TOPIC, due 31/5/07 - "A Smidgin of Religion"

Snakes and lions and atheists, oh my!

With the recent publication of books by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, much of the Western media is holding its biannual flap about the place of religion in society. If you've missed it all, let me summarise: very little is being said that is interesting, and nothing will happen. It's simply an exercise in consciousness-raising that is several centuries old.

What is decidedly less anaemic is the mythologies that the current crop of pundits are taking aim at. Long histories of sordid chaos, genocide, pan-dimensional kink, betrayal and hypocrisy, tied together with the single remaining narrative that the Clog still have to cling to - the Creation Of It All.

Your topic is out there, amongst these grand old tales of lunatics and murderers.

Find it. Beat it.

1000 wds.

Fast World, Fast Food and Fat Cunts

McDonald’s has taken quite a beating in recent times. Probably the most recognisable brand on the planet along with Coca-Cola, the Golden Arches have been kicked from pillar to post by pressure groups, documentaries and nanny states the world over venting outrage at the globalisation of obesity via fast food. There’s no escaping this behemoth of a franchise; even the Grand Canyon, one of the most awe-inspiring and beauteous sites this writer has ever witnessed, cannot elude the clutches of McDonald’s Inc.

What exactly is the secret to McDonald’s success? As with all successful businesses, it’s a simple process of identifying the need of consumers and supplying that need quickly and efficiently. Pre-McDonald’s, procuring a burger in a restaurant meant enduring a half hour wait and a rude waitress on just about enough money to feed herself never mind her bastard offspring. Now it’s merely a case of dealing with a spotty oik on just about enough money to feed himself never mind fulfil the maintenance payments for the kid he never sees. The difference is the diminished waiting time – highly conducive to the go-go-go environment of modern living: If one cheeseburger and fries doesn’t sate one’s appetite, walk up to the counter, ask for another and et voila the hunger pangs are gone.

It’s as easy as that. In fact, government watchdogs are arguing that it’s too easy; too easy to overindulge and, in Layman’s terms, become a fat bastard. And of course, the finger of blame is pointed squarely at McDonald’s billion dollar rump since Ronald McDonald stands outside every restaurant, pistol-whipping potential diners into said establishment and throatfucking them with Big Macs against their will. Nobody goes into McDonald’s of their own volition, y’see – that nasty clown forces them to eat quarter-pounder after quarter-pounder, guzzle it down with a litre of Fanta and then finish off with numerous McFlurries garnished with the latest fad chocolate bar.

Each and every person on this planet has the choice whether to eat in McDonald’s (or any other purveyor of fast, fatty food for that matter) or to eat at an altogether more healthy, wholesome enterprise. It’s not McDonald’s fault that the obesities I constantly witness in the high street have neither self control nor self respect and all the watchdogs, supposedly looking out for the well-being of consumers, provide are ready-made excuses for obesity. That monstrous, hulking fucker with more folds of flesh than hyperbolic space-time blocking the gangway on the bus isn’t enormous because he can’t stop stuffing his fat, puce cheeks with burgers; he’s enormous because of McDonald’s aggressive marketing tactics. He’s enormous because he’s addicted to food. He’s enormous because he has a hormone imbalance.

Give me a fucking break.

Until the imbeciles in organisations that our governments inexplicably give not only a voice but a platform and funding stop blaming fast food corporations and providing these gelatinous gluttons with excuses the problem is not going to go away. The problem isn’t hormonal, it isn’t addiction, it isn’t the prevalence of Justin Timberlake jingles in television adverts and it isn’t going to be solved by drugs, liposuction or restricting fast food advertising.

The obese, whose weight often has to be measured in terms of solar masses, simply don’t possess the discipline to impose restrictions on their own eating habits. It makes me physically sick to witness these masses of human blubber reducing themselves to tears of self-pity on national TV because they’ve exhausted every possible option in their quest lose weight.

Just. Stop. Eating. You disgusting flabby mess of a human.

Preferably altogether so that the 11% National Insurance Contributions that are deducted from my salary each month will actually go towards funding the treatment of somebody that can’t help the condition in which they find themselves.

It’s disgusting that these limp-willed mountains consume more calories in a single day than a staggering number of Africans will in a fortnight. They should be ashamed of themselves instead of wallowing to Oprah Winfrey, Rikki Lake or whichever chat show host decides to indulge their “illness”. It annoys me that these people only realise a problem exists when they get out of breath walking from the living room to the kitchen in search of the next banquet.

It is at this juncture that the lines between some of the Cardinal Sins (I thought that a Cardinal Sin was exacted upon a young altar boy?) become blurred. The obese suffer greatly from laziness and apathy, from jealousy of slim folk and quite patently lack any pride whatsoever. At least with the latter, if Dante’s work is to be taken literally, they won’t be forced to walk in purgatory with stone slabs weighing down on their backs.

They’d probably eat the slabs anyway.

The Shit-Eating Grin of the Tree-Hanging Sloth

Every now and then people stop to ask themselves, and eventually me, how I manage to get all of my work done, nearly constantly work on film projects, and still seem to have a ton of free time in addition to the time in which I get stupidly drunk (which is time I do not consider to be free). There's an easy answer: I do my work, I work on film projects, and the rest of the time I do other stuff and drink. However, this answer is not particularly satisfactory to the people who ask me, and although they don't read this blog, I'll take a moment to answer them in full.

But first, some history. Right now is the period where the undergraduate students at the University of Chicago write their BA graduate theses, which are essentially 40-or-so page essays that are supposed to be the ultimate product of our experience here. Some people write them over the course of a year or more. I started writing mine on Wednesday while hung over, took several breaks to go out drinking, read the excellent and entirely irrelevant novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, stopped working on it on Saturday and spent the next few days drinking with one of my best friends who chose this time to visit Chicago, resumed work on it today (Tuesday), just finished it, and am willing to guarantee that my paper is of above-average quality. I am not lazy or, in my estimation, extraordinarily gifted. What I do is when I work, I work. That's my entire secret.

That this secret doesn't satisfy anybody should be no surprise. In a society where work is measured in the amount of time you spend in a place rather than the accomplishing of given tasks, the idea of working becomes distorted. Playing solitaire or video poker, tagging pictures on facebook, and previewing horny housewives porn videos for later consumption are all ways of working so long as they're all done in the office. Talking to your friends and writing faux-clever, slant-rhymed poems on the bathroom stalls are both working if done in the school library. Why should anything be done quickly?

Since it's more difficult to correct this kind of behavior than to allow for it by lowering standards, the latter option has become prevalent. The work produced is mediocre, but mediocrity is expected, and so evaluations are quite kind. Since it is undergraduate, the ultimate purpose of the essay is to prepare you to do similar projects in the future, and that aim is not achieved - or at least it wouldn't be were it not for the fact that expectations in future enterprises are lowered as well. A chain reaction wave of shit begins with the simple procrastination of dozens of millions students.

Works of quality cannot be produced unless the habit of working is established. If it isn't, there is very little to stop undisciplined enthusiasm from ejaculating everywhere, leaving whatever is attempted drenched in suicided semen. More often there is not even that; undisciplined enthusiasm is a difficulty beyond the reach of most tree sloths.

I realize that this sort of a procrastination is the direct result of our evolutionary success, that we have so removed the bottom layers of Maslowe's pyramid that we've upset that structure, removing the forces of restraint developed at the bottom that allows the most unrestrained flights at the top. We can be taken as victims of our own success. This does not change the fact that the majority of people are too lazy to accomplish even what they genuinely care about, nor the fact that they would all prefer not to be lazy and pine away dreaming of the possibility of being able to do something.

The looks of admiration coming from these sloths is somewhat disgusting. The amount of willpower required to get yourself to do something is very little, but these people have let their will atrophy to such an extent that it could not bend a finger. And so they ooh and aah when somebody manages to accomplish what takes them months of playing grabass to do in the space of a few applied days. They do not seem to see that standards set for dwarfs do not adequately test or challenge giants, or even ordinary human beings. Nor do they see that it is their own fault they can't concentrate, can't adequately achieve anything but a stunning mediocrity and a feeling of helplessness in the face of it.

This is the world modern laziness has shaped. And when something so idiotic as Catholic dogma can adequately describe even this world's deadly sins, you know there's a problem. This is a call to everybody out there not afraid to man up and accomplish something. We are here to swallow the sun and belch out the collected lives of Earth's inhabitants while our eyes glow with the digested supernova. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us, but in reality the majority of mankind live their lives so poorly Death is rendered impotent, incapable of detecting their presence and leaving them to die, increasingly lacking in the most basic aspects of their personality, well into their 90s. All because some assholes can't collect enough willpower to move a dust mite.

The Proud: The Dumb, The Loud

It's very easy to tell a highly intelligent person. Not because they say highly intelligent things. Some people, usually in the managerial professions, have the art of spinning impressive verbiage into the Emperor's jockstrap down to a fine art. Being completely brim-full of shit is a contemporary occupation. No, an intelligent person is far more often revealed by their questions, their language and their attitude.

The right questions to ask are ones which guide but don't disrupt narrative, which facilitate explanations – brief, pointed requests ensuring discourse arrives at a conclusion. The clever will also listen to the exact words you use, and make sure they are exactly appropriate, because they appreciate that ideas cannot be better than the language they are couched in. They re-interpret, and ask, and point, and massage, and understand what you're saying.

But the most immediate thing to notice about talking to a real clever bastard is humility. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. And the more likely you are to accept someone else's claim to authority. It was no surprise to me when I realised that the professors in our department are more likely to constructively accept to your explanation and accept that you know what you're talking about than smart-arse grad students, who are more likely to shit all over what you say with tangential word-faeces. If there is a moral to this story it is simply: listen.

I don't know if a good level of mutual understanding while communicating deserves a name (intellectual osmosis, perhaps?). But I have the feeling it may be a more common event in other people’s lives than it is in mine.

Because teaching, and perpetually explaining things like a complicated psychological thesis to people, often results in something that makes me seethe and want to fuck neck sockets.

Most often, people don't ask. Immediately, they tell. At all times, they tell. Tell, tell, tell.

Most often, people can have a conversation consisting entirely of telling each other their opinions, none of them recognising the fact that anyone else is there at all.

Most often, people simply treat what is in front of them as a Pavlovian springboard into further inanities, spin a gleeful pattern of linguistic ejaculations that just travels off into the aether, saying nothing, discovering even less.

Why?

Why do the suburban dome-heads that surround us, these cretinous dimwits who have no folds in their cortex, continually conduct their lives from their shitty little pulpits? Why are their ears painted on?

Because we all live in Lake Wobegon, "... where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Thank you very much, relativistic education. Thank you for a world where perspective is sacrosanct, where stupid constructs hold more weight than evidence, and smoke and hubris are more important than truth. Where every little fucktard is told he or she is a deadset genius, and their opinion is important.

Thank you for our comfortable & gelatinous lives, spirit of human progress. Thank you for all the bountiful wealth you've given us - Cabbage Patch dolls, pro wrestling, and animal-track sneakers. Thank you for making our gene pool so much shallower. Thank you for destroying personal responsibility by redressing stupidity through lawsuits and class-action.

And thank you very much to stupid, pig-headed human nature. Thank you for maintaining the egocentric cognitions that have kept us alive for the last 5 million years. Thank you for the obsolete impulses and open-savannah heuristics you have saddled us with, that most are mired in.

But seriously... you can all fuck off now. You're holding us up. You're interfering with progress. You bring drooling yawps from people who should be quiet, and silence voices that should be heard. Turn up the heat and boil this everyday peasant pride away. Please.

Topic Due 29/04: The Seven Deadly Sins

The topic this time around is a nice one to get our collective teeth into. I would ask of you to choose the deadly sin that rankles the most and vent bile with an excessive quota of rancour.

I don't believe there is any need to elucidate further, so let it be done in no more than 800 words and submitted by April 29th.

A Hearse, a Hearse; My Boredom For a Hearse

05:45. An old mobile phone I now use as an alarm clock kicks into life with that annoying monotone bleep. The snooze button is instantly pressed and I claw back another 5 minutes from the rest of my day. Repeat until 6:20 – any later and I miss my window of opportunity for the bathroom and, subsequently, the bus.

The short walk to the bus stop at the top of my street is uneventful save for dodging the frequent smears of excrement that adorn the pavement. I notice how the pavement immediately outside the houses of dog owners is spotless, gleaming almost. I shake my head and continue to the bus stop.

Ever noticed how people sit in the same seat every day on the bus? That’s what the 345 is like for pretty much the whole of my half hour journey to the second leg of my commute. The 10A is different; no hard and fast seating rules and aside from irritating school children and the smoker who is incapable of understanding that no smoking signs generally mean not to smoke, the journey is, again, uneventful.

08:30. I arrive in work. I fire up some music from an internet radio station, “Classic hits from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s” is the jingle that greets me. Great stuff. I check personal emails, a music forum, Word War and then move on to checking work emails. Then I prioritise my task list according to the deadlines that have to be met.

Clients consistently call throughout the day with idiotic queries. Most of them are incapable of digesting the tax effects of their enquiry and simply feign understanding. There are a choice few who want to hear my explanation said in as many different ways as an hour on the telephone will allow. It’s not like I’m busy and have more pressing matters to attend; a manual corporation tax estimate for a client that provided nothing but VAT return workings (no bank statements, no invoices, no receipts; nothing) and the payment of which is already overdue, for instance.

I moan about clients. Then I moan about Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. Useless cretins. I moan some more about clients as one particular client complains that we didn’t include a particular detail on his tax return which means he will now have more tax to pay. While he complained and demanded compensation, I had a copy of the tax return that he signed and authorised us to submit sitting in front of me. Who didn’t read the cover letter, which sets out client responsibilities, we sent out with it then, eh? I apologise and knock 10% off next year’s fee as a gesture of goodwill.

That annoyed me.

17:00. Work is over for another day and I may begin my arduous journey home. The 10A is full of college students. Slipknot and Iron Maiden t-shirts are abundant, the wearers proud of displaying how “underground” they are. Due to not meeting face-to-face with clients very often, I can wear jeans and smart polo shirts to work and so many of the “moshers”, as they are known, look at me and assess my “trendy” appearance with elitist disdain. I take a seat behind one of them, although not the corresponding seat I sat in earlier. “Anal Skewer” by Gorgasm is currently raging from my mp3 player at an unspeakable level of volume and I revel in asinine one-upmanship. Ridiculous, I know, but one can’t help but feel satisfied with oneself for being more “underground” than these gimps.

Then, just as I’m feeling at my smuggest and most l33t, Cutting Crew’s “I Just Died in Your Arms” is the next random song up. Bugger.

Two hours later I get home, sit myself down to read the newspaper, have some dinner and then crack on with studying. Last night was a question re the tax implications of selling the shares in a business versus selling the trade and assets of said business, and a second question re the financial reporting and tax implications of the mid-year disposal of a subsidiary with brought forward and current year losses to another subsidiary.

Lovely.

Two hours from the moment I opened the text book later and I’m just about ready to hit the sack.

I watch an old episode of the X-Files in my bedroom, set my old mobile phone to annoyingly beep at me in the morning, and close my eyes.

05:45. “I got you babe/I got you babe.”

Hostility for Fun and Profit

...I hate dreaming. My dreams are altogether too obvious in their meaning. Insight I don’t need.

...Recently, I walked past a group of four plastic whores on the pavement near a dirty city warehouse. They were posing for a photograph, right in the middle of the path. I had to walk through. One said "Wait, don't get that ugly guy in the picture." The others laughed. I spat very carefully and deliberately in the gutter next to them as I passed, something I often do in these situations, kept walking. Their attendant male-friend started doing the "Guido Falcon" behind me, the flapping-arms come-on procedure that is the prelude to any fight of no consequence. He hit me in the back of the head. I arm-lock him, snap kick him in the guts, and start twisting his fingers back the wrong way as he falls forward. Suddenly, I notice there is a questionnaire on his head, running down his back. It has questions like:

"How often do you engage in physical confrontation? a) Often b) Regularly c) Infrequently d) Never"

"Does the presence of women in or near physical confrontation... a) inspire your macho silliness? b) make you wish they were absent? c) become nervous for their safety? d) not concern you at all?”

I fill out the survey on his head with a Sharpie. He thanks me and walks away, unhurt...

Jung would have booted me out for being too obvious.

There is a fist-shaped indentation in the top of my alarm clock. I made it. That hole prevents the strident, urgent klaxon tone I hated... the one which used to bring the first fist of the day down on it... now the device sounds more like an air raid siren through thick fog, I can turn it off without inflicting violence.

Very strong coffee - clear unbreakable Pyrex mug. Porcelain doesn't last long when flung. Computer, morning reading - journal feeds, science blogs, pop sci sites, emails and music goof. I gave up reading newspapers closely a while ago. They are drab and pointless. Breakfast - protein + milk, oatmeal, fruit, solid food if hungry, supplements if necessary. If drastically hung over, beer. The tyranny of 5pm does not hold at Casa Satanica.

What follows this is the trip into my research office, complete with empty beer bottles, kettlebells and bent pieces of steel. As a counterpoint, I put up a picture of a duckling. Somehow this seems to make things worse, not better.

I detest commuting and avoid it at all times unless strictly necessary. If teaching, I will have to commute surrounded by soul-drones. In these cases, I read research or something noticably violent. It's surprising how few financial analysts will sit next to you when you are bald, 95kgs, wearing a Malevolent Creation shirt and reading a book called "On Killing". Teaching I enjoy very much, and I am good at it. I entertain the somewhat vapid fantasy that some of the undergraduates in my classes will actually learn things about science in general and psychology in particular. At the very least, I can stare at undergraduate flesh and get paid nigh-$100 an hour for it.

If not required to teach, I will structure my day around avoiding the close company of commuters. I leave the house when I can see the trains out the window becoming progressively more empty as the day wears on.

Research is an unremarkable activity, which needs no description. Much of my day is this - reading, writing and avoiding the company of the women I work with. For 'intelligent' people, they grate my nerves. I am not sure if the best solution of dealing with them, still. If I growl at them, they forgive me. If I ignore them, they invade my space. They do not appreciate distance.

The next activity of importance is the gym. Lifting weights is good. Lifting heavy weights is better. Lifting heavy weights a lot in a manner which causes blackouts, nosebleeds and ringworm is best.

My gym has some good equipment, some bad equipment, and the worst people in the world. They are usually athletes - big, puffy, self-absorbed meat sculptures with overhanging cranial globes like a garbage-bags full of hairy abortions. I resent the way they train, which is with indifference. Their lack of interest/testes sets the tone for the gym, and it is full of utter faggots. While this makes me angry (and that is conducive to training), it would be infinitely better to be surrounded by the angry.

Eventually, I go home. I have no set time to come in, or to leave, unless I have appointments. I can leave at 3, or at 9. No-one asks any questions, points any fingers or fingers any crevices. I remain entirely unmolested. At home, I drink. It helps me sleep. If I do not sleep, I think of how to reconcile my programs for humanity (the idea) with the reality of humanity (the failed flesh-experiment) . No answers are forthcoming.

It summarises quite well - my life revolves around the production and consumption of meat and text.

Hangover days

Light pouring in through the window always wakes me up. Granted, it’s been pouring in for about five hours now, but it takes a while for my reptilian brain to really notice anything quickly. Especially when I’ve been out drinking.

I try desperately not to have to wake up. Even the most vicious of drinkenings doesn’t leave me with much of a hangover, but what there is frightens me. I have half an hour or so to kill before I can safely open my eyes and that feeling of breathing through an atmosphere of grease leaves me.

While waiting I try to piece together the happenings of last night, usually a futile effort but one that keeps me occupied. Eventually I feel sane enough to open my eyes and arise from my razor-thin foam mattress.

There’s never much food around so I settle for a glass of water and watch some cartoon I’ve seen a hundred thousand times already. Having done that I try desperately to wash some of the feck off and hit the road.

My usual routine is at this point to go to the house of a man called The Reverend and try to draw some comics, but sometimes I wander further afield. In all cases this involves a fairly substantial amount of walking along train lines and other kinds of government infrastructure. I stop to watch trains go past.

On a good day it’s about two in the afternoon by the time I’m walking. On a bad day it’s much earlier. But we’ll stick to the good day. Often on my hikes I encounter other weirdos who don’t own cars. These people are often good for conversation if they happen to be heading in the direction I’m going, and sometimes for impromptu drinkenings if they happen to be alcoholics also. These people are a rich source of data, especially as I don’t spend any time at all talking to any other people who I’ve known for less than five years.

When I eventually get to where I’m going, there’s usually some comic drawing and a lot of swearing. We work on the comic for a few hours, watch another cartoon or show for the hundredth time and I walk back to where I come from. By this time the sun has set, which makes walking a lot easier as I move faster in the cold.

Back at the abode, I roll out my mattress in the room I occupy and try to get some reading done. This doesn’t usually work, so I get up, put on some music and ride the Internets for a while. Usually one of my friends wants to bounce emails back and forwards, so I indulge her. This is usually when I draw something or paint nerd miniatures. At some point I get up and cook some two minute noodles.

After a couple of hours of this, I usually get a call or text message informing me of doings transpiring somewhere or other. I wash the paint off my hands and hit the road for some more drinking. If this doesn’t happen I’ll sit on the computer for most of the night, drinking beer and water to cut down the hunger. Sometimes I’m out of food, but I’m always too lazy to cook it anyway. Anything much harder than two-minute noodles and I won’t bother to make it just for myself.

I’ll either stumble back from where I was drinking, following the train lines as usual, or my head thumps onto the back of the chair I just fell asleep in. These are clear signs that it is nearly time to go to bed. I put on a Japanese cartoon or read a chunk of a reasonably silly book to take the edge off my alertness, and pass out on the mattress in the corner of the study ready for another important and fulfilling hangover.

Groundhog's Day

twelve, and I'm still drinking. The scenery changes but doesn't, the people do but don't, it's all the same with superficial differences. This bar might be watering down its whisky, but I can usually find one that doesn't. It might be a beer night instead. A lot of meetings regarding film projects take place in these bars, or else at an apartment under similar circumstances. If so, I try to buck people up and get them in line for whatever I'm going to ask of them, discussing conceptual details as well as very concrete ones. If not, I usually spit cryptic nonsense and mean-spirited quips; I'm a barroom poet and comedian. On an average day, this ends around two in the morning, so I'll ignore the many exceptions to this rule and say it ends there. I walk home if possible, drive if necessary.

When I get home I'm usually sober enough to get some writing done. Lately this is a screenplay, since my last project fell through and I don't want to sit around with no project. It might be any number of things, however. If I don't write, I watch a movie or read. Nothing too interesting here. Usually asleep by four.

At around eight in the morning, I'm woken by the sound of construction and aimless black people. The sun shines through my curtainless windows, directly onto my head and into my face, so that even if the noises didn't wake me, I'd have to do something now. The sun moves slowly and won't shine elsewhere for another hour and a half. Usually I spend this time thinking of how to kill somebody and trying to find a position in which I can sleep. Four hours, with your body processing alcohol, is not enough. I get some sleep around 9:30, though it's no longer solid.

Around noon I decide I'm not going to be able to get any sleep and start getting up. When I have class, I get ready and go to class. When I don't, I spend several hours writing, reading, watching movies, listening to music, or, alternately, go out and do something. Sometimes this isn't much more interesting; I spend a lot of free days in the basement of a building, editing. But sometimes I go out and start drinking after an hour or two of reading. Sometimes I actually have something interesting to look forward to doing. On an average day, though, I probably read, write, or edit.

My classes this quarter are light and uninteresting, and I'm really just passing time until I graduate. What I read, write, and do movie stuff with is more interesting, but I don't think that's the purpose of this exercise.

Around seven I usually start thinking about eating, though I might not get around to it until eleven. I tend to eat out because I don't like going home for anything but sleeping, and because I live fairly far away from where I do virtually anything else. I try to eat with something alcoholic but often don't have the opportunity. In any case, I do some reading or watch a movie during this period.

By nine or ten I'm almost always drinking somewhere. Somebody or other calls me up and I go to meet them somewhere and we start drinking. Or somebody doesn't call and I feel like drinking anyway. These hours pass slowly, unfortunately, and consist of a lot of silences over beer and whisky interspersed with clever bullshit of some sort or other, progressively either less and less or more or more clever, depending on the company and day. Still, the time does pass, and eventually the clock strikes