I wrote this a little while ago for a friend's work, so I thought I may as well post it on here too:
So, Japan eh? What is there to say about it that hasn't already been said? Everything and nothing. There is nothing left to say about it, but everything left to truly know. The truth is that any description of Japan will never give you any idea of what to expect. The eccentricities are exaggerated, the real nuances are copious and redundant, and the sense of unknown will always be just that. Japan is a bluff, and a double bluff, and that's what makes it so interesting.
I dare not make any all encompassing point, because there isn't one. A list of mentally noted, say for example, manners and etiquette fool you into thinking you know what Japanese culture is, but then something comes along that throws you, and you soon begin to realise that the only reference you have with western culture is that Japan is like the other outcome from the Chaos Theory, a place from the other side of the two faced coin, a parallel universe incarnated from our own.
As an example of this, take into account that in Japan you cannot pass food from chopsticks to chopsticks, eat in public, cross a clear road if the green man isn't lit, talk on your mobile on a train, wear a black tie, or even use the incorrect verb form without offending someone or accidentally asking for someone's hand in marriage. So the natural thought is to think Japan is an incredibly polite country, and it is. The point being that these etiquettes are relative to a different reference point, and not to any traceable, Western pattern. It is acceptable to let go of a door and allow it to fling back to whoever is behind you, cut your toenails or spit in public if you're elderly, and slurping food is encouraged. There's no homely syntax.
My advice is to forget what you know. Japan is a culture shock, but not in any way that you will ever begin to understand without going there yourself. I think anyone who has been will say the same, but like me they'll fall into the trap of trying to define it to others. Japan is no more or less quirky than Britain, it's just as much the similarities as the differences that will throw you. It's a wonderful, dull, fascinating, boring, friendly and incredibly surprising place. Even with this information, it's likely that your imagination will paint the grotesquely incorrect picture, and should you decide to go, it's that crudely misconceived caricature that will be the basis for just how much you'll undoubtedly fall in love with Japan.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Guilty Pleasures.
Always better the fashion show, than no show at all. Palumbo 1:54.
I know what guilty pleasures are, but unless you're Harold Shipman, I just can't relate to you. I realise that the whole idea is that it's a love for a film, song, or hobby that you normally wouldn't like. I understand that it might purely be because you're acting out some deep-seeded connoted urge, but I don't know what there is to be embarrassed about.
Quite often you'll hear musicians or DJs talk about the first CD they owned, and it's never , ever anything that hasn't stood the test of time. It's always Michael Jackson or Stevie fucking Wonder. Where are Babylon Zoo and The Outthere Brothers!? I know they're all crying in the shower, but I meant in people's first song purchases? You're all liars man! Obese, lying liars! Shut up! Kids don't like Joy Division you total knob!
I don't like X-Factor at all, but it was on at my Dad's when they had the guilty pleasures episode on. The songs that were chosen made less sense than a glass hammer. The Pretenders!? Arctic Monkeys!? Led Zepplin!? CHAKA CHAKA CH-CH-CH.............CH-CHAKA KHAN!?!?!?! 'Here Dermot mate, my guilty pleasure is audio.' I was expecting Belinda Carlisle, Jefferson Starship and Gary's Glitter, but got stuff that I thought people would be proud to love.
Undoubtedly trend-following in music is in no way consigned to pop music, no matter what anyone says, and I’m totally guilty too. I remember when I went through a bit of a Hardcore Punk phase, and noticed that there seemed to be, scientifically speaking, proper' loads of people within that scene (ugh) that loved...wait for it...Bjork…….’EH!?’ I thought and said. I asked people to explain it, but everyone just explained why Bjork is awesome, without ever explaining how they suddenly made the shift from brutal vociferous noise to nebulous, ethereal beauty. So I listened to Bjork more through confusion than curiousity and ended up really getting into her. It's not particularly important, but that link still makes no sense to me. Good story.
Interestingly, the people I know who have relatively alternative tastes and would wax lyrical about how they love Led Zepplin and The Arctic Monkeys, would admit to liking Lady Gaga, or Ace of Base or something, and then go on about how The X-Factor is just a popularity contest. It is, it's painful to watch someone who's really enjoying it, get confused and outraged to the power of Mark Wahlberg over Wagner (quite a fitting name for the music Nazis) getting through each round. The point is that they're opting in to that very same contest by giving one solitary shit over whether anyone else cares if they love Erasure or not! Embrace it!
Incidentally. I once told my dad I thought Erasure were massively under-rated and then had to neck on with a braud and then smack her about a bit, just to wipe the concerned look off his face.
I love it when I meet people who have a genuine passion for anything, I instantly get on board with them, and buy into their unabashed enthusiasm. It usually results in me fickely spending too much money on something that ends up as a fleeting interest. I have no real interest in medievil churches, illustration, photography, antiquities or even mortgages, but if I see the joy in your eyes when you're telling me about it, my ears are yours. The point I'm laboriously getting to, is that these people don't give one fig what anyone thinks of their passion, because that doesn't even come into the equation.
Perhaps it’s incredibly arrogant to think that I know better, but because the love of my life, after Newcastle United's Fabricio Coloccini, is music, whenever someone tells me that a song, album, or artist is their guilty pleasure, this presumptuous little alarm goes off in my head, telling me that their heart's not really in it, or at least not for the right reasons.
It’s a bit of a touchy point, because the bottom line is, without being these people, I clearly haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about. Most people I know have extremely eclectic tastes in just about everything, but a lot will almost admit that they like something that they think is frowned upon. I don’t know why they care, relative to my own musical taste, my own music taste is the best there has been and ever will be, and each to their own. People say 'each to their own', but I don't think it's ever said positively. I think it should be. Repeat to fade, goodnight.
It’s a bit of a touchy point, because the bottom line is, without being these people, I clearly haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about. Most people I know have extremely eclectic tastes in just about everything, but a lot will almost admit that they like something that they think is frowned upon. I don’t know why they care, relative to my own musical taste, my own music taste is the best there has been and ever will be, and each to their own. People say 'each to their own', but I don't think it's ever said positively. I think it should be. Repeat to fade, goodnight.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Jobsworth.
Blogs eh, they're a bit of a pointless exercise aren't they? That's not rhetorical, the answer is largely yes. So why am I writing something I find pointless, and as an interesting side-note, uninteresting?
Well, I need a job doing something I enjoy, and my preference as a certified joke of all trades, is to find a job that allows me to get paid for having an opinion. Quite simply I want a monetised ego.
I recently decided to take this ridiculous approach to finding work, saying as the painfully realistic and laughably tragic method has gotten me, and so many others precisely to, or equal to nowhere. The workplace I last retired to was a graveyard of Master's graduates with faces like bus drivers being given £20 notes on a Sunday. There was an almost apologetic air to that unfulfilled ambition being perceived as snobbery, due to the unmask-able chorused sighs born to witness at some of the most exasperatingly stupid people sharing our pay grades. I'd look down at the ground in exasperation, but I wore these work shoes to my graduation, which makes me wonder why Alanis Morissette never included that in her song.
'It's like graduation shoes, at your horrible job,
it's like 10 thousand chives, when all you need is a spice.
It's proper ironic...and that?'
Catchy as fuck! But woah! What? Wait!, who are the truly stupid people here? Those that went straight to that job? Or those that wasted a small fortune on an education, and then went to it? …..actually it's them, there is no excuse for asking if Hitler was 'that moustache bloke?' and using the child's alphabet to spell your surname. To be fair, that's only one person, and Hitler was only brought up, because I said that he should be sent to an extermination camp, because he's offensively stupid.
'Hahahaha' I'm kidding of course, but you could imagine a nation being duped into it, if it was ever on the cards. I for one know that I was duped into it, and brainwashed. I'll use sock puppets at my Nuremberg trial and it'll be fine.
You haven't written a blog until you've compared the incomparable to the holocaust
Well, I need a job doing something I enjoy, and my preference as a certified joke of all trades, is to find a job that allows me to get paid for having an opinion. Quite simply I want a monetised ego.
I recently decided to take this ridiculous approach to finding work, saying as the painfully realistic and laughably tragic method has gotten me, and so many others precisely to, or equal to nowhere. The workplace I last retired to was a graveyard of Master's graduates with faces like bus drivers being given £20 notes on a Sunday. There was an almost apologetic air to that unfulfilled ambition being perceived as snobbery, due to the unmask-able chorused sighs born to witness at some of the most exasperatingly stupid people sharing our pay grades. I'd look down at the ground in exasperation, but I wore these work shoes to my graduation, which makes me wonder why Alanis Morissette never included that in her song.
'It's like graduation shoes, at your horrible job,
it's like 10 thousand chives, when all you need is a spice.
It's proper ironic...and that?'
Catchy as fuck! But woah! What? Wait!, who are the truly stupid people here? Those that went straight to that job? Or those that wasted a small fortune on an education, and then went to it? …..actually it's them, there is no excuse for asking if Hitler was 'that moustache bloke?' and using the child's alphabet to spell your surname. To be fair, that's only one person, and Hitler was only brought up, because I said that he should be sent to an extermination camp, because he's offensively stupid.
'Hahahaha' I'm kidding of course, but you could imagine a nation being duped into it, if it was ever on the cards. I for one know that I was duped into it, and brainwashed. I'll use sock puppets at my Nuremberg trial and it'll be fine.
You haven't written a blog until you've compared the incomparable to the holocaust
The job market, cuts and student political debate have been done to death, meaning I don't have to. It's for the best really, my political ignorance is conveniently deliberate, and part of an ongoing attempt to not have an aneurysm. I've always been distrustful of all politicians, and probably always will be. I can't get on board with people who answer, or rather avoid questions by endlessly laying blame elsewhere. I know it's seen as a skill, but to me it's only that because it takes a paraplegic level of regression to bend your non-existent spine all the way back to the petty, he said-she said quarrels, taught out of you at primary school. It could accurately be perceived as ignorance on my part, but I opted out of the political mine-field a long time ago, and was quite happy with the mistaken belief that they're all as good and as bad as each other. Now, for the first time in my life, it's been inescapable, and even if I'd escaped the current shit-storm, I'd have to be the impossible bastard-child of Houdini and Dillinger to have escaped it's puddles like the puddle-jumping fanny that I am.
In one year my C.V has gone from being exemplary, to solid, to inexperienced, to irrelevant, to paper. So exactly what has been the point in higher education and all of the unpaid work placements along the way? Are we now a society based around, and pandering to the subservient jobs vacated when everyone went to Uni to get their dream job? With not just an ignorant, but deliberate and conceitedly snobbish disregard for knowledge?
A friend of mine made a point about 5 years too late for both of us, that educational content should be scrapped, and instead children should just be taught how to be 'relentlessly and unjustifiably confident'. Certainly in my experience in working in call centres, it's those with the most subservient attitude that get anywhere. Usually the type of Call Centre Advisor who thinks they aren’t expendable, with their faux-queen’s English, swinging from side to side, fingers spread and symmetrically touching finger-tips left hand to right hand. Over-dressed for the business-casual environment, thinking their opinion holds more weight than their belt, with their sights firmly set on promotion to placating their superiors and shitting on everyone else, thinking they’re better than everyone else without ever hinting at justifying it. I can be bitter.
Recently there have been a few companies murmuring in outright, backlashed snobbery, and suggesting that, here fuck it, being stupid is what we're about, and we're proud of it. Like some Middle-Class graduate threw a top-hatted boomerang at the working-class in the '80s, and it's just come back, covered in hypocritical bull-shit, and actual shit, because we all know the working class get a bit hacky.
One example being the First Direct advert, which depicts a young school-girl, fucking about in class, drawing whales, talking loudly, and generally being the type of person you secretly fantasised about punching in the face at school. The advert roles forward to now, where she relates to the customer, who sounds apologetically condescending in their middle classiness, about how it's 'only human' to forget to pay your bill from time to time. Fair enough, but she works for a bank, I don't want to put my already turbulent finances in the hands of a Whale drawing, concrete spazz-child just because she's a 'real person'.
Normally it wouldn't bother me. I mean, it's only an advert after-all, and labelling the stereotypically working-class as real people is incredibly condescending, but it's accurate in the same way as calling a stereotypical spade a real spade is accurate. The part that blitzes my hope, that spits in the face of my ambition, is that this person is being championed as 'real people'. Imagine a scenario where a montage is shown of the same person working incredibly hard at school, like a cross between Rocky Balboa and Hermoine Granger, and then being described as a 'real person' while working at First Direct. That would be snobbishly offensive, alienating, and unrealistic really. So why is it O.K for the under-educated and fat (Jacomo) to emphasise that they're real, or proper people? Is it because I've thought about this too much? I probably have, but I've thought about that too, and it's not. Is it because they'll eat us with their fat bellies? Probably. Or is it because it's an admission that the majority of us are fat and stupid, and can get on-board with it? 'Me do eat now! IS THIS EXISTENCE??' Hallow!
I know it's just an advert, but if you asked David Cameron why it's an advert, he'd probably childishly come back with 'you're an advert!' and then implode for accidentally blurting out a possible answer. Writing this has been fun. Conceitedness and Bitterness have been ticked off my list.
A friend of mine made a point about 5 years too late for both of us, that educational content should be scrapped, and instead children should just be taught how to be 'relentlessly and unjustifiably confident'. Certainly in my experience in working in call centres, it's those with the most subservient attitude that get anywhere. Usually the type of Call Centre Advisor who thinks they aren’t expendable, with their faux-queen’s English, swinging from side to side, fingers spread and symmetrically touching finger-tips left hand to right hand. Over-dressed for the business-casual environment, thinking their opinion holds more weight than their belt, with their sights firmly set on promotion to placating their superiors and shitting on everyone else, thinking they’re better than everyone else without ever hinting at justifying it. I can be bitter.
Recently there have been a few companies murmuring in outright, backlashed snobbery, and suggesting that, here fuck it, being stupid is what we're about, and we're proud of it. Like some Middle-Class graduate threw a top-hatted boomerang at the working-class in the '80s, and it's just come back, covered in hypocritical bull-shit, and actual shit, because we all know the working class get a bit hacky.
One example being the First Direct advert, which depicts a young school-girl, fucking about in class, drawing whales, talking loudly, and generally being the type of person you secretly fantasised about punching in the face at school. The advert roles forward to now, where she relates to the customer, who sounds apologetically condescending in their middle classiness, about how it's 'only human' to forget to pay your bill from time to time. Fair enough, but she works for a bank, I don't want to put my already turbulent finances in the hands of a Whale drawing, concrete spazz-child just because she's a 'real person'.
Normally it wouldn't bother me. I mean, it's only an advert after-all, and labelling the stereotypically working-class as real people is incredibly condescending, but it's accurate in the same way as calling a stereotypical spade a real spade is accurate. The part that blitzes my hope, that spits in the face of my ambition, is that this person is being championed as 'real people'. Imagine a scenario where a montage is shown of the same person working incredibly hard at school, like a cross between Rocky Balboa and Hermoine Granger, and then being described as a 'real person' while working at First Direct. That would be snobbishly offensive, alienating, and unrealistic really. So why is it O.K for the under-educated and fat (Jacomo) to emphasise that they're real, or proper people? Is it because I've thought about this too much? I probably have, but I've thought about that too, and it's not. Is it because they'll eat us with their fat bellies? Probably. Or is it because it's an admission that the majority of us are fat and stupid, and can get on-board with it? 'Me do eat now! IS THIS EXISTENCE??' Hallow!
I know it's just an advert, but if you asked David Cameron why it's an advert, he'd probably childishly come back with 'you're an advert!' and then implode for accidentally blurting out a possible answer. Writing this has been fun. Conceitedness and Bitterness have been ticked off my list.
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Let Romance Bleed
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day's a funny bugger isn't it? It has that air of Mother's Day about it (that's not a Ya ma! joke), where you dare not miss it for fear of hurting those that you care about, but the vows of affection seem to feel slightly cheapened by being emotionally black-mailed into the least spontaneous display of affection possible. That's been my view on it for a while, that it's a bit forced from the inside, and a bit of a cheap trick from the outside. Like being the baddie inside a Disney film, who no one knows had their heart trodden on before turning into a cynical prince and princess detesting love-terrorist.
I Don't Know What I Can Save You From
'I think boys put too much emphasis on just doing what they think they should and spend money on cards and meals, when really it should just be something romantic.'
Hmmmmmmmm...mmmmmmmmmmm...mmmmm.....hmm, I take my boyishly Oliver style hat off to you Phil (actually a girl) and feel a bit daft for not reaching the same realisation earlier. It might be my experiences, my beaten spirit, or my dormant heart, but I think that's the kind of outlook I had when I whole-heartedly believed in things, instead of just whole-heartedly trying to. Although I'm not quite ready to stop treating love like the powerfully hopeless and hopelessly powerful bastard that it is, if I did, I think I'd remember that outlook on Valentine's Day, and give up the half-arsed, doing the same as every Saturday night stance, which probably only serves to exemplify just how stagnantly habitual you've become.
Valentine's Day's a funny bugger isn't it? It has that air of Mother's Day about it (that's not a Ya ma! joke), where you dare not miss it for fear of hurting those that you care about, but the vows of affection seem to feel slightly cheapened by being emotionally black-mailed into the least spontaneous display of affection possible. That's been my view on it for a while, that it's a bit forced from the inside, and a bit of a cheap trick from the outside. Like being the baddie inside a Disney film, who no one knows had their heart trodden on before turning into a cynical prince and princess detesting love-terrorist.
I Don't Know What I Can Save You From
'I think boys put too much emphasis on just doing what they think they should and spend money on cards and meals, when really it should just be something romantic.'
Hmmmmmmmm...mmmmmmmmmmm...mmmmm.....hmm, I take my boyishly Oliver style hat off to you Phil (actually a girl) and feel a bit daft for not reaching the same realisation earlier. It might be my experiences, my beaten spirit, or my dormant heart, but I think that's the kind of outlook I had when I whole-heartedly believed in things, instead of just whole-heartedly trying to. Although I'm not quite ready to stop treating love like the powerfully hopeless and hopelessly powerful bastard that it is, if I did, I think I'd remember that outlook on Valentine's Day, and give up the half-arsed, doing the same as every Saturday night stance, which probably only serves to exemplify just how stagnantly habitual you've become.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Cynicism and irony would smugly have you believing that, 'Actually mate, Valentine's Day is the least romantic day of the year, because it takes away a huge portion of what makes romance so amazing? Yeah? The spontaneous and surprising display of genuine affection. It's like, not spontaneous? It's not surprising, and you don't know for sure whether it's genuine, especially if they give you a card and then un-pause their The Notebook DVD. So don't bother mate, don't believe in it, it's a mugs game.' That may all be true, but no one reads non-fiction romance, do they? Surely people need to believe in something worthwhile?
Prepare to vomit: Valentine's Day might be a tax on love as a commodity, but if you're going to make money off something, then what is more worthy of your money, your time and your imagination than love? Proceed to vomit, patronised: Love might be free, but so is any emotion. There's no need to spend a lot, and there's plenty spent on divorce as a necessity, and ,although I'm at pains to mention it, war every day, so why not set one day aside for something we can all get on-board with?
Set You Free
Maybe Valentine's Day should be seen as a challenge. A day full of expected, plastic crap that challenges your imagination, spontaneity and sense of romance. A chance to surprise over tactless adversity and show the absolute, very best of you, rather than just the defeatist side. If there's anything to bring it out, it's love. Maybe just buying a card and booking a table isn't enough, maybe it's operating by habit and highlighting stagnation (I've mentioned this twice as a cheap trick, by the way). That stagnant habit might be an unavoidable truth in life, and maybe happily so, but right now it's not my idea of what it is to be in love, which might be one of the reasons I'm not. It feels like giving in, to me.
The Leaves Left and the Willow Wept.
So is romance a lazily imagined autumn leaf, that's beautiful, but ultimately dead? Or can it be contained? Feel free to show me.
Yours,
Bridget Jones.
Weirdly, when I was writing this, loads of ridiculous love songs kept playing on my play list, these felt the most fitting:
Set You Free
Maybe Valentine's Day should be seen as a challenge. A day full of expected, plastic crap that challenges your imagination, spontaneity and sense of romance. A chance to surprise over tactless adversity and show the absolute, very best of you, rather than just the defeatist side. If there's anything to bring it out, it's love. Maybe just buying a card and booking a table isn't enough, maybe it's operating by habit and highlighting stagnation (I've mentioned this twice as a cheap trick, by the way). That stagnant habit might be an unavoidable truth in life, and maybe happily so, but right now it's not my idea of what it is to be in love, which might be one of the reasons I'm not. It feels like giving in, to me.
The Leaves Left and the Willow Wept.
So is romance a lazily imagined autumn leaf, that's beautiful, but ultimately dead? Or can it be contained? Feel free to show me.
Yours,
Bridget Jones.
Weirdly, when I was writing this, loads of ridiculous love songs kept playing on my play list, these felt the most fitting:
Saint Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Anthony and the Johnsons – Hope There's Someone
Frightened Rabbit – Set You Free
Kings of Convenience - I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (Royksopp Remix)
Friendly Fires - Paris
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