Clear a path! I'M GOING HOME!”

Anyway, I was wading through a pile of stuff which I can’t be bothered to explain as I am sure you really don’t want to know (I want you, dear reader, to keep reading and not fall into a coma) until the first bars of the song started up and I had to stop what I was doing and stare into the middle distance. Only seconds before, I was merrily nodding and jiving (albeit in a small, please don’t notice or comment on me way) and tippy-tappying on the old keyboard but the moment the song started I froze. I stared into space for those four or so minutes and let the sadness of the song build up, whilst having all kinds of meta-thought about the cathartic nature of sadness and how music can be a fantastic catalyst for this process.

You can be happy as the proverbial clam, pootling along within the confines of your day then suddenly- whammo – the likes of Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley will appear and you are transformed into some pale, consumptive version of yourself, musing on the bleakness of existence and the darkness of your own soulscape or some other emo lyric. If the wind changes and you stay that way, your only hope is to dye your hair black, get a blind man with severe DTs to crop aforementioned hair, develop a strong hatred for the colour pink and complain a lot about how everything sucks: maybe you’ll be famous one day.

For those of you who, after a period of time, come out the other side of your funk you will notice that the day is brighter and that things are ok. This, we are told is the cathartic process in effect and apparently it is good for you.

A Google search on the term catharsis gives some interesting definitions:

• an American hardcore punk band, associated with "Holy Terror", a phenomenon commonly regarded as a form of apocalyptic metallic hardcore that was breeding during the mid-'90s.
• a Russian power metal band who originally played doom metal, but have since develop their style to symphonic metal.

Ok, I have no idea what apocalyptic metallic hardcore, doom metal or symphonic metal is, but my lack of understanding of the increasingly complex naming conventions in the music world aside, I am guessing that these bands both chose to brand their various caterwauling efforts with the name Catharsis because of the general meaning of the Greek word (κάθαρσις) meaning "cleansing" or "purging".

Catharsis can happen in many different ways. Aristotle talks about it taking place in a play when it occurs for one or more of its characters, as well as being part of the audience’s experience. It describes an extreme change in emotion, occurring as the result of experiencing strong feelings, such as sorrow, fear, pity, or even laughter. (Poetics, 1449b25f, via Wikipedia)

This should not, however be used as an excuse for watching any old tripe – “but mum, it’s cathartic for me to watch this trash, I’ll finish pondering on the emptiness of my existence for 5 more minutes and then get back to cleaning my bedroom” – watching Eastenders on Christmas Day just to see who bumps off whom, and who ends up in tears is merely schadenfreude (a wonderful, wonderful thing, by the way, but not catharsis) and there is no excuse for watching Hollyoaks ever.

Catharsis makes us feel better and, I infer, less likely to kick the dog, spouse or inanimate object in our houses. So save your toe bones and next time you hear that song, watch that film or read that book go on, have a good old cathartic moment. Wallow. Indulge! Help yourself!

But please make sure you have a friend with a prodding stick on standby, just in case the wind changes.

Luxury goods for luxury people

My local Tesco Express has turned into a weirdly inverted communist Russia. I don’t know if it is something to do with increased fuel prices (not quite as expensive as beer, but jolly nearly), but the shelves are bizarrely empty.  They are just not filling them up as regularly.  The average shopping bonanza has the echoes of customers’ footsteps bouncing round the two or three items huddling in the middle of the shelf like a bread-based Hansel and Gretel, and clucks of dismay from the somewhat underwhelmed shoppers filling the air.

There are no signs that the shop is closing down, despite the ‘everything must go’ vibe about the place, but it is increasingly resembling the unfair stereotype of a little shop in communist Russia with a huge number of people queuing for the three potatoes that are on sale.  This situation differs from the stereotype, however, by dint of the goods themselves are not what you would expect: the products available for purchase tend to be the premium and branded items, the cheaper value own brands having long gone.  Whether this is due to inflation, VAT increases or heightened customer caution is immaterial: I simply find it annoying that my range of purchase options is so restricted.  Obviously this isn’t a problem for most things as one can simply go to another shop or wait for a new deliver of stuff but sometimes you are not in the position to do so and you are forced to take what’s on offer.

This rather unfortunate circumstance happened to me this week when, as a part of a last minute Sunday evening shop, I really needed to buy toilet paper.  We were down to the last two sheets so waiting was, quite frankly, not an option.  I dashed down the aisle to the relevant section and made my purchase choice.  The purchase decision that was forced upon me was one that I truly resent and resulted in much mutterage and teeth grindage, as I was forced to buy expensive designer paper which has been infused with stuff to make it more expensive.

Now I find this abhorrent and have done ever since toilet paper companies started churning out quilted, super duper double thickness in any colour to match your suite.  As far as I’m concerned, that provided it is not that nasty institutional tracing paper of the past (zero absorbency, one hundred percent useless, unless required for actual tracing things) the regular white, probably from recycled material as we are kind to the environment these days paper is perfectly acceptable and we don’t really need anything more whizzy for it to fulfil its function.  We don’t need triple quilted softness or whatever and I don’t care about its aesthetics as I will be throwing down the loo, not putting it on the walls.  But that’s just me and I have watched these terrible developments over the years from afar, tsking and shaking my head when I heard about the pre-soggied paper which seem to be a bit like facewipes for removing makeup but not really.  I rolled my eyes when they infused the paper with aloe vera for a more sensitive approach to one’s bottom and I spluttered in outrage at the launch of a certain company’s “most luxurious toilet tissue ever” – basically bog roll with added shea butter.

The writers of awesome copy on their web site tells us:

“Offering a multi-sensory experience, this luxurious new toilet tissue has some new and exclusive features that will make you feel truly fabulous. Each sheet is gently enriched with Shea Butter lotion, the central core is scented with a light Shea Butter fragrance and the pack is a deep, rich luxurious brown colour, matching any contemporary bathroom design.”

A multi-sensory experience? What on earth can that possibly mean? I cannot say it enough times, this is toilet roll not a lifestyle choice.  Anyway, rant aside, I had to pick up a bag of this wonder product and it is now in the house. 

I’m not sure how fitting the packaging is with my not very contemporary bathroom - that is for guests to comment on as they are edging out of the building as I follow them, screeching “But what about the toilet paper, eh?  What about the toilet paper?  You did look at the bag, didn’t you? You didn’t? Get back up there this instant!”

The paper feels weird - like when you have hand washed a glass but a small smear of grease as somehow got on in the pile of dirty plates and it feels, well, not right and a bit slippery.  They certainly have bunged in lots of fragrance: it is really strong and attaches itself to your hands, so you find yourselves suspiciously washing your hands twice to make absolutely certain all traces of the stuff have gone, but perhaps this will revolutionise my world and I shall be forced to eat my own words.

Perhaps I will have the face of a thirty-something but be sporting the butt of a much younger model.  Maybe I’ve just invented a new product – Anti Ageing Toilet Paper, infused with AHAs and other dark wizardry created by makeup companies, exclusively for the woman who has so little in her life she has to worry about ageing bottoms. I don’t think the scaremongering magazines have even thought of ageing bottoms as being a problem yet!

I’ll make a fortune!

On happiness

It’s something that everybody wants, apart from tortured artists, EMOs and attention-seeking teens. Everyone has an opinion on what it consists of and a not inconsiderable number of snake oil sellers employ their smoke and mirrors to convince willing idiots to part with large sums of money in order to gain access to the secrets, the rites and the rituals necessary to get it.

A one-word entry into Amazon garners 142001 results in the book section alone and there is even a whole department devoted to it – not that I blame Amazon one bit: it’s not its fault that so many books on this subject are written and bought. What is that word? What is the one thing that would give so many hits on Amazon in one section? Robert Pattinson gets 2071 hits across 16 departments including Beauty (!) and Office Products, and Brad Pitt tops out at 4867, so what one thing would beat these two hands down? Happiness, that’s what.

Titles on offer for today’s willing supplicant at the Temple of Happiness include:

• Happiness: A guide to developing life’s most important skill
• The How of Happiness
• Happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth

Not having read these tomes, I cannot possibly comment on their quality critically or evaluate their usefulness but the titles of some I found on the website (I give you ‘Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way’ and ‘Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good FAST’) make me want to lobby for all such books to be legally required to print the following disclaimer across the cover:

This book and its contents may not been evaluated by anyone with actual scientific qualifications or by any governing body of actual people and brain experts. This product may not be intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any form of mental disequilibrium and should not be treated as such. No refunds.

One hopes that such warnings would dissuade people from making an unwise purchase that could lead to addiction but, veiled references to cigarette boxes aside, what concerns me more is this overwhelming sense of a universal dissatisfaction with life.

If you Google the phrase “why am I unhappy?” you get a seemingly endless stream of the poor me’s wailing on about how he or she has got everything, has achieved everything, is a superstar with a super-hot other half, who has become the MD of his or her own company before the age of 25 and, in a nutshell, has everything he or she could ever possibly want but is still dissatisfied and do not feel happy. Further investigation will show that this is a recurring theme and, I suspect, the catalyst for a good percentage of the 142001 books the internet offered me.

Now, actual misery and depression is a serious matter and need support and understanding, but surely this extended navel gazery is not good for us? Should we be spending our time worrying that we are not deliriously and insanely happy every waking second of the day? Is it healthy or even desirable to be permanently giddy with incredulous pleasure at the sheer fabulousness of our lives? How did we become so pre-occupied with our own internal happiness barometers? How do we find the time?

Why should we demand to live our lives, exceeding every joyful expectation on a moment-by-moment and feeling like hideous failures if we find ourselves at any point living in a state that is anything less than a constant delirium of awesomeness? Who the hell do we think we are?

We’re not all going to be rich, we’re not going to be film stars and yes, sometimes life isn’t fair.

As a good friend once said:

Life sucks: get a helmet.