Move along, nothing to see here: I’ve got a job interview tomorrow and I’m planning to spend much of the day getting myself up to speed with everything on the internet I think I need to know about. And so my first assumption is that I’m not going to post much. But then again, I am going to be roaming the internet looking for interesting information, and that’s not that dissimilar from weblogging anyway…
Year: 2002
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The world’s worst Cockney translator…
In honour of Don Cheadle’s “Worst Cockney Accent Ever”, I hereby present the World’s Worst Cockney Website Translator Ever, which seems to do nothing but add the word “awright?” every two sentences. Appalling. As my flatmate says – “My poor people!”
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Thirty-seven songs for an afternoon…
An afternoon’s MP3 playlist:
Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”, B*Witched – “Hey Mickey”, Jamiroquai – “Deeper Underground”, Britney Spears – “Oops! I did it again”, David Bowie – “Boys Keep Swinging”, Grace Jones – “Pull Up To The Bumper”, Death in Vegas – “Dirge”, Lauren Hill – “Doo Wop (That Thing)”, PJ Harvey – “Good Fortune”, Tom Jones & Stereophonics – “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, Menswear – “Daydreamer”, Ben Folds – “Rockin’ the Suburbs”, EMF – “Unbelievable”, Limp Bizkit – “Rollin'”, Madonna – “Music”, David Bowie – “Let’s Dance”, Depeche Mode – “I Feel Loved”, Prince – “Raspberry Beret”, Nancy Sinatra – “These Boots Were Made For Walkin'”, Daft Punk – “Superheroes”, Charlatans – “Love is the Key”, Daft Punk – “Da Funk”, David Bowie – “Modern Love”, Ike and Tina Turner – “Nutbush City Limits”, Spice Girls – “Who do you think you are?”, Dockers – “To Vuo Fo L’Americano”, S Club 7 – “Don’t Stop Movin'”, New Order – “Blue Monday 88”, Weezer – “Crab”, Hole – “Awful”, Salt n Pepa – “Push It”, ABBA – “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”, Primitives – “Crash”, Death in Vegas – “Aisha”, Blondie – “Maria”, Smiths – “How Soon is Now?”, Destiny’s Child – “Bootylicious”.
Now answer me this – am I a cool hipster with a hint of trash or a trash glamster with a touch of cool? I can’t decide, I really can’t….
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Matt Haughey, God among men…
More evidence, if evidence were needed that Metafilter’s Matt Haughey is a god among men.
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God as plot device…
One of the more interesting quizzes I’ve taken recently examines the logical consistency of one’s beliefs about god. I’m a staunch atheist, and have been for over fifteen years now. My ideas consolidated around the time I was Christened in fact – essentially against my will at the late age of thirteen.
To me ‘god’ seems such an implausible idea – like a spacial anomaly in Star Trek – something that fulfils a plot function, but seems a bit of a cliché the three-thousandth time it’s used to explain why something unexpected happens. People have so much need for a god figure to provide a sense of purpose to life. I don’t know if I’m happier for not having a purpose – but I don’t think I could have any self-respect if I secretly believed my purpose was a placebo but went along with it anyway.
The quiz tells me that I’m essentially very consistent in my views about god. In fact it only criticises me in one area – and I actually think it’s wrong to do so. The quiz told me, “You’ve taken a direct hit! You said earlier that God doesn’t exist and you claimed that if she does not exist there is no basis for morality. Therefore, you are committed to the view that there is no basis for morality. But now you say that torturing innocent people is morally wrong. But if there is no basis for morality, then you cannot rationally say of any act that it is morally wrong.”
It seems to me that morality is a more noble achievement if it is wrought than if it is given. Just because there is no one to judge us at the end of our lives, does not mean that we don’t feel the need to be judged? And if there are standards to judge us by – even standards we just decide to judge ourselves by – then does it matter where they come from? … whether they come from biology, or from society’s inculcation of belief, or from the spread of virulent memes. As long as we’ve fought to clarify our beliefs, as long as we haven’t simply believed what we have been told, as long as we’ve struggled for consistency and clarity and to do what we believe to be best, then why can’t we call that a man-made morality to be proud of – and not less proud of because it’s in defiance of a godless, arbitrary universe – but more proud that we have been able to create meaning of some kind for ourselves in the midst of total darkness.
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Ocean’s Eleven and Don Cheadle’s accent…
On Thursday night I went to see Ocean’s Eleven. The film is amazing, Don Cheadle‘s accent is offensively bad. The whole cinema groaned whenever he came on. First “The Limey” and now this… What did England ever do to Steven Soderbergh!?
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A brief history of the Western World…
One day Mesopotamia is assembled out of bits of twig and mud. It is one of the first places we see the ‘Indo-European’ language group that will split off into India and Europe forming the basis of most Western languages. The first written work of ‘fiction’ will be “Epic of Gilgamesh” – Mesopotamian critics give it ‘One Thumb Up’. Egypt turns up in North Africa. Everyone surprised. While that’s going, Greece gets it on – and lots of separate city states turn up. Athens becomes worlds first democracy then thre’s a big war with (I think) the Spartans and then another big war with the Persians (although it could be the other way around and one of them might not have happened). Xerxes was Persian. Herodotus wrote about him.
Then Alexander the Great decides he wants to rule the world and goes a bit nuts bringing Greece, Persia, Egypt, Middle East etc. etc. etc. under his big rule. This is called “The Hellenistic Period”. Finally the Romans turn up. They are boring arseholes and no one likes them. But being very organised they build roads everywhere and conquer most of Europe but become gradually corrupt and stretched too thinly. And the Romans ended up being Christians which is kind of ironic considering how many Christians they used as lion-chow. In the end, Goths come and beat them up. Which is not as amusing an image as it sounds.
Then there are dark ages for a very long time in which most of civilisation sucked arse. Civilisation is left to mad monks hoarding books in dodgy cold monasteries in places like ‘lindesfarne’. Things gradually get better and monarchies get better organised – the two are not directly related. Technology gets better – someone invents venereal disease and pointy sticks again. Which is a relief as a lot of people thought pointy sticks had been lost when the Romans went nuts. A little bit later, lots of Europeans go and beat up the Middle East in the name of Christianity. Over a thousand years later, the Middle East remains pissed off. Everyone in Europe gets snotty with everyone else in Europe and there are big fights. Sometime around here people decide that science isn’t complete horseshit (very gradually and mostly in Italy).
European people send out people to colonise the world and send dodgy missionaries with them who introduce the world to the Catholic Church and syphilis. Which is nice. Except some of the people they meet don’t want the Catholic Church or syphilis, so they get killed and stuff. Particularly in South America, North America, Africa, the Antipodes and the bits of Asia that hadn’t invented pointy sticks yet. Then England goes all Protestanty which no one is particularly thrilled about. Particularly not the Irish who get in a snark with Cromwell.
America gets all snotty and declares independence. No one cares. It is a dumb country. Americans have wars with themselves for a bit. No one cares. It is a dumb country. Europeans have more wars with each other. No one cares. They’re used to it. Freud is born. There are a couple of world wars. Someone invents cool things like planes and electricity and moon rockets. Some of these people are from America which is no longer a dumb country but a fucking scary country. Russia is also a fucking scary country for a bit, but then they let MacDonalds in, so we quite like them now. And on the seventh day Joss Whedon created Buffy.
THE END (OF ALL HISTORY AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT CHINA, THE MIDDLE EAST, THE CRUSADES, SOUTH AMERICA, MOST OF ASIA, THE COLONIAL STUFF AND PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING ELSE).
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The Guardian’s baffling salary quiz…
I just did a quiz at the Guardian designed to figure out how much money you should be earning – it works it out by assessing your IQ. At the end of the test the quiz asked me what I was doing with my life. The quiz told me I was wasting it. And, in fact, that I should be earning about £60,000 more a year than I seem to be at the moment. More annoyingly the instructions for the second round of questions made absolutely no sense at all. So I just answered the same for all of them and hoped for the best.
You tell me – do these instructions make any sense? “Does the second shape differ in some way from the first shape? Or could the second shape be the same as the first shape?” The possible answers are “Could be” and “no”. Is that ‘No the second shape does not differ from the first shape?’ or ‘No the second shape could not be the same as the first shape?’ or is that ‘The second shape could be different from the first shape?’ or ‘The second shape could be the same as the first shape?’ – whoever wrote the quiz was a bit dumb if you ask me. Now, where’s my £75,000 salary?
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Selling a Valentine’s date on eBay…
It’s Valentines Day – are you lost and lonely? Well then it’s a terrible shame that I didn’t do this earlier. Because I’m considering selling a date with myself over the net on ebay. Would you like to buy me for a meal and some stilted conversation in Central London? Sometime in the first week of March? Then keep yourself glued to your monitor…
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