In all honesty, I'm not sure whether I'm going for a To Kill A Mockingbird thing there, in which case I'm implying that dressing a mathematician is a sin, or perhaps it's a Batman Begins affair, in which case one has to become a mathematician to conquer the inordinate challenge of dressing one of them.
Insanity aside, the title refers to JJ's seemingly impossible task today, as we went to Leamington on a mission to take out the renegade Lieutenant Fashion Sense, first name Lack Of. My mother will vouch that this has always been a difficult and sometimes harrowing endeavour, and she had given up on dressing me by the time I hit adult size shoes. JJ, however, did manage to find a few items that suited me, but they, amazingly, weren't trench coats or Converse. What with that and going to a club last night, I figure I may start accidentally blending into society.
Fortunately, however, I did turn down burger at the club – yep, that's how good Kasbah is, they had a barbecue type affair in the smoking area – because I'm currently vegetarian. I don't think I've mentioned that, but I am now one with that freaky tribe of people. I should probably stop offending them, but I attack maths students and mock men of my height for being short, so I wouldn't want to give the environmentally benevolent herbivores any preferential treatment.
Moreover, to counteract no longer appearing to be a science fiction character all of the time – The Doctor, Darth Vader, Captain Jack Harkness, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Dr Emmett Brown and Batman all wear particularly long coats, or, you know, capes – I'm writing a blog post declaring my love for looking like a pillock.
The nonconformity balance is restored.
20120128
20120124
Yoghurt Pots and String
I think creativity is the tonic of life.
Right now, I should probably be doing work. I get plenty of it. That's not stimulating, though. The end result of a maths assignment is far from new, and undoubtedly not unique due to a count upwards of 300 fellow students who also have to do said work. It's not part of my design, and, besides, who ever enjoyed being told what to do?
I'm not doing work; I'm writing this. It's hardly a short story, or a canvas painting, but it's certainly a start. Really, right now, and at any given time, I simply want to write, paint, sketch, speak, design, build, engineer, play, invent.
Perhaps I played with Lego too much as a kid, and spent way too much time improvising on piano instead of actually learning the boring ABRSM exam pieces.
I like to think of creativity as the most socially acceptable form of nonconformism. Aside from writing, composing, inventing or the like, breaking societal conventions tends to result in being branded things like "kleptomaniac," "nymphomaniac," or, if you're really messed up, "pyromaniac." I can't get arrested for writing a blog... erm... so long as I'm nice about the US Government. You guys rock.
I planned on keeping this post both shorter and with much less self-imposed gravitas and philosophical undertones than my last post, about The Hollow Men. I'll likely go into the kitchen now and make a cardboard box into some kind of dinosaur.
Right now, I should probably be doing work. I get plenty of it. That's not stimulating, though. The end result of a maths assignment is far from new, and undoubtedly not unique due to a count upwards of 300 fellow students who also have to do said work. It's not part of my design, and, besides, who ever enjoyed being told what to do?
I'm not doing work; I'm writing this. It's hardly a short story, or a canvas painting, but it's certainly a start. Really, right now, and at any given time, I simply want to write, paint, sketch, speak, design, build, engineer, play, invent.
Perhaps I played with Lego too much as a kid, and spent way too much time improvising on piano instead of actually learning the boring ABRSM exam pieces.
I like to think of creativity as the most socially acceptable form of nonconformism. Aside from writing, composing, inventing or the like, breaking societal conventions tends to result in being branded things like "kleptomaniac," "nymphomaniac," or, if you're really messed up, "pyromaniac." I can't get arrested for writing a blog... erm... so long as I'm nice about the US Government. You guys rock.
I planned on keeping this post both shorter and with much less self-imposed gravitas and philosophical undertones than my last post, about The Hollow Men. I'll likely go into the kitchen now and make a cardboard box into some kind of dinosaur.
20120120
Between the idea and the reality
I'm at University now. I thought I'd mention that for those you who don't know me, or who haven't been paying attention. Now that everyone's on the same page, I'll begin.
The seriously sharp amongst will have noticed The Hollow Men has crept its way into my title. I love that poem. Eliot is brilliant in general - without him there'd be no Cats, and that would be a travesty.
The Hollow Men is a truly beautiful piece, all about the nature of disappointment. More specifically, it deals with the inevitability of disappointment. When it's not being ironic, the phrase "that's the way I want to go," ordinarily applies to drifting off peacefully in one's sleep. Irvine Welsh thinks otherwise. Choosing life is akin to choosing "rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home." In the end, though, it's likely that the vast majority of us will die in a hospital ward, low on relatives and without any recollection of events from our last twenty years of life. Medicine is likely to advance far enough to eliminate all but a handful of diseases, car safety will improve exponentially and violent crime is forever on its way out, so the odds of living long past the onset of senility is practically an inevitability for anyone who really wants that. So, it follows thus, we will all end, "not with a bang, but a whimper."
How disappointing is that? Realistically, the death of Thorin Oakenshield is what most people would desire. To have that final victory, that ultimate battle, to win it all, then just leave one's corporeality. It's not quite a bang, but it's far from a whimper. The alternative is to perish in battle, but that is disappointing, too. Granted, it's a bang, but dying halfway through the story, with no epilogue, it's almost, but not quite, as unsatisfying as dying years later, the last remnant of your own forgotten tale.
If I can return to my original point after that pseudo-digression, The Hollow Men deals with the dissatisfaction that every man feels when his idea becomes reality. On a side note, wherever I use a gender specific noun, just read it as the other gender or your favourite non-gender specific equivalent if you're the kind of person to take offence. Back to the point, now that nobody is taking offence from stylistic choices, I can't remember ever imagining something perfectly. I'm often quite close, but the accuracy of the my approximation correlates to the relevance of my past experience. I can imagine a future train journey very well if I know the train, the line, the time of day, who the passengers will be, whether or not I've already read the book with which I'd occupy myself and so on. In the case of University, I had absolutely no idea.
In terms of academic content, I had a better idea than most. Wikipedia, the Open University and the odd visit, for one reason or another, to Newcastle University all gave me an insight into the vast difference between school and this place. The disparity between teaching at schools and learning at University was more of a shock to some than to myself, given that circumstances necessitated my self-teaching onwards from at least five years ago. Even before that, I knew above and beyond the scope of the curriculum by virtue of curiosity, an ability to read, and access to far too many encyclopaedias, atlases, poor excuses for newspapers and very few channels that weren't BBC. Enough autocentricism for now, academia is less than half of the University experience. For some, it counts for closer to zero.
The next most obvious consequence of conscripting oneself to the West Midlands for four years is that, if they're fortunate, your family doesn't live there. This came as no surprise. I was every bit as callous about the lack of brothers and sisters and, for that matter, a mother as I expected to be. Anyone who actually knows me will know just how much I love being one of the five, but I can do that from afar. Perhaps I would have found it more difficult if I were the first to flee the nest, but, as it happens, I am the middle child and the second to put down hooks outside the Northeast. Again, my mother makes it easier. I love that woman, though I never tell her, but living with her isn't half difficult. She does do my laundry, though, and thus I regularly make infrequent trips to the launderette here. It's 100 metres away, and in the opposite direction to everything else in the 'verse, given that the only entrance to this glorified Travelodge is at the opposite end of its grassy courtyard to the launderette. As such, I've been of my own accord less than three times, and that condition satisfied by a margin of at least two. I never expected to do much laundry, so as of yet, I'm yet to mention a condition of this bubble onto which the shadow falls between the motion and the act.
If you've not read The Hollow Men, you probably missed three obscure metaphors by now. Go read it, come back. Done that? Good. Yes, I know, it was in Apocalypse Now. So was I Can't Get No Satisfaction, but they don't mention that every time it plays on Radio 2.
The real shadow, the headpiece filled with straw, the discrepancy between essence and the descent, is the people. Unlike trains or launderettes, people are intrinsically different. A train goes choo, and a washing machine whirrs, but a person can make those noises and so many more. "Thanks, Captain Obvious," some of you say. "Nice way of putting it," say others. "Stop with the quotes," go yet another set. That's exactly the point. You load up a washing machine, bit of soap powder, hit the button and it washes your clothes. So I'm told. As far as people are concerned, there is no right way through clothes at them. For washing machines, there's no wrong way. That's what it does. I can generalise about washing machines; they don't take offence. People revel in their differences, and I can't even make comments about all of a single group without someone piping up in protest. I'm not complaining either. Quite frankly, people make life worth living. Not even trains do that, and I bloody love trains.
I've met a whole load of people in my life. A whole load - still with the washing machine lexicon, I see. Sorry about that. Nonetheless, just as I based my expectation of mathematics on what I'd seen earlier, I based my entire expectation of who I'd meet, greet, eat, beat, sheet, neat, hang on, the list stopped working. I based my expectation of what people would be likely upon some biased concatenation of every personality I'd ever encountered. That's a lot of personalities. Ordinarily, taking that much information, adjusting it for inflation, dividing by the square of the speed of light and then taking logs would usually yield at least some approximations worth their weight. In this case, no amount of calculating gave me anything like a glimpse at the nature of the people here.
It's almost as though nobody I ever met had anything besides anatomy and culture in common with everybody I've met since. It's terrifying and enlightening, seeing so many new combinations of little idiosyncrasies, culminating in a plethora of personalities, none of which are anything like any conception of my mind. From an existentialist point of view, there's no greater argument against being simply a brain in a jar. My subconscious is incredible: my conscious is an abacus next to its DeepThought, but it would take a machine infinitely more complex to simulate just a handful of us luminous beings. Not this crude matter at all.
Nonetheless, the horror of surprise created by twenty-two-thousand unfamiliar characters pales into insignificance under the right light. That light, to me, is the future. It counts for nothing, making every last one of these beautiful amalgamations appear in an instant, since time - the destroyer of minds, men and mountains - will vanish them all in due course. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
20120112
I, January
Christmas has its merits, but the novelty wore off a long time ago. Fairytale of New York's melancholy euphony will never get old, but tacky trees and unashamedly crass television lost its appeal years ago, if it ever had any.
Where Christmas is the fever, January is the prescription. It is the phoenix from the flames. It is the silent guardian of hopes and dreams. Aside from ending wars of mass-participation, New Year is the only chance humanity gets to share a clean slate. "Oh, that was last year," is a tonic that makes any unsavoury act that little bit less distasteful.
In January, anything goes. Trying something new becomes effortless, and sticking with the old becomes nostalgic. Despite what Wizzard might have said, Christmas never reinvents for January the lingering hope for unending festivity like summer imposes on September. The Christmas period is well-defined as the time ending at New Year and beginning in the middle of September when Asda is finished with it's "School's Back" decorations and knows that Hallowe'en just isn't big enough to fill its stores. That level of dragging out is more than summer usually gets anyway, and with torrents of rain in place of sun, sea and sand.
January's charm is aided by its lack of eternal life. December rears its ugly head in ever other "-ember," but the bringer of new opportunities, the laid-back, laissez-faire beauty known as January simply bides its time, revealing itself at the end of the show, like Shirley Bassey's money-note or a magician's second budgie.
Where Christmas is the fever, January is the prescription. It is the phoenix from the flames. It is the silent guardian of hopes and dreams. Aside from ending wars of mass-participation, New Year is the only chance humanity gets to share a clean slate. "Oh, that was last year," is a tonic that makes any unsavoury act that little bit less distasteful.
In January, anything goes. Trying something new becomes effortless, and sticking with the old becomes nostalgic. Despite what Wizzard might have said, Christmas never reinvents for January the lingering hope for unending festivity like summer imposes on September. The Christmas period is well-defined as the time ending at New Year and beginning in the middle of September when Asda is finished with it's "School's Back" decorations and knows that Hallowe'en just isn't big enough to fill its stores. That level of dragging out is more than summer usually gets anyway, and with torrents of rain in place of sun, sea and sand.
January's charm is aided by its lack of eternal life. December rears its ugly head in ever other "-ember," but the bringer of new opportunities, the laid-back, laissez-faire beauty known as January simply bides its time, revealing itself at the end of the show, like Shirley Bassey's money-note or a magician's second budgie.
20110325
Grimmer than Grimm
Many moons have passed since I last graced this blog with my witticism. There are reasons. They will remain a mystery, even to me. Rather than consciously tackling the reasons for my actions, I prefer to trust my subconscious with all of it. It usually does a good job.
For numerous, predominantly subconscious, reasons – although one of which I am consciously aware is the subject of the Dinosaur Comics of the past two days – I'd like to analyse some folk-tales, especially to highlight their amoral nature.
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
We all know the story. Girl is warned not to talk to strangers. Girl talks to a wolf of whom she has no experience. Girl's entire family gets eaten, including herself.
Now, I'll be the first to say it. Wolves do not have such a great command over language. Therefore, the villain should instead be a cannibal. Now the story makes sense.
Girl is warned not to talk to strangers. Girl talks to a well-spoken cannibal of whom she does not suspect to be a cannibal. Girl's entire family gets eaten, including herself.
In this much more sensible version, one inescapably notices that, once again, the situation could have been escaped easily by Little Red Riding Hood – who is inexplicably named after her clothing. If Red had been prejudiced against all humans, believing them to be cannibals until proven otherwise, she would have escaped her tragic fate. As such, the moral of the story is:
Granted, the cannibal could have just as easily been a regular, more wasteful of meat, murderer. If Red had suspected the wolf/cannibal/murderer to be a murderer, she would have refrained from detailing the whereabouts of her grandmother and nature of the package she was holding, therefore preventing her horrific ordeal. She could have avoided her distress simply by suspecting the villain to be a thief. Distrusting said villain in any way would have prevented the tragedy. So, the moral of that story is:
Of course, not every version of the story results in Red being consumed/murdered/robbed from. However, in other versions of the story, she is saved by a woodcutter, in a typically sexist damsel-in-distress manner that so frequently prevails throughout folk-tales, which leads me to my next tale:
Sleeping Beauty
I like this one. It involves prophecy. Prophecy always makes tales more interesting. Girl is born, some scorned witch – likely simply a misunderstood elderly woman to whom the world has not been kind, but I'll come to that later – makes a prophecy that this girl will prick her finger on a spindle and die, so, understandably, her father makes darned sure she cannot prick her finger on a spindle by destroying all the spindles in the land.
Unfortunately, spindles still exist in other lands, teenage rebellion kicks in and the damsel-in-distress pricks her finger, resulting in her falling asleep, not dying.
Supposedly, 100 years pass and, being comatose, she doesn't age†, hence when a prince/king/knight stumbles upon her lying asleep, he finds her youthfully attractive and instantly sexually assaults her.
†I think a Doctor would disagree with that supposition.
I'm struggling to find a moral to this story. Maybe it's about her father. If he'd let her prick her finger on any other spindle, maybe she would have died, and he could see to it that she gets a funeral instead of lying at the mercy of a lecherous nobleman of the following century.
Morals aside, this story clearly presents women either as young, attractive damsels-in-distress or as bitter, bedraggled, elderly outcasts, which, once again, brings me to my next – and final – folk-tale.
Hansel and Gretl
This one is spectacular. In addition to the usual stay away from strangers message, it also comes with this brilliant slice of sweet advice:
Hansel actually commits murder in this tale. Why? At what point did the lonely, elderly woman pose a threat? Does he suffer no consequences? Is it okay to murder callously those who have no surviving relatives or friends? Perhaps it is acceptable, from a moral perspective, to kill anyone who lives in a house made from food, given that gingerbread is a natural resource in limited supply.
On top of that, Gretl presents herself as an utterly useless younger sister, whilst the old woman who painstakingly built a cottage made solely from confectionery – except for an oven, which is fair enough really. How else do you make gingerbread? – is presented as villainous and ill-meaning. Here's the life-lesson from that snippet of information:
Why are people so afraid of change? Of the different? Quite clearly, this elderly woman wanted to build something of which she could be proud. If the previous tales are anything to go by, she was likely traumatised as a child for being trustworthy, dependent upon men, victim to an over-protective father and fondled during her sleep by supposed heroes. If she is so sadistic as to want to entice children into her cottage, I'd imagine it is solely for the company of which the desire and lack thereof are undoubtedly a cause of societal disorder.
I find it somewhat disconcerting that, even given the blatant disregard for women that propagates every fairytale in existence, the ideal of a Prince Charming still prevails.
For numerous, predominantly subconscious, reasons – although one of which I am consciously aware is the subject of the Dinosaur Comics of the past two days – I'd like to analyse some folk-tales, especially to highlight their amoral nature.
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
We all know the story. Girl is warned not to talk to strangers. Girl talks to a wolf of whom she has no experience. Girl's entire family gets eaten, including herself.
Now, I'll be the first to say it. Wolves do not have such a great command over language. Therefore, the villain should instead be a cannibal. Now the story makes sense.
Girl is warned not to talk to strangers. Girl talks to a well-spoken cannibal of whom she does not suspect to be a cannibal. Girl's entire family gets eaten, including herself.
In this much more sensible version, one inescapably notices that, once again, the situation could have been escaped easily by Little Red Riding Hood – who is inexplicably named after her clothing. If Red had been prejudiced against all humans, believing them to be cannibals until proven otherwise, she would have escaped her tragic fate. As such, the moral of the story is:
Always believe people you've never met to be cannibals.
Granted, the cannibal could have just as easily been a regular, more wasteful of meat, murderer. If Red had suspected the wolf/cannibal/murderer to be a murderer, she would have refrained from detailing the whereabouts of her grandmother and nature of the package she was holding, therefore preventing her horrific ordeal. She could have avoided her distress simply by suspecting the villain to be a thief. Distrusting said villain in any way would have prevented the tragedy. So, the moral of that story is:
Always distrust people.
Of course, not every version of the story results in Red being consumed/murdered/robbed from. However, in other versions of the story, she is saved by a woodcutter, in a typically sexist damsel-in-distress manner that so frequently prevails throughout folk-tales, which leads me to my next tale:
Sleeping Beauty
I like this one. It involves prophecy. Prophecy always makes tales more interesting. Girl is born, some scorned witch – likely simply a misunderstood elderly woman to whom the world has not been kind, but I'll come to that later – makes a prophecy that this girl will prick her finger on a spindle and die, so, understandably, her father makes darned sure she cannot prick her finger on a spindle by destroying all the spindles in the land.
Unfortunately, spindles still exist in other lands, teenage rebellion kicks in and the damsel-in-distress pricks her finger, resulting in her falling asleep, not dying.
Supposedly, 100 years pass and, being comatose, she doesn't age†, hence when a prince/king/knight stumbles upon her lying asleep, he finds her youthfully attractive and instantly sexually assaults her.
†I think a Doctor would disagree with that supposition.
I'm struggling to find a moral to this story. Maybe it's about her father. If he'd let her prick her finger on any other spindle, maybe she would have died, and he could see to it that she gets a funeral instead of lying at the mercy of a lecherous nobleman of the following century.
Morals aside, this story clearly presents women either as young, attractive damsels-in-distress or as bitter, bedraggled, elderly outcasts, which, once again, brings me to my next – and final – folk-tale.
Hansel and Gretl
This one is spectacular. In addition to the usual stay away from strangers message, it also comes with this brilliant slice of sweet advice:
If it looks too good to be true, get the hell out of there.
Hansel actually commits murder in this tale. Why? At what point did the lonely, elderly woman pose a threat? Does he suffer no consequences? Is it okay to murder callously those who have no surviving relatives or friends? Perhaps it is acceptable, from a moral perspective, to kill anyone who lives in a house made from food, given that gingerbread is a natural resource in limited supply.
On top of that, Gretl presents herself as an utterly useless younger sister, whilst the old woman who painstakingly built a cottage made solely from confectionery – except for an oven, which is fair enough really. How else do you make gingerbread? – is presented as villainous and ill-meaning. Here's the life-lesson from that snippet of information:
If someone does something extraordinary, they must be a bad person.
Why are people so afraid of change? Of the different? Quite clearly, this elderly woman wanted to build something of which she could be proud. If the previous tales are anything to go by, she was likely traumatised as a child for being trustworthy, dependent upon men, victim to an over-protective father and fondled during her sleep by supposed heroes. If she is so sadistic as to want to entice children into her cottage, I'd imagine it is solely for the company of which the desire and lack thereof are undoubtedly a cause of societal disorder.
I find it somewhat disconcerting that, even given the blatant disregard for women that propagates every fairytale in existence, the ideal of a Prince Charming still prevails.
If it looks too good to be true, get the hell out of there.
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