And don’t bring up videocalls to defend yourself: it’d be creepy talking to a disembodied two-dimensional head being held at arm’s length, and besides, the iPad is too heavy to hold in front of your face for long, so you’d end up balancing it in your lap, which means both callers would find themselves staring up one another’s nostrils, like a pair of curious dental patients.
Videocalls are overrated anyway. You just sit there staring at each other with nothing to say. It’s like a prison visit: eventually one of you has to start masturbating just to break the tension.
Personally, I’m not sure whether I’ll buy an iPad, although I think – I think – I’m about to buy a MacBook. Yes, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Mac sceptic for years. Yes, I’ve written screeds bemoaning the infuriating breed of smug Apple monks who treat all PC owners with condescending pity. But being chained to a Sony Vaio for the last few weeks has convinced me that I’d rather use a laptop that just works, rather than one that’s so ponderous, stuttering and irritating I find myself perpetually on the verge of running outside and hurling it into traffic. (That’s a moan about Sony laptops, not PCs in general, by the way. I’m keeping my desktop PC, thanks: that’s lovely. Smooth as butter. Better than I deserve, in fact.)
I just hope buying a MacBook won’t turn me into an iPrick. I want a machine that essentially makes itself invisible, not a rectangular bragging stone. If, ten minutes after buying it, I start burbling on about how it’s left me more fulfilled as a human being, or find myself perched at a tiny Starbucks table stroking its glowing Apple with one hand while demonstratively tapping away with the other in the hope that passersby will assume I’m working on a screenplay, it’s going straight in the bin.
The iBin. Complete with built-in camera. $599.99.
The book of the future
15/02/2010
Following my blithering about the iPad the other week, I found myself thinking about ebooks. That’s my life for you. A rollercoaster. Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the ‘physical pleasure of turning actual pages’ and how ebooks will ‘never replace the real thing’. Then I was given a Kindle as a gift. That shut me up.
Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. First they said CDs were no match for vinyl. Then they said MP3s were no match for CDs. Now they say streaming music services are no match for MP3s. They’re only happy looking in the rear-view mirror.
Crackly warm vinyl sounds wonderful, but you can’t listen to it on the bus, or squish it into a machine the size of a raisin. And unless your MP3s are encoded at such a low rate that it sounds as though the band’s playing woollen instruments in a water tank, and provided you’re listening to some halfway decent music in the first place, your brain quickly cancels out any concerns about ‘lossiness’ and gets on with enjoying the music.
I’ve never quite understood the psychological makeup of the self-professed audiophile – the sort of person who spends £500 on a gold-plated lead and can’t listen to a three-minute pop song without instinctively carrying out a painstaking forensic audit of the sound quality. That’s not a music fan. That’s a noise-processing unit.
Just as it was easy to dismiss MP3s until you’d test-driven an iPod, so the advantages of an ebook only become apparent when you use one. Yes, there’s no ‘new book smell’, no folding the pages over, and if you drop it in the bath you’ve ruined it – but on the other hand, the whole ‘electronic ink’ malarkey actually works (so you don’t feel as if you’re squinting at words made of light), downloading new books is easy, and it can store about 1,500 titles; approximately 1,499 more than I could comfortably carry otherwise. It can also read books aloud, which is great if, like me, you’ve spent years wondering how the great works of literature might sound if recited by a depressed robot.
But the single biggest advantage to the ebook is this: no one can see what you’re reading.
You can mourn the loss of book covers all you want, but once again I say to you: no one can see what you’re reading. This is a giant leap forward, one that frees you up to read whatever you want without being judged by the person sitting opposite you on the tube. OK, so right now they’ll judge you simply for using an ebook – because you will look like a showoff early-adopter techno-nob if you use one on public transport until at least some time circa 2012 – but at least they’re not sneering at you for enjoying The Rats by James Herbert.
The lack of a cover immediately alters your purchasing habits. As soon as I got the ebook, I went on a virtual shopping spree, starting with the stuff I thought I should read – Wolf Hall, that kind of thing – but quickly found myself downloading titles I’d be too embarrassed to buy in a shop or publicly read on a bus. Not pornography, but something far worse: celebrity autobiographies.
And coverlessness works both ways: pretentious wonks will no longer be able to impress pretty students on the bus by nonchalantly/demonstratively reading The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, at least until someone brings out an ebook device with a second screen on the back which displays the cover of whatever it is you’re reading for the benefit of attractive witnesses (or more likely, boldly displays the cover of The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard while you guiltily breeze through It’s Not What You Think by Chris Evans).
I like the notion of this blunt technological camouflage, where it looks as if you’re doing one thing while you’re doing the exact opposite. Here’s another idea. Modern 3D cinema technology works by ensuring your left eye sees one image while your right sees another. But they could, presumably, issue one pair of specs comprising two left-eye lenses (for children to wear), and another with two right-eye lenses (for adults). This would make it possible for parents to take their offspring to the cinema and watch two entirely different films at the same time. So while the kiddywinks are being placated by an animated CGI doodle about rabbits entering the Winter Olympics or something, their parents will be bearing witness to some apocalyptically degrading pornography. The tricky thing would be making the soundtracks match. Those cartoon rabbits would have to spend a lot of time slapping their bellies and moaning.
Anyway: ebooks. They’re the future. The only thing I’d do to improve them is to include an emergency button that automatically sums the entire book up in a sentence if you couldn’t be arsed to finish it, or if your plane starts crashing and you want to know whodunit before exploding over the sea. Ideally it’d shriek the summary aloud, bellowing something like ‘THE BUTLER DID IT’ for potboilers, or maybe ‘THE SCULPTRESS COMES TO TERMS WITH THE DEATH OF HER FATHER’ for highbrow fiction. Which means you could effectively skip the reading process entirely and audibly digest the entire contents of the British Library in less than a month. That’s ink-and-paper dead, right there.
Only one’s a Winner
20/02/2010
Not sure why, but many people seem to think I’m some kind of knee-jerk anti-everything hate machine, particularly with regards to TV. Was it something I said? In reality, I’m happy to sit through what might broadly be considered ‘crap’ programming when the mood strikes me. I can’t get enough of To Buy or Not To Buy, for instance: I don’t exactly tune in specifically to watch it, although to the casual onlooker it might look as though I have, what with me sitting rapt on the sofa and everything. If I catch the start of an episode I’m done for. Will they pick house one, house two, or the ‘wildcard’ choice? I can scarcely breathe till I know.
But my new favourite rubbish show has to be Michael Winner’s Dining Stars, the sort of programme that simultaneously makes you feel glad and aghast to be alive. Put simply, it’s ‘Come Dine With Prick’. Put very slightly less simply, it’s Come Dine With Me meets The Apprentice, which was presumably the opening sentence of the pitch document.
The format: notorious moneyed dickhead and unforgiving gourmand Winner visits ordinary pl
ebs’ houses to be served a free dinner. Afterwards, he reviews the meal, at which point he may or may not give them a ‘star’ award. This works just like the Michelin star system, in that receiving just one is an almighty achievement, while receiving three is nigh-on impossible. Actually, it’s marginally better than the Michelin star system, because a) it’s televised, and b) the awards are handed out by the director of Death Wish.
Winner himself plays to the cameras with more knowing skill than anyone in any of his own films has ever managed. He positively revels in his arrogant eccentric’s role. Every moment he’s on screen is deeply, unpleasantly strange. One of the first things we see him doing is washing his hair in beer, which apparently gives it great shine and bounce. That’s before he’s left the house.
Part of the format requires him to fill airtime by touring the hometown of each prospective chef before he visits their home itself. Cue ten minutes of him walking around some cosy Lancastrian market town, screeching and shouting at everyone like a mad uncle. It’s all put on for the cameras of course, but somehow this in itself is fascinating: he’s deliberately being a comical arsehole in a way which genuinely makes him a comical arsehole … but not in the way he probably thinks it does. There are multiple layers of arseholery going on here and it’s impossible to pick them apart. In the end I simply admitted defeat and started laughing at and with him.
Still, most of the entertainment value comes in watching the civilian chefs bend and scrape at every opportunity to accommodate Mr Winner’s caprice, as though he’s a visiting emperor. The level of terrified veneration on display is truly mystifying, as though they’ve been told he’s carrying a loaded pistol and won’t be afraid to use it. There’s got to be some explanation. They can’t just be nervous simply because he’s Michael Winner. We’ve all seen those insurance ads. Would they be similarly deferential if the Go Compare opera guy turned up? Or the eastern European meerkat thing?
There’s a spin-off series in the making here, surely: Mascot Meals, in which stressed-out punters heat casseroles for inexplicably demanding commercial frontmen.
Anyway, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, everyone involved behaves as though Michael Winner’s Dining Stars is an authentically rigorous examination of world-class cuisine, and it’s this insane act of collective will that elevates the show from mere schedule-filler to amusing cultural artefact. The sequence where he delivers his verdict is one of the most bizarre sights I’ve witnessed in a long while. For one thing, his reviews are breathtakingly cutting, especially when you consider these people have provided this egocentric millionaire with food and shelter for nothing. At one point this week everyone in the room is genuinely in tears, and I almost followed suit out of sheer sheeplike compliance.
Was I laughing or crying? In all honesty, I couldn’t tell you.
Tiger and Terry and Vernon are sorry
22/02/2010
Tiger Woods said sorry. John Terry said sorry. Even Vernon Kay said sorry. It’s a sorry state of affairs. If you were to rank the three in terms of transgression, that’s probably the order they’d fall in: Woods first, then Terry, and finally Kay, who didn’t even cheat, or at least not in our physical realm. Texting flirty messages? Maybe unwise when you’re otherwise engaged in a relationship, but at the very worst it’s a Matrix shag. I’m not exactly what you’d call a fan of Kay’s presentational style, but I don’t derive any pleasure from watching him squirm and apologise to a pointing, cackling nation.
When did public displays of contrition become the norm? More to the point, who actually appreciates them? Sitting through any public apology is mortifying. It just feels wrong. And unless the poor bastard in question is saying sorry for something as momentous as a war crime, it’s entirely unnecessary. The public don’t need to hear it, because the public isn’t as psychotically, self-regardingly deranged as the press. Consequently, these apologies are aimed not at the public, not at the fans or the listeners, but the press. The press demands apologies on its own behalf, regardless of the will of the people. And it does this because it is insane, truly Caligula-level insane.
When it comes to the three scandals in question, the press has been perpetually and erroneously outraged on behalf of the public. During the Terry debacle, I was working on a TV show that required me to watch hours of rolling news coverage, like a lab rat with its eyes glued open. TV news vox pops are about as far from a scientific survey as it’s possible to get without literally gluing a scientific survey to a rock, blasting it into deep space and bicycling like billyo in the opposite direction, but still: not one member of the public, with a microphone shoved in front of their face, managed to work up even 1 per cent of the indignant fury of some media pundits.
For the first couple of days, they couldn’t find anyone who wouldn’t simply shrug and say, ‘So what? It’s his private life.’ After a week’s worth of media sabre-rattling and interminable witless debate over the morals of a man who kicks a ball around for a living, they managed to uncover a few – a few – pedestrians who were grudgingly prepared to admit that maybe he should step down, considering his position as a role model to kids.
But the whole role-model-to-kids argument was a bogus mantra in the first instance. For one thing, kids don’t care about or even comprehend their idols’ sex lives, and for another, if you’re so worried about the havoc Terry’s shenanigans could wreak on impressionable minds, stop dredging up the details and printing them in simplified prose a child could understand, accompanied by massive photographs of his alleged mistress in her underwear.
And besides, even if Terry had been caught having sex with a Cabbage Patch Doll in the window of Hamleys, he’d still be a better role model than any tabloid newspaper. A child who idolised the tabloids would grow up to be a sanctimonious, flip-flopping, phone-tapping Peeping Tom who thinks puns are hilarious and spends half its life rooting through bins for a living. If I had a child like that, I’d divorce it. Or kill it. Whichever proved cheapest.
Of course, the press has to feign outrage on behalf of the public because that’s virtually the only thing that lends the public-interest argument much weight when you’re dealing with ethical transgressions in the private lives of sportsmen. It’s interesting that when the News of the World lawyer (the cheerfully named Mr Crone) spoke to ITN about the lifting of Terry’s super-injunction, he said that too often the public’s right to know is overlooked in favour of ‘wealthy and pampered’ celebrities and footballers.
That’s true, of course, but the words ‘wealthy’ and ‘pampered’ seemed to be delivered with particular emphasis, as though this was a noble victory for the downtrodden little guy, rather than an immense corporation that makes a fortune from prying into the sex lives of hapless soap stars and clueless ball-wallopers. It would’ve been refreshing if he’d said: ‘This is an important victory for freedom of the press – but never mind that: wahey! Filth galore!’ And then rolled his eyes and rubbed his belly and performed a cartoon backflip. But no. He didn’t.
Instead, Terry paid the price for that daft super-injunction: he was publicly tarred and feathered. As was Woods. As was Kay. In the West, adultery isn’t punishable by stoning. Instead, if you’re famous (and even if you’ve only committed virtual adultery by text) it’s punishable by kicking. Step out of line and the press will encircle and kick you. And kick you and kick you and kick you until you beg for forgiveness. At which point, if you’re lucky, they’ll chortle and sneer and move on. They must be frightfully proud.
Your beautiful password is dead
27/02/2010
In days of yore, we’re told, people had less leisure time because everything – everything – was a protracted pain in the fundament. Want to clean that smock? Then you’ll have to walk six miles carrying a pail of water back from the village well. And that’s before you’ve tackled the laundering process itself, which consists of three hours laboriously scrubbing your soiled garment against a washboard and wringing it through a mangle. By the time you�
��ve finished, it’s bedtime. Did you remember to clean your pyjamas? No. Back to the village well for you, then.
No wonder the people in medieval woodcuts look so miserable, even when they aren’t being cleft in twain by knights or dropping dead in a flurry of popping buboes. And oh how we modernites love to chortle at their unsophisticated lives. DARK AGE LOSERS PROBLY USED TURNIPS FOR IPHONES LOL!!!!
But in many ways, the rustic serf of yesteryear had a better quality of life than the skinbag-about-town of space year 2010. Computers have freed us from hours of drudgery with one hand, but introduced an equal amount of slightly different drudgery with the other. No matter how advanced civilisation becomes, there’s an unyielding quota of drudgery lurking at the core that can never be completely eradicated.
These days it’s commonplace to do everything online, from designing the layout of your kitchen to locating a stranger prepared to kill and eat you for mutual sexual gratification. Tasks that would have taken years to organise and achieve can now be accomplished in the blink of an icon. Or would be, if you could remember your password. But you can’t remember your password. You can’t remember it because you chose it so very long, long ago – maybe three days afore. In the intervening period you’ve had to dream up another six passwords for another six websites, programs or email addresses.
In this age of rampant identity theft, where it’s just a matter of time before someone works out a way to steal your reflection in the mirror and use it to commit serial bigamy in an alternate dimension, we’re told only a maniac would use the same password for everything. But passwords used to be for speakeasy owners or spies. Once upon a time, you weren’t the sort of person who had to commit hundreds of passwords to memory. Now you are. Part of your identity’s been stolen already.
In the meantime: you need a new password. One as individual as a snowflake. And as beautiful, too. Having demanded a brand new password from you for the twenty-eighth time this month, His Lordship Your Computer proceeds to snootily critique your efforts. Certain attempts he will disqualify immediately, without even passing judgment. Less than six letters? No numbers? Access denied. This is a complex parlour game, OK? There are rules. So start again. And this time: no recognisable words. No punctuation marks. No hesitation, deviation or repetition. Go.
I can make you hate Page 9
