Words From Nash - The Handsome Blog of Tom Nash

All this Junk inside my Trunk

2011-04-25T18:51:00.002+01:00

Hello Misters and Missuses of the blog pool. Shield your eyes from the gory glory, for yea, I do returneth.

To ease myself gently back into blogging with all the subtlety and grace of a TNT hippo bellyflopping onto a bonfire, I’ve picked a well-trodden subject rather than anything particularly controversial or exciting. It is this: spam.

Not spam the curiously watery animal by-product, but spam the sensationally annoying email pest. Like televised sport, it is ubiquitous and unavoidable.

Also like televised sport, it is wasting a lot of money. Not just for the long suffering search engines and ISPs who must pay extra money for their creaking servers to bear the loads, or even the slack-jawed moronicals who actually respond to the damn stuff, but for the spammers themselves.

One small but pertinent study suggests that only around 1 in 12000 people respond to pharmaceutical spam, and 1 in 200000 for viral warning sites. Even if spammers are paying just 0.00007 pence per email, that would still potentially leave them thousands of pounds out of pocket – per day.

Obviously, spammers can’t be doing this – crime generally pays, so tell your kids – but even so, they could easily do a hell of a lot better if they just improved their marketing. At the moment, it’s shoddier than a poke in the eye with a sharp John McCrirrick.

Now, far be it from me to give such jerksters tips; that would be akin to loaning gangsters guns, or investing in Endemol. However, it is difficult not to gleefully point out just how wrong they’re going. It is almost like they are deliberately bad to get people to mock and publicise them their in blogs like idiots. Anyway, let's dive into this festering pool of human mind-clots:

I can’t decide if the sender here is actually named Judithbaby Baby, or if it is a calling card style description of an infant. In the same way as a crime-busting cop might yell Malone, FBI!, she is Judithbaby, Baby.
I don’t know whether the former or the latter would be better – after all, if your surname is already Baby, don’t name your child Judithbaby. There’s one too many babies in that name already.

What I am basically saying is that whether it is overenthusiastic naming or an unusually eloquent child, this is already way too strange for me to be interested in any friendship – sorry, Judithbaby.

GUYS! GUYS! OIL PRICES are starting to DROP! Jesus, we’d better enlarge our penises – FAST!
Also, I know they’ve spelled it ‘pils’ to get past spam filters, but where I come from, a pils is a type of premium lager. Maybe they’re offering me more drink? ENABLERS.

How much time would it have taken to make up a simple subject line? Really? My guess is ‘less time than it takes to make up the name Milton Forficule’.
Milton Forficule sounds like the kind of guy who wears three gold watches and plays tennis in whites that are far too tight on a slightly pudgy body. I bet his Golf Club Buddies think that a subject line is too good for me. Well I’ve got NEWS for you, MILTON – I am a SELF-SUFFICIENT and PROFESSIONAL MAN and maybe I don’t have TIME to read your MYSTERIOUS EMAIL. So get back on your platinum-plated pony and OUT OF MY INBOX.

I don’t normally read e-cards. There’s just something so… unfancy about most of them. Seriously, I’m only going to read an e-card if it’s really super fancy. This one seems to promise some degree of fancitude but, well, I just don’t buy it. Needs much more fance.

Oh my god! An email from my local bank, Banque Atlantique! Very few people realise that Banque Atlantique operates in both the Côte d'Ivoire and Cornwall. For some reason they just can’t see the link. But what’s 3000 miles between friends?

One thing that HMRC are well known for is that they are positively eager to give out tax refunds. So eager that they often send out more than one email at a time, so that you simply will not miss the opportunity to get you a super-large chunk of their money. People who characterise them as a bunch of money-grabbing, thieving jerkholes who would rather make soup out of their own toes than willingly give you any money back are clearly mistaken.

The FBI in Washington DC want to talk to me (probably because of all my important foreign government secrets). But wait - they want to talk to me… about the FBI in Washington DC?

How deep does this rabbit-hole go?

Anyway, this lazy leap into the spam-hole means hopefully semi-regular updates again! So let's all rejoice and clap our hands and turn on the TiVo, because there's gonna be rubbish to read on the internet again!

Lordy!

2011-02-15T22:53:00.000Z

Hello all!

In place of a normal post, I have a short story here for y'all. It's super short, so don't worry, you don't need to sigh heavily and slump to the scotch cabinet for a hefty refill in order to face it. Even though I know you're going to anyway. You're so melodramatic, you know that?

It's a bit of silly playing around with the literal idea of God and, in part, the ontological argument for the existence of God. It's not intended to offend anybody, and I doubt it will. Being offended by this would be like being offended by candyfloss. A sticky great mess of sugary silliness.

The One Mistake

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

But the Word was brittle and fragile. Endings could snap off or winkle on to change the Word, and this would not do. Besides, Words are only three-dimensional in the imagination. God was to be ultimate, the most that could ever be. Immutable, unexceedable. God outgrew the Word, and the Word became the slightest shadow of God’s glory.

Nonetheless, the Word was still holy, and God placed it in a special box to save for later.

That is, He created a box, and then He placed the Word inside it.

In order to create the box, God created the heavens and the earth. He created light to feed, water to nourish, and ground to root, so that He could create trees and shrubs for the wood for His box.

God looked at the box, and saw that the box was good. The best box there has ever been, for it was God’s box, and that is hard to beat.

The trees that remained were strong but pointless, now that God had made His box. So God, in His wisdom, created fruit to hang from the trees. He was pleased, for He Loved the fruit, and they became holy objects through His Love.

As a bit of an afterthought, He created animals, and every living thing with which the water teems, and every winged bird according to its kind. He liked the animals, but could not be bothered to keep making them, so He invented sex too.

Finally, to make sure everything kept ticking over, God invented janitors.

God then grew weary of the Earth, and set off for a while to create supernovae and black holes, to polish quarks and paint nebulae. He left the janitors in charge, charging them to look after His things. In return they would rule over the fish in the sea, and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moved on the ground.

--

On God’s return, He noticed that the janitors, named Adam and Eve, were acting pretty shifty. They hid behind trees from God, which was pointless since God had created all and everything, and could certainly see through trees if He wanted.

They were ashamed of their nudity, and though God could understand their reticence around certain scraggy areas, this was news to Him.

“Why are you ashamed?” He asked, “for I have been looking at those for ages.”

“Eve ate of one of your belongings, the forbidden fruit,” Adam whined.

“Shut up!” cried Eve, “and besides, you did eat of the forbidden fruit too, thou hypocrite, thou.”

“She made me do it!” Adam did appeal unto God.

The Lord was furious that the janitors had thought to eat of His fruit, since they were Holy. Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, they surely would eat from the Tree of Life too, since they would definitely Know about it now.

"Consider thyselves banished!” He shouted, “And what is more, Adam, thou and thy kin shalt toil for thy food, and Eve, thou and thy kin shalt undergo excruciating pain during childbirth,” which might have been considered going a bit far, but it was God, who is perfect and infallible, and therefore it was completely just.

To underline His point, God created an Angel with a flaming sword to chase the pair out of Eden. Again, this was absolutely fair enough.

With Adam and Eve removed from the Garden of Eden, God did take himself out of the world for some serious introspection.

“Why did I create the janitors without My steel morality, and with the propensity to steal?” He pondered, “perhaps I am not as perfect as I believed.”

Our Father briefly considered removing evil from the instinctual make-up of humanity, but rejoice, for He was then sidetracked by a more interesting thought.

“Wait,” thought the Lord of Creation, “I am indeed perfect, and ultimate, for that is what it mean to be God.

“Yet I have accidentally created imperfection. Does this not mean that I Myself am imperfect?

“But to be God implies perfection. Therefore what I have done must be perfect. So even if I can imagine something more perfect, it does not mean that what I have already done was not perfect. I have simply created a new level of perfection for Myself to attain, which, being God, I naturally automatically have done.”

The Lord was pleased with Himself for this logic, which He had created in the first place. He made himself more perfect, and everything He did was automatically infallible, even though everything He had done had been perfect before anyway.

The Lord found Himself with a new problem, however.

“I am perfect, and ultimate, as the Creator of All must be.

“However, this means that I cannot think of ways to further improve Myself. If I am unable to think of ways to improve Myself, then my powers of thought are limited. Yet if I can think of ways to improve Myself, then I must have created room for improvement by my thought, at which point I become imperfect.”

God found himself in a logical loop of self-improvement. He searched his perfect soul for areas of potential, and then accomplished that potential with a simple thought. This led Him back to his search.

He finally broke free of this self-contained reverie when He hit upon the realisation that an omnipresent God was more perfect than an entity, and therefore He made Himself so.

At once, He became submerged in the follies and agonies of mankind. The children of Adam and of Eve, man and woman crafted accorded to His own image, did now burn and kill and steal and hate. The janitors took no care over their charge, and so God, shocked, did fire them.

He did this by instantly compressing the Earth to a singularity, turning all of the birds and the beasts, the skies and the seas into parts of the same spectral dot, from which light could never escape.

And God saw that it was good.

A Positive Result

2011-02-01T22:31:00.001Z

Hello all! I hope 2011 burst pleasantly over you, like a showy firework or beached whale.

The other day, you'll be absolutely tickled to hear, I went and gave blood. I don't mention this to be one of those self-aggrandising, more-altruistic-than-thou smug-udders who go about with a 'be nice to me, I just gave blood!!' sticker slapped on their foreheads like a placard that says 'lick me - I'm amazing!', apparently entirely unaware that the more commonly accepted meaning of that sticker is 'utter twinker'.

I actually mention it because it is relevant to this bloggation - though if you do choose to slather me in buttery praise, then I will of course assume the position.

You see, between pondering the great intellectual challenges of our time, such as why they can't get rid of that slightly disgusting Tupperware smell, or whether you can sharpen a frozen worm and use it as a pencil, I was ruminating on the crisis of not enough people apparently donating blood - or, as the kids of today have roguishly titled it, The Great Big Bloody Mess.

Now, you can see why people might not feel sufficiently excited by the prospect of visiting the leechery. We are all driven by selfish genes, and those genes cannot really see the point in actively choosing to be interrogated, stabbed and drained - all to help some anonymous flipster who will never even know of your existence, far less thank you. What is in it for the donor?

Blood drives need to appeal more to our selfish side. This, of course, is why they started giving out those smugular stickers in the first place. It is a way to increase your reputation in the community, which genuinely does drive behaviour, though unfortunately they are apparently unaware of the actual response of the community to the self-congratulation of it all. It won't be long before they introduce a 'Share This' option, sending a pre-populated Twitter message that says @houmousamongus is a bit woozy from bravely giving blood... but it's so important to help others, yah?

To save the NHS the bother of coming up with a better plan of attack, and to spare the rest of us our rage, I have designed some copy for a new leaflet campaign that makes use of a far more powerful - and far less irritating - selfish desire.

A Sure Plea for Pleasure

2010-11-08T21:42:00.003Z

Two months since I last blogged! Two! What strange and splendid things have happened since I last coughed words onto the internet? Well, governmental cuts have been set out, X-Factor has stabbed another collection of songs to death and then burned their graves, and, of course, due to strikes the London Underground has now been replaced by a conga line of in-line skaters.

However, I'm not the sort to whittle a blog out of the redwood of contemporary events. I prefer my writing to be utterly timeless, so that when future species dig my prattle out of the charred remains of the internet, there remains something relevant for them to chuckle about deep within the salty folds of their multiple larynxes and to give a fronds-up.

So I'd prefer to talk about something universal and helpfully vague, if it's all the same to you. And today it is the importance of pleasure.

From Bad Machinery - this is, let's face it, the ultimate dream.

Pleasure is a double-sided sword, with which one can easily slice up fresh, delicious watermelons, but also stab oneself in the gooliest of areas.

The argument for pleasure in life is little-offered from the top down. By top down, I am not making a sexy request of you (or at least, that is not my primary intention), but rather I mean that this is not something that most self-declared positions of authority take into account.

Consider the split over food. We are told by the government, television chefs and self-styled 'nutritionists' that junk food should not be eaten, that we should only eat that which provides the very greatest health benefits. This does not take into account the argument for pleasure, in which we decide to eat things which may have all the nutritional boon of an ordinance survey map, but which give us a flutter of pleasure and joy.

Pleasure is important. Whether or not, my glimmer-eyed, sultry reader, you believe in an afterlife (I believe that the likelihood of an afterlife is approximately as high as the arse of the Mariana Trench), chances are you let pleasure dictate a lot of your choices.

This is a luxury heavily afforded to us by our extremely lovely First World, above-the-poverty-line comfort levels. (I assume my readership to be a rough reflection of my own status - which is reasonable, given all the poncy language and analogy I use.) We have laid before us a decorative quilt of choice, and we can choose any particular patchwork we like. But it is true across the world to an extent: people take pleasure in their customs, their sports and their local equivalent of recreational drugs.

Without pleasure, our lives become grim, grey commodities of the larger group; an expenditure without return. It becomes the equivalent of watching an entire episode of Horne & Corden; unbearable.

Human emotions have evolved to give us pleasure in the same way that ants have not... but given the level of similarity between the two species, it could easily have gone the other way. Our emotions are a fluke-gained spectrum, and since we have been given the glimmering golden light of pleasure in which to coat ourselves, we should use it as best we can. There's no point in having a glorious trifle in the fridge and sticking to licking paving slabs for sustenance.

Nonetheless, authority figures lay the argument for pleasure by the wayside, like a trucker's turd. So we see the slashing of arts budgets (so much for non-contemporaneousness), the willy-nilly banning of drugs entirely disregarding evidence, angry judgement of promiscuity and the scorn from high-heeled, blood-footed fashionistas of comfortable shoes.

The difficulty with all of this pressure from above of what you should do is that it means that either people live pleasureless lives, or they scamper off in the other direction like rebellious stoats. That is to say, the latter live lives entirely dictated by pleasure, without regard for their own health or the health and happiness of others.

Now, there is nothing wrong with living a life devoted to pleasure, if your pleasure does not conflict with that of others. Someone with a passion for gardening is entirely welcome to become a gardener, live in their own garden and practise pubic topiary. Selfishness is entirely welcome in this respect. However, a life of selfishness that brings a person into violent oppositon of the pleasure of others is not cool. It's okay to blow bubbles, unless you're blowing them directly into a neighbour's eyeball.

This rejection of non-pleasure also strangulates the concept of moderation. If you decide to do something in opposition to a mandate, you tend to go further with it that you would have in the first place. Even as we speak - by which I mean, even as I carelessly hurl spiked words towards your face - across the country teens are slamming their doors without actually stopping to think whether they even wanted to paint their bedrooms black, let alone whether they would have got that pierced if they hadn't been told not to.

So the lack of consideration for pleasure in our top-down rulesmiths leads directly to misery of others. Jamie Oliver says 'no Burger Kings, ever', and many people will forgo a pleasure that would, in some small way, have made them happier, if only for the shortest time. Many others will go out and binge on burgers, shakes and fries, in a sulky fuck you to Jamie Bigtongue.

Of course, sensible people will occupy the middle ground - indulging in pleasures in moderation, while maintaining a healthy respect for others. But sensible is surprisingly hard to find in a race that hasn't evolved with modern-day sensibility in mind. It is more common than smallpox, but less common than anti-vaxxers - a potent ratio.

So overall, remember: everything in moderation. But do make sure that you float your boat, or it will languish and eventually be used as the venue for a youth rave. And nobody wants that.

Fun Fake Fact Friday

Due to many weeks' absence, this is something of a bumper load. Don't forget - to take part, simply go onto Twitter on a Friday and make up something with the tag #funfakefactfriday. I try to put all entries on this blog, so everyone can see just how flipping clever you are, once and for all, the jerks. Uncredited ones are, of course, my own little contributions of lexical spittle to this great bucket of fun.

Capitalism is an ideology in which people pay for goods and services with Scrabble letters.

The Pope’s favourite swear is the Holy See Word.

2006: heart defect rates soar. 2007: 50% increase in Will-writing. 2008: Number of surprise birthday parties triples.

The Pope has described his trip to Britain as “the worst Saga holiday yet”.

Cherie Blair has made a “book of shame” to punish Tony when he misbehaves, full of New Statesman reviews of his book.

Last year, over twenty thousand relationships were started after people accidentally put kisses on the end of work emails.

Physiologically speaking, the closest living relative of the walrus is Andrew Lloyd Webber.

90% of call centres are based in Hull. Workers use Indian accents to disguise their poor working conditions.

The most common operation on insecure male elephants is trunk enlargement surgery.

The Sexiest Pasta Award 2010 was won by cunniloni.

New health and safety laws now require gentlemen with handlebar moustaches to be fitted with brakes.

Roger Moore is not the actor’s name, but rather a statement of his intent.

George Lucas was killed & replaced by twin brother Jorge, intent upon retroactively ruining all his brother’s successes.

After comprehensively beating the Nazis, the Dambusters turned their attention to their other nemesis: beavers.

Due to its constantly opposing Poles, the Daily Mail is, technically speaking, a racist magnet.

Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie are based on the Hamiltons.

Just as water is only holy when blessed by a priest, it takes a vicar to make pastorised milk.

Newton wrote a sub-clause to his third law of motion: “Except in the tabloid press, when it is wildly disproportionate."

To discover the original Biblical Word, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider plan to smash together two particle verbs.

A sequel to The Social Network is due out in 2011, entitled ‘The Social Network 2.0: Rise of the Fail Whale’.

The Dung beetle buries poo; the Deathwatch beetle buries carrion; the Conciliation beetle buries hatchets.

The Heimlich Manoeuvre is famously named after its inventor, Dr. Manoeuvre.

According to recent scientific experiments, three things affect time: mass, frame of reference and bladder capacity.

The ‘deep film advert voice’ is, in 80% of cases, voiced by Anne Robinson.

Robbie Williams is actually a character creation of wacky-voice man Robin Williams. He says he’s “punishing Britain”.

In Latin, “Angela Merkel” translates as “angel’s bum-crease”.

Little-known forensic geography deals with criminal landscape. It has imprisoned Bluff Point, Sharp Edge & Milton Keynes.

The American Bald Eagle is now officially extinct, having been replaced by the American Toupée Eagle.

One must look into a mirror and say ‘handyman, handyman, handyman’ to summon Handy Andy.

Science has illuminated the atom & the opening seconds of the universe but cannot explain the existence of Ryan Seacrest.

A “birds-eye” view means to imagine a scene covered in breadcrumbs.

The tough and surprising qualities of the bodily fluids of Texans has lead to the development of both Goretex and Semtex.

It is predicted that by 2014, football’s status as the UK’s “national game” will be overtaken by scratchcards.

Dame Judy Dench has a chin on her brain. This is medically known as a ‘brainchin’.

Entering UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A Enter on the Google Analytics page will instantly triple your traffic.

N-Dubz’s Dappy cannot properly wake up in the morning without performing some substandard freestyle rap to his Coco Pops.

Exploding fireworks are execution pods for fairies.

5th Nov’s Santa is Daddy Blammo, who has a beard of sparklers. He gives fireworks to good children; burnt fingers to bad.

Technology advances mean you can now buy ADHD-ready TV, which flicks between channels randomly every few seconds.

80% of tweets containing the word 'stop' are directed at @mchammer's account.

The ‘X’ in ‘X Factor’ stands for Scientological final boss, Xenu. Tests on previous winners reveal huge thetan-counts.

In 2007 a hedgehog was discovered in Neath, South Wales, that had evolved a fireproof layer over its whole body & spikes. (waldinho2000)

The varsity boat race was originally between cambridge & hull, as oxford was indeed percieved as 'a right dump' 'til 1923 (l0fty835)

TV's Rodney Trotter, Nicholas Lyndhurst, is 256th in line to the Norwegian throne. (Waldinho2000)

Wayne Rooney agreed to stay at Man Utd after he offered a recurring character slot in Coronation Street as Lenny, a tramp. (waldinho2000)

'As the crow flies' used to mean 'upside down'. The current meaning emerged after further ornithological research. (tomOdaighre)

Most moles do not, in fact, live in holes. This myth was popularised by the hit song recorded by Mr. A. Mole of Swindon. (verbalslapstick)

Wine gums originally had teeth in, but they fell out due to all the sugar. (BigShimmeryWall)

Norman Wisdom's will specified that his pallbearers must trip and drop the coffin into the grave. (TrumptonFireman)

Donald Trump knows he looks stupid (Trumpton Fireman)

HP Lovecraft took his pen name from his favourite sauce fetish website. (BigShimmeryWall)

Former Norway defender Henning Berg is actually 60 feet tall. When playing, 9/10 of him was always under the pitch. (BigShimmeryWall)

At his first PMQs as Labour leader, Ed Milliband asked David Cameron to pull his finger. (Waldinho2000)

Fun Fake Fact Friday was voted the best Internet non-fiction read for 2010 by Richard and Judy (l0fty835)

BlackBerry and Apple are working together on a top secret joint project called Crumble. (TrumptonFireman)

Peanuts have a skin so they look more like toes because people needed reminding to wiggle their toes during long flights (2ssam)

Earlier in evolution, human knees bent the other way, so they could run away from a predator, while taunting it. (stevebunce)

The days are longer in the summer due to it being warmer; in winter, they contract and are shorter. (stevebunce)

Drivers who crash into rubber trees are killed by the rebound, not the crash itself. (TrumptonFireman)

At the end of a tour, Bruce Springsteen allows members of the E-Street Band to bring in boardgames from home. (BigShimmeryWall)

The eye of the portraits in art galleries follow you around the room. But if you hold up a mirror they close. (TrumptonFireman)

Blu-Tack is actually a by-product of the liposuction industry. (TrumptonFireman)

Pavlov's earlier experiments included making a leopard throw up when he played a bassoon & a budgie that swore to techno. (BigShimmeryWall)

Whenever the Circle Line closes, Boris & Cameron smash particles together by taping them to their bikes and riding at each other. (BigShimmeryWall)

Ed Milliband has the exact same hand-type as Danny DeVito. (Waldinho2000)

Ribena is Latin for Blackcurrent. (Locko8668)

Approximately 1 in every 7000 bulls is born with six testicles or more. (MartynDRoyce)

Sunny Delight was invented by Sunny Dee, brother of infamous restauranteur Maître. (d1rty_w0rds)

@RufusHound has climbed Everest 9 times and has lost half of all his toes to frost bite. (Dannybooks)

Did you know that all sardines are technically Venezuelan? (RufusHound)

Fluorida gained notoriety as the world cosmetic dentistry capital - though the "U" is usually omitted. (via McGuireDavid)

The weather in Amarillo is directly proportional to the level of Tony Christie's endorphins (Waldinho2000)

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fell out 27 years ago after Jobs accused Gates for cheating at Risk. (Dawson001)

Terry Nutkins started his career in specialists' amateur pornography. (Dawson001)

McDonalds were the official sponsor of WWII. (Dawson001)

Dracula's mum was a vegetarian. (Dawson001)

The Pope had to take a detour early to shit in the woods. (Dawson001)

It's costing the UK £100 million for the Pope's visit. £12 million while he's here and the rest for child counselling. (Dawson001)

The Popemobile would survive a nuclear attack; brilliant but the button to open it is on the outside! (Dawson001)

Hitler came up with the ice cream van jingle. (Dawson001)

The Texan state motto is: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and Texas." (tomOdaighre)

While I'm Gone...

2010-09-08T13:25:00.002+01:00

As you know, I won't be presenting you with a proper post this week. But here is a video that's relevant to an old post of mine for your edification!

Incidentally, a lot of what they discuss in this video also applies to another bugbear of mine: organic food. The same selling tactics crop up, alongside the similar level of health and taste benefits. Lordy!

Seeyousoonbye!

The Best Defence

2010-09-06T23:52:00.004+01:00

There is a slightly sticky zone in politics of which everybody has a slightly different understanding but takes it for granted that theirs is correct. That is to say, all of flipping politics. It is very much like a man thinking of a pineapple and a woman thinking of a clementine and then both referring to fruit. Which would result in a Christmas stocking like a shunosaurus tail.

But the one particular area I'm thinking about (not that kind of area) is offence. It is a difficult mess, like a maths problem posed in beans.

The reason that it becomes difficult is that if something is offensive to somebody, that person no longer wants to see it. That is more-or-less the point of being offended. If you want to see more of something that you're offended by, then you've not really grasped the idea, you dimwitted rubber spud. Wait, I'm just fueling your fire.

However, just because something is offensive to you, does not mean that it is offensive to everybody. There is a spectrum of offence that can be taken, thrown from a bloody awful prism made of babies' tears and squashed hedgehogs. Some people take none whatsoever; others take offence at practically everything. The latter will be quite appalled at me proffering a gold-plated, strawberry-scented daisy in their direction; the former will be quite at ease at my repeatedly jabbing their infant child's cranium with a hot cocktail sausage. Mostly people, as with all spectra, sit somewhere between the two points.

This is all background which you already knew, because you are a shining and magnificent example of synaptic splendour. I would quite like to commission a statue of your gobbing great brains.

The iceburg in this post, however, is the question of censorship. At what point does offensiveness require censorship, and how are we to reach a quorum of agreement on where this point is?

I will now throw my hat into this ring, like a man frantically throwing cutlery into the nest of a titanic, threatening magpie, in the hope of appeasing it enough not to steal his shiny new car.

I am, admittedly, a (stinkin') liberal, but my feeling is that something should not be censored, whether or not it is offensive, unless it can be shown to do concrete harm.

Under this system, censorship of certain things could still occur. For instance, pro-anorexia websites, Ku Klux Klan publications and Chris Moyles could all be censored. However, simply causing offence - for instance, calling 50 Cent a 'good-for-nothing mush-minded shitpiece with the maturity of fresh caviar' - would not see me ejected from my comfy seat on Loose Women.

But the difficulty, of course, comes with defining 'harm'. Sociological harm? Psychological harm? Firal harm?

Some people believe that children hearing swearwords causes them psychological harm. I disagree, and would ask that they can provide evidence that children who have been exposed to swearing fare worse in life than children who have not. It would be difficult, though, to monitor this, since playgrounds are essentially profanity-cauldrens, brewing up fresh swears with the ease of a pigeon flying into a French window. But this is all beside the point. My point is that belief that something is harmful does not necessarily make it so.

I feel that scientific - i.e. objective, repeatable and obtained with rigorous experimental / surveying methodology - evidence should be, as almost always, the cornerstone here. The harmful effects of writing instructional guides to children about how best to burn Daddy's wardrobe are obvious, but anything even a bit less extreme than that really needs to be backed up by solid, scientific evidence to prevent mere opinion -simply a particular slot on the Offensive Spectrum - from censoring harmless activities, words and even thoughts.

This approach is important, because we currently live in a world where, for instance, this kind of debate occurs. I have, of course, not seen the evidence for the survey that the LGBT spokesperson cites in the video, and it's possible that the methodology is shot, but notice how much more cogent and sensible the argument based on evidence is, as opposed to the stale and circular argument that arises from the Focus on the Family representative, like a boring, stench-ridden mud-monster from a garderobe. She is arguing for censorship based on no evidence other than a belief and a level of offence that she has taken - and if we were all to do that, we could really quash some magnificent things.

Of course, there is also the issue of censorship by proxy. Even if it is legal, television, radio and print media have a responsibility to cater for their target audience. This almost always means not displaying unpopular, offensive views, imagery, etc. - even if they are demonstrably harmless. An estate agent taking a rich couple around will show them the finest mansions in the county, and leave out the flea-ridden one bedroom-kitchen-toilet shanty house from the tour (in other words, my house).

This can be good. It is people voting with their eyes - racist sentiment drops out of sight, for instance.

But once it drops out of sight, it cannot be addressed. And not having a platform on which it is expressed does not mean it does not exist - it means that it exists and feels injured. We need a public platorm to engage with and dismantle crazy offensive ideas, as well as to allow the voice of the unpopular and offensive idea, but which is of benefit - such as the voice of Galileo, or Kermit.

If one person is right amid a million who are wrong, shouldn't they have the right to be heard, even if it offends the majority? Anything else is just slapping ourselves directly on the brain.

-----

No blog next week, friends - I'm off to End of the Road festival this weekend, and won't return until Monday afternoon, at which point I'll be shattered and stinking (which is different to usual in that I'll also have been to a festival). From there, I'll keep you posted. All love!

Fun Fake Fact Friday

Pilates are named after Pontius Pilate, who trademarked and expanded upon his famous ‘hand-washing’ workout.

Despite being invited, most magpies chose not to attend Jordan’s wedding, describing it as ‘far too gaudy’.

After much speculation, the letter of the law has finally been revealed to be ‘S’. Jack of Kent says: “we had no idea”.

Luxembourg is the only country whose capital is bigger than it is.

Space Invaders crisps were recalled after testers discovered that many packets contained an alien substance.

Irony was invented by Jeremy Irons, who doesn’t know what it means.

‘Hotel California’ was inspired by an experience at the Premier Inn, Slough.

Bees buzz, wasps hum, hornets whistle. (by Waldinho2000)

In certain states of the USA you can be arrested for Randy Newman. (by Waldinho2000)

The Bermuda Triangle is more of an oblong. (by dawson001)

Chumbawamba's most famous song was penned after the lead singer strayed out into the motorway after a night drinking. (by dawson001)

Milkshakes are made by freezing cows. (by dawson001)

The Complete Oxford English Dictionary has 32 spelling mistakes in it. (by dawson001)

There aren't enough seats in heaven. (by dawson001)

Scientology is not a cult. (by dawson001)

Area 51 was created after JFK took the game of hide and seek too far. (by dawson001)

Pedo is a traditional Japanese soup. (by dawson001)

If you add tabasco & lemon juice to phlegm it tastes exactly like an oyster. (by TrumptonFireman)

So Long, And Thanks For All The Oil

2010-09-01T22:08:00.005+01:00

Dearest of the dear reader. I can see you, in my mind's eye (using my mind's monocle). You are a cosmopolitan, sexually-endearing individual, with comely form and sharpest mind. You are the finest catch for miles around. If two of the readers of this blog were to meet, there would probably be some sort of ripping of universal fabric. Fortunately, you are so few that it is unlikely to happen, but it's best to avoid mingling just in case.

Despite all of these magnificent, wondrous and possibly entirely fictitious qualities, there will be some of you, I have no doubt, who do not wish to see the human race investing in space exploration. You are wrong, and I can only apologise on your behalf.

Often described as the 'Final Frontier' (by people who have not seen the mess underneath my bed, or the depths of Jeremy Kyle's ego), space is the vastest, ball-poppingly massive entity, home to some of the most utterly extraordinary and brain-mashingly brilliant occurrences of nature. To say that we ought not explore it is like saying that you should read only one book when sat in a library that stretches to the Moon, or at a magnificent banquet with every possible culinary delight under the Sun, we should stick to water and possibly sucking the waiter's jacket.

But I do not intend to argue for space exploration by detailing the majesty of its possibilities. Instead, I would like to focus on why it would be best for everybody to get the flip off Earth.

We are, frankly, a little like unwelcome houseguests, eating the scones and sipping endless cups of tea while the hosts roll their eyes and look pointedly at their watches, with enough throat-clearing to produce a phlegm reservoir. I shall detail why in a series of steps, in:

Tom Nash's Pragmatic and Utterly Without Fault Argument For Space Exploration

1. Natural resources are running out.

Within recent years, we have become undeniably dependent upon oil. This is the resource we have that is most under threat, for obvious reasons.

Fans of tremendously-acted and extremely long film There Will Be Blood will be familiar with the idea of oil represented by milkshake, and drilling represented by a straw. Now, if you imagine that the world's oil reserves are a milkshake that is replenished at the rate of one drop a year, and that we suck it up at the usual rate of drinking a milkshake, you will see the issue. Oil is not being replaced at anything like the same rate that we consume it. There is not an endless supply - ergo it will one day be used up.

It is, of course, this difficulty of supply that pushes up its cost, making it even more valuable for the companies who can drill it - especially given our dependence upon it. This is why companies like BP are drilling in places like the Gulf of Mexico, where it is difficult and dangerous to obtain oil - because all the easy, safe spots have been sucked dry, like a desert lollipop. And the more that we demand oil, the more dangerous and difficult drilling will become, until it is eventually impossible.

I am focussing on oil because it is the resource that is most in danger of running out, as far as I am aware... but the same issue occurs with any resource formed by compression or decay over great periods of time - which is practically all our resources. Iron, marble, gold and quartz are all in the same boat, just sitting on different decks.

2. The population is expanding.

Look at the below graph:

Based on these data, this is a graph showing human population growth. As you can see, it has expanded enormously in later years. This has occurred as we've discovered medicine, fast transportation to get fresher food to the table, and scientific breakthroughs which have enabled us to live longer, safer lives.

This looks, to me, remarkably like this graph:

This is a graph of a Lenski experiment. The spike occurs when the bacteria evolved to be able to process citrate, as opposed to being restricted to glucose. In other words - when a resource became available in abundance, their population boomed wildly until the citrate ran out, or another resource restriction became critical.

Now, I'm not saying that we are exactly like bacteria. For one thing, we own toothbrushes. But the issue of expanding to fill your resources is not a bacteria-specific thing - it is a life-specific thing.

We have a number of resources propelling our massive population. One is oil - and that will soon run out. But scientific advance is another... and that won't, simply because the number of things yet to discover is colossal.

The population is now stretching our physical resources to breaking point. We could (and really should) switch to renewable resources, but even then, population will continue to grow as medicine improves and better food becomes available more freshly. Space will run out, and we will start to see the knock-on effect on resources we think are as stable as a horse's house - metals, for instance. In other words, switching to renewable resources will prevent us running out of critical resources now... but even so, we will nonetheless run out of room, if nothing else. We are two big men in a small room, and switching to renewable resources is the equivalent of giving them an endless banquet (to stop them starving). They will outgrow the room.

So what are the options?

1. Let more people die naturally.

A genuine option, but one which our morality will not allow us. Very few of us are willing to see our families die in pain when life-saving medicines are available.

2. Kill / prevent more people.

Again, another genuine but immoral option. We could pull a Logan's run, selling Grampy off to the glue factory, or put restrictions on the number of children per family. But the former is abhorrent, and the latter is unenforcable without draconian measures with which most people would be very uncomfortable than a dinner guest at the Kilroy-Silks'.

3. Expand to find new resources.

The issue is postponed - perhaps indefinitely - if we create a way to hop from this leaf of the great galactic tree to one next door. Space, as previously mentioned, is cocking enormous. It is essentially an infinite stockpile of flipping everything.

Science fiction has known this for donkeys' ears, but asteroid mining really would be an ingenious solution. There is no reason why, with our best minds put to it, we could not create some way to live on other astral bodies. Or rather, there are loads of reasons why, but chances are that they are eminently surmountable - with time.

This would remove the restriction of space, because we could be more disparate. Furthermore, it would lessen the drain on other resources on Earth. The Earth would be better off, and we would be better off.

Plus, it reduces the odds of extinction. Currently, all our eggs are in one basket - except that planet Earth is the basket, and our eggs are our soft pink little heads. One large meteorite to the chops, and all our known life is down. One planet-wide epidemic, and our chips are lightly battered. The potential for our extinction is enormous when you consider it. But scatter us lightly across the galaxy, and even if one planetsworth succumbs, we live on - which is really all that the genetic imperative demands.

The counter argument often runs: Nash, you bog-goggler, why waste time and money on something future-based when it could be spent helping people who are currently alive, here, today, right flipping now?

My point here is simple - it will take time and money by the buzzardload to establish the technology and ability to explore space to any useable degree. But it's very possibly the only chance for survival that humanity - and our planet - has. And if we don't start now, it may be too late to do so later. If we discover that we only have 20 years left of life, but that the technology and knowledge required to get us off the rock is 50 years away, then all hell will break loose, and we can't do a damn thing about it. If we get boy scouty about it, and are prepared, then the future is bright... for everyone.

Insert penis joke here!

Fun Fake Facts

Justin Timberlake’s smash hit about a Ukrainian waterway, ‘Crimea River’, was mostly misunderstood by his fan base.

A scandal involving people attending a party they were not invited to is known as a crashgate.

In 2004, pomegranates were voted ‘Most Awkward, Rubbish Fruit’, just ahead of invisible oranges and Bananarama.

Despite going for ten years, nobody ever noticed that, due to an administrative error, there were 6 members of 5ive.

Three was considered a ‘magic number’ until 2003, when it was discovered to be doing it with lights and mirrors.

The pi chart was invented in 1932 in Chicago by a mathematically-inclined private investigator named Dick Chartt.

Budget cuts in public spending have led riot police to downgrade '3' from a crowd to company. (by lofty835)

Rescuers waited 1hr for a reply after lowering the phone in chille because miners forgot to dial 9 for an outside line. (by lofty 835)

If you assign a number to each letter (A=1 Z=26 etc.) and multiplied the total digits in Chris De Burgh the answer is 666. (by Waldinho2000)

Hello beautiful hoo-mans

2010-08-23T17:53:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

Today's post is postponed. I am poning this post until next week. This is because my girlfriend, whom I rarely see, is down and I want to spend time with her rather than tap out angry words, sitting in a tear-stained vest, railing at the injustice of it all. You're all very lovely people, so I know you understand.

Back next week in style, though!

Love,
Tom

Good News is No News

2010-08-16T22:42:00.002+01:00

I do not take a regular newspaper, you may be pleasantly shocked to discover.

This is because all newspaper content requires selection - and the basis of selection tends to be editorial bias. The Guardian picks stories that display left-leaning favouritism, whereas the Daily Mail picks stories that have tenuous links to immigrants being daemons from the outer circles of Hell. It is also because I prefer to spend my 50p a day of luxury spare money on a Mars bar.

Most journalists are impeccable and lovely people, who work very hard. Unfortunately, these are not the people we tend to see splashing hot, spicy, controversial by-lines across the newspapers like hot vomit from a centrifuge.

Science stories tend to suffer the most. They are spattered with scientific lingo like white-coated toothbrush flecks on a mirror with the face of an ugly, leering clown on it, but they are scientifically dubious at best - or more often, entirely misrepresented.

The above was all confirmed when I discovered the following news story, published by one of the best-known tabloids of today.

The News Is Made Up!

Most of the news you made is entirely untrue, according to the country's top boffins.

The results come from a new study performed at the University of Leicester. Dr. Doug Deepur who ran the study says: "PR companies often send out any old rot, but journalists simply don't check their facts."

"More often they simply copy press releases and paste them into the news."

While [insert publication name here] was found to report the news honestly, other papers came out of the study badly.

In fact, in a hard-hitting experiment in which random samples of stories were fact-checked for accuracy, six out of ten newspapers were found to be uncritical... printing nonsense as fact.

Dr. Deepur explains: "Many journalists are wowed by official-sounding methods, or 'sciencey' statements like "six out of ten people prefer ham". But if the journalists were to check their sources, they'd find out that it is rubbish."

"Sheer laziness"

The study also suggests that celebrity endorsements have a part to play, fooling journalists into believing a story is legit.

National treasure Dame Maggie Smith blasted lazy news reporting, saying: "More than once I've seen my name in the paper with an entirely fictitious quote."

"People think that quotes from somebody famous lend weight to a story."

"But I've never been called to check if I did say anything of the sort. It's just sheer laziness".

Entirely made up

Shockingly, the eggheads reckon that some papers even print complete lies... publishing news that is entirely made up.

Dr. Doug continues: "Journos are under a lot of pressure to keep finding extreme stories, and sometimes if they can't find one... they create one.

"Most of the time, even the editors don't know!"

Don't take the time

But mostly the study, which was sponsored by world-leading search engine Google, found that for one reason or another, papers just don't check the facts.

Ian Spie, head of Google UK, says: "It's not a case of not being able to check the facts - journalists just don't take the time to do so.

"A 20-second check on Google will usually reveal the source of a story - which often has vested interests in the results of the study, inflating something scientifically useless."

Mr. Spie advised readers to be wary in future of believing everything they're told.

"You can't believe everything you read - even on Google!" he joked.

Fun Fake Facts

Christopher Walken was one of many celebrities to support his pal Nancy Sinatra during her misguided stint as a cobbler.

Perhaps his greatest stunt, Derren Brown famously predicted the date of his birth.

Contrary to popular belief, the peanut is not actually a nut. It is, biologically speaking, a slinky.

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but it is for his greatest invention, ‘Bop It!’, that he will be remembered.

Arcade game Pac-Man is a documentary based upon the life of growling presenter Jeremy Paxman.

Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was based on the Conwy Cardboard Services Factory in Wales.

Rabbits can smell bacon from up to a mile away underwater. Since they are land-dwelling herbivores, this is useless.

Captain Oates' death is often seen as a noble self-sacrifice... but he really just nipped out to get cigarettes and milk.

Cheese jokes pre-date cheese. (by TomOdaighre)

Tiger Woods changed his name from 'Ben D. Woods' to help his erectile dysfunction. It proved very effective. (by lofty835)

Jesus' right leg was longer then his left. (by Dawson001)

Prince Phillip has a long standing bet about how many racist comments he can make; if he hits 1000, he's king for the day. (by Dawson001)

By 2016, it is estimated that 9/10 of the UK mentally disabled would have been on the XFactor auditions. (by Dawson001)

Blind people do not get hungry. (by Dawson001)

The pope isn't actually Catholic! (by Dawson001)

Nobody knows how the London Underground system was created. (by Dawson001)

Rihanna invented the umbrella. (by Dawson001)

Dolphins are very racist. (by Dawson001)

Jeremy Beadle's small hand is now kept In the British Museum. (by Dawson001)

Blood From a Kidney Stone

2010-08-09T23:55:00.001+01:00

We live in a capitalist society. This may shock some of you. I can only apologise for not giving you enough warning - two centuries seemed long enough, but then I'm still regularly amazed to find myself wearing shoes. Shoes!

Capitalism has survived thus far for the same reason that communism has failed thus far - personal greed.

I don't say this in a judgemental fashion. Just tonight I have eaten two cupcakes when one would have been quite sufficient. This may not sound like much, but it is symptomatic of the same issue. I may as well don a top hat and let the little curly tail point freely from my behind. I'm a bourgeois stereotype, and that's as plain as the snout on my face.

The trouble with capitalism is that it could be exercised relatively gently, but the strongest competitor will always be the person whose ethic is closest to get something for nothing. This is the ethos that survives best within that framework, so it is the one that is ultimately almost always adopted, like an orphan with big shiny eyes who smells faintly of dark chocolate.

Of course, this goes two ways. Consumers want to get the most bang for their buck, quite literally when purchasing fireworks but also metaphorically when not. On the other hand, companies want to be paid as much for their products and services as possible, and pay as little as possible to obtain them. Like a magician on a tightrope, it's a tricky balance.

Happily, there are some areas in which many people are quite happy to pay hulking great horse-heights of money in order to receive more-or-less the total sum of what Einstein famously referred to as hot bollock-all.

Here are just a couple:

1. Car parking spaces

On a recent excursion to a car park with my girlfriend (that is, an excursion which required the use of a car park - that's not the kind of hot date I treat my lady-woman to. A car park isn't Bodmin Jail, you know), it cost us a full £6.50 for just 4 hours. The car park held approximately 80 spaces, which were almost universally taken. Car park owners presumably have to pay tax on income and placement, but also they took no precautions to safeguard property, and their biggest outgoing was probably to pay the wages of the person who checked everybody had purchased a ticket.

We were essentially paying to rent some floor - which I wouldn't object to so much, but I could buy my own for less. They could probably cover their yearly costs in a day, and the rest of the year is spent laughing so hard that they sweat fat-cat-juice at our bloody expense. We bought those pissing cigars that they are blowing in our faces. The ruddy great wazz-mongering butter-tuggers.

2. Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a substance diluted in successive vials of water until (usually) not one molecule of active ingredient remains. The resulting liquid is, to give it its technical name, water.

Sometimes this water is sold in vials - sometimes a single drop is placed onto a sugar tablet and allowed to evaporate. This is, of course, the perfect way to make potent medicine.

To put this into context: Nelsons 30C Arnica tablets in Boots sell for over 6p a tablet. Sainsburys sell entire cubes of sugar for just over 1p each. Silver Spoon must be kicking themselves.

In the other direction, of course, we also, like cats, expect everything for giving very little in some circumstances.

We could apply this to the world's energy (and I'm in control of this conversation, so we shall). We demand cheap products made in China, inexpensive exotic food and means to propel ourselves about - but we also complain about the lust for oil. We are essentially whizzing all over our walls and feet and then complaining about the smell.

Without wishing to defend BP in any way, who seem to have wilfully forgone safety procedures and indulged in legalised corruption to be overlooked when it comes to lawmaking, the recent issue very soon became one of the Western world - particularly America - became up in arms about. But America is the biggest user of oil in the world (though to be fair, only 23rd per capita). This is the equivalent of screaming why the hell were you drilling for oil there?! from the centre of a motorcade, or using a sword to stab a sword-maker for making you your sword. Or learning a new language just to swear at your teacher, the Sheissekopf.

Once again, this is a simple issue of people getting what they can for as little as possible... and until people are physically unable to do so, they will continue to strike that deal. Any discussion of world resources must take account of that. Possibly more on this next week!

Fun Fake Facts

The original draft of Romeo and Juliet had three warring families: the Montagues, the Capulets and the L. Jacksons.

Mr. T is famous for his swathes of jewellery, but is unaware that it is mostly comprised of fool’s gold.

In 1994, lawyers were declared to be squid, due to issuing great quantities of ink when threatened. Sushi bars rejoiced.

While many things taste exactly like chicken, chicken itself cannot physically be tasted.

Biscuiteers McVitie's recently caused outcry for labelling products ‘vegetarian’ that are made from chocolate chipmunks.

Chemically speaking, sugar is left-wing salt.

Just over 8% of people are born with cancer of the zodiac.

A cure for Alzheimer’s has been discovered in McDonald’s cheeseburgers – but most don’t consider it worth the cure.

Machiavelli inspired deceitful political tactics; his brother Machoavelli inspired showing off buff muscles and fighting.

One in eight maracas contains a glass eye.

Britain’s democracy works on a ‘one person, one vote’ system. The person with the vote is Mrs. Gladys Morgan, Surrey.

Emma Bunton was nicknamed ‘Baby Spice’ due to a rare disease which keeps her the same size and shape as an infant.

The British East India Company's original name for tea, 'you', was dropped almost immediately due to obvious confusion. (by TomOdaighre)

Tornadoes are caused when wind gets bored. (by TomOdaighre)

Zebras are orange with black and white stripes. (by TomOdaighre)

Until 1948, every act of legislation passed by the UK Parliament had to be written with an ABAB rhyme structure. (by TomOdaighre)

Homonym is a homonym for antonym. (by TomOdaighre)

Carrot cake was originally devised as a cake FOR carrots. (by TomOdaighre)

Samuel L. Jackson's middle name is Lucy. (by Dawson001)

Twitter and Facebook were all created by China to reduce productivity levels in the Western Countries. (by Dawson001)

It is estimated, by 2020, all the orphans in the world will have been adopted by celebrities. (by Dawson001)

Humans could all see in the dark before the light bulb was invented. (by Dawson001)

The phrase "Too many cooks spoil the broth" originated after the Cook family fell in the soup mixer at the Heinz factory. (by Dawson001)

Edam is made backwards. (by TrumptonFireman)

John Bishop is a hilarious and original new comic talent. (by TrumptonFireman)

Jonathan Ross was fired from his first job in TV for using a big-faced boy as a satellite dish. (by TrumptonFireman)

Twitter is increasing productivity, improving lives and making a positive contribution to the world. (by TrumptonFireman)

First draft of Marx' book "Capital" included list of capitals of all states that existed at that time. (by aktarian)

Jousting is still an acceptable form of choosing a husband, or indeed wife, on the Isle of Man. (by waldinho2000)

'Stag do' is actually a shortening of 'stagger down', the traditional description of the groom's movement down the aisle. (by waldinho2000)

Naomi Campbell was the original inspiration for Michael Jackson’s “Liberian Girl” (by McGuireDavid)

The digital clock was invented by a man who suffered from chronic chirophobia. (by lofty835)

Right Plan for the Job

2010-07-26T18:56:00.010+01:00

Apologies for the lack of post last week - it was cancelled, partially due to family circumstances.

---

One of the first things that people say to me when they stumble confusedly upon my presence in the street or the "personal hygiene" section of Boots is holy crap! You have a job! That is so impressive and decidedly erotic!

It's true, I do have a job. And it's quite reasonable that you are impressed, as I nonchalantly place the worming tablets back hopefully unnoticed.

However, you should not take that to mean that to be unemployed is a badge of shame. In the current climate, jobs are as scarce as sense in Scientology. And, of course, in the currant climate, it rains raisins.

The paucity of openings means that any job that is worth having (i.e. not kicking babies into threshers, or recruitment) is descended upon by a swarm of hopeful, eager and attractive applicants, each more experienced and bloody galling than the last.

What this means is that if you are in the unfortunate position of searching for work, you have to be more on the ball than a circus seal.

Fortunately for you, hapless, jobless reader, I am a fount of knowledge, spewing forth wisdom like an unwell bookworm. In that light, I thrust towards your face:

Tom Nash's Unbearably Accurate Guide to Getting a Job

There are, of course, two main stages to getting a job. The first is:

Getting an interview.

1. Take time on your CV.

You may see some employers saying things like we don't even look at CVs, y'know? I've got a special place for CVs, and that's my bloody toilet roll holder!

This kind of person is an arse, and you wouldn't want to work for them anyway. Everybody else takes at least a passing glance at your CV, and so it's important to make it stand out well, or at least not stand out badly.

Things to include: charity trips; qualifications; hobbies that bring interesting or useful skills with them; a sprinkle of personality.

Things not to include: your interest in combining racist epithets to create entirely new, even more offensive terms; splashes of urine; that ill-advised period of work experience with Bin Laden.

2. Take time on your covering letters.

This is really the time to shine. Get your writin' galoshes on, because you're about to wade into the muddy waters of glory.

This needs to have personality, but it needs to have the personality of somebody suave, collected, witty and eager. If this does not describe you, without wanting to suggest that you lie, as such, I definitely suggest that you lie. In a good way.

When I say lie, of course, that doesn't stretch to the actual content of the covering letter. Nobody will believe that you can parasail while hosting airborne cocktail parties, so don't try it. It took me five long years to discover that one.

3. Be aware of your web presence.

The internet is a massive, beautiful thing, like a glorious enormous diamond - and like a glorious enormous diamond, potential employers will grind it down into a microscope if it means being able to glimpse what you're really like.

So remember that hilarious picture on Facebook of you pretending to make love to a wasp's nest? Make that private. And that "ironic" quote from Stalin? Make that private too. Make your whole damn profile private, because if there's one thing that we've learned, it's that nobody can be trusted not to cock stuff up online sooner or later.

If you have a blog with half-toasted rants about this and that or the other, edit it, delete it or hurl it directly into the sun. If you have a Twitter profile that's mostly used to insult badgers, make sure it contains no links to your professional self.

Potential employers are undersexed teenage boys living opposite the curtainless bedroom windows of their nudist crushes: given the opportunity, they will look. Make no mistake about it.

4. Be patient.

It can take months to get an interview, even if you're amazing, intelligent and your skin tastes like sparkling, fresh, dewed blackberries. If you keep plugging away, you will get an interview - so don't give up on life and start living in despair, raking clawmarks into the walls and letting your droppings lie where they fall. You're not a student anymore. Or Welsh.

The second stage is:

At the interview.

1. Be yourself.

Don't start trying to be Jet Li or Angela Lansbury at your interview. They will almost definitely immediately be able to tell that you are not Jet Li or Angela Lansbury. This is because almost everybody in the world is not Jet Li or Angela Lansbury, and so the interviewers will have had a lot of experience being able to tell who is and, more importantly, who is not Jet Li or Angela Lansbury.

If you actually are Jet Li or Angela Lansbury, of course, this does not apply. Unless you're impersonating each other. I wouldn't put it past you.

2. Look good.

It's no good spending weeks and months getting an interview, only to roll up on the day as sweaty as a triathelete's knapsack and dressed as a rottweiler accountant. Employers want to know that you will be meticulous and exact, and the best way for you to demonstrate that is to paint them a flipping great picture using your face as the canvas. You've got to feel beautiful - after all, people who are/feel attractive do better at job interviews (and a load of other things).

You should also dress appropriately. Generally speaking, a suit is never wrong - but an all-white suit with diamond cuffs will give off the wrong impression (that you are a spittle-brained knee-knocker).

3. Smell great.

Why not play with all the senses you have to offer? You can look as good as you like, but nobody wants to work in close proximity with somebody who smells like Hades' sulphuric undercrackers.

Don't overdo it, of course. Technically speaking, gassing your potential employer to death with your overapplied 'scent' is not only manslaughter, it's also a bad interview.

4. Research the company.

Just as potential employers can use the internet to spy on your naughty bits, you too can use it to discover exactly what the company's about. Look up house styles, acquisitions and takeovers, guides to their perfect candidates and, mostly importantly of all, anything you can use as blackmail material. It has to be seriously illegal for that gambit to pay off, though. Like, decade-in-jail illegal.

5. Be confident.

Confidence is the silver bullet to interview failure's werewolf; the salt to its slug. Self-confidence is immensely attractive in an interviewee, because it suggests that you know the job area well, you're a people person, and you're comfortable enough in your own skin to be as stable as a horse's house.

Don't overdo it though! Or you'll contravene point 6. Speaking of which...

6. Don't be a dick.

The single most important thing you can possibly do is absolutely, positively 100% not be a dick. Now I know that nobody reading my blog could possibly be a dick - mostly because I've got this joint booby-trapped up to the nines. If a dick started reading the blog, they'd be electrocuted, burned, beaten and stuffed full of angry hedgehogs before they could say oh, I meant to visit wordsfrommash actually.

However, your future employers don't know that you're not a dick. You need to make them understand that not only are you not a dick, but you are the anti-dick; dicks shrivel in your presence. So to speak.

So be pleasant, friendly, funny if appropriate, thoughtful and sensible. In fact, just treat a job interview like a first date, and you'll be fine. Just don't ask the interviewer back to yours for 'coffee'.

Fun Fake Facts

Twitter fun on Fridays - hashtag #funfakefactfriday. Bumper two-week edition! I've also decided to start including other people's suggestions here too.

Sailors' tales of creepy, coquettish giggling during high storms is just the natural phenomenon of Tickle-Me-Elmo's fire.

Music was pronounced dead following the Talking Clock's monotonal 200 hit 'It's Not Easy Being Green(wich Mean Time)'

Rhinos are the only other animal to experience Shadenfreude, hence Africa's huge viewing figures for You've Been Framed.

Swearing was invented in 1493 by Sir Frederick Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk.

Terrorists have faces (on average) 44% colder than those of normal people, necessitating the use of balaclavas.

The real reason for Ringo Starr's refusal to give autographs is that he completely forgot his own stupid name in 1987.

And this week's special language-themed edition:

The word 'paradigm' was invented in 1937 as a meaningless joke word. Many people have not yet got the joke.

Croatian is actually Latvian backwards. (from @Waldinho2000)

According to the OED, 'Brian Blessed' refers only to the beard and not the loud pink thing attached to it.

The alligator was originally called the 'allig'. The name changed after a misheard report about one eating a woman.

The Scots have over 1000 words for 'Englishman', none of which can legally be published.

The longest sentence possible in English is "lifetime imprisonment".

The phrase 'agony aunt' is from mediaeval times, when people would nail their aunts to their walls as a local source of advice.

Straight Outta Bodmin

2010-07-12T18:50:00.006+01:00

I recently went on an excursion with my lovely ladyfriend to Bodmin Jail. I know, I'm a hopeless romantic. Next trip I'm planning to take her to a slaughterhouse, or maybe to see High School Musical 4 (okay, that was too far).

This got me thinking about prison. This is, of course, like saying that a trip to a dairy farm got me thinking about milk. Of course it did. But for a subject that is really at the core of society, it's remarkably contentious. Prison, not milk.

Prison is a bloody horrible place. Even worse than a conversation with Uri Geller. There is the constant awareness of violence, a high degree of rape and sexually-inappropriate behaviour (both from fellow prisoners and staff) and of course, the sense of being sectioned away from society with a collection of people who have done things to make themselves worthy of being sectioned away from society.

Now, almost like a waiter to a trio of dolphins, prison is intended to serve three purposes:

1. It removes people who break society's rules from society;
2. It acts as a punishment for those caught breaking the law and a deterrant to those considering it;
3. It acts to rehabilitate people into society when they are not playing ball.

That is not to say it exists for all of those reasons for everybody. Some people want it very much more for reason 2 than reason 3, for instance.

But nobody wants not to fit into society. We have spent millions of years developing social ability and survival skills. When cut off from society, we go nutso. We go crazier than the craziest of paving. So can it really be an honest choice?

I submit this suggestion: people are born into environments they have no choice over, and with physiologies they cannot help. While infinitely complex, everything that happens to them shapes them. They always make choices, but their choices are shaped by who they are, and that is shaped by who and where and when they've been.

Society, of course, does benefit from not having people who act against it within its ranks. But is the best way to treat the problem to lock up all offenders, slowly stretching the resources of society? For me, this feels like trying to house-train a dog by picking up all of its turds and putting them into a pillowcase. Soon you'll end up with a pillowcase straining at the seams, and you'll still have crap all on the carpets. The crapets.

I am not saying that prison doesn't act as a deterrent. There is some reasonably compelling evidence that it does (though the deterrence doesn't increase with the severity of punishment). So in that sense, it does help society. But is it as much as actually addressing the causes of crime?

I don't believe we will ever eradicate crime... but by focussing more on point 3, and treating criminals as people reacting in unsocial ways (without inherent evil), you are more likely both to discover common causes of criminality and treat the individuals who have acted against society - helping to reduce massive recidivism.

Priming people to work within society is probably not best achieved by having them mix solely with people who are, for one reason or another, anti-social. That is like teaching somebody how savour fine wine by making them drink gallons of rat vomit.

Now, I understand that this is blue sky thinking. My brain is a like a summer's day seen through a sapphire or something similarly bloody lovely. What's more, it's impractical to help society by chucking the anti-social back into it. That's bandaging a papercut with a plaster made of razors. But surely there is a halfway point, between putting offenders into wider society and putting them into a small, enclosed space with what could sensibly be termed bad influences? For instance, placing them into the company of people who try to understand them and help them come to terms with why they act in ways that don't help themselves or anybody around them at all.

I know this sounds like a bleeding-heart rant - but actually, putting everybody in prison is expensive for society, doesn't prevent regression to crime and might just see more criminals back on the streets.

Anyway, that's my two pence. Don't steal it, or I'll slam you in the banger like a nail into a firework sausage.

Fun Fake Facts

The Village People's paean to serial killer Fred West was surprisingly well received.

The Gulf of Mexico now contains so much oil that the US has declared it in the Axis of Evil, and will invade next spring.

After huge chart success, Glastonbury 2011 has announced the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows audiobook as headliner.

The Macarena was originally a cut-price sporting stadium, after which the song is named.

Famous liar Derek Acorah was debunked in 2007 when the spirit world announced that not even they wanted to talk to him.

Despite their potential, 'nature's Jobsworths' giraffes are surprisingly unwilling to stick their necks out for anyone.

The expenses scandal recently resurged when every single MP was found to be claiming for a second House of Parliament.

They've All Got It Influence

2010-07-05T20:40:00.006+01:00

Who likes retreading old ground? Okay! Okay! Wow, I didn't expect such a blushingly enormous response! Haggard old ground it is.

Technically, I haven't walked these familiar peaks before, but it's an age-old debate that I am weighing into with metaphorical armour glimmering like a gold tooth in a TV presenter's lubed-up mouth.

It is the question of influence, my friends, that we must gather around to warm our brains upon like a gang of moths menacingly clustered around a gaudy raver.

How much we are influenced by our surroundings and by our own culture is a difficult question. For instance, violent films and computer games are often associated with creating knock-on real world violence.

There is little doubt that short-term changes come from engaging in violent media. Aggression levels can rise like a salty, scampish Kraken from the depths. This is entirely understandable - after all, that's why we watch films and play games: to become emotionally involved.

However, the evidence suggests that effects are inconclusive at best for short term effects beyond the youngest ages, and for long term effects at any age. I'm not definitively saying there's no link at all, because there are so many conflicting studies. This recent study found strongly for an association between violent media and aggression... though it's also worth noting there are strong objections to its methodology. I do suggest that there certainly isn't enough weight of evidence to establish a causative link.

Enough studies Nash, you wazz-monger! you screech at me, like a demented harpy with a bee in its undercrackers, gimme something I can digest now!

Very well, terrifying reader! Now what I reckon, like a modern-day Socrates or Jeremy Kyle, is that the reason some short-term influence can be seen in younger people, beyond which the evidence peters out like Andy Murray's tennis success, is that they have more difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. It doesn't affect them long term, because they continue to experience real life and discover how different it is (i.e. as different as a carrot is from the planet Uranus. Insert awful food-ruining joke here).

If it is distinguishing fantasy from reality that is the issue, then one good way to see if there's anything in that theory is to see whether mistruths that are packaged as truths do have short- and long-term effects. Put on your 3D glasses... now.

Ho and belold, they do. This is why propaganda works: mistruths packaged as reality are consumed, and leave a lasting effect, even the evidence after the event points to the contrary. For instance, my grandmother stills hates the Japanese based on propaganda stories, and people still blow themselves up in crowded areas or picket AIDS funerals because they've been told it's what their deity wants, never once considering that if that's what their deity wants, then he's kind of a hairy nadsack.

How many people still believe that the MMR jab causes autism, despite the utter dismemberment of the false "evidence"? A myriad harmful beliefs in the same vein (pun definitely intended) abound, simply because they've been sold as truth, like a bottle of warm hedgehog's urine sold as mulled cider.

The real danger comes from the fact that if you are sold something as truth, society's understanding and morals somehow no longer apply. People who believe everything they read in the Daily Mail end up in the EDL, fighting a non-existent battle that ends up with them causing criminal damage and spreading fear, ironically fuelling inter-racial tensions and creating the problem they were complaining about. Like a sit-in to protest laziness, or bathing in a bath of beans to complain about food-wastage.

In comparison a posited small, short-term effect from violent entertainment media seems insignificant and relatively harmless. After all, even if there are short-term aggression levels, the overwhelmingly morals of society should still engage, forcing the would-be violence-hurlers to re-evaluate their actions based on what they know to exist. I.e., they say I could go and kick a cricketer in the hips, but mam wouldn't like that one bit - and it's only a bit of fun off of the Weetabox, so it ain't worth it no sirree bob sir no sir bobbles.

What the world really needs, rather than censure in this regard, is a crash-course in critical thinking. And also great big hugs. Perhaps with a billboard campaign: "Are you man enough to girrus a hug?"

These are the tenets that I'll be running for prime minister on. Vote Nash 2014!

Fun Fake Facts

It is illegal for people in a relationship to eat Bachelor's Supernoodles without at least considering adultery first.

The mission to lubricate Mexico and North America has, according to BP, had 'unexpected side-effects'.

The Two-Storey Snail is the only breed with a cellar. Though not, obviously, a cellar of salt.

Human clones all became avant-garde musicians, until scientists realised they were growing them in a Jean-Michel Jar.

The Blue Whale is actually a bright yellow. It is, however, very depressed.

Tunbridge Wells has the country's 1st hip-hop school. Pupils failing "raptitude tests" are sent to "rhymedial classes".

When Chris Moyles dies, to save money on funeral costs they intend to use his arteries to nail his coffin shut.

Cricketing low: running out of balls in the 2004 Ashes final and having to bowl fruit from the umpire's shopping bag.

A 2 B, C?

2010-06-28T21:55:00.007+01:00

I have been up and down the length of this fair country, dear reader, as the actress said to the bishop with a tattoo of Great Britain on his dongler. And since I own no means of jet propulsion (yet) or any other form of mechanical move-maker, I have generally trundled by using public transport.

Public transport varies more than Madonna's image, of course. Occasionally it is clean, efficient and pleasant. This is the same occasionally as occurs in occasionally, somebody is struck by lightning at the moment they win the lottery - and then a dog steals a string of sausages from their pocket. The rest of the time, it seems to have gained an extraneous l.

We have developed the Large Hadron Collider to discover the basis of anti-matter. Fortunately we require no such gigantic metallic Smarties tube to discover what anti-fun is: it is simply the natural state of public transport in the UK.

It is negotiable, however. Not every journey via public transport need end with you curled on the floor, weeping from every pore. I, a hardened veteran from many journey-battles, am here to help. I shall liberally distribute my wisdom into your faces; all you need to do is greedily nibble at it.

I present, then:

Tom Nash's Superb if Glutinous Guide to Public Transport (the Surviving Of)

Travelling by Bus

Ah, buses. Those old warty stand-bys. You can always be sure in the knowledge that, should your car be irreversibly damaged, you can always count on buses. Unfortunately, you can usually only count on them not to turn up.

Should you manage to find one of this rare breed, however, be sure to take the following steps:

1. If there is a spare bench with nobody on it, take it. To sit next to somebody when there is a whole empty bench available is a mortal bus sin - at best, an invasion of personal space; at worst, considered to border on attempted rape.

2. If there is not a spare empty bench, however, you must decide who is to be your travelling partner. Fortunately, you have the perfect organ that evolved for this exact, precise purpose - your nose. You must sit next to somebody who does not smell of wee, vomit or evil. If nobody fits this description, you must take your lumps and stand, even if the empty seat next to Mr. Pukey Pissdevil looks tauntingly inviting to your tired old leggles.

3. Now that you are (hopefully) sat next to somebody, it is of the utmost importance that you do not engage in conversation or eye-contact. Even breathing the same air is pushing it. You're lucky you don't get arrested.

4. If somebody - probably a youth, you know what they're like - starts playing dreadful music from a mobile phone or other device, do not, under any circumstances, remonstrate with them. They'd probably give you a stabbing up or whatnot. In this situation, you have two options: firstly, you can imagine all the ways in which you would deal with the situation, and how you would coolly win the argument with wit and zing, leaving the shamefaced youth only to quietly turn off his or her ear-crap - while silently hoping that somebody else sorts it out. Secondly, you can whip out your own musical device and commence a music battle. Pick something haughty and militaristic, like Wagner. Then let this booze-sodden youth have it, classical style.

5. Be respectful of the other passengers - if you wish to partake in recreational drugs, the correct place for this is the back seats. Nobody can smell it from there, anyway.

6. There is an ancient Chinese proverb that deals well with this situation: when on the thundering metal chariot, your feet stick in a surprise substance, do not endeavour to ruin that surprise. Or in other words, what you don't know, won't make you sick up bits of din-dins.

Travelling by Train

1. If possible, reserve a seat. After all, it's often free to do and guarantees you some semblance of comfort, though of course it bears as close a resemblance to actual comfort as Janet Street-Porter does to a human being.

2. If it has not been possible to reserve a seat, remember that reserving seats is for total jerkholes anyway. sit down at a seat that has not yet been claimed, and glare angrily.

3. Should the train start to crowd up, Derren brown tells us that a surefire way to prevent people from sitting next to you is to hold their eye, smile at the and pat the seat invitingly.

4. To best annoy fellow passengers, when boarding the train, spend a long time stowing your things in the overhead compartment. Then sit at a window seat, but get up to fetch things from your bags many times during the journey. Foolproof!

5. If you wish to order something from the buffet, be sure to have the GDP of Iceland on you.

6. There aren't that many places where you get to pay 30p to take a whizz, so when you get to the station - go nuts!

Travelling by Plane

1. Today is not the day to finally try out your new Islamic fundamentalist fancy dress costume.

2. Nonetheless, when at the airport, consider making a joke about how you let somebody else with a big ticking machine pack your bag. This would certainly show The Man.

3. Reconsider when you see that the security guards are carrying guns - and perhaps even more frighteningly, latex gloves.

4. When on board the flight, dutifully ignore the safety procedures.

5. An hour later, during a patch of turbulence, become terrifyingly aware of the fact that you are in a fragile little barrel floating against all instinctual sense. Wish you had listened to the safety procedures.

6. Realise that the safety procedures would be futile anyway, since no amount of oxygen or little top-up tubes will stop you from blowing up in the plane or catching hypothermia in the cold, cold sea. Be strangely comforted by this.

7. If you see somebody feeling fearful or unwell during a wobble of turbulence, give them a wink and thumbs-up, and then exclaim weee!. They will certainly thank you.

8. Your expectations for the quality of the food should be lowered in direct propotion with the increase in its price.

9. At one point, you may have been allowed to view the cockpit. These days, asking to do this will earn you a strait-jacket for the journey and a nice interview with some rather large, armed men at your destination.

10. When you reach your destination, make sure that you are the first to unbuckle and stand up, well before the little seatbelt light has gone off. This will certainly get you off the plane the fastest - and maybe even earn you a medal!

If these guides don't help you, reader, I'm afraid that you are beyond help, in my expert, medical opinion. Don't say I didn't try!

---

New Song

Every so often, as you may or may not know, I forge mediocre little auditory splurges that you can try in your ears, if you like to. Here is one such example! It's only a very rough version, but enjoy it if you possibly can! And even if you can't.

---

Fun Fake Facts

In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis famously crammed in 80% more acting than the next leading brand of actor.

Brest in France is home to the only grape able to lactate - hence France's exclusive, fiercely guarded wineshake recipe.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor's fantasy-inspired hit, Mordor On The Dancefloor, is the most misquoted song in recorded history.

Peter Mandelson's newest rap, 'You Can't Handle The Mandleson, Son', is set to be the most pirated mp3 of all time.

The Queen of Sheba is the only known monarch whose kingdom extends exclusively to cat food.

The biggest victims of the digital switchover will be ants, whose antennae will now be entirely useless.

In a fit of Bowdlerisation, UK farmers have elected to rename the cockerel. It will now be known as 'wang-flapper'.

I'm Back, Mack, and not so Slack

2010-06-21T20:24:00.006+01:00

Remember my stupendous words on pride, reader? Remember how giddy-eyed and marmot-brained it made you feel, as though you were dropped into a world of wonder from a gilded duck giving you a thumbs-up? Well prepare your limbic system for another onslaught of ecstasy, because I’m about to give it a saucy ear-nibble in the form of talking about something similar.

If you recall, my brain-bending hypothesis is this: pride should be felt more strongly the more of a hand you had in whatever it is you’re potentially proud about. I demonstrated this with Tom Nash’s Stupendous Indicator of Pride, which incidentally has now appeared in 5 academic journals and has been given its own late night chat show on Bravo.

This time, I am going to talk about something that can almost be demonstrated on the same graph, except that it is the exact opposite of pride. It is the Clark Kent to pride’s Superman; the stutter to pride’s Gareth Gates. I’m sure you can guess what I’m talking about, since most of you will feel this particular emotion 25 hours a day. I am talking about shame. Or, if you prefer it more dramatically: shaaaaaame!

Now, it cannot have escaped your notice that I am more middle-class than the central desk in a schoolroom. I pronounce my grass to rhyme with sparse, mother to rhyme with other and not lover, and cannonball to rhyme with magpie (though this may be a plain mistake). I have a white-collar job except for days when I have a dirty neck. I can usually be found wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a pleasant slogan, like Ruffle Ruffle Tick Tock, It’s Book o’Clock or Ribena! The Sweet Treat That Can’t Be Beat!, either of which would certainly earn me a bruised eyeball if I wore it in public.

Nonetheless, I feel no shame about my middle-class roots and sensibilities. Nor do I expect anybody on any other foothold on the social strata to flop over with their head in their hands, weeping with natal misery.

This might seem like an obvious thing to say. Nash, your obvious sentiment has no place here, you might scream at me, like a seacow whose steaming algae pie has been stolen from its window-ledge.

However, for something that seems (to me) eminently sensible, people regularly nevertheless act in ways antithetical to its ideals.

No doubt you will be familiar with the common fallacy that working class people are less intelligent than middle-or upper-class people. This is so much manticore nuts, of course, and it is generally understood to be by most people these days. But there’s also a blind disgust swinging the other way, which seems to be much more accepted in society.

Why, for instance, is it okay to equate posh with jerksack? Somebody born upper-class has approximately as much choice over the family and style to which they were born as a shoelace has over being tied, or Simon Cowell’s hair has over looking like a field of tiny Guiness turds.

Sometimes, people mock other people for fun, and it’s not actually harmful. I recently spent a pleasant afternoon with somebody from Essex, and many a splendid joke was made about knifecrime and so forth. No doubt, we were sitting on top of the world, swinging our feet over the edge gleefully. This is because half of the humour in the jokes revolved around the fact that neither of us actually believed in these outrageous slurs.

But when people actually take their attitude from such arbitrary, crazy distinction, it is damaging and divisive, like a cutting review printed on a butcher’s knife. I am as uncomfortable when somebody disparagingly mutters toff twat as I am when somebody says common cockplate.

There is a counter argument that my approach ignores context. After all, Nash, you dribbling wizard, posh people have been in a position of power for centuries and they have lorded it over poorer folk without a semblance of pity or chin! It’s quite reasonable for us to widdle in their cereal bowls!

Now, I thoroughly understand and appreciate the importance of context. It is as important as remembering to double-check the connection to a colostomy bag. But it still remains true that if somebody has done wrong by somebody, then that person should shoulder the blame and the shame. But to tar everybody who was born into money (that is, a wealthy family, not a Scrooge McDuck pool) with the same manky brush is as wrong as treating people who were born into poverty as a mass and not individuals.

True, the culture that one is raised in affects the individual. Somebody born in an Islamic country is more likely to be a Muslim than a Zoroastrian. We derive our beliefs, ethics and way of understanding the world from our surroundings. But it is nonetheless somebody’s personal actions that they must account for, not those of their parents, teachers or polar bears.

This impacts on my personal life too, which as you should know, is totally out of bounds. If that abstract ball comes into my metaphorical garden again, I’m going to pop it with imaginary shears.

For instance, I absolutely refuse to take personal responsibility for atrocities committed in apartheid, since I had absolutely zilch to do with it, and I would not endorse it. However, because

I live in Great Britain, it is sometimes expected for me to feel ashamed when hearing tales of dreadful violence and segregation.

I feel unremittingly sad for the human race, and those individuals involved, of course. My refusal

to feel ashamed does not diminish my empathy for the victims. But for me to feel ashamed of that would be like the Germans of today feeling shame for the two World Wars – nuttier than the contents of a squirrel’s shorts.

On the other hand, were I to ruin a friend’s haircut with a well-placed piece of gum, I would feel terribly ashamed, and rightly so. The action makes the person, not the culture.

I am, of course, incensed with shame at my laxity in updates. But that’s all about to change, readers! Set your eyes to stunned and your knees to quivery, because Nash is back in town and he’s probably gonna be kipping on your sofa, and eating all of your bran flakes, Team World!

Fun Fake Facts

I’m a man of simple pleasures. One such pleasure is the telling of fanciful lie-jokes. I wrote a post relatively recently that consisted almost entirely of these, which I hear some folk liked.

I have a Twitter account, you know. And on this micro-blogging, psycho-blogging tool, I have

a meme called Fun Fake Fact Friday. On this day, I liberally sprinkle hearty 140-character mistruths across the internet, like lexical dandruff. And I thought ‘why am I giving these to a stinking bunch of beautiful cyberjerks when my sexually-pleasing blog readers are missing out?’.

I was right to wonder this, and now I intend to rectify the matter. Each blog post will contain the previous Friday’s fun fake facts, for your depraved pleasure. I hope you like them.

By the way, if you feel like contributing fun fake facts of your own, you absolutely blooming must – either add them in the comments here, or get your own Tweetle account and add them on a Friday, preferably with the tag #funfakefactfriday, or #FFFF.

This is a bumper load, to start us off with a bang. Enjoy!

Science fact: Butternut squashes are not a species. They are simply anorexic pumpkins.

Geog fact: There's a new New York! So New York now named 'York'. York to be 'Old York'. Mapmakers said to be 'shitting selves'.

History fact: contrary to popular belief, King Charles was not a spaniel. He was a collie.

Celeb fact: Britney “Spears” is a nickname referring to her lifelong love of whale hunting. Real name? Britney Harpoons.

Bird fact: Penguins can, in fact, fly. They choose not to do so to reduce their carbon flipperprint.

Stats fact: Deaths in Canadian hikers fell by 68% after their local grizzlies lost the right to bear arms.

Phrase fact: “you've only yourself to blame” is a corruption, referring to Cat Stevens’ Islamic name (and culpability).

When they split the Atomic Kitten, the resulting explosion left sub-Atomic kittens. Whether they are dead or alive remains to be seen.

Military history and beloved children's icons were strangely married on 1st March 1941, when Germany entered Great Uncle Bulgaria.

Often overlooked is Jesus' raising of Papa Lazarou (who later claimed the son of God to be his wife).

Religion fact: Popularised in the 16th C, Calvinism is an intriguing belief in the immutability and omnipotence of an imaginary tiger.

Xmas fact: Coca-Cola as we know it today was invented by Father Christmas. He put it in bad children's stockings to rot their teeth.

PC World was designed as a theme park. It changed direction after 7 deaths on “The OverClocker”. A Random Access Memorial still stands .

Famed intellectual Noam Chomsky has never won a game of Monopoly. He claims it's due to the game's inherent capitalist hegemony .

Maths' most embarrassing moment: when mathematicians lost the number 18,471. "We've looked everywhere but we can't find the bugger".

Insect fact: The Latin name of the common garden wasp, Vespula vulgaris, literally translates as “flying fuzzy knuckle”.

Football fact: 1997’s England manager appointment dashed the team’s hopes to enter Britain’s Got Talent as an Acapello group

Energy fact: Parrots are the only animals which can photosynthesise. They are too lazy to do so, however.

“Cats’ eyes” road reflectors were invented by Cedric “Moggy Murderer” Mansfield, the only man the RSPCA ever executed.

In a 2002 episode of Hollyoaks, all the female characters wore masks resembling Arnie. No male viewers noticed.

Element Fact: the first element to be named for commercial interests was Magnersium

Catholicism fact: To be sainted in the Catholic Church, one must be fired out of a canon.

The vuvuzela is the official WC horn due to its "drawn-out, dull & monotonous sound, perfectly complementing the sport."

The author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is “dismayed” at recent film Human Centipede’s adaptation of the orig. text.

Birthday boy Paul McCartney's favourite song is his Bob the Builder theme ring tone

Folksters Mumford & Sons have been in a family feud for years. Now their rivals are releasing an album as Sonford & Mums.

Ming the Merciless first appeared in FG only when original villain, Ming the Trouserless, inspired less fear than hoped.

Life's a Pitch

2010-04-26T20:16:00.006+01:00

I recently went to the cinema. Now before you get all giddy-eyed at my superb movie-star lifestyle, I should clarify something: you're absolutely right. They laid down a red carpet for me, a gaggle of attractive photographers clicked and whirred at me, and I'm fairly certain that somebody was fully trampled right to bloody death in the crush of people who wanted to sniff my discarded popcorn box.

My diseased imagination aside, I did glimpse at the current filmscape with a scurvied eye. And I came to the conclusion that many, many traipsing this gaudy, velveteen land have arrived at before me: most films are rubbish.

The trouble is, they are just rubbish. Standard rubbish is dull and achingly boring when you know it could be exciting, like an erotic novel on audiotape read by Droopy.

You can't help but feel that if you're going to all the bother of making a film, you might as well make a good film. But if you can't make a good film, then for goodness sake make it really, awfully, dreadfully rubbish. Give it the edge of interest that something truly bad, truly cringingly stenchworthy has. Make it at least a Sarah Palin speech.

In that light, (and more than slightly similarly to the other week's TV shows of the future) I submit the following film pitches to whichever Hollywood execs (come on, at least ONE of you three must be one) are reading. I accept kudos in the form of the words YOU FRIDGIN' GENIUS scrawled across a bureau'sworth of £50 notes.

Tom Nash's Excellent Dreadful Film Ideas

Under the Covers... Undercover

The world's most brilliant detective, Roger Canoodle, has been assigned to discover what's been happening to the employees at a bed store run by the shady Mr. Plumps. There's just one problem... the only position available is that of snuggling bed model... and Canoodle is agoraphobic!

Krakedance

A high school film with a difference - the students are all mythological monsters. These abominations of nature curiously enough have American accents, and are easily separated into the "Jocks", the "Nerds" and the "Unfathomably Sinister Devourers of Light". Mac Kraken has never been popular, or well understood - especially not by the object of his desires, Sandy Soul-Swallower. But one day a funky new dance teacher comes into town, and injects Mac with the drive and enthusiasm he needs to kick-start his high school career. Will he be able to hone his natural aptitude for breakdance, and learn enough discipline not to rend sailors limb from limb in time for the senior prom?

The Second World War II: The Warrening

The sequel to the Second World War. Little Rudolf Hitler is his father's son - born with the trademark moustache, swept hair and meaningless speculation over his sexuality. A dark story of how one boy learns the ways of his father, and brings about the Second World War II. He grows up friendly with Branston Churchill, son of Winston, but the two eventually break apart when Branston accidentally burns up Hitler's secret diary with a dropped cigar.

They meet again in battle, and Hitler gets a leg blown off. Remembering the closeness of their childhood, Branston carries Hitler and his disembodied leg back to the trenches, where they have a tearful reunion and decide only to do good for humanity henceforth. We are considering Michael Cera for the role of Hitler.

Pride and Clegg-judice

A period drama. A young woman named Anne is led by social norms to marry into the aristocracy when a passing Earl takes a fancy to her, but she rejects his advances to the point of insolence. She becomes increasingly infatuated with that nice Nicholas Clegg from the village she grew up in, who has a nice smile, kind eyes, gentlemanly tongue and policies designed to support the notion of equality across society.

Slowly Anne delves deeper into her own imagination, in which she runs away with Nicholas and he treats her with the love and respect that she deserves, and her villainous husband is left weeping and broken. One day she decides to take the plunge... but will her fantasies prove to be nothing but wishful thinking?

Nicholas Clegg to be played by Robert Pattinson, Anne's husband to be played by Nicholas Lyndhurst and Anne to be played by Nick Clegg.

The Man, The Monk And The Mad, Mad Midget

Rutherby Shackleton, a man who works in a bustling city job, one day breaks down, frustrated by the artificial nature of his job. He abandons his work and jumps from a 3rd floor window - only to have his fall broken by a passing monk. The monk offers him a spiritual life, one divorced from the empty materialism of his current existence, and offers to train his mind in the ways of his mystical religion. There is just one catch - to prove himself worthy of learning, he must first defeat the Mad, Mad Midget of Mumbai - by catching him in a fisherman's net.

Rutherby travels the world chasing the midget, who is always one step ahead of him (despite his little midget legs - a joke that is repeated several times during the film). Eventually Rutherby corners the midget in an abandoned swimming pool, and makes ready to throw the fisherman's net over him. Suddenly he realises that the chase had given him more purpose than any of the rest of his life up until that point, and that the religion the monk offered wold have been as empty as his previous city life. He realises that he loves the midget for the purpose he has given his life. The two of them elope to Marrakesh, and live happily ever after. They get married, and unseen at the wedding, the monk watches on from the bushes, and nods to himself with a knowing smile, then vanishes into the foliage.

If you do make any of these films, while I would like the money, I would also prefer to be credited as Mixmaster Disappointment, please.

A Judgement on Misjudgement

2010-04-13T18:59:00.010+01:00

Hi all. I had a rather lovely but also rather tiring weekend away with my delightful girlfriend, which is why this is late.

---

I've calmly and attractively discussed science before, and why it is important. Increasingly, as I discuss such things in real life with human beings, they tend to look at me as though I were a toenail in their soup. Exceedingly tiresome.

So, like a junkie returning for another hit, or a teenage boy left in a locked room with an underwear catalogue, I'll emptily promise you this: just this one more time.

Now, another way that people tend to react when I talk about fascinating things, besides falling to their knees with open and unending adoration, is almost in an insulted way, as though by promoting the scientific method, I am walking up to humanity and slapping it across the face with a disgusting glove all covered in bacon grease and nettles.

People say things like well it worked for me/my aunt/a local farmer I've never met but read about in a highly trustworthy Murdoch paper about things like alternative medicine, or astrology, or not stepping on pavement cracks (after which their mothers' backs were miraculously undamaged).

Unfortunately, while human judgement is spectacular in the animal kingdom, and is really astonishingly good at gauging things like personality, lying, and other human traits that it has grown up around, it is actually not that great at judging this sort of thing.

There are a great many things known as cognitive biases. The list of them is wonderfully long (the linked list may not even be exhaustive), but I'm going to pick out a few to demonstrate my point - and hopefully fascinate you into a curled up ball of quivering nerves. If this does occur, I do not give you permission to sue me, okay? Let that be the end of it.

Illusory Correlation:

If you assume that two unrelated events lead to each other, then you are a victim of this. But don't worry, you poor little flower! It's extremely common. So we get people who think that wearing a particular pair of pants helps them pass tests (which is only true if you're a man, they're very tight-fitting and you're testing for sterility), or people who believe that waving crystals over their heads is what cures their colds, rather than simple regression to the mean and not going out boozing all night until they are sick down their bibs.

Memory Biases:

The list of memory biases stretches down a chimp's arm, but this paper does a decent job of explaining some. Essentially, we can't trust our memories. For instance, people regularly confess to crimes through suggestibility techniques used by the police to root out real criminals, juries are foxed by eyewitness testimonies that are honestly but mistakenly given, and people remember their experiences of a particular medical treatment, say, coloured by the belief in its eventual 'effect' - or lack of. Also, if you think you remember seeing my face hiding in your bushes, then that is definitely memory bias of some sort or another at work.

Pareidolia:

We have an inbuilt tendency not only to see patterns of causation, but also to see patterns that resemble faces, or hear sounds we think of as words, etcetera. So when you look out of the window next, think: is that really the ghost of a mediaeval Prince of Norway standing outside, calling your name in a creepy, creaky voice or is it some old bloomers batting against a bush? If you go for the former, you believe in ghosts, visions and the Virgin Mary in your athlete's foot, and other things that people claim are mysteries and unexplained, although actually the mysterious explanation is right in that old jelly-sack of yours.

Survivorship bias:

The flawed thinking behind the belief that makes you look at lottery winners and think that looks tasty, I'll have a bit of that, or, more upsettingly, leads to AIDS denialism because it's not 100% fatal and wishful thinkers and liars focus on that.

Subject-Expectancy Bias:

If somebody expects something such as a treatment to work a given way, then the strength of that belief often affects the way that treatment works. This is why science employs controlled, randomised, double-blind tests, so that nobody is given, or can be given, expectations beyond any required in the procedures. This is how we discovered the placebo effect and the equally fascinating nocebo effect, but lack of this stringency also leads to false results from, say, homeopathy tests that are inadequately controlled. As we would expect, the better quality the trial, the fewer positive results we see. This is also why if you tell somebody a house is haunted, they're more likely to hilariously brown their downtowns when you jump out at them from a dark doorway.

This is just five out of what is technically called a fludgin' mug-ton of biases that affect our brain and impair our judgement. Why do we have all of these? Because, unlike a good hot chocolate, or kicking David Cameron in the back of the knees, our brains aren't perfect. They've evolved from modest roots without the purpose of being perfect at judging non-societal elements in mind, and the biases we've developed are either side-effects from other developments or help us to survive better in human societies and the wider world. In the same way that a recently-severed finger can be used as a pen, it'll do the job but it won't do it exactly right. For one, blood is really hard to Tippex.

Such species-wide judgemental faults are exactly what make the scientific method the best way we have to interpret and examine the world around us. It takes us away from such flawed subjectivity, and allows a more objective view, often which goes against so-called common sense.

Of course, science is a tool - it can be used well or badly. The fact that scientists are humans like any others - with the exception of your glorious host, who is faultless in every regard, of course - means that they too are prey to the same fallacies of judgement. This may include:

Confirmation bias: looking to substantiate your beliefs by focussing on evidence that supports them only. This is true as much for scientists, who can engage in cherry-picking evidence, as much as those who decry science as a pitchfork of the soulless, stainless steel whitecoats. The little sister of this is obviously Not Invented Here - where something outside your own beliefs or subset of society is seen as wrong because it is not from that subset. So if somebody performs a scientific experiment but doesn't bear 'scientific credentials', they may be rubbished. Equally, if a scientist damns chiropractic, they are often dismissed as being part of a wider "Big Pharma" conspiracy.

Nobbling: people have needs - some people want to advance in their professions, others are scared of legal difficulties. If a case goes against something that is very lucrative for somebody else, it is entirely possible for them to be nobbled. This is not a cognitive bias, as such - more a sad fact of life.

Nevertheless, just because a tool can be used badly, doesn't make it a bad tool. The most exquisite microscope in the world can be used to bludgeon your grandfather, but that doesn't mean that the microscope is shoddy (although it would probably need to go in for repair). Used well, however, it can uncover things we may never have possibly ever seen without it.

Who-Manist?

2010-04-06T19:33:00.008+01:00

To make up for the dull and drudging horror of yesterday's update, I thought I would chuck more words at you, in the hope that the dreadfulness of The Candle Boys will somehow dilute in extra text.

So undoubtedly you are all wondering minute-to-minute about my philosophical position on life. You are scratching at the doors of your minds, carving questions into the tables with a (hopefully metaphorical) bread knife. This agitation is quite understandable, your psychologist will agree, as he presses the silent red button under the table.

The answer is, of course, that like most reasonable people I'm not entirely certain yet. People who are entirely certain about things generally underestimate the complexity of everything, like a squirrel ruining a difficult equation that happens to have been laid out in acorns.

Essentially, though, I have a few beliefs based on sense and evidence. For instance, I am pro-equality for demographic differences. I believe that men, women, middle-class, working-class, upper-class, all stripes of skin colour, homosexual, heterosexual, group-sexuals, grope-sexuals, soap-sexuals, metro-sexuals, Petri-sexuals and so boringly on ought to be treated based on their personalities and individual traits rather than on their survey-enabling groupings. Anything else is somewhat nonsensical and tends to be based on hard-to-translate prejudice hanging over from other religious or ethical leanings dispersed by parents, peers or authority figures. It's widdle in the hot-tub of life.

So based on this, I am an egalitarian. How dull, right? Right. I just bored my own eyes out. Any typos in the rest of this blog are frankly going to go unnitoced.

Anyway, about 4 months or so ago, I came across humanism. And I thought: HEL-lo... in the manner of an intrigued archaeologist uncovered a knife in the back of a long-dead king. Not like this.

As it turned out, humanism shares a lot of my deeply-held tenets. Rejection of faith in favour of rationalism and evidence-based belief; the egalitarian principles that I mentioned above; philosophical consideration of issues; a cool name that sounds like it's from Star Trek.

Intrigued, I asked for a subscription to New Humanist magazine for Christmas (the irony was not only not lost on me, but positively warmed my belly on chilly days. Irony is better than hot chili soup and a battery acid bun). It was a delight to find a magazine that actually raises fascinating points and seeks not simply to inform but to stimulate. Not just on religion (although a lot of it does cover that) but on a wide variety of topics that are genuinely fascinating, and usually well-researched. This was as pleasant a discovery as when you dig around in a litter tray and find a golden nugget. Although I'm not sure what you're doing digging around in litter trays. You should be ashamed.

True, every so often the articles are seriously silly, but even they give you the chance to exercise critical thinking and consider the reasons why they are wrong. And sure, it can come off a little smug at times, but I'd rather read something that was smug but making reasonable points than something that was humble and shit. Better a peacock than a broken sparrow. Better a Ferrari than a bucket of wee (unless you're putting out a housefire).

The way I came to this is a healthy and natural one, I feel. I have developed my beliefs and now come to a discipline with which they align. I was not embossed with a belief system as a child and then had my ethics tailored to match it. It's like me growing up to decide that I quite like the colour green, rather than being told that I love green and should treasure it above all the other colours because I've been told I should. And that it died for my sins.

So now I identify myself with humanism fairly strongly, albeit a certain strain of humanist. For instance, I agree with its placing of people first (putting the 'human' in 'humanism', you dolt) in terms of humanity: while I don't think that human life - and comfort - is sacrosanct, I do think it is of paramount importance. This is why I am for medical testing on animals. And comfy sofas.

However, I don't believe, as many humanists appear to, that humans are necessarily 'special'. We have this magnificent ability, donated little by little by evolution, to process and create and compare, but it is as much a product of natural and sexual selection as anything else. An electric eel's zappy power is astonishing and incredible too, but that doesn't mean it is somehow elevated above animals that can't imitate the Emperor. Incidentally, The Emperor? Half eel, half Duracell Bunny. You heard it here first.

Anyway, that's where I sit in the great hot-tub of life: in the corner, nervously scratching my nads and hoping that what the other guys have just released into the water came from a joke shop and is just very realistic-looking.

A Novel Idea

2010-04-05T20:41:00.003+01:00

Sorry I was away last week, I had a rather angry throat infection that did its damnedest to dig a hole in my neck and lay barbed wire eggs. In case you don't understand what that would feel like, I will sum it up: ow.

Anyway, in the accompanying fever that turned my forehead to ocean and my spine to spindly stick, I came to pen the beginning of a short novel within my burning brainicles. This novel will thankfully never exist. It exists only in the fanciful uterus of the imagination, like black tartan and knife-shoes.

I will give you the first chapter of it, though, visible beneath. It is known only as:

The Candle Boys

Roger sat. He sat in his little golden cup and he sweated. His waxy complexion worsened with the gradual trickling down of his little flame hat. It sat in his brains like a hot coal, burning through his thoughts. Beads of textured persipiration ran down his side.

"Roger!" came the call across the table, the familiar shrew tones of his mother, "Roger, where are you? If you're wearing that stupid flame in your wick again, I'll box your ears!"

Roger had no ears. He was a candle.

In fact, his mother was a cruet set, and thus could not vocalise her annoyance in any form. She was just a cruet set, embossed with a rather chintzy blossom-bound scene. All of the previous and following exchanges are strictly metaphorical.

"There you are!" Roger's mother said. Or rather, didn't say. "And with that awful flame on your head, as I thought! Take it off at once!"

Roger turned half-away, his non-existent face resolving itself into a grimace of determination.

"I c'n wear what I wan'." His wick sputtered a little in the cold air. His eyes crossed briefly.

His mother's eyes filled with tears. She half-turned away with a clatter.

"I don't know where I went wrong with you, Roger. I can't watch you destroy yourself like this!"

The yellow triangle was down to Roger's nose now. His mouth filled with his own melted head.

"'M j's 'njoyin' m'self" he bubbled. His upper lip dissolved and dribbled down his back. His mother let out a despairing mmp! and clackled away.

Roger crumpled, his lower lip spread upwards in a big gleeful grin until it, too, was dispersed by heat.

----

The great dinner gong was sounded, and The Crockery Council came to order. The CC had been formed twelve years previously, when the estate's owners moved into their new home following a marriage, and lots of different dinner implements were introduced anew to each other. Wedding gifts coalesced, and the CC formed naturally enough to ensure that the new community would be a melting pot of melting pots.

The following meeting is entirely fictional, of course. The Crockery Council had no sense of volition whatsoever.

"Enough is enough!" cried a gruff old fruit bowl, "our finest candles are destroying themselves with this burning scourge!"

The assembled dinner pieces chittered assent. Roger's mother was shrieking great sobs noisily and pointedly.

"How many of your have seen your loved ones melted into brainless puddles?" continued the fruit bowl, jiggling his banana and grapes furiously.

Shouts of assent from the council members - one butter knife cried "my Winnie burned herself out just last week!". Nearby dessert forks tsked sympathetically.

"But what can we do?" came the whine of the custard jug, stained with puddings past.

The Crockery Council descended into jibbering and muttering, as each strove to be heard above the non-existent din.

"Order! ORDER!" shouted the fruit bowl, and he ordered the dinner gong to be struck once more. With the ripples of its crash rebounding through the room, the group's cacophony died down.

"We must form a strategy!" the fruit bowl announced, "tactics! A plan!"

A dark voice came from the back of the room.

"If you really want to keep a handle on your candles," it said, in a voice deep and rich that made the blinds flutter and the napkins wilt, "you've got to fight fire... with fire."

The Crockery Council turned as one to see a large yellow box of matches, sitting calmly with a burned match hanging loosely in its jaws, apparently absorbed in its own decorations. It continued,

"And I'm just the box to show you how."

TO BE CONTINUED (never).

I think this is an apt demonstration of why I must never be allowed to become ill ever again.

Tele-Visions of the Future

2010-03-24T21:21:00.011Z

I don't watch much television these days. It's not in protest or anything. I don't even know what kind of protest could possibly be achieved by me not watching television. Perhaps if I were protesting against the conditions that makers of TV dinners work under. More cheese! Less sleaze!

In truth, it's because there is very little on television of interest. That's not to say, though, that when you do sit down in front of the blether-box with a few cans of carbonated booze-whizz and a mouthful of salted snacks, you don't find something to hurl your eyeballs at. There is almost always something that you do watch. It's just not usually anything you really want to watch.

This is a weird form of semi-masochism that is much more healthy than slapping your genitals with a ping-pong bat, though much less healthy than, say, force-feeding yourself balanced meals at 3 evenly-spaced times throughout the day. Why on earth am I watching a programme about a man who collects his fingernail clippings in a Princess Diana memorial bowl? you think. Or why am I wasting my life watching a dog prance about dressed as Wilma Flintstone?

It's not the fault of television producers that their output is so jaw-droppingly emetic. Or rather, it isn't wholly their fault. Both creators and viewers have to take dreadful credit (dredit) for its proliferation. TV producers might be feeding us medical waste, but if they're the ones holding the shovels, we're still the ones opening our mouths wide and rubbing our awful bellies.

Is there a point where the buck stops? I'm not sure. I can't help but feel that the buck is tumbling freefall through metaphorical space. If we could somehow harness energy from televisual degradation, we could have limitless power. And plug our tellies into it.

I suspect that the half-life of televisual quality is predictable over time. How long does it take teleivison to become twice as dreadful as it was? It might be measurable in minutes. We could set our watches by it.

It therefore becomes possible to predict television schedules. Thus I present:

Television Highlights for Thursday 24th March, 2011

7.00 pm - BBC2: The Secret Life of... Condiments

Ever wondered what ketchup dreams? Or why mustard isn't really all that keen on anything? Sit down with your favourite spreadable and watch as Jon Tickle gives us a fascinating - and sometimes controversial - look at the aspirations of condiments, as well as some of the obstacles they find they have to overcome. Contains some scenes of horseradish distress.

8.30 - Channel 4: Flea Are Not Amused

Flea, bassist for famously overhyped American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, finally gets to live out his long-standing dream of dressing and acting like Queen Victoria. Laugh as he struggles with a ruff! Gasp as he earns an unmerited reputation for prudishness! Get bored and turn over after the first 7 years of a forty-year mourning period!

9.15 -Five: Where Are They Now? Thora Hird

A 5 minute recap of Thora Hird's greatest stairlift commercials, followed by a live 25 minute interview with the late actress by Danny Dyer. Contains scenes of a self-obsessed dickney shouting at a gravestone.

10.00 - BBC 3: Two Pints of Lager, a Packet of Crisps and a Handful of Notes

In this first episode of yet another inexplicably recommissioned series, the shitcom gets a new twist: the pub setting is revamped into a strip club. The two main male characters, Jimbles and Roddlepock, get into an hilarious misunderstanding over the no touching policy, while the main female characters, Sandy and Candy, pay lip service to post-feminism by catering to misogynistic fantasies in a self-perpetuating cycle of misery - to a laughter track!

11.00 - BBC2: Newsnight: In the City

In an attempt to "youth up" serious programmes, the traditional format of the current affairs programme is given a sexy injection. This week, the Home Secretary faces hard-hitting questions about apparently hypocritical policies, his involvement with the recent murders for money scandal and his favourite sexual positions. Contains scenes of Jeremy Paxman in lingerie.

11.30 - Channel 4: Auntie's Extremist Bloomers

A series of blooper reels from terrorists through the ages. Contains footage from Bin Laden's tapes in which he accidentally says he will cause unimaginable scenes of devastation and erection, and an early clip of some IRA members claiming responsibility for the murders of thirty-three innocent people, which sounds really funny in the VT because of their accents. Presented by Patrick Kielty. Contains scenes of Patrick Kielty.

12.00 - Five: Midnight Cress

Slow-motion footage of cress. On until 9am. Repeat

The Libel Bible

2010-03-08T21:56:00.007Z

Greetings, long lost readers! I hope that in my absence your eyes have not withered, possibly due to crying out all available fluid, because I have got things for you to read today! Things that may or may not include words sautéed in syntax. You lucky scamps!

I missed last week's update altogether because I was absolutely shattered. This is a good reason, I'm sure you'll agree. If you're apoplectic, perhaps you are too attached to this blog. Wait, what am I saying?!

Anyway, first on the agenda today is a minor addition to my lexical vomit two weeks ago on the subject of libel. As happens depressingly frequently, I read back over the post and realised that in introducing the subject, I never got around to making the points I intended to make. So I'm going to do that now as a sequel of sorts. Hopefully one in the Empire Strikes Back vein, rather than the Starship Troopers 2 one.

Libel Bible Two: The New Testament

Okay, so I've discussed why Britain's libel laws are bad in simplistic terms. But what is so bad about them besides their undemocratic edge of fiscally-led faux justice? I'll tell you, surprisingly attractive reader! There's no need to look so concerned! Unfurrow that brow!

Our libel laws are currently a hamper to progress. This is best seen in two lights - scientific progress and societal progress.

Scientific progress is obstructed by the fact that dissent is easily quashed currently. Many people seem to believe that the scientific community is one faceless mass brought together by a sterile and spiritless ideology - whereas this simply isn't true. Science is a tool, and people from all colours of the ideology spectrum come to it. When done properly, this doesn't matter, because science is all about producing objective evidence: whether an experiment is done by a racist or a small confused duck, if the methodology is stringent and well-performed, the result ought to be the same.

This means that heated debates occur all the time, and that the scientific 'community' (for want of a better phrase - and I really want a better phrase. Community is as meaningless as paradigm became) exists on the slashing, cutting edge of this debate. This is, far from being divisive, absolutely essential to the scientific method.

No scientific study is perfect. There are always drawbacks - funding; sample size; the duck's inability to satisfactorily grip a pencil. It is up to the scientific community (ugh) to find every little pedantic problem they can with every study done, through the process of peer review, and then weigh that against the strength of the conclusions that the study draws.

This can get quite heated - Albert Einstein famously called Niels Bohr a sweaty shit-slapper, and Richard Owen described Darwin in terms that melted a bishop's ears. But there's no time for niceties in peer review - people need to know the honest problems with a study before they can judge its worth, and no-one benefits from bashful smiles and awkward eye-contact.

However, currently, if a drug company, say, decides that your description of its pills' ill-effects of making people digest their own feet are likely to put people off them, or perhaps it are hawking vitamin pills as AIDS cures, it is able to engage in a libel case with you. If you are understandably daunted by the legal fees involved, not to mention the time and heartbreak, you are under a great deal of pressure simply not to mention their problems.

This, then, is a hamper to scientific progress.

It is also a hamper to social progress - because it can be used to silence truth that is of public value.

It is clearly in the public interest to let people know that their tax money is being used to fund a murder-village, where thousands of people get brutally nibbled to death every day and their blood used to shine Nick Griffin's shoes. People have a right to know this sort of thing, and it improves society when the inevitable outcry kicks the perpetrators into a well.

This is not to say that the public has the right to know everything. As mentioned last week, libel laws are used to obtain information on the private lives of that peculiar strain of person arbitrarily named celebrity, which does not benefit society at large, even if it does fill a disgusting void in its awful sickly mind-guts, like a McDonald's hamburger made of turdy tramp fingers.

This is not a good use of libel laws, and it is not what they were set up to do. Unfortunately, along the way, we seem to have lost our perspective, like somebody walking through a greasy mist whose glasses inevitably become unusable.

Happily, there has been some good news on the matter this week: Jack Straw has done something right for the first time since he slapped himself around the face as a 5-year old. Hopefully this is the first small step of many along the long road to betterment. Because our currently libel laws are like butlers - they only work for rich wankers.

Geoffrey from the Fresh Prince is excluded from the above analogy, of course.

Libel La Vida Loca

2010-02-24T17:57:00.009Z

You know me, my beautiful, member of the Intelligentsia reader. I don't like to cover things that are topical in case a) people are able to uncover my vast, Saharan ignorance or b) the post veers into areas that are dangerously close to being interesting.

However, there is, currently, an undercurrent of excitement and trepidation running through English law that has got my excitement-glands working overtime.

No, I'm not referring to the altogether dreadful Digital Economy Bill (which ignores educating and stimulating Britain's poorest and makes a mockery of democracy in favour of helping the world's richest defend a dying business model). Well done for thinking that, though! You and me... we could really go somewhere, baby.

No, I'm talking about Britain's libel laws. There's quite a kerfuzz bubbling at the moment, because people are only just waking up to the fact that they are quite spectacularly awful in terms of minor things like ensuring free speech and stimulating progress and just not being really, really terrible, like a reality television show set inside Simon Cowell's colon.

A lot of people have written about this. I mean a lot. Probably more blogs have been written about this than hilarious jokes about Tiger Woods that revolve around holes or balls or 9 irons - the latter of which I actually don't understand myself.

Nevertheless, like a disgruntled rower coming home to find his wife in bed with his cox, I'm going to stick my oar in.

The reason that our libel laws stink are essentially that they allow people with more money to intimidate people with less money when they say things about the richer people that they don't like. Like if I were to say that Rupert Murdoch is a crusty old badger-buggerer with stale Turkish Delight for skin.

How does this work? Through the ability to hire better lawyers, and even more basically, to drag astonishingly lengthy - and thus costly - suits through the courts, effectively bankrupting the defendant. The average libel case costs more than a platinum moon filled with oil; it is valued at a mother's love squared.

This is essentially the equivalent of a fully-fueled Morris Minor racing a Vectra with only quarter of a tank of petrol to a point that requires 3/4s of a tank. It doesn't matter that the former is a shittier car, it's how much further its resources can stretch that matter.

Currently, our laws are massively stacked in favour of the claimant. Although there are some clauses that say it can't be classed as libel when it is clearly presented as opinion, even these are ignored like an accordionist in a lift. Such as in the recent case with Simon Singh.

Simon Singh, as well as being a journalist, mathematician and science writer, is a man who had the sheer, brain-curdling audacity to point out the many flaws of chiropractic. Imagine! I sincerely hope that clattering sound was your jaw hitting the floor.

In a Guardian article, Singh decried chiropractic, and described it as bogus - a word which the British Chiropractic Association claim mean that he accused them of wilfully misleading people.

Quite apart from the fact that I'm not sure what else you can call continuing to treat diseases with - and make a lot of money from - practises based on a solid lack of evidence or scientific sense, his column was clearly printed in an area set aside for opinion. It was even printed on the top of the page, for the hard-of-thinking.

Nevertheless, this case has been considered seriously in the courts. This is equivalent to the courts seriously considering the Fat Controller as an accomplice in the Great Train Robbery - utterly preposterous.

But thank goodness it has. Because now we stand on the brink of a decision that could change British libel law. And crikey heck, does it need to be looked at. More than a suspiciously plastic daffodil on a clown's lapel.

Because we live in a country where the News of the World can quite legitimately tear a man's life apart after seeking appeal from the courts, and John Terry can do nothing but reflect that surely there must be bigger shits in the world than him (even though he is a footballer)... but when a massive oil company is discovered to have made a whole community of people ill, with some deaths, and their internal documents betray that they knew the dangers to human life all along, and then British news wants to report on it, libel laws ensure that the media are silenced.

And surely that's not right.

I urge you all to sign the petition for libel reform as one of the most important ways you can use your name. It's far more satisfying than texting it in to Big Brother or Babechat.

-----

Interesting Links

Related to this post:

An amusingly poker-faced site on chiropractic. Laugh while you learn!

WikiLeaks - a place that cheerfully ignores any document's classified nature. Currently down - but if you're interested in finding offending Trafigura, or indeed most other libel-silenced, documents, this will be the place for you, when it returns.

Another Whinging Delay

2010-02-22T21:21:00.002Z

Hi guys - I'm about to be a rather large jerk to you.

I'm beyond shattered, as a result of a number of factors but mostly for not sleeping between about 9am on Saturday and 11pm on Sunday.

Another of these factors is a large Awards ceremony which I, along with everybody at work, have been busting a nut to get preparation done for. More than one nut. A whole nut roast.

This Award ceremony is going to be on Saturday, and I won't be sleeping then either.

All of this means delays delays delays again, quite embarrassingly. Here's the deal:

I'm going to get one up on Wednesday (client meeting tomorrow evening);
I'm going to get one up next Tuesday.

Then it will be back to Monday as per usual.

Sorry to let everybody down with this - but the physical world sometimes gets in the way.

Love of love!

Consider Me Your Confidentist, Filling The Cavities of Your Soul

2010-02-15T20:09:00.007Z

Confidence makes the man.

What it makes the man, I can't quite put my finger on. But confidence makes him it, so there you have it.

Confidence is, in one swell foop, mankind's greatest weapon and its deadliest foe. It is the sweetest sugar in humanity's porridge, yet also laced with strychnine. It is our fist raised it triumph, but also used to slap ourselves around the face by life, as it shrieks why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?

Confidence pushes people into actions and feelings that make their lives worthwhile; a lack of it strips them of self-esteem.

Between 8 and 12% of people in most countries may fall foul of depression - it is one of world's most prominent diseases. As a statistic, it certainly makes depressing reading. And I firmly believe that, alongside other factors like a general feeling of dissatisfaction coupled with an absent sense of entitlement, one of the biggest catalysts in this downcast epidemic is a lack of confidence.

What is it? It seems a surprisingly powerful but underunderlined state, like the world's most beautiful painting hidden under a sack cloth under a sign written in urine saying LOOK AWAY.

Many people look at confidence and say, well, you're born with it. You gots it or you don't, Sam - and you don't, so make yourself useful and get outta my barn. And take off that hat - you look ridiculous.

To some extent, I guess, this is true. Some babies seem to be instant waltzers in the dancehall of life; others immediately mark themselves out as sitting on the chairs along the side, picking their fingernails and sighing loudly when they catch the time, which is actually pretty impressive for a baby, considering.

But to say that birth is the be all and end all is to mark yourself out as equivalent to a hick looking at a rainbow and saying yep, that's white, or a label on a bottle of Chablis describing the contents as roughly wine-flavoured, give or take. It's wildly too simplistic.

Confidence is, after all, a matter of mind; be mindful that matters. As with most mental states, it's as malleable as a baby's brain-box.

For instance, I have before chattered my woes about NLP. NLP boasts a rather successful hit rate for improving confidence, mostly because people can be persuaded to think differently when they think they're being cured. It's that impeccable internal medical genius Dr. Placebo again, but it's no worse for that.

Actually, a caveat: while the theory behind NLP is, for the most part, all tin can lids, takeaway cartons and cat sick, they do have some techniques based in the sensible world (which helps to confuse it with actual science, of course, but on a pragmatic level: if it works, it works). One of these depends on shifting associations. This is the kind of thing that psychiatrists have been doing for years to kick out phobias, but never mind. If you've always thought of yourself in negative terms - past, present and future - that informs your actions, appearance and attitude almost irreparably. This, of course, leads directly to negative feedback - if you act like a weeping willow, you'll be treated like one. It starts with the associations, and ends up with people pelting you with rotten cabbages as they chant loser! Loser! Kick the loser! Right in the shins!

So since it's at least partially a brain thing rather than wholly genetic, you can indeed become more of a confident person if you resolve to become more confident. There's nothing holding you back other than your own stupid illusions. It's one case where seeing the glass half-full is not just another wanker's cliché, but can genuinely improve your life.

It makes you more sexually attractive (although it's not a miracle worker, so don't expect the Stynx effect), you'll try more interesting things and you'll feel happier inside yourself as you are perceived as a more interesting person.

And that is why confidence is fascinating and I'm quite confident you'll agree.

Just One Thing

2010-02-08T18:32:00.007Z

I am a single man.

This simple term often comes with connotational baggage, in the same way as the relatively gentle and semantically easy I'm pregnant comes with a shuddering shaft of terror thicker than the fatty deposits in Chris Moyles' arteries.

It tends to go one of two ways. It can mean that you are a bachelor, which comes with its own connotational handbag; not the image of a suited-and-booted gentleman about town with a rose between his teeth and a pencil-thin moustache, but rather that of a shave-headed boor screaming, fighting and vomiting in the street, then retiring to an alley with a spaghetti-haired strumpet for a few minutes of porcine and distinctly unromantic liaison.

It can also summon the image of the perennial singleton; the man destined to love naught but five digits with a palm for a bonus ball. This man is forever foetal, can recite pi to fifty thousand digits and will almost certainly boast more casual sweaters than a laid-back jogging community.

In truth, of course, binary distinctions are unhelpful at best; damaging and misleading at worst. I am neither of the above men, yet I am single. I am also, it may shock you to learn, relatively happy.

So many people these days, it seems, simply can't bear the thought of living outside a relationship. We hear the moans winding up as special occasions approach. I can't believe I'm going to be single again for Valentine's day/Christmas/my birthday/a Tuesday they whinge. To this I reply a stupendous and blistering great so what?

I would very much like to find somebody with whom I share a certain connection, that special edge of gold that can cut directly to your heart. However, I don't feel that there is anything missing from me since I haven't found that - and I'm not going to jump into a relationship with somebody I don't feel that tingling affinity with just because they're there. If I did that, I'd also have to become romantically entwined with my boss, my binmen and my kitchen table.

Of course, I don't believe in true love as a sparklingly unique and once-in-a-lifetime entity; to believe that there is just one person out there for you is to deny all the complicated chemistry and biomechanics that go into creating that feeling of love. Nature is constantly telling you to love the one you're with - but I can feel like my bladder is full without having to instantly urinate over the nearest wall, shoe or canine.

Yes, there is a certain element of belonging, trust and accomplishment that the single person misses out on, but it is worth spending more time finding somebody who genuinely complements your own personality particularly well rather than just finding any old John or Jane and clinging to them like a limpet for as long as possible before snapping off and severing all contact with them, decrying them as a bastard or bitch or sheep-worrier to anyone who'll listen.

It strikes me that if you can't be happy single, you can't be happy with your own company. If you're not happy with your own company, you shouldn't expect anybody else to be either. Take the time to love yourself before you hurl your love out into the ether at anybody who happens to be in the firing line, like a blind person waggling their stick at the world, trying to find a postbox in a forest.

The way that a lot of people look for love seems to be fundamentally flawed in this respect. Another way seems to be their method of searching.

Firstly, if we take a look at dating sites, what do we see? Men looking for women who act like men and women looking for men who act like the equivalent of the omnipotence paradox - but with better abs. If you want a bad lad, you'll receive a man who is basically a teenager's good night in - little more than a cock and a clenched fist. If you want a romantic, you'll get someone soppier than a Hallmark puppy directing a rom-com. There is no crossover here - you cannot have both. In a Venn diagram, these two sets veer apart so wildly, they actually appear in other, unrelated Venn diagrams (see below).

I guess what I'm saying in all this is: know who you want to be, and what will make you happy. Then all you can ask is that your future partner does the same.

Actually, I suppose I'm also saying one other thing. And that is: hey ladies - I know how to work a Venn diagram. Form an orderly queue.

----

I think I'm going to start putting any interesting links I've discovered in the week into my blogposts, in a section that I like to call:

Interesting Links

If you like false facthoods, you'll love, or at least probably not loathe, Rock Myths - a blog with more lies in than an MP's tax forms.

If, like N-Dubz, you don't want to have to display any talent, yet still create music, try this: the Tone Matrix. Like Yamaha's Tenori-On but a bit different, actually. And everything you do to it makes a beautiful sound like starlings kissing milk bottles!

Why I Am Not Evil (no relation to Google)

2010-02-01T17:24:00.012Z

Every so often, it's appropriate for me to mention in conversation that I work in marketing. I try to keep it to related instances, so more:

Person: Where do you work?
Me: I work at a marketing firm.

than:

Person: Do you know where the butter aisle is?
Me: No but they are marketing it terribly I KNOW BECAUSE I
AM A PROFESSIONAL OKAY

If you want to congratulate me on my seriously excellent relevance skills - and you should -please do so via an online form or cake-bakery.

On those occasions when it is reasonable for me to shiv it into conversation (such as when business networking, on a date or screaming at a construction worker), there is generally a rather binary split of response. Reasonable and lovely people tend to be either interested, or pretend to be (which I appreciate almost as much). People who are the mental equivalent of a Chinese crested dog's facial appearance tend to go on about me selling my soul.

Now I am perfectly certain that the soul as a commodity (or even an entity) does not exist, and it would definitely be laughed out of any stockbroker's saloon. But even if a soul could be packaged, sold and bought in terms other than those of slavery or charity auctions, going into marketing would not be relevant in the slightest. It is like suggesting to somebody who has made a blancmange that in order to do so, they must have had to slap a goat. In the words of Mario, it-a makes-a no sense-a.

Nevertheless, one of the most popular contenders in this decade's Miss Conception beauty pageant is that a career in marketing is synonymous with degradation, exploitation, stultification and mastication. Probably because of all the puppies and orphans that we chew on.

I am almost certainly not evil. I am definitely no more evil than your average carthorse, whose biggest sins are mostly hay-based. So what are these accusations on about?

Take, as an example, this hysterical post. SEO is one service that most marketing companies offer, including, increasingly, my own.

The brunt of this rather red-faced rant is SEO is easy - you can find loads of free information about it on the internet. Marketing companies are either therefore doing evil, underhand tricks to poke Google in the eye, or they're charging you for something you could do yourself for free. And it's probably both, the colon-cobbles!

Just because SEO relies upon a number of freely-known principles doesn't mean that any given company has somebody with the time to use them. This chap also makes rather large assumptions about people's knowledge bases; just because he has read about, used and is au fait with these principles of SEO, he assumes that everybody is. But despite Britain now whirling around in a digital jacuzzi, giggling at the bubbles and playing footsie with Europe, not everybody is as technologically astute as this fellow. A lot of people need a helping hand, and that is what their marketing company is for.

Undoubtedly there are companies thriving mostly on black hat SEO practises, but Sauron existing doesn't negate hobbits. Only one thing negates hobbits, and that's foot-shaving.

Moving into more general territory, there's a lot to be said for advertising and marketing in general. Yes, okay, I completely hate the faux-realistic plastic-soap-opera paper-plot-twattery of the BT adverts too, but that doesn't mean that all advertising is terrible, even if it is breaking up television programmes like boulders through greenhouses. There are horrible, awful books around too, but that doesn't make Catch-22 worthless.

How do you find out that a band you like is playing near you, or that a good film is coming out? How do you discover that there's a new novel by your favourite author, or even (if it's the kind of thing you're into) that you can now dye your hair for some reason with some sort of glorified bleach that's apparently amazing?

Yes, if you're marketing a horrible product or service, then people are right to resent you, and steal your snacks. Simply raising awareness of something, though, is not enough to make you the son of Satan.

And even if it did, Satan probably isn't all bad. He just needs better PR advice.

I Am Not A Dancing Bear

2010-01-24T09:27:00.013Z

Well bloody, bloody hell! Imagine seeing you here. You... You've aged. Your skin, once so smooth and supple, has lost its elasticity, I'm afraid. Time has carved its calling card into your face. But I still love you, lovely reader! I'm sexually revolted by you, of course, but emotionally - it's all still there. Thanks for coming back!

I am now back online, two weeks and £240 worse off. Usually I would not pay such exorbitant sums for little bits of metal and plastic - but I love you too dearly to depart with such a graceless amputation. I cannot quit you, readers, and I hope that you appreciate the vast costs involved. Feel free to send money to help to pay for it; I will accept any percentage of the total cost, from 0.01% to 8000%. It's only right. In return I'll make you all shareholders in Nash Blog Ltd (not yet recognised by Wall Street).

Anyway, here comes a much-delayed blogpost!

--

I am not a dancer. There, I've said it. Bring your spiky sticks and polish up your finest jeers, because I'm coming out of the closest closet - unlike whiskey, winks, Supernoodles and the idea (but not the reality) of pineapples, dancing is not something that I enjoy.

Actually, I've never made a secret of this, but over the Christmas period I was reminded of the unfair attitude of the entire bastard world to this topic by David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker (both men of esteem and reason) on a programme called The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. In this clip, we see Mitchell quite rightfully and righteously defending his right (three rights don't make a wrong, alright?) not to dance. The rest of the show makes regular reference to this 'curmudgeonly' attitude, with the guests and audience all trying to make Mitchell dance. I easily feel his slightly squirmy pain, because I have been in that situation many times. Not in front a studio audience, you understand (I have a face for fax) but having a lot of people trying to make you dance when you really, really don't want to.

There seems to be a general consensus in society that everybody must love dancing no matter what. Well I have got news for you, society: there are people out there who not only don't enjoy it, but who positively loathe it, with a venom usually reserved for mosquitoes and Monday mornings.

There is, it's true, apparently some instinctual basis; there is evidence that the dancing phenotype helps to glue societies together and is genetically measurable. However, as I've discussed before, instinct alone is not enough to render something worthwhile or good.

The prevalence of dancing and its social benefits seem to suggest that it is useful, but it is by no means necessary. In other words: no, I don't have to dance to be a successful human being; now take your hands off me, officer. Officer jerkhole.

It's not a dealbreaker, for me. If you get me enough good music, good company and, above all, good booze, I will swing and shimmy with the best of them (or at least the half-least mediocre of them). On the other hand, I tend to make it a rule that if I only ever do something when I'm drunk, it's probably not something I want to be doing (like urinating on libraries). But above all, I tend to get bored.

The first ten minutes are all well and good - the candyfloss of motion. But before long my mind starts to wander. I wonder how many people here clipped their toenails today? might strut into my brain, perhaps, or how much hair would it take to sink a yacht?. These are not interesting ruminations, but they are much more interesting than thinking about the fact that I have spent the last quarter of an hour standing up and doing the same thing over and over in a room full of other people doing exactly the same thing. I find myself able to do the same move, sway or shake only three times before my brain melts and drips from my ears like stalactites formed by the constant trickle of dullness.

Since people tend to go dancing for the equivalent of a full working day, you can see my dismay. But the length of time it takes you to get sick of something should not determine its worth, or influence your judgement of others.

People should be allowed to dislike dancing, and other people should not coerce them to dance against their will, using (as Mitchell points out) peer pressure tactics like you want to really. It belies a serious lack of empathy on the part of the dancers. It also belies a serious lack of not being infuriating.

So, are we human, or are we dancer? We're human, Killers. You pretentious, alienating shitwicks.

P.S.

To sweeten the bitter end of this post (like dressing an old man's toe in a tiny pink tutu), have this marvellous electrowiggle-fest from Tim Minchin: Bears Don't Dig On Dancing.

P.P.S.

I don't know whether my own warblings have been enough to interest you in synaesthesia - the mingling of senses where somebody can taste sounds or see sounds or various other combinations - but there's been a recent study that quite cleverly shows that at least one form of synaesthesia is based upon perception rather than simple physical input. I don't necessarily agree with the study's conclusions (that synaesthesia must therefore develop later in life than simple input dictates) but it's a fascinating study.

ARGH

2010-01-12T13:12:00.001Z

Hi all,

Writing this at work. My computer seems to have undergone some sort of techno-spaz. I'm working on getting it fixed. Then an update ASAP. Let's say... see you Thursday? If not, pray for me.

A Resolution Revolution

2010-01-05T17:21:00.005Z

Happy New Year, reading-types! I can see your eyes twinkling with potential; your auras aglow with the giddy anticipation of scratching your way across the blank slate of 2010. What will it hold for you? Will you find love? Will you shatter your high score on Streets of Rage? Will your urinary tract finally stop stinging? It is a time for miracles, friends.

It is also time to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself am I everything that I could and should be? Am I making the most of my fleeting, flitting wink of time on this planet? Am I still at least bobbing above the 'mediocre' line?

In truly lazy and unoriginal blogging style, then, I proffer from my pocket, like suspect, warm toffee:

Tom Nash's Laudable and Respectably Realistic Resolutions for 2010

1. Use More Candles

The bees are dying out, in case you didn't realise. Why is this? No, it is not colony collapse disorder, as some eminent fools would have you believe. They are dying out for the same reason that you rarely happen upon a Betamax repairman: redundancy.

Bees have been returning to their hives and dancing slow, mournful waltzes that say: my brothers, we are outdated. Our output is unrequired; Joseph Swan was our slow-acting Angel of Death, and he has has melted our waxen dreams with his incandescent bulb. My countrybees, the time has come to bow out gracefully. Lo, let us taste the honey of retirement, not the biting sting of dismissal. To sleep!

These strangely poetic insects need to know that we still value them; that our hearts swell for them, through love and allergic reactions. Replace all of your bulbs (light or onion) with great blobular candles that guff smoke and spit victoriously in the air of acceptance!

This resolution will also give firemen more work, so help to dig us out of our economic crater.

2. Defy Nature More

I am sick of so-called nature telling me who I can be and what I can do. What's that? I don't have gills? I've evolved beyond my marine roots? Chew on a piss-rock, nature! I am going to breathe so much underwater that the sea will seem carbonated! And what do you mean I can't leap across great gullies? You're not the boss of me, human limitation!

3. Start Wearing More Hats

Hats are effortlessly excellent. They can transform a simple, dowdy fishwife into a Parisian fashionista with nothing more than a doily-esque smattering of lace.

The only drawback with this resolution comes via an unfortunate occurrence; the taint of twattery.

You see, while trilbies were once the mark of a discerning gentleman, a sturdy chap of action with a quick wit and sharp mind, they are now the mark of bolognaise-brained buggernuts fit only for being blasted in the bollocks by bowling-ball-bazookas. They hope to gain some of the effortless 1920s chic for themselves by adopting the style; in fact, they only dilute it to homeopathic levels. Now if I were to wear a trilby, I would be stained by association with Pete Doherty rather than identified with Humphrey Bogart's noir-style.

Nonetheless, I shouldn't be afraid to hold my hatted head high - that's just what the terrorists want - so I'll experiment with the glory of headwear.

4. Prevent a Crime

Crime prevention has always been the playground of the superhero, but I am fed up with Jimmy Spangletights getting all of the delicious frosted kudos; I want in. Fortunately, despite governmental lies, crime is bloody everywhere! So it shouldn't be too difficult to find some to waggle my wonder-stick at.

Of course, the actual discovery of crime has never traditionally been the sticky part. It is the prevention bit that tends to trickle into the difficulty-reservoir. And sadly, the crime that seems to be increasing is violent crime.

Now, I'm all for my vigilantism ideal, but getting stabbed to death to only receive a small mention in the back of the local paper, between 'Iguana needs good home. Only partially used' and 'Swedish masseuse will make all your dreams come true, even the weird ones about calendars' adverts to read 'Idiot man-child found nude and drained of body-fluids in alleyway; police are currently mocking his genitals' is not terrifically appealling. I want to be alive and vaunted. So I need to keep my eye out for crimes that would be suitably heroic if prevented, but will not lead to my ghost blushing sadly.

Of course, if it gets to December 31st and I've not prevented one, I'll probably just refrain from punching a toddler, thus preventing a rather wicked crime. And then I'll call the papers about it.

Next week: a post of some more substance, perhaps!

Mini-post the mini-most.

2010-01-04T22:14:00.004Z

Hey all - I'm a bit shattered from having to do an essay I forgot I had to do for a course tomorrow. Whoops. So here's some stuff to entertain you, and I'll bust a proper update tomorrow.

This year, I thought I'd push the boat out so far that it tumbled off the edge of the world. So I made some Christmas cards. Having sent my load already, I've uploaded them to this "internettal" contraption so that you can alter and use the templates for your own cards next year, should you so wish! It is not unoriginal to use my stuff, because that is like being derivative of the universe itself.

Download this here.

Download this here.

Download this here.

I've also uploaded a wee short story, that you can see here. It's not perfect by any means, because I'm rather rusty and out of practice (the narrator particularly wobbles in maturity), but it should stop your eyes being bored out of their sockets until I summon the wherewithal tomorrow to spatter words through the lids.

Have a great evening! Except for you. You know what you did.

A Faction of Fictional Facts

2009-12-14T22:13:00.006Z

As everybody barring the excruciatingly ignorant knows, Christmas is fast approaching. The calendar is a country road, and December the 25th is a roaring sports car driven by Richard Hammond, careering wildly past the other trundling, bicyclic days, flashing them the Vs and laughing until it accidentally smashes into a great wall of celebration.

What can you expect to get on Christmas day, besides chocolate, satsumas (for some reason), drunk and into family arguments? Nestled between the lime-green jumper and the audiobook on minerals you can usually expect a magnificent offering - a book of facts.

The most famous fact-book is, of course, the Guiness Book of Records, which has cleverly made itself an indispensable present by bringing out a new edition just as Christmas rolls around (like X-Factor singles).

There are, however, countless others, such as the QI books or Does Anything Eat Wasps, etc., all of which are basically marketing themselves as toilet books but which are no less stupendous for that.

I would very much like to write a fact book that is brim-full of peculiar little peccadillos, but I have only one problem: I don't know anything at all. Believe it or not, not even the tiniest morsel of knowledge simmers behind these movie-star eyes!

I've decided not to let that hold me back at this most frabjous juncture of the year, though, so I've compiled a senstational list of untruths instead. If you want, you can read one a day, making it like an extended, fallacious Advent calendar - or you can just greedily consume them all at once, as with Peter Kay's Advent calendar. Either way, I present:

Tom Nash's 40 Facts That Aren't True

1. Snakes do in fact have legs, but they are all on the inside, designed to speed up digestion. This is where we get the phrase the runs.

2. Despite their name, popular music band The Byrds only had one actual bird in (magpie drummer).

3. Clouds are formed from hopes. Rain is caused by income tax.

4. The Earl of Sandwich did not, in fact, invent the sandwich - it was invented by Baron Panini.

5. The literal translation of stiletto in the original Italian is woman-wobbler.

6. PacMan was based on Arthur Scargill, whose fear of ghosts was equalled only by his love of
cherries.

7. If you line up all (DVD) series of Grey's Anatomy in chronological order, the design spells out Why, God? Why?

8. All evil people have distinctive red hair so that you can tell the danger from a distance (as with wasps).

9. Model Caprice made her own car out of Meccano.

10. In Denmark, it is illegal to give a child magnesium.

11. General Frumblestump is scientifically the most humorous name possible.

12. The first ever television advert was for Collins' Cigarillos, claiming scientific benefits with the tagline cough your way to health, chokey!

13. The 27th letter of the Roman alphabet was lost in the Great Fire of London. Linguists hypothise it was something like a mixture of x and 9.

14. Before cowboys, farm-types used to be called catboys. This is because they herded cattle, which is the plural of dog.

15. Romans were the first pacifists, from pax meaning peace and fisto meaning of the fist. Pacifism is quite literally punching people into submission.

16. Carpool Tunnel Syndrome is the disorder arising from sharing lifts with people you don't like much while your ears pop.

17. Chinese people cannot click their fingers.

18. The longest scarf ever knitted was a full 18 inches long.

19. The marrow inside bones is primarily made out of dog food.

20. Most sarcasm in the world comes from Portugal, where they have huge mines literally dripping with sarcasm.

21. The most offensive animal in nature is the Racist Cuckoo.

22. Philatelists estimate that we will run out of novelty stamp designs by 2034, after which point we will simply have to make do with the same picture of a castanet trotted out on every special occasion.

23. The word carbuncle is the only English word without any letters in it. Instead, it is formed by a complex optical illusion.

24. The London Eye was constructed as a result of Tony Blair's belief in Mayan prophecies, one of which stated that 2001 would bring a great flood to Britain. It was designed to act as a waterwheel.

25. While most stars are combusting gasballs, astronomers believe that they have discovered one blue star which burns pure sugar. It can be found in the Gumball Galaxy.

26. Queen Victoria had two noses.

27. Asparagus is the only plant capable of sin.

28. In the poorer regions of Russia, acne is considered sexually attractive, since it is indicative of being able to afford pizza.

29. Jonathan Ross invented the chihuahua as a practical joke.

30. All clocks in the Southern Hemisphere run anticlockwise.

31. In Thailand it is illegal to slap your own thigh.

32. Ants can see through fridge doors to find food. Unfortunately they are too small to be able to open them.

33. Aloe vera is a paste secreted by the elderly.

34. The tallest tree in the world stretches from the bottom to the peak of Mount Everest. Cheats often lazily ascend via a pulley system operated by luckless sherpas.

35. The phrase full of piss and vinegar comes from a popular Scottish salad dressing.

36. Jack Russells are the only dogs with mandibles.

37. Approximately 86% of air is made of splinters. This makes sharp intakes of breath possible. The remaining 14% is a combination of skin and toffee.

38. Glass is formed by dieting sand.

39. The longest nine-letter word ever obtained on popular TV show Countdown was particular. Dictionary Corner's Suzie was reduced to tears.

40. The most complex molecule in nature is Chris Evans.

That's all, folks! I'm going to take a two-post break over the Christmas period, since I don't have much time off so I'm going to spend it wisely (i.e. drunk). I'll only post if I think of something brilliantly amazing - so I'll see you all on January the 4th! Have great holidays!

Inside Pride's Insides

2009-12-08T20:29:00.003Z

Sorry for missing yesterday’s update. As a conciliatory gesture, today’s update contains scientific-looking graphs – as seen on shampoo adverts!

Like most people, I try to live my life by the Good Book. Okay, that's not true. But I do try to steer clear of the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins (a name even more dramatic than The Murder of Jimmy Innocence) However, one that sticks in my craw like a hunk of craw-glue is the issue of pride. Pride is generally considered the most downright evil of the seven - worse than beating a nun to death with the baby Jesus. But is pride really so dreadful?

To dissect pride, we first have to pin it down with a great big sharp definition. Fortunately, I happen to have one of these to hand, as though I were James Bond and a dangerous situation had arisen requiring an exact type of gizmo that Q had luckily (and uncannily) happened to give me before the mission began:

Pride is the pleasant swell in your breast at recognition of success or good qualities in something or someone associated with you.

It's okay to be extremely moved by that definition, because it is a very moving definition. It could easily get a job as a removal man.

Now, I thoroughly believe that pride is a source of good in the world. It's one of the driving forces that defines humanity, a source of creation and ambition. It's one of the things that makes us get things right. Imagine if Michaelangelo, instead of splattering his genius across the roof of the Sistine chapel, had instead opted for a couple of stick figures and a crudely drawn cock. Imagine instead of the splendid sculpture Lacoön and His Sons adorning the Vatican, we had Tracey Shitting Emin's My Bed. Pride keeps us from throwing first drafts out into the world, or the cognitive equivalent of vomit.

However, it has its flip side. It has two flip sides, actually, making it a pride triangle, or a priangle.

Flip Side A: Arrogance.

Pride is too easily mashed into arrogance by people who we will kindly refer to as wonkers. There is a clear difference between taking pride in something you've done and allowing it to inflate your sense of self-worth until it resembles an absurd wobbling twat-trifle. This is an obvious side-effect, and I'm not particularly interested in exploring it, but feel free to do so in your own blogulars.

Flip Side B-Sides: Vicarious Pride.

This is a far more exciting area of pondering for plundering.

You see, I personally find that my sense of pride grows as my association with the object or subject of pride gets stronger. This makes perfect sense (after all, I am perfectly sensible, and sensibly perfect), since the very idea of pride gets introduced due to the association itself.

As such, a graph of my pride would look a little like this:

On this instructive graph (although not all that instructive since I totally left off any values on the axes) we can see the following points of pride:
Point 1 represents somebody in Antarctica inventing a new way of wearing a hat;
Point 2 represents one of my favourite comedians punching Paul Dacre;
Point 3 represents one of my close friends breaking a world record for swinging on monkey bars;
Point 4 represents me remembering to go to the shops before they bloody shut at 4 on a Sunday;
Point 5 represents me personally somehow saving all the bees from extinction via repeated copulation with Pippa Black.

All well and good. But this draws me into direct contradiction of the English way! You see, it is not English to be proud of your personal achievements, but very English to feel vicarious pride. As such, the national pride graph looks more like:

On this:
Point 5 represents saving a child's life (for some reason);
Point 4 represents giving up cheese;
Point 3 represents seeing your friend play on Countdown;
Point 2 represents your favourite football team winning despite being complete tools;
Point 1 represents a British ship sinking a French ship.

Which, as you can see is all backwards. Nevertheless, this is part of the national character, so it is glued onto us at birth; it is the opposite of an umbilical cord.

As you might have guessed, I am almost entirely flummoxed by nationalism. On the one hand, I can see why you might be pleased that the country you live in has certain standards; free speech, good law, etc. On the other, I honestly can't find it in me to be proud that Newton was an Englishman. I'm excited for the contribution he made to the human race, but since his nationality was as much an accident as mine, I can't see how it could be a source of pride.

I suspect this is also why I find it difficult to identify with sports enthusiasts. I'm not sure why you're so excited that the man on the pitch who kicked the ball got it into the string-sack - the entire purpose of his existence - that you simply have to punch a chap in a different-coloured jumper. You have had no involvement in that success. You have contributed nothing, and it is in no way a reflection of you at all. You are naught but a thunder-stealer, and I'll have nothing to do with you, knave.

So next time you're feeling proud, consider: what does your pride chart look like?

By the way, as far as I know, I invented this pride graph. While it has not been reviewed by peers, nor printed by the British Library, nevertheless feel free to refer to it in philosophical essays. But only as Nash's Stupendous Indicator of Pride. And only if you were going to fail anyway.

Helping You Put the 'Tingle' in Christingle

2009-11-30T19:36:00.006Z

Well would you just look who is December! Well, very nearly, and for me very nearly has always been good enough. That is why it is totally okay for you to tell everybody that you got a First, when you very nearly passed your degree, and it is also why it is okay to name a show Celebrity Love Island when people you haven't heard of get lusty. And it's actually a peninsula.

We all know what December means, of course! It is the time to celebrate Christianity appropriating a pre-existing holiday again! And you thought Hallowe'en was as good as it got!

But one holiday is as good as another, and since I don't believe in according significance to any unproved signifier, let's not judge based on that. Let us instead make it a marvellous excuse to get right on down and party like filthy sewer-rats.

Beyond all the hedonistic and erotically-charged boogying, though, there is more to do in the advent of Advent. Like any good capitalist, I of course refer to Christmas shopping.

For many, Christmas shopping is the yin to Christmas day's yang; the Ben Affleck to its Matt Damon; the knuckle to its sandwich. What oh what oh what am I going to get for my loved ones that will not result in smears of tears and garden shears through ears? people ask despairingly, as they miserably wander the tinsel-splashed streets,, wishing terrible things upon Santa and every one of his reindeer (especially Prancer).

Well worry no more, my poor, misguided readers! I am here to save your skins and skin your shins – with a little something I like to call:

Tom Nash's Intense and Not At All Flippant Guide to Christmas Shopping

1. Know Your Audience

You are presumably shopping for somebody you care about. If not, I urge you to rethink the entire debacle, go home and kick them hard in the thighs for having the sheer gall to almost make you spend money on them, the jerk-spanner.

Now we've got that over with: if you care about them, you ought to know at least a little about them. If you don't, you should ask yourself why you care about them, not to mention why you're such a flipping blunderbrains.

Use this information to your advantage! If they are vegetarian, it is no good buying them a subscription to Luncheon Meats Monthly. If they are blind, there is very little use in buying them a kaleidoscope. If they have an ounce of self-respect, it is no good buying them an oversized teddy bear with I Wuv You on it (and besides, that's definitely a keeper).

The closer you are to a person, the better gift you should get them. But equally, the better you should know their mindset and be able to purchase a better gift. Set a thief to buy a present for a thief (and also to make sure it's portable enough to carry out of an upstairs window).

2. Don't Go Out Hungry

This is usually advice for people who are going food shopping, but at Christmas, all the rules change. Saint Nick takes the rules and shoves 'em up your chimney! Because Christmas is the time of the Late Night Shopping (ooh! aah!).

This means that not only are shops open later in order to shake you by your ankles until the cash falls out, but so are stalls - the least trustworthy of food-selling media.

Stalls bound in hot dogs and gently roasting chestnuts will crop up along the streets like whack-a-moles, and your hungry belly is the hammer. Just one cone of chestnuts, you'll say, and then oh, go on, then. A mince pie and a hot dog and a turkey and a five-course feast for eight, and before you know it, your pockets will be emptier than the cold, dead eyes of the food-selling bastard-holes that tricked your stomach with your own nose.

Fill up on cheap pastries beforehand, though, and you can strut fearlessly along the Yuletide streets, laughing callously at all those stupid enough to fall for the stalls' delicious trickeries! What larks!

Yes, I was once severely beaten by a hot dog seller. What of it?

3. Set Aside Lots of Money Anyway

Even if you aren't wheedled into eating more than your weight in tapeworm egg-ridden sausages, Christmas shopping will prove far more effective than any fad diet at losing you pounds fast. Everything that you want to buy your friends and family will without fail cost just very slightly more than you had set aside. If you are tremendously popular (and since you're reading this blog, I can't imagine you're not), this will all soon add up to the fiscal equivalent of a duffing up in a dark park.

The only way to avoid this is not to set aside a particular sum for each person. Instead, set aside twice your wages every year. This should just about cover costs of presents, turkeys, trees, decorations, trips to relatives and trips to hospitals (New Year's Eve not included).

4. Be Full of Seasonal Cheer

As somebody annoying is bound to remind you, cheer up mate! It's bladdy Christmas! So the old lady in front of you - in fact, the horde of old biddies in front of you - are dragging their wrinkled heels along at a rate of nots (that is, not goin' anywhere not too fast, son). That is not their fault, but the fault of time constantly yapping and snipping at their ankles, dragging them down by the skin into the grave! So cheer up.

Everybody has a right to be out doing their Christmas shopping, and it is really best if you just hush your moaning and suck in the Christmas spirit like a hit on a novelty Santa shisha.

5. Get Angry Anyway

Well of course that won't actually work. Just where the feckfire do all these people come from?! I can tell you - they are carefully unpacked by local councils every year, along with the coloured bulbs strewn over the walkways and the huge tree for children to vandalise, just to bumble into your path. The council watch on their CCTV cameras and they laugh, great cannonball bellies shifting like flabby dunes, brandy in handy. Oh how they laugh.

6. Do it All Online

What the hell am I talking about anyway? It is the 21st Century I think, and computer-robots now exist to help us get out of socialising with people like that! Sit at home in front of Play.com in your pants with a bowlful of whiskey and ask yourself does Nan really want a copy of High School Musical 3? That is a stupid question and I am stupid to ask it, because of course she flupping does probably.

Then sit and smile in the knowledge that truly, you have got into the festive swing of things. Well done!

I'm joking, of course. Christmas shopping is one of the most fun types of shopping. It's great to see people enjoying each others' company for once.

But only for once, alright?

Inspiration - Not The Act Of Entering Cathedrals

2009-11-23T18:46:00.008Z

Well, it's been a long old while since I've done a post on writing. I can hear people champing at the bit for another. Their teeth are mashing into the metal like soft balsa wood crumpling against an aircraft carrier. I don't have enough money to sort out the kinds of dental problems that's going to create - so another post on writing it bloody well is.

Today I am going to embarrass two topics, because 1) they are related and b) I'm so good that that's the kind of thing I do. By good, I mean great. Great at being the best. At being good. Etcetera.

So the first issue I'd like to wade blindly into, knocking over the knick-knacks and scuffing the rugs, is inspiration. Just what is inspiration, and how can you get inspired?

If those sound like childish questions, that's because you're reading them with a thoughtless brain, rendering it a useless bulbous lump, like Chris Moyles. They are very intelligent questions, actually, because becoming inspired is something to which we all aspire, but often never quite reach, like tickling a rainbow.

I expect you've heard of writer's block. It's a fairly dreadful thing to happen to a writer (and an even worse thing to happen to a block). It prompts fairly serious and scary questions like have I been sucked dry of originality? and is everything I want to be actually just the pipe-dream of a self-indulgent idiot? and oh hot toddles, what's a demonstrative pronoun? I've completely forgo- oh yes, that's it.*

The thing is, you see, is that if you want to write, you can't afford to have an off-day. The subject has to be good, the themes should be interesting, the chapters should ring with thought and all the sentences should line up to give your brain hugs.

Inspiration, then, isn't something you can just do without, unless you want to write Mills and Boon. So to get to the interesting question: can you manufacture inspiration?

Well, yes, to some extent! But only if you're willing to set aside some brain power. Be warned: you may have to eat extra Ready-Brek, and set your eyes to stun.

You see, the very best writers are people who read a lot. This isn't just because they pick up interesting vocabulary and constructions, but also because they learn lots of interesting things. Subjects that can be mulled over, styles that can be considered and replicated, unsettling prospects to ponder.

Reading and learning is a fantastic way to open up new mental gates to pastures green and unmown. I heartily recommend it.

The trouble is that while the human imagination is relatively limitless, many ideas obtained this way will be the same or similar to those obtained a different way. And thus we come to the second topic propping up the bar of today's dreadful tirade: plagiarism.

More specifically, feeling like a plagiarist because you've come up with a really good idea and then you find out that some other liver-licker has gone and done it before you.

This is something that happens with depressing regularity. For instance, sometimes you make up a joke or an original storyline, and that's fine until some total handle-head says yeah that's funny except for the fact that you completely ripped it off. At this point, the only appropriate response is to unleash the rage-scorpions.

This is a pretty annoying situation, as I'm sure you can imagine. You end up feeling guilty for creating something, because some other saddle-sucker did it first! But even worse is when, after an uninspired couple of months, you finally get a glimmer of fascination working its naughty way into your brain, which you then can't use, because you find it already exists even before you can work on it. This happened to me quite recently.

You see, I was reading Oliver Sacks' entirely enjoyable An Anthropologist on Mars. One of the cases discussed is that of a person who has been blind almost all his life, and then is suddenly afforded sight. He perceived the world not as concrete shapes and visible textures, but as a bizarre mish-mash of colour (a little like Kilroy-Silk). And I thought I wonder what would happen if somebody experienced sensory deprivation up until well past the theoretical critical periods that form the senses as we know them? I got excited! All sort of ideas began to flow throughout my cranium as though my brain were salivating!

The framework I came up with was this: a boy has been confined in a box from birth by a crazed mother. He has seen nothing; heard nothing; smelled, tasted and touched very, very little. Then he is rescued. How will he react? How will the world react to him? Would it be humane to subject him to a life of tests, or would it be justified given how much we could learn about development? Could he develop? How much personhood could he develop? Would he be more animalistic than could ever be humanised?

All of this spattered across the inside of my skull as I flicked television channels, only to discover
a television programme about a boy who had been kept out of human contact for most of his life. Further, as I researched, I discovered people like Genie, who come depressingly close to living my imagined boy's life.

There is a rule on the internet known as Rule 34: if it exists, there is porn of it. I would like to submit to life, Rule 35: the most dreadful, awful thing you can imagine, somebody will have done.

The gut-wrenching subject matter aside, what has happened is that I thought I had an original thought, and then discovered that it had been already occurred. BAM! went my inspiration and BAM! went my belief that I had an ounce of originality to weigh up against the stones of hackneyed ideas I regularly come up with. It's enough to make a grown man weep! And me, too.

So by all means, go striding forth for inspiration. Let it tickle your brains, and curl up next to your sense of confidence, purring. But watch out for the barbed bully of inadvertant plagiarism, because, like when I pee, it really, really stings.

* This is a very funny grammatical joke and if you didn't laugh, you deserve a hearty smack around the folliculars.

Rakin' in the Bacon

2009-11-16T22:13:00.004Z

Pig! I can smell bacon! I bet you've totally got swine flu because you're a pig and that is both hilarious and topical!

This is the kind of pig-headed abuse the policemen put up with every single day, apart from their days off and even then their partners probably make wry comments about it as they're cooking a sausage fry-up for breakfast. Is that fair and just? I ask you, lazily lounging reader: is that reasonable?

Unless you are the most ardent anarchist (and we'll come back to you later, you scallywag), you will probably agree that laws, at least in principle, are a good thing. They help to bind society together, grinding off the sharp edges until we tessellate reasonably well. Don't nobody do no killin', we say, because we don't like having to live on our tiptoes with a big pack of tinned apricots on our back, ready to run away just to survive. Again, I'm generalising; some people probably love that. But then, some people probably love licking live chickens. I can't accommodate everyone.

These basic laws - ones concerning simple liberties, like the right to live and the right to own a something - are what police exist to safeguard. Without somebody safeguarding those rights, everybody would take the piss, in the same way that leaving a child alone in a room with a chocolate bar that they mustn't touch or a naked man alone in a room with a vacuum cleaner will yield inevitable and undoubtedly messy results.

The necessity for some strain of centrally-controlled guard can be traced directly to the size of any given colony of hoo-mans. This is an important point, so let it simmer in your brains a second whilst I sprinkle in a delicious aniseedy aside.

Ardent anarchist, I said I'd get back to you, and now I have. Consider me a wordy Terminator, or a Wordinator. Here is the main problem with the premise that a society can get along fine - in fact, better - without laws and law-enforcers: that you are absolutely correct. If you weren't expecting me to say that, then hold your horses, because I am totally going to qualify that mutha like AQA. You are totally correct - but you are only correct in small societies, and you can't apply it to societies the size of which mostly exist around the world, and in the context of nearby societies too.

You see, the grand old history of human societies can be considered a tottering great list of scientific experiments. True, it didn't take place in a laboratory, and true, nobody threw magnesium into a Bunsen burner for bright white kicks, but then those are not necessary for science, if you recall. The important thing is to take context into account, and to see whether certain outcomes reliably repeat under certain conditions, and then isolate the causes.

Before we go any further, I should say that I am drawing most of the inspiration and facts for this post from Guns, Germs and Steel again. While it is not without its flaws, it is an excellent and stimulating read. If you didn't add it to your reading list the last time I recommended it, slap yourself about the face with a hot slipper and right your wrong.

Across a multitude of societies, then, a pattern becomes clear: the larger a society, the more likely it is to have a centralised government, and all that goes with it (i.e. command over some muscle-lugs). Why is this?

When you have a small collection of humans, it tends to be a few co-mingling families. The reason that you come together is to pool resources and to protect your children better. It is small enough that if two people get into a barney, rather than each family taking the side of their fighter (as would happen in some current societies, such as the half-human society of Tunbridge Wells), their role is in fact to calm things down - a violent rift in so small a community would more-or-less damn them to much more dangerous lives.

All well and good. But what happens if this little intrepid band grows beyond a few families and becomes more of a tribe? The families of all the people can't be around all the time! For the most part, simply recognising most other people in the tribe is enough to prevent most problems, but perhaps the biggest person is understood to be able to sort out disputes. This is the prototype chieftan.

So the tribe is successful and grows, and eventually it's more of a tribal village. Now the chieftan regularly has to sort out disputes, and for this he is given a revered place in the village. He makes the decisions, because decisions often have to be made, and any office man will tell you that getting committees to make sink-or-swim decisions quickly is like trying to get a paraplegic to tapdance. Now sub-communities in the form of extended families coagulate, and people don't feel so closely bound to other members of the village. The chieftan needs a band of warriors or at least people to be able to sort out disputes. This is where we get guardsmen.

So it grows, and it grows, and as people get less and less familiar with and dependent upon others around them, so their investment in their security dwindles and the need for a large band of peacekeepers grows.

This all sounds fairly theoretical and frankly a little like an example of the slippery slope form of bad argument. This is because I'm not providing examples at each given step (it's late and I'm lazy). However, somebody who wasn't lazy was the author of the book, Jared Diamond, and he looked at a whole swathe of societies. What he found was that this is the kind of society that survived. That is, societies that grew in this manner did not tear themselves apart, and equally, they were not torn apart by the warriors of another tribe (the secondary purpose of the warrior-peacekeepers is clearly defence/offence). It is a rather lovely case of natural selection (if you ignore all the blood and skull everywhere).

So police of some form or another are not only in most successful societies, but they are one of the features inherent in successful societies of any appreciable size.

So why so much hate towards them?

Well, for one, laws extend well beyond the established basics. As human society grew more complex, work roles multiplied, wealth smeared, religion swelled and technology bloomed, increasingly complicated laws were required. It was no longer possible to please all sub-sections of society, but in terms of the society as a whole, these partially-unpopular laws needed to be enforced.

Secondly, politics swung into the equation like a flasher's wangle. With the power that having a band of peacekeepers bestows comes an urge to make life easier for yourself and your family. This is built in at a genetic level, and evident again in all growing societies. So while the 'chieftan' of a smaller tribe is just another member of the tribe, and democratically equal to his tribesmen, the larger the society gets and the more power they wield, the more status they are afforded.

In our society, it is more complex than just a chieftan and his family, but the principle is the same. Various corporations, for instance, might make life easier for a politician (and thus his family) through bribery to pass a certain law. The law will then necessarily be enforced by the police even if it isn't necessarily the best thing for the society as a whole. This is the mirror of a chieftan passing a law that everybody has to give him the finest clothes they own. It isn't benefitting the society, but it is the inevitable flipside of giving a person the power of decisions.

So yes, police powers are abused by the powers that be, as the Sun might term them in its disgusting, pseudo-underdog twattle-spit, and we should limit that abuse as much as possible. But as an institution, they are necessary for society's survival, and as individuals, they are as entitled to a lack of abuse as anybody.

I haven't made many jokes today, I'm afraid. More next time, honest!

Words 2: Word Harder

2009-11-09T19:48:00.004Z

Make way! Make way for a brief and unrelated introduction to today's waffle-cake! I have finished the next bout of redrafts of EBTT, which is exciting news for me, because it actually feels a little more complete now than it did when I first finished it. It's still a little rough around the edges, like a gravel badger, but I've shot it off to my handsome comrade Josh (among others) for a delicious wadge of criticism trifle, so I'll let you know progress once I get some feedback from these various esteemed and unflinchingly excellent friends. God, I bet you're jealous.

Okay, that's enough of that, move along. Come on, haven't you got homes to go to?

Today's topic can be considered a sequel to a post I wrote not one month ago. The reason for the possibly unwelcome return of this subject, like badly-prepared sushi, can be attributed to my stupid brains. Look at them, all crinkled and twattish. I'd be better off with a hunk of margarine greasing up my thinking-kettle.

You see, I actually intended to make a completely different point with that post, but got sidetracked into different details. I only remembered halfway through the week, whereupon I slapped my forehead with my open palm like a cartoon character and then felt pretty good about that (like when you angrily shake your fist at a rapidly-departing nuisance).

What I would like to talk about is the usefulness of language.

Now, as I hope you recognise from that previous post, I heartily endorse the evolution of language. I thoroughly admire its twists and turns, gasp as it transforms itself into linguistic butterflies and place long-term bets on letter erosion that should see my great- great-grandchildren earn a pretty penny, or possibly laser-cherry or whatever they use as currency in the future.

However. There is a trend - and possibly has been since the introduction of standardisation - towards making language less useful, which is a direction that I can't help but lament (along with other dreadful directions, such as sadwise and north-Hullish).

Consider the proliferation of the word less. Less is a perfectly reasonable word in its own right. It means diminished continuous quantity. If you want to say I would not like that much spit in my cappuccino, please, you are entirely within your rights to ask for less spit, you dreadful, phlegmy barista.

However, less is now also being used in situations to describe quantities that are discrete - I.e. occur in countable numbers. There is already a word that describes diminished discrete quantity - it is fewer. Nevertheless, these days we see far fewer fewers and less lesslessness.

This means that the word less is now becoming less useful, as it gradually does not mean diminished continuous quantity, but rather the larger, more umbrella diminished quantity.

Given that words can be regarded as handy little mouth-pellets that have garlands of information tied around them, this just means that the word less is being stripped of its purpose, a little.

Now, there's an argument that runs like this:

Listen, Nash, you jumped-up colon-conker, if a word's useful, then it will survive in our lexicon through natural selection. This is just a streamlining of language, and you are a fluffy-faced fumblemonk.

While I respect this argument (who wouldn't?), it fails to take into account our stupid human natures. That is, it doesn't nod its head towards bloody, bloody fashion, nor the lack of full standardisation.

Basically, you will modify language (often almost arbitrarily, as with all fashions) according the node of society that you hang off, as well as the one you'd like to be swinging towards. There's a huge branch of study called sociolinguistics that deals with this - I recommend reading up on it, as it's fascinating, but I'm not going to throw crumbs of it at you now. You don't have a napkin on.

An interesting and deliberate example of this occurs again in some feminist groups. I absolutely swear to you that I am not a misogynist! This is an important aside to note, because nothing would wrench my guts more than to be thought of thusly. It just so happens that these particular feminist groups are one of the first and best publicised examples of people toying around with language like a child putting two spiders in a jar to watch them fight.

The argument runs that words like actress and mistress are derogatory. They make women seem small and insignificant! We will call ourselves actors and masters thank you so very shodding much, Mr. Man!

But what is offensive about simply stating a fact - that actresses are people who act and are women? Women make up half of the world's population - it seems like a reasonable distinction to draw between acting people. If somebody needs a woman to play a lead part in their play, isn't it easier, more efficient and thus more sensible to ask for an actress rather than a lady actor? Stripping a word of harmless information like that is not only pointless, but it actively reduces the usefulness of our language.

I don't believe this is something we can stop, since it happens below our level of consciousness for the vast majority of cases. Nevertheless, this won't stop me sighing and wishing like an asthmatic well that we had more control over our own stupid bloody tools.

Just Call Me the Anchor-Man

2009-11-02T18:35:00.004Z

Some of you may have heard of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. Many of you may swear by it, some of you might swear at it, and one or two of you might just swear near it. If you haven't heard of it, please feel free to enlighten yourself using an internet surfboard - there are a great many sites more able to educate you than this one on this particular topic.

The trouble with NLP is that it has individual results, but makes claims far beyond its station and that are based on unfounded science - a little like chiropractic or homeopathy. It basically can be shown to get some results (more basic than many of its claims), but the mechanisms it claims power them are faulty. It's a bit like driving a car and saying to your passenger you know, cars are powered by shrews. You can trust me; I've got a diploma from the academy of mechanicology.

I personally believe that it is more a demonstration that some people have a very good bedside manner, and are generally engaging and persuasive communicators, naturally responding more to non-verbal communcation, but that just boils down to a useless some people are better at communicating ideas than others, which might as well be some people are taller than others or some people smell pretty dreadful.

Whatever its faults (gigantic and terrifying like a murder-mountain, I suspect), there is one aspect that I think NLP has been right to pick up on: the concept of anchoring.

Now, I'm not saying that you can use anchoring to make people throw money at you (unless you run an NLP academy, perhaps), but it certainly does seem true that people gauge things by first impressions.

For a simplistic analogy, imagine an alien landed in my back garden, curious about the human race (it was a lazy alien and neglected to research us first. Really, it's shameful). The first person it meets is me. Clearly, its impression of humanity will be dictated a little by its impression of me (tall, handsome, sexually-charged and curly around the edges). Now consider instead that it had landed in wretched woman-vulture Gillian McKeith's garden instead. It would be sickened and feel quite justified in razing our planet to dusty rubble.

Actually, though, that is a bad analogy - aliens would probably be much more sensible, because anchoring is an extremely human trait. It's one of those cognitive illusions that arises from the peculiar and singular way that our brains have evolved to make judgements and deal with situations.

Marketers take advantage of anchoring all the time, and this is why it's important to be aware of it. You'll still fall for it, in the same way that even if you know an optical illusion is just an illusion you'll still fall for it, but at least you'll be able to mark it out, hopefully.

For an easy one, consider the anchoring that we all notice and roll our eyes at like indignant chameleons: that of pricing. Prices are almost always set at £x.99 rather than £x+1. We all know why this is - they think that if you see the lower number first, you'll think it a pound cheaper, even though it's just a penny. Nevertheless, even though we know it's only cheaper in the same way as plucking one hair from your head makes you a baldy slaphead, it still works - that's why they do it. Across a million sales, one fewer penny amounts to quite a lot - so you can bet your beetles that if they are sacrificing a penny, it's for a damn good financial reward.

It gets much more subtle. If I say there are eight hundred shoes in Mary's wardrobe and then I tell you that actually, it's not that many, then asked you to guess just how many there are, I suspect the vast majority of you (if the question hadn't bored you so much that you simply answered with a great big smash to my dullard face) would guess at a number in the hundreds, rather than just one single, sad shoe (Mary's a peg-leg). Just by opening the possibility of a number in the hundreds, most people get anchored to that initial impression.

Amusingly, NLP is the perfect example of inappropriate anchoring. With its use of sciencey sounding-terminology, people are more inclined to believe that it is scientifically-endorsed. Even if somebody tells you that that is sugar-rot, you're nevertheless anchored to your impression of it as a legitimate theory. What a cheek!

This is exactly why it's so important to reflect on what you see and what you're told, all the time. Even though you can't help but be anchored, you can certainly do your damnedest not to be fooled into acting on it, if it's not useful. An anchor's only worth as much as what you're anchored to - anything else will just see you putting the w in anchor.

Getting Away with Murder

2009-10-26T20:19:00.006Z

There are a lot of things in this modern world that we could do if we really put our minds to it. I could stitch a hot air balloon together out of umbrellas, so that all the handles pointed outwards and it resembled a large, floating blowfish in the sky. You could easily win the lottery, if you could find somebody to lend you £13, 983, 816 (though it’s best to make sure the jackpot is higher than that… and that nobody else will have to share it with you). The fact is that while these are quite possible, they are time-consuming, difficult and not worth the effort. No-one can be bothered.

There are plenty of immoral people out there, but very few murders compared to their numbers. I can only assume, then, that since morality is not a factor, that these are the principal reasons that most people also don’t commit the dreadful act of murder. This is a little surprising to me.

While I don’t want any more murders in the world (fewer, if anything), as a simple thought exercise, getting away with murder is a rather straightforward task. Yes, perhaps 81% of murderers are taken to task for their naughtiness, but let's face it - 81% of the population are bloody foolish. I once saw a guy sitting on a bench and drunkenly throwing up all over his front. That's one of your 81%, right there.

This should not be taken as an instructional guide (unlike the rest of this blog). I do hope that you take it in the spirit in which it's intended - a brief shanking of fun. I also hope that I've actually made my real views on violence fairly clear.

Of course, since anybody taking this guide seriously will get away with it, I don't have to be worried about getting blamed for it. If only rock music and computer games would learn from my example.

In an overtly grand manner, then, I present:

Tom Nash's Glorious and Moral Guide to Getting Away with Murder

1. Plan Out the Location Carefully.

I've never quite understood the curious Ms. Marple settings wherein somebody is murdered at a dinner party - and there are just seven guest, each shiftier than the last, the cads! On the face of it, the murderer must be thinking excellent - just a one-in-seven chance of getting fingered (pft!) as the murderer! I'll just spend the rest of the story being the last person anyone would suspect! Take that Poirot, you moustachio'd arrogant todger-tickler!

While this is technically all true (especially the bit slating Poirot - dont ask me how I know. I just know), if the murderer were to commit the foul deed in a situation where anybody could be a suspect, they would have a 1 in 62,000,000 chance of being picked up as the perpetrator, all things being equal. I'm no statistician - and don't you dare suggest I am - but that seems like a better deal to me. Just sayin'.

For this to work, then, you really need to plan out the location of the murder to allow it to be anybody's work. So where are places that a) have secluded areas, just right for a spot of murder and b) anybody and everybody goes (or has been to, at least)?

The list is long, but for the moment, here are just a few examples: public toilets; the gift card bit of Tesco; abandoned Woolworths stores; Hull.

2. Pick Yer Weapon Carefully

This is not disgusting (if sensible) biological advice, but rather an extremely important round in the murder gameshow. Murder weapons thhat are too distinguishable from any other get identified. Murder weapons that are too big, heavy or annoying to carry away on the run (like a Tickle Me Elmo) get left behind, and used to identify you. What you need is something discreet and common, like a fart on the Tube.

The very best stories suggest weapons that not only can't identify you, but in fact are unfindable. There are many stories that use ice, which simply melts away. That's all well and good, but if somebody finds you with a mould for an ice-dagger in your freezer, they're going to ask questions. The first question is likely to be why do you have an ice-dagger mould in your freezer? and the second is likely to be can I borrow your phone? I don't need it all - just the speaker, receiver and the 9 button.

What you really want to do is kill the lucky object of your murdery affections without even coming into contact with them. I suggest gas of some variety. Now this is important - don't order gas off the internet or buy some from a hardware shop. Those will be the first places the police check. What you need is some sort of gas that is ubiquitous. Something like... I don't know... common air?

That's right! I am deviously suggesting that you kill with naught but air! You can do this in a few ways (for instance, you could inject a lot of plain air into a vein, creating an air bubble that will choke the heart... but that's a bit dark) but I suggest that you hairdryer them to death. Pimp your hairdryer so that it can blow fantastic levels of air directly into their face, and it will be like sticking your face outside on a car journey: they will be unable to draw breath. Cunning!

3. Alibi Alibi! Ándale Ándale!

If you've wazzed up the first parts of this guide, you might find yourself under (let's face it, entirely reasonable) suspicion. What you need now is an alibi to throw people off your disgusting, homocidal scent (it smells like lilac and misanthrope). Fortunately, your appealing buddy Nash has got your back like a chiropractor.

Some people would be tempted to tell you to arrange something with a friend, but one more person who knows about the moi-dah is one more person you'll probably eventually have to do in, and then you'll have to find another alibi-giver and the circle of killings won't ever end, and it will grow tiresome after the first year or so. Don't go down this dusky, dull path.

Other people will suggest doing fancy things like turning clocks forward so that everyone you're with gets confused. This isn't a bad idea, but knowing you, you numpty, you'll try and do it on the night of the year that the clocks go forward anyway, so you'll get caught and have to wake up when it's bloody dark.

The answer I give you is the same answer I always give: go out and get drunk. Or rather, pretend to get drunk. Go out with some friends and get them royally turnipped, but only feign boorish drunkitude yourself. Then, at one point during the evening, slip out for 15 minutes to commit your dark, turdsome act of dastardery and return saying boys, I just did the longest wazz ever and then did a bit of a sick. You will get high-fives galore and probably bought a round, you clever, murderous bastard.

4. Don't Second-Guess Yourself, You Second-Guessing Second-Guesser.

You've gone and done a murder now. The time for conscience was back then, when you were wielding your bizarre hairdryer contraption in the face of a surprised businessman. Now it is the time for chill. Don't:

return to the scene, unless it's somewhere you'd normally go, in which case do, but only under normal circumstances, you plum;
tell friends, family or prostitutes in a panic about how you've done something dreadful, oh God, God please forgive me blah blah boring. It is suspicious, sucker!
Get all smug and start bragging or leaving the police tips. If you catch yourself writing a letter with your left hand in Braille about how they'll never catch me, for I am the Murder-Hawk and you are lowly carrion you have gone too far, you are a cock-puddle and you thorough deserve to be caught.

Right, that's me done for tonight. I'm off out to, er, buy some chips. Yeah. Chips. That's... where I'll be.

Politicatastrophe

2009-10-19T19:48:00.004+01:00

A while ago, back when I still wrote these things on Facebook and in vaguely more offensive language, I introduced a political system. It was an exciting, innovative and genius system, flawed only in the fact that it was a bit rubbish. It was called 'Jeffing', and I still stand by it, even though I would never use it myself (like Carol Vorderman selling debt consolidation, the scab).

Essentially, the principle was this: nobody wants to vote these days, because nobody knows who to vote for. So one could totally remove the politics from politics by simply choosing to vote for the candidate whose name was closest to 'Jeff'.

As you can imagine, this was taken up enthusiastically and with great gusto by almost everybody, except that what I just told you was a big lie and actually nobody did. Hurt, I retreated into myself for answers. Did nobody understand the various levels of extreme brilliance that gleamed within my plans like the shimmer of screws inside the mouth of a toddler left too close to a toolbox?

Of course, I soon discovered that the problem was not with the system itself so much as its premise. The reason that people don't vote isn't just because they don't know who to vote for - it's because they don't give a shit. This makes much more sense, because it can be corroborated with the evidence of why people litter, why people buy ready-made sauces when it takes the same to make your own with a tin of chopped tomatoes, and why (I hypothesise) on a busy high street, if Janet Street-Porter were kicked to death over a period of a week by a Shetland pony, not one person would stop to help.

Clearly, what is required is a way to make voting popular again. Then we'll be able to see what trends actually surface in voter polls and perhaps a party actually representative of the British people will be elected (despite the fact that this is clearly a terrifying prospect that has Nick Griffin salivating into his chin-rolls).

So I came up with a way to save democracy. Here it is: only give the vote to celebrities.

You're welcome!

We've seen how anything, even bottled water, can become a style icon in the hands of celebrities and the fashionable elite. Furthermore, we've also seen how restricting practically anything can increase its perceived value. In one fell swoop, then, I plan to make the vote sexier than a dirty weekend in a Viagra factory.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that we only give the vote to a small elite of demonstrably intelligent and reasonable people. Christ, anything but! That would be a dreadful way to foster an intense sense of value around the vote. Nobody values sense! No, I mean that we restrict the vote to Simon Cowell's address book, the pages of Heat and the A-Listers of Brollywood (British Hollywood).

Scientific studies have been performed (though I make no claims as to the rigour of the linked one) that almost unequivocally attest to the power of celebrity endorsement to create a positive return. Some may remember reports that mammograms went up by 40% when Kylie Minogue got breast cancer - and if it can work for that, then why not for the tits in charge?

So here's how I see it happening:

First year: Vote heavily restricted. Only A-Lister Brollywood types, with a few given to media journalists. They vote in some complete idiots.

Second year: Vote still very heavily restricted. Vote restricted to A-Listers, media journalists and a few carefully-selected tabloid celebrities (Jordan, Lily Allen, the Chuckle Brothers). A handful are reserved for giveaways for Skins fans. They vote in a cactus shaped like a cowboy.

Third year: The celebrity fever around votes should now be building. Vote rebranded 'the Voscars' and takes place in glitzy ceremony. Slightly less restricted - most journalists can now weasel their way in, and it is also given to Masterchef winners. They vote in the smell of aloe vera.

Fourth year: Apparently the Voscars are 'tightened up', with restrictions back to first year levels. At the last minute, an apparent flaw in the system is 'leaked', meaning that everybody who can get down to the voting station before 3pm is erroneously allowed to vote. They tumble to the stations in droves. Many are stamped and stomped to death. They are the true heroes of the piece. They vote in Elton John.

Fifth year: Elton John has a strop and fires nuclear warheads at China. We are instantly demolished, since nobody in the previous four years has maintained any kind of defence system or war protocol. Everybody dies... but democratically. One man, one heaped pile of charcoal.

This may seem drastic, but it's actually the least terrifying of the futures we face. After all, both Labour and the Tories seemingly plan to castrate the BBC - and isn't that a more terrifying prospect than simply being vaporised following a ginger dwarf's hissy-fit?

Cunning Linguistics

2009-10-13T22:02:00.004+01:00

[It wouldn’t be a fun Nash schedule if it didn’t start off neglected! Actually, yesterday was full of surprises – a housemate’s birthday, an arrest (not mine), an unfortunate text meaning I had to (unsuccessfully) try to reschedule a course I was meant to be on today, and various other personal and vaguely amusing matters.]

What is language to you?

To many people, as I am discovering on my wayward blunder through life, it is a blunt tool for communication. You have something to convey (I would like some of your chocolate), somebody else needs to have it conveyed to them (lest you get no chocolate return at all) and so you use language as a boat to carry the message across the rivers of incomprehension (“Girrus some choc, you tight bugger. Go on, giz!”).

For me, though, and many other fluttery, girly petals like me, language is more than that. It is a twisting, turning beast, constantly morphing according to its rider and the terrain over which it canters. Or, if you’d like more amusing imagery, it’s like drawing pencils – some people will create moving, beautiful pictures, but most people will simply draw great big spurty cocks.

Those cocks, though, will nevertheless vary from person to person – no two cocks will be exactly alike. Moreover, they will vary according to the situation. If somebody is at work with their boss looking over them, it may be a tiny, hidden cock, for the satisfaction of the artiste. If they are drawing it on a letter addressed to a friend, however, it may be gangly and hairy, shooting great lumps of puerile humour.

So it is with language. We all modify our language according to context, which includes the formality of the situation, the people you are addressing, the people nearby whom you AREN’T addressing but who can hear, and how you’re feeling. It’s beautiful and it’s subtle, and most of the time we aren’t even aware that we’re doing it.

Such variance isn’t restricted to single usage, either. Language changes over time and across cultures, as words gradually shed their old meanings like middle aged men’s hair, and take on meaning anew like middle aged men’s toupées. Grammar fluctuates and occasionally spazzes out. Such change is not only inevitable, it is exciting.

So, then, how is it that people can tell you that your grammar is wrong? If you say I going to go, what right does somebody have to tell you that actually, it’s “I’m going to go,” and I wish you bloomin’ would, you ungrammatical rump.”?

The answer isn’t simple. Prescriptivism in language is tough to navigate, because it is useful up to a point, but beyond that point it becomes about as helpful as a horse in your bath.

It is useful to have a standard language. Even if we consider language as nothing more than our communicative riverboat, it helps both ports if they know what kind of vessel to expect, so to speak. It makes communication easier, it binds communities and it’s easier to pass on to the next generation of little gabblers. Creatively, it sets parameters which can either be used to their full potential or cleverly ignored – but while there’s art in a regulated karate competition, and art in a no-holds barred cage match, there’s no art in a free-for-all drunken street brawl.

On the other hand, too much prescriptivism can divide communities – by confusing one-off mistakes or misunderstandings with the natural evolution of language, strictly prescriptive people distance themselves from other sections of society and run the risk of becoming an old stick-in-the-tongue.

You can’t prevent the flow of language. It would be like trying to catch a shower, or pee into a thimble. The world is bigger than one person – society bigger than one sub-section. If this upsets you, you are invited to have a good old weep, but it will be about as effective as trying to make language entirely static, which is about as effective as inflating a balloon with hedgehogs.

Similar – but more interesting – is the political ambushing of language. It is, in its own way, an attempt to make language static while at the same time recognising that language is fluid and changing. It is both remarkable and misguided at the same time – a person trying to stone somebody to death with soap bubbles because they’re lighter to throw.

[I am going to censor a swearword here. Personally, I believe that being offended by swearing is a bit ridiculous, since you can entirely decide how offended you feel by any word – you bring the weight to the word – and I don’t understand why you would choose to be offended, or have unsayable words in your vocabulary, but nevertheless, I’ll compromise my own position for the sake of others, the fucking sillies.]

A few feminists – by which I mean specific, individual members of particular movements, not just ‘people who believe in the mind-slappingly obvious prospect of equality between men and women, and different races, etc. too come to that – of various stripes have tried to corner the market on the word c**t.

That is to say, noticing that the word has various derogatory connotations (and apparently ignoring that it’s not to do with womanhood at all, but rather the taboo around sex – hence why prick, dickhead and bollocks are all insulting too (not to mention hilarious)), they decided to rebrand it. They did (and do this) by using it a great deal, at as many opportunities as possible. C**t: A Declaration of Independence is one tome setting out such intentions.

In my opinion, further associating women publicly and a bit simplistically with the word probably furthers the idiotic non-feminist perspective of women as basically walking vaginas, but that is for another discussion. More relevantly, can you see what is happening here?

That’s right. An attempt to shed negative connotations by ‘reclaiming’ the word. That is, a small section of society trying to change an element of language in larger society, and then trying to make it immutable. It is akin to trying to grab an eel with oily gloves on, then trying to fix it to the seabed with a jelly nail - or cheating on your partner with somebody else, then complaining when your mistress/toyboy cheats on you with somebody else.

The moral you should take away from this is partly that language in large society will always do things that are interesting and ever-changing. More than that, though, you should understand – and I really, honestly hope you agree with me – that language is fascinating, beautiful and bloody crazy, when you think about it.

Interim

2009-10-11T22:28:00.002+01:00

Post coming tomorrow. I've decided to make Monday the official update day for this blog. Like most people, I only get two days off work out of seven, and while I do thoroughly enjoy writing the blog, I generally choose to do things with other people that are not sitting in a chair pecking at a keyboard on these days.

This should be fairer on you, as it should mean you are disappointed by delays less often. Feel free to shoot me angry messages though!

Hopefully this will be a better arrangement all around.

Tomorrow's post will be on a prescriptive approach to, and political ambushes of, the English language. But it'll be fun! Probably!

Alfresco Value

2009-10-05T20:41:00.003+01:00

Today, I stumbled across a funny old realisation that wasn't actually funny but was probably as old the hills. It was this: value is whack.

My unbelievably contemporary street lingo aside, what on earth do I mean by that? Am I just spitting words into the mouth of the internet, hoping that they'll form something palatable enough to swallow? Of course not! ...almost definitely not.

Here is the thing, see: in terms of quantity, value can be added one of two ways. Firstly, there can be a large quantity of something. Secondly, there can be very little of something. Either of these is, in itself, almost guaranteed to create a sense of value. The only quantities of anything that more-or-less guarantee its worthlessness is stuff that there is enough of, but not loads of, or overwhelmingly much of it.

I realise that this sounds very abstract and a bit tossy, but bear with me, because I am going to pad it out with examples that will not leave you feeling that you've read something of value, but at least it'll have entertained you (or made you annoyed enough to gnaw on roofing tiles).

I wangled onto this thought when I was considering supermodels. Most people do not think about value when they think about supermodels, but I am nothing if not a penny-pinching old fuddleduck.

Essentially, my thoughts were thus: it's strange that supermodels, who are essentially mobile clothes-hangers with haircuts, are required to be so skinny. Given the choice between a thin supermodel and a chubby one, you'd think the chubby model would be worth more, since you get more bang for your buck.

By bang for your buck, by the way, I am not insinuating that supermodels have sex for money. That would be unfair and inaccurate. I'm sure they mostly have sex for cocaine.

Of course, it is not only supermodels where less costs more. There is a finite supply of oil, for instance, causing huge prices and even wars. You can see how this type of value works - there's not much of it and it's useful or pretty, so it's in demand. This pushes up the price. Bastardisation of this type of value occurs when something becomes valuable simply because there isn't much of it, creating value out of a vacuum. Consider Tracy Emin's work (though only if you are a glutton for disappointed annoyance, because I can't fathom any genuine value to it).

The two-faces to this vase is the value accrued by quantity. This is the most simple form - one apple is worth two pounds, so two apples are worth four pounds (and, of course, the grocer is a daylight robber). Any heterosexual male will undoubtedly be happy to expand upon the merits of the threesome for much the same reasons, although he will not receive as much vitamin C from the whole affair, and if he is not careful he will die of scurvy (but ecstatic).

So far, so goood. Neither of these explains the supermodel affair since skinny people are not hard to come by, and are probably in about as much abundance as the chubbles, but in fact the example is anomalous - it is dictated not by quantity but by external factors (the way clothes hang, perceptions of beauty, the fashion world being a self-esteem abattoir).

Simple things like hair is valued, but not to any great degree because we have a steady supply of it (until we begin to bald, in which case it becomes immensely valuable indeed and we will pay ridiculous sums of money for what is essentially head-paint).

Similarly, things like air, seawater and reality television contestants are absolutely without value, because they come in such abundance that putting a value on them becomes as sensible as trying to lick your way to the centre of a glacier.

These things are all on the same sliding scale. The scale seems to go:

Huge value > Little value > Large value > Little value
Nothing------------------------------------------------------------- Abundance

Henceforth, this will be known as Nash's Handy Value Stick, and you will all use it in your day to day lives. Now go on, be off with you.

Birthday Presence

2009-09-30T21:00:00.002+01:00

Some of you may be aware that it was my birthday last Friday. Some of you, on the other hand, may not. This is not your fault really, as governments across the world unaccountably failed to declare it a national holiday, buses kept running and death itself did not falter or quit out of awe and respect for my special day.

I am now a heady 23 years old, for those of you rude enough to ask. It’s not something of which I’m proud, necessarily, as it makes me much more aware of my unsteady, dizzying tumble out of mortality. Nevertheless, I still have my teeth, my hair and, thank goodness, my libido, and I am still young enough that going out and getting sloshed on my birthday is actively encouraged rather than something embarrassing for my children and divorce-fodder for the wife.

Actually, I rather like birthdays – the concept of birthdays, certainly. It is a particularly egalitarian process: everybody alive, by definition, has one. The only exceptions are in utero foetuses (which, let’s face it, might technically be human beings, but they're not blimmin' people) and clones, who never even get the semi-birth of caesarean section to justify a day of celebration.

The question that I would like to ask is this: does everybody celebrate birthdays?

I don’t mean the people who say things like I hate my birthday – I just like to let it slide past unnoticed, like paedophilia in the Catholic Church before the 90s. I mean, are there cultures to whom it is an entirely alien concept to celebrate the day of your birth? These would be people who would say What? Celebrate the day I flopped into fresh air? That’s a bit weird. Like celebrating the day your balls dropped for the rest of your life. And, to be honest, they’d be right, but nevermind.

There are, obviously, other celebrations that are entirely culture-specific. If it weren’t for Western media, Christmas would be entirely alien to Iran, and I am relatively certain that a boy’s ritual circumcision at 13 is not widely celebrated in Britain. I certainly haven’t seen a Hallmark card for it.

This is symptomatic of the fact that belief systems are more-or-less universal, but that the actual beliefs themselves vary from religion to religion (and for the non-religious, from unjustified apparent pattern to unjustified apparent pattern. It’s all the same). You wouldn’t expect different cultures to celebrate the same milestones in the year any more than you’d expect Japanese and Portuguese people to speak the same language. Somehow we just inherently know that it’s area- and culture-bound.

Birthdays feel somehow different though – everybody has one, and everybody has only one. It is noticeably a special time in everybody’s life, because it is the start of what country songs have drilled in my head as being The Journey. It is an obvious point to celebrate.

On the other hand, the fact that it’s an obvious point to celebrate doesn’t mean that everybody does. There’s nothing built into our instincts or mental make-up that makes celebrating birthdays a universal must – unlike, say, learning language, or punching clowns.

I know that there are a few miserable Christian splinter-groups that actively refuse to celebrate birthdays, but actually that’s just the flip-side of the coin – to decide to definitely not do something, you must first have observed it. Is the idea of birthday completely foreign to any culture?

Wikipedia just says that some don’t celebrate it, but can anybody fill in this stark paint-by-numbers, piddling little sentence with genuine knowledge? I’d love to know!

In any account, I’ll catch you on Sunday, you sexy scamps. I’m not too old for this lark. Not yet!

Cheery Waves

2009-09-27T20:44:00.007+01:00

As you may know (since I regularly bang on about it), I’m living in Cornwall. Upon telling people that I live in Cornwall, there are a few standard reactions. Generally speaking, after the questions about beards and incest, the following interrogatory flower blooms: been doing much surfing then?

This acceptable form of stereotyping, roughly akin to asking a Scotsman tossed a lot of cabers recently? has always met with a haughty ‘no’ from me. While I don’t actually object to surfing in practice (surfers can now breathe a sigh of relief), it’s just something that I’ve never really considered… until now.

Yes, I have now experienced the watery skateboarding that defines coastal regions worldwide like misery defines Aylesbury. Yesterday, I was bundled into a van with a cloth sack over my head and hit with a lead pipe until I broke down and promised to give it a go if they would only sew my toes back on.

So I surfed for the first time ever. How did I do? Well, as regular readers here will know, I don’t like to use words like expert lightly. I also don’t like to use them when they are wildly inappropriate, as is indeed the case with surfing. I was cocking dreadful.

Nevertheless, knowing very little about something has never prevented me from assuming an air of unquestionable authority, so I present:

Tom Nash’s Ridiculously Accurate Guide to Surfing

1. Wetsuits: Shell-suits of the Sea

Some surfers live in countries where the sun beats down like someone boxing a duck. I live in England. Anybody who has cautiously poked their head outside in England since the summer of 1978 will know that the two bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever.

As such, it is necessary to wear wetsuits, which protect your body from the unholy chill of the water, as well as functioning as minor, squishy armour.

Wetsuits are carefully designed by companies who have a lot of spare money and who are allergic to self-esteem. They have been specifically developed to obey the following doctrine:

1. Any part(s) of your body of which you are particularly proud or think looks attractive will be made risible.
2. Any embarrassing sections of fat, no matter how tiny, will be maximised for full comic effect.
3. The penis will be made both particularly prominent and yet compacted, to further amplify and draw attention to the effects of freezing cold water.

2. Salt City: previously known as Your Insides

If you are one of those people who refuses to salt pasta because it’s ‘bad for you’, you should steer well clear. While the sea’s waters may look delicious and inviting, your eyes, nose, mouth and throat and going to end up saltier than if you’d been buried in oysters. Your hair will granulate. All the chafings and little cuts that you receive just through the process of being dragged along rocks and sand will be frankly cluttered with salt, which we all know feels particularly pleasant on open wounds.

I know I shouldn’t have been surprised by the saltiness, but it was of such a level that I was somewhat taken aback. On around the 5th time I tried to hack up all the salt that had coated my oesophagus, feeling decidedly sick for those couple of minutes and with a frantic burning sensation in my sinuses, I thought to myself why was I not warned? The people have to know! Consider me your public service, friends (if you didn’t already).

3. Getting on the right wavelength

There is a certain kind of wave that is good for surfing upon. This is known as a Poseidon’s wink or a golden shuffleshank. Catch it at the right time and your job is half done.

The trouble is that while there are a few distinctly different types of wave, the one you want looks very similar to waves that talk the talk but do not walk the wavy walk. This means that you get into position and look towards the beach where a crowd has gathered, murmuring amongst themselves as they stare at your unbearably attractive form, transfixed; you flick your sun-gilded hair and sparkle on the waves like a beautiful and fucking magnificent sea-horse, ready to ride the greatest wave that mankind has seen since John Prescott belly-flopped into the Pacific; the swell approaches, you paddle faster and adeptly, drawing coos of wonder from your captive audience; the wave turns out to be a dud, you are carried approximately about a foot, and the coos turn to jeers, admiring claps turn to points and flicked Vs, and everybody takes it in turns to urinate into the water around your shamefaced, stupid body.

4. Look the part, Mart

A lot of the fixation around the surfer culture is image-led. It is undeniably cool, if loafer-ish. Understanding the importance of appearance, especially on Fistral Bay which is surfing’s answer to Islam’s Mecca or bingo players’ Mecca, my friend Pete and I made certain that nothing about ourselves could possibly be mocked by the surfing community. This went exceptionally well – until the boards we hired turned out to be a shade that can only be described as flamingo; they were blocky, padded lumps of hard foam not unlike Pink Wafers.

People driving past us actually slowed down in order to be able to shout all the things that they wanted to from their car windows.

It was a very enjoyable day, and I can certainly see the appeal, but I don’t think that I’ll be doing it again soon. I will leave it to people who have what I believe is known in the industry as a sense of balance. So I’ll stick to surfing the internet for the moment, where the waves are of conspiracy theories and pornography, and which requires no discernable skill whatsoever. Which is how I like it!

APOLOGY

2009-09-20T22:46:00.004+01:00

Hallo everybody. I would like to sincerely apologise for not providing you with some eye-sugar this week. I had a packed week last week, a weekend away from the computer and this week is even more packed (a client of the company I work for has launched a week-long awareness campaign, requiring many, many press releases to be sent out and lots of PR). The result is that I am more tired than roadkill at Silverstone when I get home, and the last thing I feel like doing is writing or being creative.

I will be updating this Sunday (the post will be on the merits of surfing, which I'll be doing for the first time on Saturday), so please do check back then. Assuming things have simmered down a little, I'll also provide another post mid-week to make up for this frankly unacceptable breach of trust. I have no idea what that'll be on, but I assure you that it will ring with all the indignance that I can muster.

Thanks for coming back, and thanks for bearing with me. Assuming you have and are.

In the meantime, please check out the blogs to the right, most of which update regularly and all of which are magnificent. In my opinion. Which is right.

Love!

In Dining Armour

2009-09-13T16:44:00.007+01:00

If you live in the UK and enjoy gazing into the glassy abyss of television, you may have seen the celebrated show Come Dine With Me. For those who have not, allow me briefly to smear the details into your lobes as though they were massage oils loaded with sexy information.

Come Dine With Me is a reality show practically unique in character, since while the majority of contestants are shaped into the tried-and-trusted reality television silhouette of personifying the drudgery and dredges of humanity, it also includes some genuinely likeable people. It also includes Dave Lamb, a wry and sarcastic voice-over presenter, who is just on the right side of the cheeky line to make him funny rather than a judgemental wangberry.

These factors alone would make the show popular, without also catering to the middle-class foodie autofellatic bubble that’s currently inflating itself over the country. But it is none of these elements that I would like to stumble into today.

You see, I firmly believe that this show is, on some lazy level, interactive. I wouldn’t host a party like that, you think, as you imagine all the ways in which case you would do a much better job than all the oven-jockeys on the telly, he should have provided a cheeky Rjoca rather than that inaccessible Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the whizz-sniffer. Or what are those decorations? What are they? They look like buzzard’s balls. My tasteful collection of garden gnomes would go down far better.

The show, essentially, gets you thinking about your own dinner party, and how you would host it and clearly do a far superior job than the people on the flicker-box. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? Just look at how good you are! You’re great - and it comes naturally! I definitely feel bad for everybody who, through no fault of their own, bless them, nevertheless just isn’t you!

I, too, foolishly fall into the trap of being a person, and so I’ve considered the matter myself. While a dinner party is obviously a personal thing, guided by your own insane opinions, there are nevertheless a few actions you can take to ensure that it won’t be a flopping great disaster which has people sniggering about your stupidity in the supermarket as you shamefacedly walk to the ready-meal section, having sworn forever off cooking again. I shall now handsomely present them in:

Tom Nash’s Insultingly Magnificent Guide to Hosting a Dinner Party

1. Plan your menu… then choose who to invite

Some people would suggest that you invite some people to a dinner party, and then adapt your menu to their needs. What gumps! Why allow for such wildcards as:

Vegetarianism;
Allergies;
Personal taste;
People who will complain about pubic hairs in the salad;
People who want bloody rubbish salad at all?

Instead, carefully plan a menu that you personally would thoroughly like to eat. I don’t judge on this blog – you can make your main out of champagne-stewed partridge or eyeballs du roadkill as far as I’m concerned, so long as it’s something you enjoy making, eating and, of course, forcing onto other people.

Now go through all of your friends to discover who has similar tastes as you and invite them along. If none of your friends have similar tastes, no matter! Simply discard them and find friends anew through foodie fora or police reports. Don’t forget, this is a treat that you are offering people out of the golden goodness of your splendid heart. Don’t let them forget that either!

2. Don’t be tone-deaf

This is a dinner party, but it is your dinner party. It can be as formal or informal as you choose, within certain restrictions. However, don’t think that just because you have served up your dinner in hair-thin golden bowls moulded directly from Prince Albert’s knees that everybody will suddenly believe you are the first cousin of the Queen. They will think that you are a pretentious goonicorn, and will probably spray-paint words to that effect all over your front door.

Similarly, you may wrongly think that it is cool to say to your guests, oh, yah, I just wanted an informal do, you know, no boundaries. So there are no chairs, no cutlery, no plates and all three courses are being served in one big bowl. Dig in! You are wrong. That is not an informal dinner party – that is a squat. Your guests will fill your home with tears, and all your favourite possessions will become water-damaged. Worse, your home insurance will not cover damage by twattery.

3. Keep the booze flowing

Some people, for whatever reasons, don’t drink. It may be religious reasons, taste reasons, or perhaps they just solidly loathe the idea of fun. This is fine, and up to them. However, they are in the minority, and it is a source of considerable dinner party shame to run out of the Good Juice.

As such, you must always make sure to purchase a variety and large quantity of liquid grins for your guests to consume. It always helps to have something a little different for after dinner – a good scotch, perhaps, or a Swiss spirit distilled from cuckoos – but in general, the big three are red wine, white wine and beer. Gin-and-tonics are also a popular request, by women and the upper-class alike (quite reasonably, given their dangerously high levels of deliciousness), so if you’ve got any of those coming, stock up!

Cocktails are always popular, because they are entertaining to watch being made, and come out a variety of exciting colours and in funky glasses. They are essentially Playdoh factories for adults. This may be why children eat Playdoh – though adults are intelligent enough to make sure our version tastes good too. Children, as I’m sure we’ve discussed before, are definitely not.

Consider this: nobody ever weaves away from a dinner party, smashed off their face, and saying that was, *hic*, that was awful. Whereas a dinner party drenched in sobriety may spawn boredom and genuine resentment towards their host for their frankly un-British lack of alcohol.

4. Put on background music

Conversation is characterised by bursts of chatter punctuated by short silences. Even if the conversation is scintillating, the drink flowing and the participants arousing, these bursts of silence always feel slightly awkward, as though everybody around the table has suddenly realised how little they have in common with everybody else at the table. This even happens with identical twins.

Background music fills this gap and, as a desperate measure, can provide a back-up conversational topic. Since it is there to prompt conversation rather than drown it, though, choose it carefully. Top One Hundred Terrifying Circus Tracks or Drum ‘n’ Bass Covers of Foghorn Sounds are probably inappropriate.

5. Tidy Up

Everybody understands a little clutter, but if you’ve gone to the effort of inviting somebody for a nice evening in your home, then try to make it look a little less like an abattoir, for Rod’s sake. Nobody wants to trip over shoes, books or children on the way to the toilet, so be sure to stick all of these in a cupboard before they arrive.

I, obviously, have never hosted a dinner party, but when I do, I shall follow my own guide and arrive at Success Station, covered in medals and lipstick-marks. I urge you to do the same!

Back to the scenes of literary crimes

2009-09-06T17:02:00.004+01:00

Updates! Get yer updates! Hot from the ovens of progress!

Yes, here at Wordsfromnash I don’t just throw information at your faces to see what sticks to your eyebrows before striding off, never to be seen again – I like to keep you in the loop regarding past topics. Why? Because my heart is made out of gold, mahogany and gigantic bloody great lumps of sapphire, that’s why. Anyway, here are a few updates on topics that I’ve discussed, which you may or may not have missed recently:

1. Adventure games.

I don’t like to brag (well, okay, I do) but shortly after I wrote this engaging and prophetic post, fantastic news was foisted upon the gaming world. LucasArts, the main producer of the good old adventure games but recently dwindled into a portal for little other than Star Wars games, kicked itself back into adventure mode. This occurred mostly because Darrell Rodriguez, bless his cotton socks, was appointed the new president of the label, and he almost immediately:

Licensed a new series of Monkey Island episodic games to Telltale Games;

Created a special edition Secret of Monkey Island, completely revamped with everything new except the plot and dialogue;

Hid the fantastic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis adventure game in its entirety as an unlockable bonus on the Wii version of recent release Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings;

Gave every adventure game fan a Mercedes Benz.

Now far be it from me to allow my shiny new Merc to sway my feelings about the man, but I can definitively state that Mr. Rodriguez is a spectacular human being, for these alone. What’s more, the suggestion is that, should these be successful and popular ventures, LucasArts will consider creating new original adventures themselves again – a step that can only catalyse the popularity of the adventure genre in general. I am excited! I am so excited that I’ve started to make myself tranquiliser sandwiches to calm myself down, lest I start skipping about the place like a schoolgirl with a crush on a pony or something.

2. A scientific approach to healthcare

Based upon a World Health Organisation release, the BBC reported late last month that homeopathy should not be used to treat serious diseases. It also reported that paper should not be used to build hobs and, as I expect you recall, there was that whole cats miaow, dogs bark controversy as well.

Actually, though, snide comments aside, I’m not going to make fun of homeopathy. It is entirely understandable that when people use something and then feel better, they should attribute their recovery to whatever they’ve used. That, along with various anecdotal evidence and the pseudo-scientific shit-ribbon that is carefully tied around homeopathy, plays us off against our worst instincts – the mistakes in rationality that we are all inclined towards, and for which we should not therefore mock people (even if it is fun).

Nevertheless, while taking homeopathic ‘cures’ for mild and ailments that are mostly to do with state of mind or pain without underlying faults is relatively harmless per se, using them to try and cure more serious problems can come at the expense of genuine treatment, and people suffering from them will make judgements based on what are essentially falsehoods. It doesn’t matter if a child believes in Santa, because it’s a harmless lie. If the Prime Minister believed in Santa and that he was able to deliver bombs down enemy chimneys, however, he might make all sorts of potentially deadly decisions.

Another ‘treatment’ that claims more than it can possibly achieve, thus becoming dangerous, is chiropractic. Dependent entirely upon spinal manipulation and, of course, the placebo effect, practitioners nevertheless claim to be able to heal just about everything. I half expect to see claims that by cracking a couple of your vertebrae, chiropractors can stop your neighbours playing loud music through the walls.

See this post on Bad Science for details – there’s no sense in me repeating it. Not when I’ve got other important things to discuss like…

3. Organic food

The Food Standards Agency recently commissioned a study into the health benefits, if any, of organic food. Unsurprisingly, it came up with nada.

Of course, this study can’t be taken in isolation, but it is damning. A couple of caveats:

a) Nutritional values between organic and non-organic (to use their lingo) foods can vary – though it has never been shown that in this case, different means good.

b) This study is specifically about health benefits, rather than the use of pesticides (which is a large part of what the organic pushers are concerned with).

Interestingly, while the SA claims differently, most scientifically-stringent ‘taste tests’ seem to come up saying either that there’s no obvious difference in taste between organic and non-organic foods or that the difference in taste varies from product to product – so the organic food tastes better claim is suspect too. Try this for a scientific study (conclusion: no discernable taste difference, while recommending further and more stringent research), and this for an uncontrolled but fun test by a Times journalist.

Well, this was meant to be a faster blog-post than usual because I’ve got to go out, but if anything I’ve spent longer sourcing bastard links than I would normally spend churning out a nonsense post. See me suffer for my art! Stay well until next week, folks, whereupon I’ll throw more jokes at you instead of hard-bitten SCIENCE. Because you’re here to laugh, not bloody learn about stuff, I know, I know.

Narration Information Station

2009-08-31T12:22:00.005+01:00

Sorry this is a day late, pals – I was unwell over the weekend. Nothing murderfyin’, but nothing fun either (e.g. a mass of boils that get larger and larger until it becomes clear that they are in fact party balloons filled with sweets).

Today I intend to blether on at you about the writer’s voice. By the writer, I am of course not referring to any particular writer. Rather, I am using the definite article to refer to something indefinite – writers as a whole. I apologise if my hot-shot crazy manner of tongue-kissing the English language misled you there.

That shanker’s guide to grammatical semantics you just read in the above paragraph is an example of my voice (not to mention my self-absorption) – the manner of style in which I have carefully and thoughtfully (and handsomely and magnificently and so on) chosen to write directly towards your twitching, greedy eyeballs.

There are many reasons for choosing one particular voice over another when writing. I chose this because it is very close to my natural writing style in any case, but with the hyperbole and humour (I hope) ratcheted up. I also chose this because I want to make it fun for people to read, and while you can be talking about the most interesting subject in the world, if it’s not written in an enjoyable way, all that will happen is that the first couple of lines will rattle about on people’s retinas a little without troubling the brain before they click onto somewhere else that talks about murderers’ hands transplanted onto the bodies of ghosts or something.

Another aspect that is extremely important when selecting a voice is consistency. The readers must be able to rely on the voice as dependable, because anything else confuses the subject matter too. A book on immigration could not take the Sun’s stance in one chapter and the Guardian’s in another without some serious explanation, because the voice would be utterly compromised, and the reader would not know whether the information was dependable, whether they were coming or going and whether or not the book was written by some sort of prankster bastard.

All of this is about to become whizzingly relevant in a much more specific sense than my usual ramblings, since it is a very real issue that I must address in EBTT. My main slice o’ ham Jo-Pi has recently been kind enough to give me some insightful and delightful lit-crit on the story, and one major flaw he picked up upon that I’ve successfully nailed into it is a troublesome voice.

Now the reasons it occurred are as obvious as Prince Harry’s parentage: as I’ve stated before, EBTT, while even now short for a novel, was originally a much, much shorter undertaking – in which the author’s voice was a crucial hobbling-post. However, as it meandered and simmered, I built more themes and memes into it, until, while the general thrust was the same, the initial importance of the narrator became sidelined.

Now this is Bad News straight from the Bad News Bible, because it has led to a rather skiddy slip in that important consistency malarkey I was just discussing. You may note that I am not the most consistent fellow at any time – consider the contrast between the below post on science and, say, the post about beach fun. They are different in everything except the fact that both spilled out of my silly ears like night-time wax. If I can do that over a couple of thousand words, then imagine the inconsistency I can weave in over sixty thousand. I’m amazed it’s still in English.

Now, actually, it’s not so dreadful a situation as I’ve just clumsily painted. I have a choice – and it is a bit like Sophie’s Choice, except that nobody will die depending on what I choose. I’ll have to do some thinking and work depending on what I choose, which, as I’m sure you can appreciate, is far worse.

My choice is this: I can either lose my narrator (and as such, a point in one of the themes in the book which I quite like, but which does not actually develop anything in any real fashion, and exists more as a ‘look how clever I am’ taste in the mouth) or I can build him in further, cementing him in the book as useful.

As you may have gathered, the better option is numero uno, but it’s not just the spots of work that will stain my collars if I choose it that make me hesitant. It’s also because I chose an additional narrator for another, non-thematic purpose.

If you do not build in an extra narrator, then everything you say in a book that is not attributable to one of the characters’ mindsets is, as a baseline, considered your point of view. As such, you write things that you believe are true or false. With an extra narrator, you can create their personality and beliefs, so that you have a buffer – you can build in some of your own beliefs, but also argue things that you don’t necessarily believe, which means you can set the tone of the book fully; it doesn’t necessarily have to fall in line with the way you personally feel.

I probably will end up nixing the narrator (a middle-school science teacher called Aaron Doherty who has mild issues with mothers and objectivity), which means I will have to rewrite various chunks of the story so that I myself don’t appear a whack-job. Either that or I’ll write the whack-jobbery off as artistic licence, like some sort of pseudo-intelligent twat.

Artistic licence has a lot to answer for.

Good Knowing's Good Going

2009-08-23T21:18:00.003+01:00

I have a rather natty list to the right of this block of exceptional text, you know. While it probably pains you to allow your eyes to stutter across the screen for even a second, mesmerised as you are by my powerful storytelling and rambunctious imagery, there is some excellent reading to be had there.

I regularly – daily, probably – check some of them, to place an interest-grenade in my brain and pull the pin. These include Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, Derren Brown’s team blog and (though infrequently of late), Fundulus Schmundulus. Each of these updates with interesting developments and scientific studies in all spheres of fun, fantastical and often furiously erotic happenstances.

This service provided by these delightful specks of magnificence is useful, and incredibly underrated. I regularly learn things from all of them as they tickle the testes of fascination, and so too could millions more – but learning seems to be joining the ranks of penny-farthing robot wars and whipping shoeshines as an antiquated pleasure.

It’s not unreasonable or even unusual to suggest that there is a fearful trend towards anti-intellectualism – and worse, against science – that is increasingly prevalent. While it will probably never represent the majority vote, its large following is enough to ensure that my spine turns into a large wobbly fear-éclair, more cream than starch.

Part of the problem is the representation of science as an ideology, with the appearance of white coats and NHS specs. This is a little bit like confusing the everyday sun with Apollo, Roman god of the sun. Unless you genuinely believe that the sun is a muscular and rather under-dressed fellow with tight ringlet curls, it bears no genuine resemblance. So let’s be clear, and pin down what science is.

Science is nothing more or less than a method employed to discern truth. There are various of these around, but science is the one that works because it is most concerned with two principles: objectivity and consistency. If something is scientifically determined to be true, it is something that is always true under the stated conditions, regardless of human wish.

Science is not biology, physics and chemistry. These are examples of studies that can be furthered, illuminated and explained using the scientific method (science).

Science is not bubbling test tubes, lightning-powered laboratories or owls’ heads sewn onto telephone boxes.

This is important, because it is often treated like just another viewpoint or perspective. Sure, you may say, evolution is a scientific theory that should be taught in schools, but so is creationism and they should be taught side-by-side so that people can make up their own minds. Fascist!

This has all the hallmarks of thinking attached, but it is really just… just awful. In assigning each with the same presence and clout, it presents it not only as a dichotomy between the two, but an equal battle. Which is frankly barmy, due to the level of scientific (which, remember, just means objectively attained) evidence on the side of evolution versus the lack of objective evidence supporting creationism. It’s not that they are two different theories… it’s that one is actually a theory that is vastly accounted for, and the other has nothing to back it up but ideology. For a comparison, imagine two entries in a beauty pageant: one a Brazilian model, the other a piece of paper with a woman drawn on.

Another consequence of rendering science as a plastic sticker of itself is that people are rejecting scientifically-obtained progress.

Consider the goals of the Soil Association. There is, essentially, one purpose behind the campaign – to curtail modern farming methods and return to a farming style established pre-1900s. Genetically modified products at any stage are banned, as are all recent pesticides (though pesticides from the ‘good old days’ are okay, in some circumstances – which don’t have to be submitted to safety tests, because they’re traditional).

In itself, this isn’t a bad idea. However, given that there is evidence that modern methods can do a hell of a lot of good worldwide, that the levels of pesticides on food are so small that they do no harm and, indeed, in some cases have an hormetic beneficial effect, and the lack of scientific (i.e. objectively obtained) evidence that food farmed by the SA guidelines is any healthier or tastier, it seems questionable.

Policy Director of the SA, Lord Melchett famously said: "Science doesn't tell us the answers so some of it we have to go on feelings". That is to say, if something can’t be objectively proven, we should make decisions based on our own biases and beliefs, as though the positions were equal.

Of course, it is important to monitor pesticide levels, because they are a kind of poison. However, the legal limits are placed well below the safety limit, and in industry-wide yearly checks, only 5% of any food is ever found to contravene the legal limits – usually by trivial levels that never come a mile of the safe limit.

What could the pesticide and GM technology do? A lot of big claims are made, but they could certainly help with feeding hungry people, using less land to do so – people who may not get the chance if Europe-wide international regulations are put on foods that are swung by public clout rather than influenced by scientific sense.

Lord Melchett understands that appealing to emotive people and fuelling an anti-science sentiment is the way forward. In 1981, he said: “conservationists need to realise that scientific evidence, rational arguments and compromise do not win political arguments … sheers volumes of data – of facts and figures – are unlikely to be very persuasive in themselves”, thus demonstrating a contempt for objective evidence over warm and human bullshit.

Science is massively important for feeding people, then, yes. But it should be actively encouraged for its own sake anyway. I firmly believe that knowledge is an end in itself – it is something to glory in. This is where schools get it wrong – the search for knowledge and understanding is the means and the end, not a journey towards a certificate.

Surely that is just my point of view, though, right? Well, perhaps. But I’ve just finished a book called Guns, Germs and Steel, which is an account of human populations of all sorts over the last 13,000 years. One of the things that I came away from it with was an understanding that societies which embrace knowledge, new technology and understanding flourish and succeed evolutionarily – they grow and overtake other, more reticent societies easily. Giving up on technology and progress – for which science is easily our biggest champion – is not unknown, but retards your society while others host populations who live longer, eat better and experience more luxury.

A society which embraces scientific endeavour for its own sake is a successful society. Anything else is just pissing in your own bathtub.