Anyway, while most people don’t perceive life with the worrisome scope of a Tralfamadorian, they’re capable of projecting at least a little. Take joggers. They weren’t born with a pre-programmed desire to jog. No. One day they decided they’d like to get fit, and chose to sacrifice their immediate comfort in favour of delayed gratification: they got off the sofa and jogged themselves slim.
Every jogger is essentially a clairvoyant. They’ve transcended the shackles of contemporary subsistence and risen above the likes of you and me, to witness a vision of the future so captivating it blocks out the pain of the present, so enticing, they’re literally compelled to run towards it. Not only that, they’ve been organised enough to buy proper trainers and shorts and everything, the smug bastards. No wonder everyone else wants to hit them. Here’s a tip: visualise a future in which you’ve toned yourself to athletic perfection by fighting random joggers in the park. Here’s another tip: wear some sort of mask. And maybe a cape. We’ll come up with a logo for your chest plate later.
Joggers are a minority, but then exercisers generally are a minority. Even though we’re repeatedly told that regular exercise combats heart disease and cancer and blah blah nag nag nag, more than 60 per cent of the population couldn’t be arsed trying, because it makes their legs ache. They’re not necessarily lazy, but suffering from an inability to perceive the future as a solid and tangible thing, unlike those far-sighted seers in running shoes and sweat pants. Perhaps joggers have a few additional Tralfamadorian synapses; only by experimenting on their brains can we be sure. Meanwhile, the rest of us remain stubbornly wedged into narrow individual pockets of time, moaning that we need to lose a few pounds while sobbing into our chips.
And we do the same with the environment: we fail to take painful measures in the present that could ease our existence in the future, because we think they’re too arduous – unless you’re a spluttering contrarian, in which case you think the whole climate-change thing is a load of trumped-up phooey anyway, and that all scientists are shifty, self-serving exaggerators, apart from the brave handful who agree with you. Hey, I’m no scientist. I’m not an engineer either, but if I asked a hundred engineers whether it was safe to cross a bridge, and ninety-nine said no, I’d probably try to find another way over the ravine rather than loudly siding with the underdog and arguing about what constitutes a consensus while trundling across in my Hummer.
Still, it’s easy to picture a collapsing bridge. Picturing a collapsing environment is trickier. Hollywood has tried its best, but all I learned from sitting through The Day After Tomorrow is that, contrary to my previous expectations, the end of the world might be boring.
What we need, if we’re really going to work in unison to overcome climate change is a mix of Tralfamadorian perspective and joggers’ resolve: to let visions of the future dictate our present, rather than the other way round.
So: we need to loosen mankind’s dogged grip on a linear interpretation of time if we’re going to save the planet. But how? We can’t go round injecting our brains with Tralfamadorian grey matter, because it doesn’t exist. Instead the closest thing we have is LSD, which must be pumped into the water supply as a matter of urgency. A couple of months of steady supply should be enough to expand our collective perception.
Let’s start by testing it out on Stourbridge (no reason; just picked it at random: sorry Stourbridge). The results can be televised live. It’ll be funny watching them trying to eat their own ankles or chase the town hall into the sky: just like It’s a Knockout, but with a sense of civic purpose.
Yes. For all our sakes, this must happen NOW.
Meow meow meow meow
22/03/2010
I’m a lightweight; always have been. I didn’t get properly drunk until I was twenty-five, on a night out which culminated in a spectacular public vomiting in a Chinese restaurant.
Ever wondered what the clatter of sixty pairs of chopsticks being simultaneously dropped in disgust might sound like? Don’t ask me. I can’t remember. I was too busy bitterly coughing what remained of my guts all over the carpet.
Not a big drinker, then. Like virtually every other member of my generation, I smoked dope throughout my early twenties. It prevented me from getting bored, but also prevented me from achieving much. When you’re content to blow an entire fortnight basking on your sofa like a woozy sea lion, playing Super Bomberman, eating Minstrels and sniggering at Alastair Stewart’s bombastic voiceover on Police Camera Action! there’s not much impetus to push yourself.
Marijuana detaches you from the world, like a big pause button. The moment I stopped smoking it I started actually getting stuff done. I still sit on my sofa playing videogames, necking sweets and laughing at the telly, but these days if I have to leave my cocoon and pop to the corner shop to buy a pint of milk before they close, it’s a minor inconvenience rather than a protracted mission to Mars. That was the worst thing about being stoned: there came an inevitable point every evening where you’d find yourself shuffling around a massively overlit local convenience store feeling alien and jittery. Brrr. No thanks.
I tried other things, only to discover they weren’t for me. LSD, for instance, definitely isn’t my bag. Call me traditional, but if I glance at a wall and before my very eyes it suddenly starts sliding around like oil on water, my initial reaction is not to be amused or amazed, but alarmed about the structural integrity of the building.
My most benign lysergic experience consisted of an hour-long stroll around an incredibly verdant, sun-drenched meadow, watching the names of famous sportsmen appear before me in gigantic 3D letters carved from fiery gold. Eventually someone passed me a cup of tea and the spell was broken: there I was, sitting in a student hall of residence, watching late-night golf on BBC2 on a tiny black-and-white TV. From that point on it was like being trapped in a David Lynch film that lasted for eight hours and was set in Streatham.
Once again: Brrr. No thanks.
These days I’m sickeningly lily-livered, by choice rather than necessity. I don’t smoke, I drink only occasionally, and I’d sooner saw my own feet off than touch anything harder than a double espresso. I don’t want to get out of my head: that’s where I live.
In summary: if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t much care for mood-altering substances. But I’m not afraid of them either. With one exception.
It’s perhaps the biggest threat to the nation’s mental wellbeing, yet it’s freely available on every street – for pennies. The dealers claim it expands the mind and bolsters the intellect: users experience an initial rush of emotion (often euphoria or rage), followed by what they believe is a state of enhanced awareness.
Tragically this ‘awareness’ is a delusion. As they grow increasingly detached from reality, heavy users often exhibit impaired decision-making abilities, becoming paranoid, agitated and quick to anger. In extreme cases they’ve even been known to form mobs and attack people. Technically it’s called ‘a newspaper’, although it’s better known by one of its many ‘street names’, such as ‘The Currant Bun’ or ‘The Mail’ or ‘The Grauniad’ (see me – Ed.).
In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often ‘cut’ the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria, reheated press releases, advertorial padding and photographs of Lady Gaga with her bum hanging out. The hapless user has little or no concept of the toxicity of the end product: they digest the contents in good faith, only to pay the price later when they find themselves raging incoherently in pubs, or – increasingly – on internet messageboards.
Tragically, widespread newspaper abuse has become so endemic, it has crippled the country’s ability to conduct a sensible debate about the ‘war on drugs’. The current screaming festival over ‘meow meow’ or ‘M-Cat’ or whatever else the actual users aren’t cal
ling it, is a textbook example. I have no idea how dangerous it is, but there seems to be a glaring lack of correlation between the threat it reportedly poses and the huge number of schoolkids reportedly taking it.
Something doesn’t add up. But in lieu of explanation, we’re treated to a hysterical, obfuscating advertising campaign for a substance that will presumably – thanks to the furore – soon only be available via illegal, unregulated, more dangerous, means. If I was fifteen years old, I wouldn’t be typing this right now. I’d be trying to buy ‘plant food’ on the internet. And this time next year I’d be buying it in a pub toilet, cut with worming pills and costing four times as much.
Personally speaking, the worst substances I’ve ever encountered are nicotine (a senselessly addictive poison) and alcohol (which spins the inner wheel of judgement into an unreadable blur). Apart from the odd fond memory, the only good thing either really have going for them is their legality. If either had been outlawed I’d probably have drunk myself blind on cheap illegal moonshine or knifed you and your family in the eye to fund my cigarette habit.
But then I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to narcotics. Like I said, I’m a lightweight. I can absolutely guarantee my experience of drugs is far more limited than that of the average journalist: immeasurably so once you factor in alcohol. So presumably they know what they’re talking about.
It’s hard to shake the notion half the users aren’t trying to ‘escape the boredom of their lives’: just praying for a brief holiday from society’s unrelenting bullshit.
Let’s eat crisps
04/04/2010
This being Easter Monday, what better way to celebrate than a column devoted to describing the flavour of assorted novelty snacks? It’s what Christ himself would’ve wanted. Although I suspect even the messiah himself might prefer crucifixion to the horror of tasting Walkers BBQ kangaroo crisps. The moment the first sliver of fried potato hit his tongue, delivering its payload of marsupial flavouring, he’d moan ‘forgive them father, for they know not what they do’ through a mouthful of wet crumbs.
Last year’s ‘Do us a Flavour’ campaign, in which the company launched six temporary new varieties, was eventually won by the hideous ‘Builder’s Breakfast’, which tasted like a fried egg in an envelope. This year, they’re celebrating the World Cup by launching fifteen – yes, fifteen – new flavours, each ostensibly representing a different nation. I was alerted to this exciting development by an email from Walker’s PR agency – I’m presumably on their radar after reviewing the ‘Do Us a Flavour’ varieties last year. On that occasion, I went out and bought the crisps myself. This time I’d get them for free. Following a brief phone call, a courier delivered a mock suitcase full of crisps to my door. So you can view everything that follows as essentially free publicity for Walkers, albeit the kind of publicity that explicitly states that their new crisps taste revolting. Well, most of them. A couple of them are quite interesting, as you’ll see in a moment:
Japanese chicken teriyaki
The first ones I tried, and not a good start. There’s no identifiable teriyaki element – just a whiff of chicken stock. They should’ve tried tackling a sushi-themed salmon-and-wasabi flavour. Instead they’ve created something that tastes about as authentically Japanese as Lenny Henry. Cowards.
Scottish haggis
After a bad start, another step down. These tasted of nothing, yet somehow managed to make that ‘nothing’ deeply unpleasant. It’s like a small piece of fried potato failing to recall a repressed abuse memory while sitting on your tongue.
Argentinian flame-grilled steak
At last a vague stab at accuracy: there’s a faint whiff of steak, although identifying the ‘flame-grilled’ aspect would require a leap of the imagination so vast you might as well use it to imagine something more exciting, like sex with a movie star or a holiday on Venus. Still: the Argentinians take the lead.
English roast beef and yorkshire pudding
Did Rio Ferdinand create this himself? The beef hits you first: not dreadful, but quickly overpowered by the oleaginous ‘yorkshire pudding’ element. The result is a mixture of cold Sunday roast and stale grease: like inhaling from a pub dustbin on Monday morning. Also, it’s surely not wise to use the word ‘roast’ in any product that notionally represents the England World Cup squad. It’s not looking good for our boys.
German bratwurst sausage
Ah. These actually taste like sausages. Not suitable for vegetarians either. Glancing at the ingredients reveals no pork, although they do contain the downright sinister ‘poultry extract’. What exactly is ‘poultry extract’? And how is it ‘extracted’? Walkers must tell us. Preferably in the form of a televised re-enactment starring Gary Lineker.
Dutch Edam/Welsh rarebit
Yeah, whatever: these are both just ‘cheese flavour’. The former is mild, but still tastes more like ‘real’ cheese than Edam itself does. The rarebit offering tastes like a flattened Wotsit with a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Perhaps that’s a traditional Welsh dish too.
South African sweet chutney
South African what? They’ve made this one up, surely. It’s actually OK-ish: a bit like spicy ketchup flavour.
Italian spaghetti bolognese/Brazilian salsa
Tomato time. These both taste like scratch’n’sniff pizza aroma: a lame committee meeting of watered-down herbs. The ‘Brazilian salsa’ has a slightly more sugary feel, but otherwise I couldn’t tell the difference. My face was openly sobbing by this point, mind.
Spanish chicken paella
It would’ve been fun to have annoyed the Spanish by releasing ‘maltreated donkey’ or ‘slaughtered bull’ flavours instead, but no: chicken paella it is. Amazingly, these actually taste like rice. And slightly like chicken. But they don’t taste like chicken paella: more like chicken fried rice. Maybe Walkers were expecting China to qualify.
Irish stew
No.
French garlic baguette
Garlic bread diluted by a factor of approximately 10,000. So weak and ineffectual, it’s almost homeopathic. They missed a trick: a novelty ‘snail’ or ‘frog’s legs’ flavour would at least have grim curiosity value, much like …
Australian BBQ kangaroo
See? You want to know what these taste like, don’t you? Answer: watery barbecue sauce with a dim hint of meat. There’s no actual kangaroo in them, so the ‘kangaroo’ is delivered entirely by your subconscious. They could call it ‘boiled pilot’s leg’ and the effect would be similar.
American cheeseburger
By far the most interesting entry, if only for the sake of accuracy: these precisely capture that instantly recognizable McDonald’s aroma. Not Burger King, not Wendy’s: McDonald’s. If they were an official McDonald’s product, you’d begrudgingly admire their authenticity. Instead, you’re left wondering whether Walkers will get sued.
So that’s the lot. If these crisps are in any way representative of their associated national squads, the World Cup itself will be an underwhelming kickaround which the US will eventually win on points. Presumably the company’s crisp technicians are already working on a series of stunt flavours to honour the 2012 Olympics. Here’s hoping they steer clear of yet more bastardised takes on national dishes and go for topicality instead. How about American tea party flavour? Iranian uranium? Chinese dissident? Give it your best shot, Walkers, and with any luck you’ll start a war.
Brief gush about Mad Men
09/04/2010
Mad Men is one of those rare shows you just don’t want to end. Thankfully its pace is so languid, it almost doesn’t start, let alone finish. Eighty-five per cent of each episode consists of Don Draper staring into the middle distance through a veil of cigarette smoke. Sometimes so little appears to be happening, you have to fight the urge to get up and slap your TV to make the characters start moving again.
Hypnotic visuals, lingering pace: Mad Men is television’s very own lava lamp. I’m exaggerating, of course, as anyone who
’s been absorbing the show on a season-by-season basis will attest. And I use the word ‘absorb’ deliberately: you don’t really ‘watch’ Mad Men: you lie back and let it seep into you. It works by osmosis.
David Simon once explained that The Wire’s deliberate refusal to decode cop jargon and street lingo was a conscious ploy to force the viewer to ‘lean in’; to make an effort, to engage, to pay close attention to the dialogue.
Mad Men plays things differently. It makes the viewer lean back.
The programme’s glacial tempo is startlingly alien to the average modern viewer, accustomed to meaningless televisual lightshows such as CSI Miami – all winking lights and trick shots and musical montages telling you what to think with such detached efficiency they might as well issue a bullet-pointed list of plot points and moods and have done with it. Shows in which the story is secondary to the edit, edit, edit: where any sense of meaning or even authentic emotion is doomed to death by a million tiny cuts. Mad Men’s tranquility and poise makes it resemble a still photograph by comparison. The viewer has to calm the fuck down to even start appreciating it.
But the notion that nothing happens in Mad Men is bullshit. Every scene has a pay-off; every line has momentum. But like life, it’s often not clear in the moment quite what the direction is. Go back and watch a season again from beginning to end and the trajectories are startlingly clear. Even moments which appeared entirely aimless are suddenly sodden with purpose. There’s constant churning activity – but it’s largely happening inside the characters’ heads. Everyone in Mad Men hides a secret, often a driving force they’re scarcely aware of themselves. They don’t know who they are or what they want. Unlike many characters in TV drama, they don’t verbally telegraph their motivations: in fact they couldn’t if they tried. This is what gives the series such a steady pull: there’s a mystery at the core of every character, and they’re trying to solve it at the same time as the viewer.
I can make you hate Page 11
