If there's one thing that always impresses me, it oversized statements of power and might. I've recently being toying with the idea of buying a BMW 7 Series, the Bavarian luxury battleship with up to five litres of engine, leather seats and a boot the size of a small swimming pool. Thanks to monumental depreciation, such a machine is well within the grasp of mere mortals like myself. Do I need such a ridiculously massive vehicle when I'm making do nicely with it's 3 Series smaller cousin? Of course not. But I know I'd love the feeling of invincibility and the perception of respect from fellow road users. It's the same reason I feel awed when I visit the Trafford Centre, humbled when I listen to any of the songs on Oasis' Be Here Now album, transfixed when I watch Youtube videos of the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test, and feel in the presence of the domestic shopping god when I shop amongst the catherdral-like congregation at Tesco Extra.
Maybe my faith had been tested recently, or maybe I needed to stock up on jalapenos. Nevertheless, I found myself once again contemplating the my meagre existence in the grand scheme of the universe while navigating the isles looking for spicy mexican food this evening. It's hard to believe there can be so much choice in the world, but ultimately, Tesco's size is its undoing - for every choice you are offered, you actually have to make a decision, and after a while, survival instinct kicks in - I select the base items I need to get and make my way to the checkout, leaving the more regular shopping to the more regular sized local Morrissons.
Because of the heavily reinforced shopping steroetypes that seem to be perpetuated in British society, I always feel acutely aware that I am a single male 20-something when I start emptying my trolley onto the checkout conveyor, and tonight was no exception. Bless the late teen girl who efficiently scanned my £18 worth of sauces, pickles and naans through the till - although she failed to actually acknowledge my arrival or offer to pack my bags (a personal bete noir of mine - even though I always decline the offer, it's nice to be asked), she didn't cast the same disparaging look of half condescision, half pity that I've had in the past from her ilk. We nevertheless engaged in that unspoken battle of wills that is trying to fill the bags at an at least equal speed to the items coming through the scanner.
The demographic of this particular Tesco is somewhat different to the Morrissons I frequent, and it's inner city location gives me a glimpse into certain lives I wouldn't normally encounter. So it was this evening, a couple of checkouts up from me, a young man who I would estimate to be in the mid stages of heroin addiction was barking orders at the slightly older looking woman he was with (she looked similarly afflicted), and they were accompanied by a young girl who I would have guessed was maybe 15. For a moment I tried to imagine what the nightmare of their lives must be, no future, nothing to believe in or work for, just the misery of being slaves to the drug. I thought about the girl... was it too late for her to get out of that situation and make something of herself, or was she just resigned to heading down the same path in life.
I've never understood why people get into heroin. I've never done any drugs whatsoever and have no intention of doing so, but I understand from various people who have that most of them can be done - to a greater or lesser extent - on a recreational basis. Obviously you hear of marajuana casualties (every saturday on the centre pages of the Daily Mail), people who've got strung out on coke, and you only need to look at Brian Wilson or the late Syd Barret to see that LSD can seriously mess about the wrong kind of person.
But heroin - and the other real hard stuff like crack and meth-amphetamine are the one's that really seem to take over people's lives and send them to the worst depths and probably death. What puzzles me is that there are people who just don't seem to get this. I mean, has anyone ever heard of anyone saying "yeah, I did a bit of smack but i thought it was shit" or "I do heroin sometimes, but only when my dealer is out of poppers" (I'm sure there's all sorts of proper lingo for what I've just written, but you get the vibe). It's therefore very difficult for me to have any sympathy for people who get involved in it, just for the poor families who have to suffer as their love ones selfishly degenerate into drones with one single purpose in life.
Sometimes, I wonder how this stuff gets onto the streets in the first place, since apparently some massive proportion of crime is drug related. Alas, in this country at least, it seems that that only way a drug dealer will feel the force of the law is if he or she drives too fast through a speed camera. I'm sure we could stop it if we wanted to, if there was a sufficient will.
The headline on todays Independent got me thinking about all this in the first place, and my experience in Tesco made me think about it even more. Apparently something like 90% of Britain's heroin starts its life in a little Asian country called Afghanistan. Some of you might have heard of this country, its the one we hurriedly invaded after 9/11 and have subsequently occupied ever since. Despite our occupation, opium production is actually up, which will no doubt mean that there'll be more, cheaper heroin on the streets of Britain.
Now, if we can send our boys halfway around the world to bring democracy to this county and help the Afghanistanis become free, then how about, y'know, while we're there, sending some of the guys in with Black and Decker strimmers and cutting the damn things down? Supposedly the opium profits are going in the back pockets of the Taleban, so it's not like out government would have to pretend it was actually acting in the sole interests of the people, there's some element to which we'd actually be fighting the enemy, right? Perhaps we could employ the farmers to grow bio-fuel and pay them fairly for the crop, thereby going some way to building a legitimate economy? Hell if I was a soldier in Afghanistan, I'd damn make sure I discreetly carried a bottle of SBK Brushwood Killer and sprinkle it on the poppies while I was patrolling the plantations. If we can smuggle prisoners for torture around our domestic airports, surely it's not beyond the means of man to send small crop-dusting plane over one of these fields one cold night to kill some of it off?
Alas, I have only questions, and an anger that this is allowed to carry on while people back here are dying. They are the enemy, and it seems that their weapon is killing our own people. What kind of government lets that go unchallenged?
Tuesday 28 August 2007
Sunday 12 August 2007
Byespace
In hindsight, one of Myspace's few redeeming features was that it got a lot of people into blogging. Personally, I've often found the idea of blogging somewhat ridiculous, and talk of the 'blogosphere' just usually makes me think that whoever is talking up this new 'phenomenon' might just be a little preoccupied with their own delusions of grandeur. Personally, I only ever used my Myspace blog to rant about things. People found it amusing, so I did it all the more.
I managed to finally extracate myself from Myspace about two months ago, after one abortive previous attempt last summer. Back when it first started, it was a mind blowing experience that connected people from all over the world with a shared love of music. It was interesting (and slightly voyeuristic) to take a look into other people's lives, and some people lead very strange ones. One person who sticks out in my mind was a young lady who called herself "Vaginal Blood Fart" and had as her profile picture a shot of herself in a pretty white dress, splattered with blood and with a really disappointed look on her face.
It wasn't long at all before Myspace started to take the piss. I listened to the first few bands that tried to add me as friends, usually local chancers trying to ride the same wave that was propelling the Arctic Monkey's to fame. Their songs were often rubbish, badly recorded, and it was apparent that the only real reason they wanted to add me was to increase the amount of people at the friends list, while at the same time leaving an impolitely sized comment on my page saying "Thanks for the add!" which would then link back to their page.
Still, there were redeeming features. Bizarrely, it took me some time to discover the "Browse" function, and if you set the parameters correctly, you could list all the single girls within a 25 mile radius who were up for a bit of dating/serious relationship, between a certain age and some other handy variables. I got a bit of mileage out of this, befriended one girl who was quite nice, went on a date with, I also got taken out on a date by another girl (the first time that's ever happened), and as a result of Myspace (if not necessarily using it a great deal) met the one and only friend I made the entire time I lived in a nearby town. However, perhaps about this time last year it became clear that the mood of myspace was changing.
I was listening to a documentary about Britpop a few weeks ago, and Noel Gallagher remarked something to the effect of "That's when we made a load of money, when the squares got involved," because Whats The Story Morning Glory had appealed to people outside of the bands original indie crowd. Well, with Myspace, it was kind of the reverse - it was all the squares involved at the beginning, but all of a sudden, people who blatantly had no business even turning a computer on were getting their myspace accounts. Silly girls from various provincial towns who fancied themselves as soft-porn stars started to put in friend requests. Looking at their page usually revealed another unpleasant Myspace phenomenon, the oversexed illeterate alpha-male, marking their territory in the comments box with messages like "Ur hot babz, PM me so we chat chat some more." People with no consideration to the fact that people would actually visit their page attempted to do their own web programming, cramming their pages with six simultaneously playing Youtube clips that meant the page took five minuted to load. And then new owners Newscorp started with the marketing offensive. The final straw came when all the hacks started.
So, with girls preoccupied with their need for validation, wankers who were getting all the action, shit advertising, bad infrastructure and people just trying to fuck it all up, Myspace stopped being escapism, and instead just became everything that's bad about the real world on one website.
The vast majority of people I wanted to stay in touch with - in the end just people I actually knew in real life anyway - defected to Facebook, and joined too a couple of months ago. Initial reactions are good, it does actually seem like a reasonably fun way to keep in touch with my friends, without everything that annoyed me about Myspace. One of my friends remarked that it looked "a bit preppy" but I like it - it'll probably go down the pan when all the trendies get on there and I've already denied a few people who look they just want to increase their friend count. If and when that happens, we know we'll just move out a bit further west.
I managed to finally extracate myself from Myspace about two months ago, after one abortive previous attempt last summer. Back when it first started, it was a mind blowing experience that connected people from all over the world with a shared love of music. It was interesting (and slightly voyeuristic) to take a look into other people's lives, and some people lead very strange ones. One person who sticks out in my mind was a young lady who called herself "Vaginal Blood Fart" and had as her profile picture a shot of herself in a pretty white dress, splattered with blood and with a really disappointed look on her face.
It wasn't long at all before Myspace started to take the piss. I listened to the first few bands that tried to add me as friends, usually local chancers trying to ride the same wave that was propelling the Arctic Monkey's to fame. Their songs were often rubbish, badly recorded, and it was apparent that the only real reason they wanted to add me was to increase the amount of people at the friends list, while at the same time leaving an impolitely sized comment on my page saying "Thanks for the add!" which would then link back to their page.
Still, there were redeeming features. Bizarrely, it took me some time to discover the "Browse" function, and if you set the parameters correctly, you could list all the single girls within a 25 mile radius who were up for a bit of dating/serious relationship, between a certain age and some other handy variables. I got a bit of mileage out of this, befriended one girl who was quite nice, went on a date with, I also got taken out on a date by another girl (the first time that's ever happened), and as a result of Myspace (if not necessarily using it a great deal) met the one and only friend I made the entire time I lived in a nearby town. However, perhaps about this time last year it became clear that the mood of myspace was changing.
I was listening to a documentary about Britpop a few weeks ago, and Noel Gallagher remarked something to the effect of "That's when we made a load of money, when the squares got involved," because Whats The Story Morning Glory had appealed to people outside of the bands original indie crowd. Well, with Myspace, it was kind of the reverse - it was all the squares involved at the beginning, but all of a sudden, people who blatantly had no business even turning a computer on were getting their myspace accounts. Silly girls from various provincial towns who fancied themselves as soft-porn stars started to put in friend requests. Looking at their page usually revealed another unpleasant Myspace phenomenon, the oversexed illeterate alpha-male, marking their territory in the comments box with messages like "Ur hot babz, PM me so we chat chat some more." People with no consideration to the fact that people would actually visit their page attempted to do their own web programming, cramming their pages with six simultaneously playing Youtube clips that meant the page took five minuted to load. And then new owners Newscorp started with the marketing offensive. The final straw came when all the hacks started.
So, with girls preoccupied with their need for validation, wankers who were getting all the action, shit advertising, bad infrastructure and people just trying to fuck it all up, Myspace stopped being escapism, and instead just became everything that's bad about the real world on one website.
The vast majority of people I wanted to stay in touch with - in the end just people I actually knew in real life anyway - defected to Facebook, and joined too a couple of months ago. Initial reactions are good, it does actually seem like a reasonably fun way to keep in touch with my friends, without everything that annoyed me about Myspace. One of my friends remarked that it looked "a bit preppy" but I like it - it'll probably go down the pan when all the trendies get on there and I've already denied a few people who look they just want to increase their friend count. If and when that happens, we know we'll just move out a bit further west.
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