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…
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
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.
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.
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