As you might imagine, given my inability to relate to the rest of the human race on even the most cursory level, I’m somewhat socially inept. Slide me between two strangers at any light-hearted jamboree and I’ll either rock awkwardly and silently on my heels, or come out with a stone-cold conversation-killer like, ‘This room’s quite rectangular, isn’t it?’ I glide through the social whirl with all the elegance of a dog in high heels.
A friend once tried help by coaching me in small talk. Step one: take note of what day it is. On a Monday or Tuesday, ask what they got up to at the weekend. Thursday or Friday, ask if they’ve got any plans for the coming weekend.
‘What about Wednesdays?’ I asked, wide-eyed. ‘Or what if I meet them at the weekend? What the hell happens then?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Just ask what they do for a living.’
That Friday, I attended a reasonably sized get-together and boldly stood in the corner, trying to avoid everyone and everything. When this plan failed, I tried out my newfound small-talk skills. But having dealt my opening gambit, I drifted off, gazing at eternity as their stupid wobbling faces outlined their weekend plans in punishing detail. I didn’t care what they were doing at the weekend—nor, indeed, whether they lived or died. Afterwards my friend asked how the party had gone. I complained that the key to small talk had merely opened a door into a world of tedium.
‘Well, duh,’ they said. ‘No one really cares what anyone else is getting up to. Why do you think it’s called small talk? It’s just shit you say to make things less awkward.’ What, just a pointless noise you make with your mouth? ‘Precisely,’ they said. ‘Cows moo.
People small-talk.’ And I thought: I hate this world. This stinking, unbearable world.
Fast-forward several years until you hit now. Then rewind a few weeks. Some of my friends tell me they’ve signed up to Facebook. It’s a bit of silly fun, they say. So I sign up too. Even misanthropes hate feeling left out. Facebook, for the uninitiated, is ‘a social utility that connects you with the people around you’. It’s like a streamlined, refined take on MySpace. No gaudy backgrounds and hideous customised cursors, just crisp whites and pale blues. You create a profile for yourself, locate other people you know, and add them as ‘friends’. You can then swap messages, share photos, invite one another for drinks, and so on. There’s also a status window you can easily update, so if your friend Dave is feeling pensive, he types ‘feeling pensive’ in and you see a little bulletin saying, ‘Dave is feeling pensive.’ For some reason, this is endlessly amusing. My friends were right: it was a bit of silly fun.
There was one drawback. Being on Facebook involves submitting yourself to cheerful, yet merciless surveillance. Your friends can automatically see more or less everything you’re doing—who else you’re making friends with, which groups you’ve joined, and so on—and vice versa. So when a girl I’d once been semi-involved with but oh-dear-that-ended-badly added me as a friend, I found myself confronted with an unrelenting, unfolding, up-to-the-minute news feed of her fantastic new life and her fantastic new man, replete with photos. It doesn’t yet treat me to an automatic update each time they have sex, although that feature can’t be far off.
Anyway, last week I mentioned my burgeoning Facebook obsession in print. This was my first mistake. By the end of the, day I had received several hundred ‘friend requests’, mainly from students so desperate to escape the tedium of revision they’d idly befriend literally anyone, including me. Probably out of pity.
When someone sends you a friend request, you’re confronted with three options: ‘confirm’, ‘reject’, or ‘send message’. Confirming all of them would make it hard for me to find my real friends among the influx of strangers. Coldly hitting ‘reject’, however, seemed far too mean. Most of them were smiling.
Instead, I chose ‘send message’, and invited them to join a group I’d set up for people I didn’t really know, but who had been kind or bored enough to send a request. This was my second mistake. After sending about thirty such cut-and-pasted invites in quick succession, my account was blocked for twenty-four hours: Facebook thought I was a spammer. Worse, people who signed up wondered what my plan was (I didn’t have one), while others refused, and instead sent me messages pointing out how pathetic it is to smugly fish for new Facebook friends, then arrogantly shove anyone who applies into a custom-made holding pen. Besides, in Facebook terms, several hundred people isn’t that many. lan Huntley could generate more friends in an hour. ‘You’re not exactly Joan Bakewell or John O’Farrell,’ rasped one irritated ex-admirer.
So, for the sake of a bit of silly fun, I’ve generated a roster of wannabe friends I can’t reply to, organised a small group of people baffled by my motives, and convinced several perfect strangers that I’m a conceited, desperate prick. In other words, it’s comforting to know my crashing social ineptitude adapts in line with technology. I can be awkward and useless anytime, anywhere. Even when pixellated, there’s no bloody stopping me.
Because we’re worth it
[28 May 2007]
So it’s come to this. Traffic wardens waddling around with cameras on their heads, like a 705 sitcom approximation of RoboCop. Miniature, pilotless spycopters hovering overhead, simultaneously fighting crime and peering down girls’ dresses. And—as mentioned a few weeks ago—CCTV cameras audibly shrieking at yobs, litter-bugs and anyone with a slouchy walk. The future’s not only arrived, it’s entered our lives with all the breezy assurance of a character from Neighbours popping into Harold Bishop’s kitchen and casually helping himself to an orange juice. The air is thick with magic wi-fi atoms. We’re literally breathing technology.
All of which should make us the most depersonalised generation in history, right? After all, we’re analysed and observed, prodded and scrutinised, catalogued and chronicled, twenty-four hours a day. As far as the software’s concerned, a human being is nothing more than a 3D barcode made of animated pork; a blob on the radar.
Yet thrillingly, we refuse to be beaten. We may have willingly submitted to this unfolding mass experiment in passive-aggressive suppression, but we’re not going to feel like meaningless pixels, goddammit. No siree. Instead, we’ve gone the other way and become hugely self-important. Every single one of us is the centre of the universe. Our mantra: have it your way. Because you’re worth it. Because you’re special. More special than, say, the person standing beside you—can you believe that idiot actually thinks you’re talking to them? Ha ha ha! As if! You’re the special one. Right? Don’t let anyone tell you different. Keep repeating: You are special. And if you detect a whiff of desperation in your own voice, don’t worry. That’s just part of your specialness.
Remember the time that bad thing happened to you? You know. The bad thing? Knocked you for six, didn’t it? Perhaps you were left wondering whether the universe is a godless, random sort of place which doesn’t understand the concept of favouritism. Well, you were wrong, silly! The bad thing happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. No, really: there’s a gigantic Department of Reason deciding these things, located somewhere between the spirit realm and the superstition junction; a shimmering celestial office where invisible civil servants plot out Your Fate and Your Destiny on an almighty chart. The paperwork involved is mind-boggling, but it’s worth it. You’re worth it. You’re special. Keep repeating: You are special.
So yes, you have a destiny all of your own, and in the meantime, while it’s slowly being fulfilled—while all these things are happening to you for a reason—you should demand nothing but the best. The greatest comfort, the tastiest meals, the widest possible choice of entertainment. It’s all about you. Look! Movies on demand! Widescreen movies, movies you can play and pause and repeat as you see fit. Hey, fast-forward the damn thing if you like! Go crazy! It’s your movie!
And we’ll adapt to your mood. You’re in control. Want chuckles?
You got ‘em! More than 200 Adam Sandier movies at the touch of a button. Want romance? I
t’s yours! More than 200 Adam Sandier movies at the touch of a button. Want Adam Sandier? Yes sir! More than 200 Adam Sandier movies at the touch of a button.
You’ve never had so much choice. It’s part of your destiny. Because you’re worth it. Everything in those movies happens for a reason. And it happens in front of your eyes because you’re special. Keep repeating: You are special.
Now, if you’d just like to pop that special fingertip of yours on this scanning device for a moment…that’s the way…and just keep your special eyelids open while the iris recognition software does its thing…that’s lovely…now, you might get a bit bored during this next bit—we’re going to analyse your prior credit transactions and generate a purchasing destiny chart—so while we’re doing that, slip some headphones into your special little ears (white headphones, pink headphones, red, blue, olive—pick a colour that you feel expresses your personality best) and listen to your very own choice of music while our computer chugs away in the background. Are you comfortable? Would you like to lie down? We’ve got 1,000 pillows for you to choose from. Pick the one you feel expresses your personality best. Plump it up (or don’t! You decide!). Lie back. Close your eyes (quickly or slowly! You decide!).
Tell you what. We can pump some dreams into your brain if you like. Want dreams? More than 2,000 Adam Sandier dreams at the touch of a button. Have it your way. And we’ll do what we like while you enjoy your little snooze. That’s right. That’s good. That’s special. You’re special. Keep repeating: You are special.
Dicks, lies and measuring tape
[4 June 2007]
It’s what you do with it that counts. And, according to the Sun newspaper, what almost half of men ‘do’ is fret about it. ‘MEN FEAR TOO SMALL PENIS SIZE’ bleats the headline, which, like all Sun headlines, sounds a bit like ‘red injun’ dialogue from an old cowboy film (quite a racy one, in this case). Apparently, Dr Kevan Wylie of the Royal Hallamshire hospital has recently overseen the completion of a sixty-year study into penis size, during which 12,000 penises were ‘analysed’—an average of 200 penises a year. Assuming they took weekends off, that’s 0.76 penises a day. At some point you’d drift off and start doodling on them.
The survey ultimately concluded that ‘the average erect penis was 5.5 ins to 6.2 ins long and 4.7 ins to 5.1 ins in girth’. And looked hilarious resting on a Petri dish.
If we generously take the average to be six inches, and multiply that by the total number of appendages, it means they examined a total of 72,000 inches of penis, which sounds impressive until you input that figure into a conversion calculator and realise it’s a mere 1.136 miles. A frail old lady could cycle that distance in less than five minutes, assuming she could keep her eyes on the road.
Anyway, it wasn’t all warm hands and tape measures. The researchers also asked the owners of the penises some probing questions—presumably in a misguided attempt to break the ice, or make the whole scenario feel faintly less awkward. They found that ‘those with a ‘normal-sized’ penis often mistakenly thought theirs was too small’. Perhaps the researcher had huge hands.
No. It seems pornography is to blame, as ‘almost 40 per cent blamed their insecurity on watching porn as teens’. Presumably they also felt insecure that they weren’t a smooth-chested, oily West German pulling a face like a man undergoing an ingrown toe-nail operation under insufficient local anaesthetic. On the plus side, they’ll have learned to pronounce the phrase ‘Ich komme’, witnessed countless body-fluid tributes to Jackson Pollock, and perfected the art of slamming a laptop shut at the sound of approaching footsteps.
The tragedy here is that most of them are anxious for no reason. The Sun reports that ‘there is no need to worry as 85 per cent of women ARE satisfied with their partner’s penis proportions. The study found GIRTH matters more than length to 90 per cent of women.’ That’s how they printed it—GIRTH, in bold capital letters, no messing about. It’s a raunchy paper, the Sun.
(Speaking of suns, or rather sons, if I ever have one—a son—I’ve just decided that I’m going to call him Girth, to give him a subliminal advantage with any would-be suitors. Girth Hammer Lointhump Brooker. He’ll thank me for it one day, if only because having a unique Googlewhack-of-a-name is a real boon in our thrilling online age. Finding him on Facebook will be easy, and who wouldn’t want someone like that listed among their ‘friends’?)
To assist worried readers, the Sun thoughtfully accompanied the article with a ‘Pecker Checker’—a graphic of an actual-size ruler with the ‘average zone’ clearly labelled. In doing so, it is actively encouraging male readers to press their erect penises against the page, which is a cheery way to pass a few minutes on a quiet afternoon—or it would be, if the article weren’t surrounded by adverts for MFI kitchens and BT broadband hubs, a column called ‘The Whip’ topped by an illustration of a gloved hand wielding a lash, a photograph of silver-haired sixty-year-old aristocrat Benjamin Slade and, most alarmingly of all, a headshot of Mr Bean hovering perilously close to the ruler’s tip, gazing directly into your eyes. Anyone who can maintain even a below-average erection under those circumstances is precisely the kind of psychopath who shouldn’t be allowed to own a penis in the first place.
So, then. Penises. Men fret about them too much. The answer, perhaps, is to remain erect at all times, as the moment a penis starts engorging, it drains blood from the brain, leaving the owner incapable of worrying about anything more complex than where he wants to put it. Long or short, fat or thin—they’re good for depleting common sense, soiling sheets, terrifying bystanders, creating selfish offspring and precious little else. Plus they look ridiculous. If you’ve got one, or access to one, take a good look at it this evening and ask yourself: how can this possibly be the work of a sane God?
Washing machines live longer with Calgon
[11 June 2007]
My favourite advert at the moment is for Calgon. A kindly looking handyman is sitting behind a washing machine and a box of Calgon, addressing me directly. ‘You’ve heard about Calgon, but why should you use it?’ he asks. It’s true. I have indeed heard of Calgon, but don’t know why I should use it. It is as if he has looked into my soul. This guy understands me better than many of my closest friends, and I’ve only known him four seconds.
Better still, he follows his ice-breaking question with a straightforward answer. Apparently Calgon stops your washing machine turning into a crumbling chalk sculpture. ‘Calgon protection,’ he says, patting the box. The advert ends with a good old-fashioned jingle—a small choir singing: ‘Washing machines live longer with Calgon!’ It couldn’t be simpler.
Now obviously, I’m never going to buy Calgon; popping a Calgon tablet ‘in every wash’ might make the washer ‘live’ longer, but (a) it sounds like too much trouble to go to on behalf of a machine and (b) I could probably spend the money I’d saved on not buying Calgon on getting a new machine when the old one finally dies of limescale cancer—and I bet new washing machines are thrillingly advanced these days, with wi-fi iPod connections and sat nav and everything. But I appreciate the ad’s straight-talking nature. It’s refreshingly unsophisticated, and unlike almost every other advert on television, not glaringly over-pleased with itself.
Right now, there’s a rash of commercials which combine ‘twee’ with ‘patronising’—‘tweetronising’ if you like, although that’s quite tweetronising in itself. You can spot a tweetronising commercial a mile off- it’ll have a modern folk music backing track, a cast of non-threatening urban hippy replicants, and a drowsy hello-birds-hello-sky overall attitude that makes you want to chase it down an alleyway and kick it until the police arrive.
Furthermore, tweetronising takes infantilism to a new level. They’re like children’s programmes in miniature—not so much talking down to the viewer as placing the viewer in a cot and tickling his chin. George Orwell once described advertising as ‘the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket’. These days it’s more like the rattling of a rattle.
&
nbsp; Take the current Orange ad in which a woman stands in a forest unfolding a range of ain’t-it-cute props while a self-consciously lo-fi recording of a female voice recites the following:
I like conversations that last for hours and hours
Full of jokes about singing bees and talking flowers
I like it when they take up whole mornings
And fill up whole nights
When they mention books and cocktails
And trumpets and kites
I like them when they talk about parties and talk about dreams
And talk about cakes covered in cream
And all that they need is me and a friend
And the talking to go on and never to end.
Never to end? I’m all for a bit of pointless digression, but this bitch wants to witter about ‘singing bees’ and ‘trumpets and kites’ for eternityffiiis is a description of hell. Orange does not think insipid babble is the sole preserve of womankind, incidentally-there is a companion ad backed with a man moronically singing about how he likes to talk about dinosaurs, cars and ‘anything that pops in my brain/ and then falls out my mouth/ kind of like the rain’. He is either naturally stupid or recovering from a head injury. Or maybe years of intensive mobile phone use have caused a brain tumour so huge it’s crushed his IQ to the back of his skull, leaving him with the conversational skills of a six-year-old.
The rule of thumb seems to be that the more grimly impersonal the product, the more ingratiatingly syrupy the ad. Cars, for example, were until recently portrayed as cold mechanical sharks; selfish metal cocoons that transported men in sunglasses across isolated desert roads at fearsome velocity. Now, apparently, they are cuddly scamps with an impish sense of humour. Or toys. Or skateboards.
Dawn of the Dumb Page 34