Things from Ben's Brain

Customer Service

2011-12-13T08:44:00.000-08:00

I may have waxed enthusiastic over the course of the past year about London-based trio Hot Head show, who supported Primus across America and Europe during their Spring tour this year and make jagged, esoteric noises which I greatly enjoy.

I took it upon myself to e-mail the band (or perhaps an ambitious representative, though it strikes me that the threesome continues to perform the entirety of its own administration) with the following query:

Hello chaps,

Firstly, thanks for the Lemon LP. That cake, as you put it, is indeed right up my slightly clackity alley.

Secondly, am I to assume from your official channels that you're not actually playing anywhere in the near future, or is there a source for upcoming dates I'm missing? I had the privilege of seeing you support Primus at Brixton this July, and am rather keen to replicate the experience.

Keep doing your thing; it is a good thing.

Many thanks indeed,

Ben

P.S. Enclosed with my Lemon LP was a small note, a picture of which I have attached. My assumption was that someone had begun writing and had become distracted, disinterested or otherwise deterred from finishing. Whatever the case, we enjoyed the vagueness, and so put it on our wall. Still, if you could shed some light on what, if anything, this communiqué was destined to become, I would be interested to know.

The note to which I allude was A7-sized and read, simply, 'Dear Ben,' with a small amount of space underneath. Whilst I didn't think it fair to assume beyond a rational doubt that this wasn't all I was meant to receive [as stressed in the subordinate clause '... if anything ...'], I at the time found it endearingly mysterious and thought it deserved a comment. Whatever the case, it seemed to offend the person who was to be my respondent, who issued this rather oblique retort:

Dear Kind and Inestimably Patient Comrade,

Our mailroom staff has been working late most nights in the run-up to The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, and occasionally consequent lapses in professionalism have been logged in the Happylife Workbooks of several of our Postal Supervision Chieftains. Hence our recent decision to fly the entire department to Colombia for Christmas; hopefully they will return in January with a fresh approach to dopaminergic stimulation which should enhance both their professional efficacy and the helplessness of their continued servitude.

In the mean time, the Administrative Thrall responsible for the disgraceful shortcomings your email so eloquently highlighted has been flogged as comprehensively as we could manage without risking damage to his delicate envelope-stuffing fingers. Regrettably, the P.S.C. to whom the Punitive Funtime was delegated was not, in the heat of the moment, able to maintain the level of maturity we expect of all our staff when administering P.F. procedures, and ultimately found himself on the receiving end of the Exponential Punitive Funtime Principle which, despite causing moderate (but temporary) disturbances in the sleep cycles of most of the staff members who happened to witness the E.P.F.P. (administered on the evening of December 2nd on the Special Joyharness Platform behind the canteen), has inadvertently brought about unparalleled administrative productivity here at Tentacle Entertainments (recently voted Prince William's Most Fervently Advocated Entertainments Company by a peer-elected panel of Social Accountability experts), and the resultant (and ongoing) spike in Professional Happy Ratings amongst all but the most catatonic of our workforce has been a joy to behold.

Here concludes your Customer Unhappiness Neutralization Transmission.

Boundless Love,

Hot Head Show

Being, as I am, of fragile temperament, the thinly veiled contempt in this ironic diatribe initially depressed me; and so began the inevitable catharsis of drafting a response:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your reply to what you seem to be under the impression was a grievance.

I am of course mortified to hear that such strict punitive measures were deemed necessary on my modest account, particularly given that my initial mild enquiry has been interpreted as - as I can only assume from the comprehensive implementation of physical and psychological admonition with which it was met - a venomous customer service complaint. Mayhap the lexical ballet employed in the creation of your Customer Unhappiness Neutralization Transmissions is beyond my reach, and my clumsy syntax has caused consternation where it was unintended. For this I can only apologise, both to you and to the unfortunate victim of the horrors inflicted as a result of my linguistic ineptitude.

My intention to remain a long term advocate and user of the services provided by light entertainment entity Hot Head Show has not been sullied to any measurable degree, but only because I feel that this misunderstanding can be abrogated by swift and significant recompense provided to the administrative worker whom you disciplined in response to my attempt at a cordial and jocular interchange. Whatever the case, I hope that this Denouement Instigating Collective Kindness (Heeding Erstwhile Acrimony Duly) can facilitate accord at this festive time; between both consumer and entertainment provider, and entertainment provider and allegorical clerical staff.

Your humble fan,

Ben

Success! The gloom induced by a combination of dwindling serotonin and the disdain of one or more people I respect as entertainers had abated! I rather enjoyed writing it, and continue to hope even now (some half an hour on) that this situation may resolve in a conflagration of good humour and mutual respect. My contrary supposition is that the next reply will induce even more irrational anxiety and persecutory delusions. Whatever the outcome, I am required by both my neuroses and my own indomitable haughtiness to share this with the four or five people who might read it, and so here it is.

Green Naugahyde (review)

2011-10-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Out now – ATO Records, Prawn Song

Primus – Green Naugahyde

Those of you who like this sort of thing (I do) may have had the privilege of seeing Primus in concert in the UK this July for the first time in almost a decade and a half. Those who did will have heard some noises amid the ferocious weirdness that they might not have recognised – these were noises from their first album in just over a decade, Green Naugahyde, and it is this album I wish to discuss.

Green Naugahyde is a Primus album. This statement may seem like a tautology, but it's really the thrust of this review. I am almost certain that, if you like Primus, you will like Green Naugahyde. There is no sense that the album is contrived or, after such a delay, the kind of cynical cash-in of which many similarly long-lived bands are guilty; this is an album the band recorded because they wanted to, and as such it fits snugly upon their catalogue like a glove (albeit a glove donned after your fingers have already numbed).

Like all bands since God said "let there be leather trousers", Primus gets through drummers like ancient Rome got through Emperors. Unlike ancient Rome, however, Primus seems to cycle their drummers on a rota. The skin-smacker on this album comes in the form of Jay Lane, an apparition from Primus' distant past, and who is as good as any drummer Primus have ever had; which is to say, bloody good. His ballsy, freewheeling beats skitter around the dirty mattress laid down by bassist and vocalist Les Claypool and the schizophrenic, often sparse guitar offerings of Larry LaLonde and tidy the whole thing up rather nicely.

Yes, the Primus mainstays are all here for your pleasure. The juxtaposition of pounding, dissonant musical sludge and cartoonishly political lyrics is exemplified by such tracks as 'Eternal Consumption Engine', during which Claypool – as a chugging, smoking, Residents-esque harmonic nightmare rolls along beneath him – raves with quavering, histrionic panic: "Everything is made in China!"; similarly, a mere two tracks later, the disintegrating political landscape of America is impassively observed through the eyes of a mute squirrel.

Nor are they above forays into total meaninglessness, as evidenced by standout track 'Lee Van Cleef', a toe-tappin', teeth-grittin’ three-and-a-half minute lament for the understated The Good, the Bad and the Ugly actor; whilst "everyone wants to be like Clint (Eastwood)", Claypool would much rather "be like Lee". The song doesn't say much more besides that – apart from, through a throwaway line about "a yellow Studebaker ... with a seat of green naugahyde", giving the album its somewhat obscure moniker – and it doesn't need to.

For the most part, however, this is classic, circa '91 Primus song-smithery, where the absurd is a reflection of the absurdity of day-to-day life and the cartoonish is an allegory for sinister things much better digested through the medium of a small mammal or toothless hillbilly. It is simultaneously dark, cerebral, and wonderfully carefree, and the same can be said of the music. Having evolved in tandem with the live show, Primus' studio material is far more effects-laden and prone to protracted Jamming (a phenomenon so common in American music that it gets its own pigeonhole and capital letter and everything) than old-school fans would like, but it's reigned in nicely by some solid, home-brewed production and dazzlingly addictive hooks, and the album feels as tight and competently executed as any of its older siblings.

Lievre it Out (or, How I Forgot How to Think of Good Titles)

2011-02-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Mark Lievremont has needled the embers of England's national consternation today by claiming that whilst he "respects them [the English]", he feels that France does not have "the slightest thing in common with them." He goes on to extol the joie de vivre that the French share with their "Italian cousins", admire the "conviviality" the Celtic nations, and then summarise the common denominator - "we all don't like the English."

Barring the obvious irony that Mark Lievremont looks like a mid-level communications executive working in a stationery firm in Hounslow, I have to admit that I agree with him. I don't like the denizens of "[this] insular country, who always drape themselves in the national flag, their hymns, their chants, their traditions"; I regard the English as a bunch of directionless, parsimonious, uptight jobsworths whom I dislike in much the same way as I do the French (rude, condescending, unwashed buffoons), the Italians (profligate, supercilious, workshy turncoats), and the 'Celts' (violent, perniciously ecclesiastical, ginger alcoholics.)

Or do I? Perhaps I think that wherever you go you get pieces of yammering simian filth that make you want to split your brain down the longitudinal fissure with a shard of your own car windscreen, you get nuggets of sheer condensed splendid walking around like mere mortals with human voices and human shoes, and you get everyone in between. Perhaps I think that national characteristics are indicative of what is, at the level of juvenile and agentic banter, a harmless summary of what you perceive as friendly, tolerable flaws in your neighbours but is, when spouted carelessly in the sphere of legitimate public rhetoric, harmful and polarising nonsense. Perhaps I think that Mark Lievremont can piss off and keep his silly, childish views to himself.

Hmm?

Hmm.

Lutrinae (or 'How Brashness Brought About the Betrayal')

2011-02-10T01:11:00.000-08:00

"You got me... an otter?"

In a sublime display of imprudence, Gary - normally among the late-night petrol station elite - has this year elected to purchase his wife of thirteen years, Melissa, a Norfolk Wildlife Trust 'sponsor an Otter' gift pack.

She sighs. "I can't take this any more, Gary. I'm seeing someone else."

His face whitens like freshly bleached linoleum. "Who is it?"

But the query is merely a perfunctory one, as its response has just entered the front room - wearing Gary’s slippers and dressing gown, smoking his pipe, clasping his copy of yesterday's Sunday Mirror.

"You!"

Laconically, deliberately, the otter nods.

The Grand Gesture (a vignette, of sorts)

2010-06-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

On June 4^th, 2011, Nathan Lunch stunned a twenty three point five percent audience share when, following what was to be his final broadcast as a news anchorman, he produced a Smith and Wesson Military and Police range revolver from his inside right-hand coat pocket, placed it to his temple and basted his co-anchor, Melanie Wise, in a lavish coating of his own internal matter. The number of people who viewed this interesting and histrionic end to a career climbed dramatically when the clip emerged on the internet and amassed over one point five billion views in the first month alone. A doctored version of the clip was produced in which Lunch self-edited using a Parlux Professional ionic hairdryer and vacated his skull cavity upon the celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, which was deemed to be in ‘bad taste’ by over one million independent commentators.

When asked why he did this, Nathan Lunch was unable to provide an answer which he found satisfactory. “You don’t expect to be retroactively quizzed as to the motives of your suicide,” he went on to muse in his memoirs, “and so do not spend any time formulating responses theretofore.”

In the same volume he explained that Melanie Wise, who had been struck with a small piece of shrapnel from the bullet after it passed through his own head, had had the offending article removed surgically and had suffered resultant irreparable damage to her corpus callosum, the structure in the longitudinal fissure of the skull which connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Because of this she went on to survive a bath in 2024, in which she would otherwise have drowned as a result of a complex partial epileptic seizure.

His following memoirs, of which there were close to thirty, were endemic with analogous conjecture as to the lives which had been saved, destroyed, bettered, worsened or otherwise affected in any Earthly matter by his decision to place a gun to his head on national television all those years ago and pull the trigger. As a final act of solipsistic defiance he paid for the memoirs to be shipped by recorded delivery to the Faculty of Humanities at De Montford University, Leicester, in 1974 – the precise place and time of his graduation as a bachelor of journalism – with the explicit instructions not to attempt suicide on national television on June 4^th, 2011, and to, in his dotage, write several memoirs pontificating as to the consequential impact upon space-time.

His younger self never received the memoirs; Lunch was, by this point, senile, and no-one had elected to remind him that he in fact graduated as a bachelor of economics from Lincoln University in 1976.

Letters to Mister Simon Wright and Chancellor George Osborne

2010-06-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Interwebs,

Today, supporters of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign were invited to e-mail both their local MP and Chancellor George Osborne regarding the implementation of the tax, and also to contribute to a very worthwhile advertising campaign in Westminster tube station. I added my own input which, on account of it probably being destined to be wasted on the disinterested eyes of some beleaguered aide, I have decided to post on the Webbynets.

NOTE: Despite de-desting the Tories, I found the sardonic quasi-vitriol more forthcoming in my correspondence to Mr. Wright. Either I'm more angry with the Liberal Democrats for wimping out on a number of key issues, or I'm simply scared of offending a cabinet member. YOU decide. (It's probably the second one; not that I want to influence your investigation.)

Dear Mr. Wright
Before the generic message drafted by the campaigners of the Robin Hood Tax, I would like to congratulate you on winning the seat in Norwich South for the Liberal Democrats. I am pleased that you have pledged to fix the infamous Norwich to London train line. Is there also any chance that you could stop them turning the lights out in residential areas? We won't be able to see where we're going after dark, you see, and that will be remarkably dangerous (especially in Winter, when many will be walking home from work in already treacherous conditions).
But this e-mail isn't about that; it's about the prospect of fairer treatment for those of us who are less able to shoulder the burden of our significant national debt. Following is a personal letter I drafted to Chancellor Osborne, which I hope that you will take the time to read:
_________________________________________

Dear Mr Osborne,
The generic message is to follow, but I would like to take the opportunity to personally address you. Hopefully this message will reach you, and perhaps you will be able to allay some of my fears when the budget is announced later this month.
I was not looking forward to the inevitability of a Tory-lead government. Although I'm not long enough in the tooth to remember the era of Lady Thatcher, I certainly felt the effects it had on my progenitors. Suffice it to say, myself, my family and my contemporaries do not believe that it is in the interest of the Conservative party to help the lowest common denominator, and the threat of front-line public service cuts, VAT hikes, increases in tuition fees, mass privatisation and benefit cuts across the board do little to reassure us.
As Mr Cameron rightly says, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to deal with a national debt; however, it seems fair that an individual's responsibility should correlate with their ability to shoulder it. I am more than willing to do my part, and this includes doggedly persisting in applying for jobs within a saturated local market. I do not like being on benefits; I do not like associating myself with people who aren't content to try and change their circumstances, and I do not like being unable to care for myself. The £2 I have donated to the Robin Hood Tax advertising campaign (see below) is a too-large percentage of my limited weekly budget.
The generic e-mail from the tax campaigners follows, though I expect that you've read it before now. As you have promised to open up your spending reviews to public input, I would be overjoyed to see cuts and taxes implemented which lessen the blow on those who are both victims of the debt crisis and far from able to handle the burden of mitigating it. If my cynicism against the Tory party can be assuaged over the coming five years, I shall certainly laud your efforts to my children (assuming I can afford to have any).
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin Gosling (Norwich South)
_________________________________________

Back to you, Mr Wright
I am aware that your party has been given the opportunity to abstain from certain votes in the House of Commons [this originally read: 'put their fingers in their ears, screw their eyes shut really tightly and sing: "la, la, la" whenever the Tories do something that you find unpalatable', but I felt that an unnecessarily hostile addition], but after Mr Clegg's assertion during the election that many of these policies were key issues, those of us who supported your party [I didn't; I voted Green, but Mr. Wright doesn't need to know that] find this rather unsatisfactory. I put it to you, therefore, that you can stand out among your peers by voicing your support for the Robin Hood Tax, or at least a budget which promises fairer treatment of those in lower income brackets or on benefits. [I then added: 'It wasn't our fault that the economy collapsed, after all - we were diligently frittering away money on KFC and Special Brew with the welfare of the nation firmly planted in our minds', but I don't know Simon Wright. Does he have a sense of humour? With a face like that, you would hope so, but fortune favours the cautious on occasion. I elected to omit it.]
Of course, this information is provided in the content to come. Thank you very much for your time, and I wish you all the best for the coming term.
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin Gosling

That, dear reader, was my political activism for the day.

P.S. Click HERE to see what the Robin Hood Tax is about, if you don't already know.

None of the Above (or: Let's See in the New Year Splenetically)

2010-01-26T03:21:00.000-08:00

Back when I was a POW on the Burma/Siam railway during World War 2, the Japanese gave me and the lads the option to vote for the method of execution we wanted to receive. The options were:

• shooting,

• drowning,

• burning,

• hanging,

• or ‘None of the Above’.

I cast my vote for ‘None of the Above’, as I didn’t much see the point of being pernickety about the method of a process which would ultimately achieve the same end. The votes were tallied and ‘shooting’ came out on top, which rather upset me – as, when we were promptly lined up and shot dead, it occurred to me that I rather would have preferred to be hanged.

Thus concludes my shameless pre-amble, flagrantly bogus as it is on every perceptible front, and the end of which brings me on to summarise the latest slop-bucket of arse-smelt to come to my attention: ‘None of the Above’.

‘None Of the Above’ (henceforth referred to as ‘NOTA’, as my inevitable carpal tunnel is in no way to be compounded by the continued typing, or even copy-and-pasting, of the full moniker of this asinine and offensive phenomenon) is a ballot choice in some elections, corporate, local or national, and signifies a process whereby ‘voters’ (who are permitted to call themselves such only in the sense that crystal healers are permitted to call themselves medical practitioners or darts players are permitted to call themselves athletes – i.e. not at-fucking-all) can check a box registering their intention to not vote for any of the parties listed.

I shall reiterate myself for emphasis: they can vote to say that they are not voting.

A vote for NOTA unfolds as follows: the votes are tallied and statistically analysed as normal, any constituencies which have been appropriately bribed appropriately fiddle their figures, and then the NOTA votes are disregarded. This is because NOTA has no party to represent it, no leader, no policies to speak of; and, if by some freak mass abandonment of integrity and sense, NOTA was to gain the most votes, the runner up would come into power. That there could be any perceived worth in this spectacle is a notion nothing short of astounding to me and, one would hope, to any educated people.

The argument for such a system is that any and all legitimate consent requires the option to withhold consent to counterbalance it – but in what sense of the term can one attempt to withhold consent only to see the circumstances unfold as uncontested as they would have been had the unnamed party slipped on their way to the ballot box, burst open their head like a melon on the corner of the table and played out their remaining years as a stitched-up, comatose vegetable?

NOTA is in place so that those who wish to do so may register their disapproval with the options given – something that non-voters have been doing quite spectacularly for generations. One cannot effectively register one’s disapproval with a system by conscribing to it in order to do so. NOTA is the equivalent of buying the crate paper and sparkly pens for your anti-capitalist demo from a Tesco superstore. It is the equivalent of buying Fair Trade produce from a shady cabal operating out of the back of a white van. It is categorically idiotic, and should be discouraged everywhere and anywhere without exception.

Were NOTA simply a harmless trend the IPhone elite could display proudly on their lapels like Blue Peter badges awarded for figuratively skull-fucking what remains of our inherited sense and worth from the ears of our ancestors, then my anger would be marginally more slight – but it is not. It is a summation of our collective, unspoken desire to sabotage ourselves through indolence, ignorance or apathy; a representation of the ubiquitous mindset which has turned England into a two-party system doomed to fester in its own inadequacies. Every election we buy into the notion that a vote for a minor party is a wasted vote, and so the options we have are as follows: the perpetual running gag which is the Liberal Democrats, or the Conservative and Labour parties; two diseased, moss-encrusted labia of the same thrush-ridden cunt. These are not options, and the latter two know it; choosing to spend their time slanderously pimp-slapping each other into submission rather than stopping to consider how they would actually govern the country (including the party in power at the time, which is why an appropriate metaphorical image for the government is usually that of a blind, drunken brothelgoer desperately waving his junk around trying to find a stray fanny, all the while unaware that he is in a local Dixons at three in the afternoon).

Were prospective voters to stop as one and consider which of the several and varied (you heard it here first) parties best reflected their schemas and then, horror of horrors, actually vote for them, the benefits would be twofold: firstly, the larger parties would be aware of the emergence of actual, bona fide competition, and whip their arses into gear; and secondly, the minor parties would be aware of the actual, bona fide chance that they might get into power, and gear their manifestos towards achievable and sensible goals rather than sensationalist, far-wing comic-fodder.

I’m not saying that either group would succeed in these aims – everyone is, after all, as big a clueless berk as is the clueless berk next to him, and just as ill-equipped to achieve anything of significance and merit – but it would be worth a try, wouldn’t it?

Happy New Year.

Toast

2009-11-23T05:56:00.001-08:00

The A6/Bin Bag Debacle

2009-11-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

This 'epic' poem uses trochaic tetrameter - a lovely, hypnotic rhythm which consists of a four pairs of syllables per line with the stress on the first - and should be read as such. I felt it the perfect form to tell the story of how, when I was first on my medication for depression and, needless to say, a bit spaced, I threw a full bin bag into some douchebag's car.

First written in 2007 for a creative writing degree poetry module, the poem has since undergone a number of edits which have slowly sculpted it into the form you see before you, and with which I think I am finally competely content.

It is called 'The A6/Bin Bag Debacle.'

On the seventh day of this month

(February, as it stands) I

made the choice to undertake

domestics in a drugged-up stupor;

emptying the bin; that which dwells

in the corner of our kitchen

and, with careless distribution

of a bag containing rubbish,

caused to hit the pride extension

– very blatant pride extension –

of some dickless office jockey.

Colleagues of his came by, both men

sporting grins at his misfortune

(or it could be mine) and told us

that when he – their friend – discovered

that I’d hit his pride extension

– sorely blatant pride extension –

he would doubtless be displeased and

maybe this would cost me money;

so I went out to observe just

how much damage I had caused by

flinging out the bag of rubbish

up and over our back wall. And

there, there was a mighty horde – a

large, conceited, sour-faced horde – of

monkey-suited office jockeys

voicing their utmost displeasure

at the careless way in which I

threw the rubbish past our wall

“You should really be more careful

when you’re throwing out your rubbish,”

thus proclaimed a frowning miser

who’d relinquished pleasure for a

mortgage, desk and comfy pension.

Little could this woman know my

medicated stupor was the

reason for my undertaking

wanton distribution (which was

careless distribution) of a

bag containing rubbish up and

over our back garden wall and

scratching up the pride extension

– oh so blatant pride extension –

of her dickless jockey colleague

So I did the noble thing (well,

what I deemed the noble thing) and

two of us left from my house to

take the path around the house and

through the car park to the office

which is found behind our house and

where resides the pride extension

of the monkey suited jockey

which I totalled with a bin bag

when I threw it in a somewhat

careless manner past our wall. My

housemate in his hoodie and

myself in my pyjama bottoms

both seemed rather unfamiliar

entering the office where the

monkey-suited office jockey

owner of the pride extension

spent his days and evenings working.

I’ll admit I felt quite good in

floating through this zoo-like office

where the scratched-up pride extension

wounded by a plastic missile

flung by some great drugged-up tit-end

was the most eventful thing to

happen in their working day. And

so the monkey took my details

and I gave these details freely

even though I clearly couldn’t

pay for any damage suffered

by his blatant dick extension

when I threw the bin bag like a

shot put over our back wall (I

must say, quite a mighty throw, which

sent it sailing past the wall). He

told me he would call tomorrow

when he knew the damage that I’d

caused his blatant pride extension

when I sent the bag of rubbish

flying over our back wall, and

freeing it for just one fleeting

minute from the dull and mundane

tedium it must endure. What

little shred of life the bin bag

ever must endure, which surely

shamed the office jockey whom I

might now owe a lot of money.

Press 'X' Not To Be Annoyed

2009-11-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

Turn your frontal tenaciousness up to maximum, readers, because I am about to resurrect an old debate we are most likely sick of; the cultural effect of videogames.

The reason for this questionable choice of action is relatively simple; I do not believe that any debate exists. With my moral compass firmly aligned, I can categorically state that there is nothing wrong with video games; that, at the very least, they are no more offensive or debilitating than any other entertainment medium; and that anyone who thinks that they are is a terrible person and an idiot.

We are told that violent video games are “significantly associated with: increased aggressive behaviour, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased pro-social (helping) behaviour”*, and I am sure that they are, which is why age restrictions are implemented on such games in order to prevent the audience from meandering onto the lower rungs of the age ladder. Only at the earliest stages of cognitive development are human beings impressionable enough to blindly imitate, or alter their beaviour according to, electronic media, and not a soul I know over the age of fifteen who plays violent videogames exhibits any of the above tendencies. Anyone of an older age who is found to be more violent as an ostensible ‘result’ of playing videogames is simply a violent person. Human beings are inherently compelled to seek vents for our inner frustrations or desires, and if one channel fails to present itself another will promptly replace it; for instance:

A fundamentalist belief in a particular deity or deities.
A propensity towards reactionary politics.
A keen interest in ‘character-building’ blood sports.
A career in the military.

There is an overwhelming abundance of options and outlets for people to both channel, and be rewarded for channelling, aggression; so many, in fact, that it almost seems as though mankind is inherently violent and is compelled on both a holistic and subconscious level to realise this peculiarity (who'd have thought it, eh?). Does it not then seem as though an insular alternative with no direct affect on a third party might actually be preferable to going out and beating each other senseless with enormous sticks?

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of those who oppose videogames with such vehemence are parents who are willing to blame absolutely anything other than their own ineptitude for the waywardness and indolence of their children. If one relies on television and video entertainment to babysit one's offspring and then, when it turns out that the character of said offspring is far south of savoury as a result, one scours the day-to-day routine of the child for a convenient scapegoat, I can say with certainty that you are to blame.

Case in point: “My Goodness. Charlie spends a lot of time on his Z-Box one-eighty chatting with other users whilst gunning them down on Holo Four, doesn’t he? That must be why he pushed that girl down the stairs of the science block and refuses to aim when he uses the lavatory.”

No, generic bad parent, it is not. Charlie does those things because he was unfortunate enough to inherit your sub-par genetic fudge, and your unwillingness to tend to your litter because of our residence in a world full of conveniently vilified stooges ensures his continued emotional and intellectual mediocrity. You created this monster; you are responsible for what it does; now stop shirking on your accountability and blaming guiltless third parties whose only sin is being beyond the feeble grasp of your limited understanding.

Gaming is a legitimate hobby and can oft-times be genuinely artful. Like music, art, or literature, one must in part hate it to truly love it; not for the erroneous assumption that it is debilitating to society, but because of the torpid gutter-water that forms the material amongst the medium which surrounds the solid and admirable backbone. Beneath trite Japanese RPG number four thousand and seven, trite super-powered space soldier shooter number eight million, nine hundred thousand, seven hundred and forty-nine and trite third-person action adventure with hideously stunted dialogue which plays like an interactive Michael Bay movie (a medium whose interactivity should be limited to putting your foot through the screen showing it) number seventy-two thousand and twelve are truly timeless gems which have, in part, refined and strengthened our culture. Of course, ‘culture’ is a double-agent in this drama, as I am about to explain.

Culture is dead. We have reached a period of stagnation unparalleled in history; preceding the postmodernism, post-minimalism, neo-expressionism, post-Neolithic-troglodytic-minimal-abstraction, post-postal strike, neo-postal strike, post-spam-egg-spam-spam-modernist-spam-and-spam (and so on and so forth) of modern times was the last short-lived era of artistic endeavour I believe we shall ever truly enjoy if we continue in the manner in which we are currently, and this mentality expands to all territories of modern cultural enterprise. Every religion, action group, political philosopher, societal spokesperson and moron with a mouth that moves faster than their limited neurones can flare briefly into sensibility will blame something they do not like for our troubles, but the frank reality is that humanity is committing a slow and embarrassing infanticide.

Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to have the temerity to fight fire with fire and blame our cultural drought on something I don’t like – people who blame our cultural drought on things they don’t like. Stop complaining, you loathsome cretins. If you are affronted by something, ignore it; because with over six and a half billion people alive on the planet, hundreds of thousands of them are statistically likely to irk you. You are a parasitic drain on the minute trickle of goodness and wholesomeness left in the world, and if you don’t go away, I shall have to kill you in the nipples with a flamethrower.

Videogames do not make people violent.

* Anderson, Craig A. “Violent Video Games: Myths, Facts and Unanswered Questions.” http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html.

The 5th of November

2009-11-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

Remember, remember the Fawkesian endeavour
that should urge us to chime the attempt -
To bomb the elite would be a truly great feat,
no bourgeoisie white-collar exempt.

Floating heads.

2009-11-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

To Green or not to Green; Philosophy, and its Place in the Mindset of the Modern Working Man.

2009-11-03T08:59:00.000-08:00

Earlier today it was announced that a gentleman from Oxford, who was dismissed from Grainger plc – the UK’s ‘Biggest Residential Landlord’ – has won the right to take said employer to a tribunal on the grounds that the reason for said dismissal was his green views.

The article goes on to describe that the views of the fellow in question have drastically altered the way he lives his life. His home has been renovated to be as environmentally friendly as possible without being an orchard; he refuses to travel by plane; and he preaches his strongly held sentiments to friends and family with all the fervour of an Austrian dwarf on a soapbox in Munich*.

The article also states that “resulting moral imperative [of a belief in man-made climate change] is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations”. Now, I would surmise that this applies to when views are taken to the extreme; i.e. when one believes in something strongly enough to make drastic alterations to their day-to-day life – after all, I do not suppose that anyone who holds the philosophical belief that steak bakes taste better with hot fart on them would have much of a leg to stand on when attempting to take Bakers Oven to court for unlawful dismissal – but it raises, to me at least, an interesting semantic debate: to what extent do one’s personal views qualify as philosophical, and in what manner do – or should – they affect one’s standing in the workplace?

I am in two minds, as the axiom flies, about the above example. I refer you, in the first instance, to the third definition of ‘philosophy’ in the Oxford English Dictionary:

“... a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour.”

Quite arguably, anyone whose views on climate change are passionate enough to affect their day to day behaviour can be described as holding not just green beliefs, but a green philosophy. My collective term for such types is going to become ‘bogeys’ – a term which, since the endemic period of naval warfare in the Pacific some time ago, has seen dismayingly stunted usage – and I hope that you will join me in the application of this new moniker into common parlance.

However, there are other factors to take into account. The cited Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations of 2003 ambiguously define "religion or belief [as] any religion, religious belief, or similar philosophical belief.” In addition, it states: “It is unlawful for an employer, in relation to a person whom he employs at an establishment in Great Britain, to discriminate against [a] person ... by dismissing him, or subjecting him to any other detriment.”

However, the text carelessly omits the circumstances under which a person in possession of a particular belief or set of beliefs regulates their own choice of prospective employer. After all, an Orthodox Jew will not apply for a job in a spam factory. An Islamic fundamentalist will not have designs on the position of Sarah Palin’s PA. I have yet to see a Jedi Knight become an EBay entrepreneur. These phenomena, or absence thereof, in mind, one of two eventualities presents themselves:

The chap who was dismissed from Grainger held his beliefs in climate change prior to his employment and therefore, in becoming the employee of the UK’s largest residential landlord, is a hypocrite, or;
He developed his beliefs during the tenure of his employment and, in deciding to harass his employers due to the nature of their environmentally unfriendly business acumen rather than quit on principle, is a douche bag.

Thoughts?

* Poetic license encourages that I change the wording of the article; but only very slightly.