Rob Manuel

Why I wish Douglas Adams had stopped smoking

2012-12-22T22:11:00.001+00:00

Written in 2009 and had fallen off the internet - putting it back online as I get occasional requests from people wishing to stop smoking to read it again. Hope it is helpful. I've now not smoked for over 5 years and my only regret is not stopping sooner.

Recently I’ve been re-reading Douglas Adams novels, particularly enjoying his travelogue Last Chance To See, but the odd references to smoking makes me wince. Adams died of a heart attack in 2001, and as the British Heart Foundation points out, “quitting is the biggest step you can take to reduce the risk of having a heart attack.”

Two years ago I stopped smoking. The government told me to – well they banned smoking in public places and I went out to the pub for that one last time with a pint in my hand and…

I got drunk – too drunk, didn’t eat any food so I could have more room for lager and cigarettes, hence a blur of visiting the toilet every 10 minutes to piss and, well nothing. I’d drank so much my memory is blank and all I get next is a feeling of shame.

My wife woke and shouted, “What the hell are you doing?” and I looked down, saw myself pissing on the carpet and mumbled, “ugh!” and took myself to the bathroom.

Maybe this is a sign I should give up drinking, but no, I took it as the cue to give up smoking, and this wasn’t the only reason, some of the anxieties that were floating around my head at the time include:

* Brown teeth. Like most handsome young men, I’m dreadfully vain, and I was nauseated by the sight of my increasingly stained tusks. I was scared to smile and would momentarily grimace where I’d flash my teeth, worry that people would be revolted and then drop the grin and look shifty.

* Children. Nothing looks worse than trailing behind a pushchair with a fag in your gob. So I didn’t do it. Hence would find myself not smoking until the evening, finally light a cigarette and then feel a bit sick.

* Fertility. We wanted a second child and it wasn’t happening, we were due an appointment at the hospital for an investigation and I couldn’t bare the idea of being told it’s my fault. Hence if I stopped first, I couldn’t be blamed. Win. I think.

* Smell. A friend recently stopped smoking to persuade his now wife to marry him. He found a difficult time of it and made many attempts including hypnotism. After not smoking for a few days he said to me, “Rob, I never knew when I smoked, but when you go for a cig, and you think no one notices, they do, you really stink.” I hated him for a least a week after that, but he’d certainly produced a clanging bell that struck with a cracked note every time I sparked up.

So that morning I quietly decided to stop smoking, and it was very easy as I was horrifically hung over and I never feel like smoking when I’m ill anyway.

I’ve always found it easy not to smoke for a day or two, as long as I was lurking around the house and not exposed to any stress. It’s the third day that’s always more tricky when the little voice pipes up in my head going, “oh go on, you’ve been good, have a cig.”

This time it was going to be different – instead of giving in to the urge – I googled it. I decided to read as much about smoking as possible so that I’d be going into this battle armed, or more honestly, it was an excuse to immerse myself in smoking without actually putting a cigarette to my mouth.

Unsurprisingly there’s no shortage of smoking stuff online, there’s database fetish sites where every instance of an actresses lighting up is studiously recorded, there’s 80s musician Joe Jackson essay “The Smoking Issue” where he argues that the health risks of cigs have been grossly exaggerated, a furiously edited wikipedia page that helpfully points out that Nazi doctors were the first to link smoking and cancer and of course a hooky PDF copy of How To Give Up Smoking the Easy Way by Allen Carr.

Allen Carr – I have to type that carefully as it’s irresistible to confuse him with the speccy comedian with the Carry On voice Alan Carr. A confusion the comic must have noticed himself and quipped, “me? I’m not giving up fags.”

Carr’s book is repetitive and attempts to brainwash but I found it contained a few helpful ideas which I’ll paraphrase:

* Smoking is addiction to nicotine. All the stuff about needing stuff to do with your hands is nonsense. Addiction to nicotine. That’s it.

* Chewing nicotine gum is unlikely to help, that’s like trying to cure a smackhead by giving him a heroin patch.

* Smoking is a con that works via anxiety. In smoking a cig you simply top yourself up with nicotine. Every second afterwards your nicotine levels are falling and the only way to cure this feeling? Have another cigarette.

* Hence your body learns to associate the reduction of anxiety with cigarettes, yet the only true anxiety it’s resolving is your body’s need for that next cigarette.

What a con. That was the word that really stopped me in my tracks. I hate the idea of being conned. I’m cleverer than that, I like to think anyway.

So how to stop? Carr talks about an addiction monster that must die and every time it’s asking for a cigarette he’s going, “please feed me” and the only way to kill him is to not feed him. Hence every craving should be seen as a good thing, as this is your addiction monster dying.

The next few days were pretty easy, as Will Self writes, “In fact, nicotine withdrawal is a rather pleasant experience â€” giggly, slightly trippy, rendering the recovering smoker emotionally volatile, likely to laugh, cry or shout.” My particular version of this involved a lunch at an Italian restaurant which reminded me of the extraordinary sensations produced by eating a packet of Frutella on mushrooms.

Over the next few weeks I notice I’ve got a couple of cues for smoking.

* Phone calls to parents.
* Getting off the tube and waiting for buses.
* The pub

The first two are the easiest to deal with – I tell myself that’s the addiction monster dying and I can move on quickly – the pub is a trickier beast.

It’s not so much I want to smoke but my friends want me to smoke. One person in particular is a keen part-time smoker who relied on me to enable him to have the odd cigarette. He pressures me and is irritated when I refuse.

Two years later and it’s much much easier. I hardly think about cigarettes and I feel generally healthier. Woo hoo. And I get to feel superior to the smokers stuck outside restaurants and pubs.

If only Douglas Adams could have knocked the fags on the head then maybe we’d have a few extra books to read, or at the very least, the best ever person to follow on twitter.

Five Tips on how to Read Books in an Age of Infinite Digital Distraction

2012-12-13T20:48:00.001+00:00

My reading had got into a mess. I had 30 or so unfinished books on my Kindle - something needed to be done and here's my guide how I got myself out a digital hole and started enjoying books again.

1. Only have one book on your Kindle. When you pick up your Kindle your first thought shouldn't be a "oh which one of my several unfinished books should I read now?" Keep it one book at a time. If you're totally bored of something, you don't have to wade through it, delete it and get move on.

2. Keep a reading list. When you hear about an interesting book DO NOT BUY IT NOW, yes the temptation is huge but instead add it to a list. Then when you finish a book, go to your list and pick from your now large selection of interesting books. This makes buying a new book a treat, and stops an oppressive backlog of unread things building up. Also it helps you buy things you actually want to read, rather than think you should read.

3. Add digressions to reading list instead of looking them up on Wikipedia. Say your book takes an interesting detour into say Cold Reading or Pigeons in the First World War - do not run to Wiki to find out more as this'll stop you reading the book and you'll end up on some arbitrary page about the breeding cycle of llamas (lady llamas spit when they don't want sex). Add your interest to the list so you can see if there's a good book on the subject later.

4. Do not read on a iPad, Kindle Fire, laptop etc. Any device that also has the ability to play Angry Birds, tweet & consume frightening horse-based pornography is not a serious reading device - it's a distraction machine. Don't use them for reading, less the temptation to do something else becomes overwhelming.

5. Your phone is your friend. This conflicts with point 4 - but it's ever-so handy to read half a chapter of your current book on the bus when you've forgotten to bring your Kindle with you.

Others might say just buy some paper books. Maybe they're right but ebooks aren't going away - and my favourite book of recent times wasn't even published in physical form.

The one where Patrick Moore sent me a C90

2012-12-09T22:42:00.001+00:00

In 95 I wrote a letter to Patrick Moore asking him how to get hold of an album of his xylophone playing. He home taped & sent me a C90. True
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) December 9, 2012

Some context probably needed for the Patrick Moore C90 clearly.

In the mid 90s I read the KLF's The Manual - a book on getting a number one record. I decided that the most obvious number 1 record in the world would be a dance track featuring Patrick Moore playing the xylophone - the video would feature him shooting into space whilst sexy Martians tried to sex him up. Brian May delivers a blistering guitar solo whilst straddling a rocket zooming around the planets.

Surely a hit record.

So I went to the local HMV to try and find a record to sample into my friends Amiga (4 tracks of 8 bit samples - yay!) and couldn't find one.

It was the early days of the internet and there was a Sky at Night email address knocking around on the BBC site - pinged an email off - not asking him to make a record but simply how to get a recording.

I was stunned to get the this C90 in the post.

The C90 Patrick Moore sent me. I had to dig through a few boxes to find this. twitter.com/robmanuel/stat…
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) December 9, 2012

There was also a short letter - not quite sure where this is now - I know I folded it into a book - but I own a lot of books. It'll probably turn up in say 2018.

My plan to get Patrick Moore to number 1 didn't come to much - partly as the tape was very hissy and mostly because I had no real thought or stamina to see the idea through until... around 2002 and my then flatmate Jonti Picking and I were chatting about what projects we could do and I hummed him, "Patrick Moore Plays The Xylophone" and Jonti disappeared into his bedroom for a few hours.

The whispering bits, "1, 2, 3, 4 Patrick Moore knows the score" are me - inspired by Steps I think.

Anyway - there you go. RIP Patrick - legend of science TV - shall we see his like again?

Printer Jam

2012-10-29T08:18:00.001+00:00

The final video from the Trapped in Technology series. Actually based upon something I once pitched to Virgin Direct (a pay by month tech support service) in ooh 2010.

Here's the original pitch - as you can see I've cunningly stuck eyes on a printer. I guess this would have been a stop motion rather than 3D animation production.

Anyway - I hope you enjoy the video - as you can see there is a second verse where it extends into a whole different fantasy. When in doubt add vampires.

I've been booted from Facebook and now they want my passport

2012-10-25T13:34:00.000+01:00

In a moment of bordem I removed all my friends from Facebook and attempted to add only people who shared my name.

There's 20 or so Rob Manuels listed on Facebook and I liked the idea of having a feed entirely made up of Rob Manuels discussing themselves, possibly even commenting on each other. The ultimate ego-wank mirror of social networks - it's all about me as I only follow myself. Digital narcism writ large.

Now I don't claim to be altogether serious - simply bored twiddling that MIGHT have had comedy or art potential or could have been totally useless and boring. Who knows? But harmless enough surely.

So the day after add my 20 new Rob Manuel friends I log in to see who has accepted me? And I can't. I've been booted.

Hmm. And checking out the FAQ - I get this:

OK. I'm an "inauthentic account" because I fancy creating crappy art / comedy instead of using Facebook to blither to my chums? Great. So I click "Can I regain access to my account?"

Oh I can. But I need to give Facebook my passport or driving licence? Haha, that's not going to happen. And as my friend Mike says, "Which means somewhere on their system they have a load of scanned passports. Well, that's not a security fuck up waiting to happen, is it?"

Sorry about the Zappideals sponsored link

2012-10-01T18:31:00.000+01:00

First an apology: We're sorry that we ever took a sponsored link in the B3ta newsletter that mentioned Zappideals. We're sorry that the good(ish?) name of B3ta is being dragged through the mud and we're sorry if you have given these people your money.

The background? We occasionally run ads via a company called Bragitup - they got in touch suggesting we run one for Zappideals offering a cheap Kindle. We were a little suspicious about it as it was cheaper than Amazon so we asked Bragitup to check them up. They assured us that the Kindle was a loss leader to generate new customers. This seemed reasonable so we ran the ad.

Then the complaints started trickling in. We sent these to Bragitup who worked tirelessly behind the scenes talking to Zappideals getting messages that the Kindles would be sent, will be sent, are being sent etc.

Bragitup wrote a blog detailing these problems but it got taken down. Why? Well Zappideals threatened legal action against Bragitup. They might possibly threaten legal action against this so we're writing it carefully - there's several things we'd like to say about them which we'll refrain from. So imagine the kind of stuff we'd like to say. We bet you can do it.

And still the complaints come. Daily. Opening the B3ta mail is depressing. Going on Twitter is horrible. We're sorry we ever heard of these people. You're sorry. Our dead cat Rocky is sorry.

One thing - we haven't profited from this - on the unlikely chance we ever get paid for the advertising (and the chance would seem slim) the money will go to charity.

Comments are closed on this because we know it'll take minutes before legally actionable stuff will appear from angry people and it'll then be used to close this post down removing our chance to apologise and get a clear message out.

Brands = Fake Monopolies

2012-09-15T21:09:00.000+01:00

I think about advertising a fair bit. Not only because I occasionally work in the industry but mostly because I live in a world (like we all do) utterly surrounded by advertising. I can't help but to engage with it - it's screaming at "notice me!" all day long. Hence despite taking the kids for a nice trip to the park I found part of my mind being taken up with thoughts about how brands create effective monopolies.

The best business is a monopoly. Why? Your product can't be undercut on price. This is why companies build brands. Anyone can sell baked beans but only Heinz can sell Heinz Baked Beans.

The job of the advertising is to make the brand = the generic commodity so that nothing else will do. It was never said with more clarity than by Heinz who used the slogan, "Beanz Meanz Heinz." Here they are virtually beating the public around the head with the core message - so baldy stated it's almost breathtaking. Yeah the triple rhymes and the Zs make it catchy and cute - that's the sugar to make the medicine go down.

A similar example is Coca Cola, "It's the Real Thing". I.e. every other coke is fake.

This is the essence of a brand: a fake monopoly held up with trademark law.

Jeremy The Magic Potato - Telling Stories for Kids

2012-09-13T20:32:00.002+01:00

I've got kids and at bedtime I read a story or sometimes I make one up. I particularly like making them up - I don't claim a specific talent for it but there's one trick I'd like to share which I have no idea if it's common or not, but it came up quite organically.

In theatre improvisation people talk about not blocking your partner. This means if someone on stage says "when is the bus due?" you accept their reality that a bus is due and run with it rather than going, "what are you on about? This is a space ship. Are you a mental?"

I find it so key with kids stories, in fact I consciously build in questions to allow them to add stuff and control the elements of the story. It's part 80s text adventure and part crap improv comedy.

An example I did this evening was "Jeremy The Magic Potato" and it went something like this.

Me: Have you heard about Jeremy? He's a potato. And he's magic.

3 y/o son: And he can fly.

Me: Jeremy flies into your room and he says, "I've got three wishes young boy. What do you wish?"

Son: I wish I had a car.

Me: Would you like a blue car or a fast car?

Son: A blue car.

Me: And ping! A blue car appears outside our house. Jeremy is driving it. He says, "where shall we go today?"

Son: Let's go to Tree-tops! (a soft play area)

Me: ...

Actually I'm not going to write it all out, but obviously we did three wishes and the story concluded with Jeremy The Magic Potato putting my son to bed and promising to come back tomorrow with more wishes.

There's part of me that wonders if this is the original story telling - an older tradition that fused the teller and audience as one creative partnership. Story telling as conversation rather than a "here's my art, pay for it" commercial process that presumably started with the printing press.

I'm just saying it's quite fun to unleash your inner minstrel, and a 3 year old child is thrilled with my stories of magic potatoes in a way that most people might go "shut up Rob."

Best Film Soundtrack Albums... According To Me & You!

2012-09-13T18:12:00.000+01:00

I've recently been enjoying film soundtracks. It's not an area of popular music that I've given much thought to but my route in was watching an interview with Robert Smith of The Cure who recommended that Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was a great album.

I've never had much time for Elton - pop music is partially about identification and my memories of Elton is looking so frumpy and uncool in the 80s that I've always thought a bit yuck about him. Anyway, Robert Smith is right, Yellow Brick Road is a fine LP, or at least the first 4 or so tracks that I've had on repeat.

The opening track is 10 minutes long and utterly monumental - titled "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" the first half sounds pretty much like the famous Clockwork Orange music. So close it is (in my head) that I started wondering if there is a connection?

Hence I start thinking about and listening to film soundtracks. Here's my personal top 4. I know 4 isn't 5 or 10 but I don't want to bulk this out with stuff I don't actually listen to as that would be mental.

1. Clockwork Orange - Wendy Carlos. There's two versions of this, purists prefer the "Original Score" version that's just Wendy's analogue synth reworkings of Beethoven stuff. I prefer the film soundtrack that has some Wendy Carlos stuff but also moments of ridiculousness - including a lump of Pomp and Circumstance (better know as Land of Hope & Glory). I like to imagine my neighbours hearing me play it and thinking that I'm some kind of patriot who sits in his flat, naked, saluting a photo of the Queen.

2. The Virgin Suicides - Air. I can't imagine Air being anyone's favourite band but they do sound pretty. Easy listening in as in easy to listen to rather than a genre. Also there's something very charity shop about them. They are ALWAYS there. Have 4 now - £1 each. Virgin Suicides is the best one as it has less singing on it. Yay for less singing.

3. The Wicker Man - Christopher Lee's finest role (or was it Peter Cushing?) and what a soundtrack. Turn it up loud and imagine you're leaping through fire, sticking your haters in a huge funeral pyre and getting a goat pregnant. Speaks to my inner something or other I can't quite identify as it's been rubbed out by civilisation. I get a similar mood from another UK film - Requiem for a Village released by BFI Flipside. Actually most of the BFI flipside is worth a look if you want to venture into forgotten UK film. There were other stories to tell - Hollywood hadn't totally won the culture war back then.

4. Assault on Precinct 13 - ok this one is a bit of a cheat - as a soundtrack it's a bit flawed. 25 minutes of variations on one riff. It makes me feel a bit mad if I listen to it all. But what a riff. Duh da da da duh - and probably ripped off by Adam Clayton to make the bassline to U2's New Years Day. But stick it on and whatever room you're in will become cooler, and moodier because of it.

Oh and the artwork above isn't the CD cover (which is shit) but some rather lovely artwork produced by a company called Mondo for a recent poster. It's lovely and I'm currently using it as my desktop wallpaper.

So what other soundtracks should we listen to? Hmm. Let's ask Twitter.

Other than Wicker Man, Clockwork Orange & Assault on Precinct 13 what film soundtracks are the bestest?
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) September 12, 2012

Lots of replies which I'm going to list here so I can remember to look them up on Spotify and give them a listen, and add additional blither based upon not actually looking them up or doing any research. Anybody can look shit up on Wikipedia and it has a saming process. Same old "facts" trotted out by every rubbish TV show. So I'm going to do this blind.

Easy rider - Think I heard this once in a student flat in Leeds in the early 90s. I think it's got Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild on it. I used to amuse myself changing the lyrics to be about the web, "Get your modem running, information superhighway! Looking for some net porn, whatever comes your way." Which now I think about it lacks a punchline somewhat.

Moon - Clint what's his name not Boon maybe Mansell - the guy who amazingly had a post Pop Will Eat Itself career as a successful Hollywood film music bod. Who would have thought it? It's like someone from Gaye Bikers on Acid becoming a MP. Good film though, in a it looks a little bit like 2001 and has a plot straight out of Twilight Zone kind of way. I don't remember the music in the film - other than a bit where it plays Chesney Hawkes. Hopefully it's 40 minutes of Chesney played through a tape delay with Rent-a-ghost whispering, "I've got a career- you Greebo tosers - and you haven't".

Gladiators. I saw this movie with Joel Veitch when it came out. We pretended to do a sword fight afterwards. I don't mean we touched cocks. I think this movie was directed by Tony Scott who recently committed suicide. I have a personal theory it was over waking up one morning and realising that by making the military propaganda Top Gun (which encouraged 1000s of people to join up and some of them die) he felt horribly guilty and decided to end it all. I realise this is very unlikely but as I said I have no intention of using Google to find facts. I guess it was someone like John Williams who did the soundtrack. Heroic theme and lots of trumpets. No disco bits.

Star Trek The Motion Picture - hmm. I remember the theme to the TV show. I even know it has unused lyrics written by Gene Roddenberry so he could claim half the publishing cash, the canny shit. The movie I vaguely remember as being dull, so I suspect this will have lots of slow strings and not be anything like as good as The Firm's Star Trekkin'.

Thor - no thoughts about this except pretending to have a lisp and saying "I'm very thor".

And lots of other suggestions including:

Drive, Fifth Element, Con Air, Mulholland drive, Tron:Legacy, The Piano, Where the Wild Things Are, Run Lola Run, Cannibal Holocaust. Taking of Pelham 123, the warriors, little miss sunshine, Amelie. And Goodbye Lenin, The Shining, Vanishing Point, Scorpio Rising and Dead Presidents, The good the bad and the ugly.

Feel free to make recommendations via the comment thingie. Or don't. They are your fingers and it's your choice on how to use them.

The Costa of Advertising

2012-09-13T14:03:00.000+01:00

Went for a cup of tea this morning at Costa. Mixed feelings about the place - the corporate brands such as Pret & Costa are making inroads into Kentish Town high street after years of us being relatively free of such influence largely I presume as the area was considered too poor to be worth bothering with. But the visible forces of gentrification are making themselves known via the changing high street and even the changing people that frequent it - huge influx of well heeled French bankers who have come to the area to send their kids to CFBL - essentially a French private school that's not in France.

Anyway today I noticed the advertising:

Language of self-help books has seeped into Costa advertising. I'd like to see Adam Curtis do 5mins on this. twitter.com/robmanuel/stat…
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) September 13, 2012

I've got a hypocritical relationship with advertising. Essentially I'm both fascinated and horrified by it but due to needing money it's an area I occasionally work in. The internet is largely an ad supported medium, I stick ads on sites I run, and sometimes agencies and companies want to talk to me (and even employ me) to work on campaigns. I'm not morally pure and if you think you are then that's because you haven't examined the world in which you work in.

My problem with advertising is I see it as essentially psychopathic. All advertising means one thing: give us your money, but the skill of the advertising creative is to make that message work - make the mark say yes rather than no. (I'm going to use the word "mark" rather than "public" to emphasise the con of this transaction.)

Psychopaths as explored in Martha Stout's wonderful The Sociopath Next Door - will tell any lie to achieve their aims and not be troubled by conscience. They represent about 4% of the population, and the corporation is effectively psychopathy encoded into law. A publicly traded company legally has to choose the option of maximising profits for shareholders - to be a corporation with a conscience is to break the law.

Advertising is the conversation the psychopathic corporation uses to manipulate the mark out of their cash.

So this is how I (sometimes) see the world, we're surrounded by the messages from psychopaths and we're sucked into an internal dialogue with it. I buy a cup of tea and I'm suddenly having a conversation in my head going, "so you're using language that mirrors self help books to try and get my cash now?" Or quite often I'm probably just absorbing the messages without being critical.

These insidious messages that are telling you to reward yourself with a loads of sugar (that'll make you fat) because you've achieved something? Achieved what exactly? That's left blank for the mark. You feel depressed? Drink what is effectively a cake. Costa is McDonalds in a cup for the middle classes. Ker-ching.

But I'll probably be back next week. Why? They've got comfy sofas. I do like a comfy sofa.

MMORPG (Took Away A Friend From Me)

2012-07-18T23:15:00.002+01:00

New song and animation from myself, @superpowerless & @peepholecircus.

This started from a suggestion by @peepholecircus that we do one about computer games and I worried that I don't play them that much - what on earth can I say about games that might be worth hearing?

Writing is easiest and more likely to resonate with people if you write about what you know, so I free associated and remembered a friend who plays rather a lot of World of Warcraft and how I found it quite alienating. That's a song I thought - tell the story of missing a friend who you've lost to computer games.

As is the want of story telling I heavily fictionalised the scenario, my friend isn't called Lee and the detail is exaggerated, but there's a kernel of truth in there that I hope some of you will be able to relate to: the complaint being that we've replaced real friendships with virtual ones and they are unsatisfactory in many ways.

Writing from real life is a dangerous game but one that I assume many people play - ideas can't come from nowhere - but I'll generally change a few details to a) make sure nobody comes after me if they are horribly insulted and b) sticking to the literal truth is a bit limiting.

I once didn't follow this rule and wrote a song so damaging that I'm still living with the consequences, but I'll save that story (and it is pure Larry David stuff) until everyone mentioned in it is dead so the almighty row doesn't start all over again.

Thinking now there's other songs I could have written based upon gaming. A song about being "Quite Good At Solitaire." Boasting about being good at something uncool might be fun. Reminds me of the Beastie Boys line, "I'm the king of Boggle there is none higher. I get 11 points off the word quagmire."

Or a song pinpointing the exact moment I stopped caring about new computer games. Probably in the mid 90s. That might work as a linear song listing lots of games so a viewer can enjoying working out where the point was they stopped caring too.

Obviously my most notable association with the genre of computer games songs would be Hey Hey 16k, a song I didn't write (the genius that is MJ Hibbett did) but due to my flash video people still mention it to me to this day. I still think me and MJ should pull our fingers out and make a proper musical - shown at the National Theatre with proper fuck off production with that song at the centre. Maybe next year.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the song and video, it came out melancholy yet epic.

Phone Rage

2012-07-05T10:44:00.001+01:00

Myself, @superpowerless and @peepholecircus have done another song / video for Mondo in our trapped in technology rock opera.

I wrote the song after I threw one too many phones at a wall in frustration. The best one (according to my wife) was the time I threw a phone in a hedge. A huge hedge the size of a house and we could ring it and hear it but there was no chance of it ever returning.

I really hate phones. Yes obviously I like my iPhone but that's mainly as it's a pocket internet / music / twitter / camera device than for the ability to make calls.

Who makes calls these days? The only people who ring me are giving me bad news. A client who is demanding an answer, a bank trying to sell me a shitty service, or a local child service demanding I take the kids home as they've shat themselves or got fleas.

I'm not saying I don't talk to people - but generally anything more friendly or chatty has moved to email / social networks, whereas the phone is a evil device to ping you out of your zone and MAKE YOU DO SOMETHING ELSE.

It's shoot the messenger really isn't it?

I saw two bits of graffiti today - they work as a pair

2012-06-24T21:33:00.000+01:00

Hope

On a railway bridge so it confronts passengers. My geography is shit so I don't know if it's for people coming into London or leaving it. But it works either way. "I hope I will make some money", says the person coming in. "I hope life can be better than this", say the worker leaving.

I didn't get to check whether the bridge said on the other side "despair". But I assume it does. It should shouldn't it?

Kill

In a small tunnel near my home. It disturbs my kids. They see it and ask me if someone died here. I don't know if it's made in actually blood but the intention is clear: to scare.

As a pair. Kill hope? I hope not. We need hope.

Internet Microcelebrity

2012-06-21T14:00:00.001+01:00

Me & @Peepholecircus & @Superpowerless have done another songy / video for Mondo.

My lyrics were inspired by watching a stranger on Twitter gain a small amount of attention and it giving them a partial mental breakdown. Or at least that's how it looked from my perspective - but when it came to making the video it ended up being about me. Maybe it was always about me - my wife certainly thinks so. I certainly identified with the stranger. "Woo hoo! Look at me! People know who I am on the internet! Oh it means jack shit because I'm still poor and have to scrabble about for money."

One of the odder aspects of the Internet that it's brought a very low level of fame to the unfamous but without of the obvious benefits getting bags of cash in return for the loss of privacy or access to a global elite of fascinating people.

One of the most seductive untruths that our culture tells us is being famous has value in itself and many of us have fallen into the trap of idly day dreaming about being a famous writer, pop star, actor, footballer etc.

Now the internet has given us a pseudo-democratic version of fame - you can achieve microcelebrity if only you spend your time endlessly updating your status and sticking ridiculous clips on YouTube. Of course what you're really doing is just supplying free content to huge corporations to stick advertising on - but don't think about that - just look at your follower count go up! Wow, if you keep going you might get spotted and given a fancy media job! (Tip: most people I know who ever got a fancy media job were not magically spotted. They did obvious things like getting in contact with people who could give them work and pitched them projects. Or even more obviously, scoured the jobs listings and applied for lots of stuff until someone gave them a chance.)

Of course celebrity is an empty dream. But no matter how many times you tell a youngster that, their head will be full of stars and it won't go in. But I bring you hard won experience from having briefly touched the outer hem of fame, and it's not particularly amazing getting recognised by strangers. It doesn't happen to me often but generally it's at the level of a drunken person on the Tube slapping me on the back going, "Fucking hell, it's the Ginger Fuhrer" and running away leaving me feeling an odd mixture of excitement and paranoia.

However the worst aspect of the fame delusion is the belief that you're special and different to everyone else. A destructive form of individualism that leaves you adrift from your community and ultimately isolated.

So that's what I think this song is about. The push me pull me nature of internet fame. I sort of want the attention then don't always like it when I get it and objectively think I'm a bit of dick for trying in the first place.

But hey - to think I somehow pitched this as a comedy song - is it funny? A bit, but mostly it's part two in my existential rock opera about technology and I get to live temporarily in a fantasy bubble that I'm making an album and I'm not just sitting around in my kitchen on my laptop eating cheese. Mmm, cheese, it calls me from the fridge, "just a little nibble Rob, no one will know, you can always blame the kids."

How do you find fiction you like?

2012-06-19T21:21:00.000+01:00

Just read Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. He's my new favourite writer - although I haven't read anything else by him and for all I know it may be all tosh. But for a few days I've been obsessively googling him - he's my new obsession.

Tevis is best known for writing a handful of books that were turned into movies - most notably The Hustler and The Man Who Fell To Earth. He died in the 80s and isn't really a name on everyone's lips.

It's hard to describe the effect his novel Mockingbird has had on me without sounding pretentious. Finishing it has left me with a sense of loss. It's over and the beautiful music - I hear it as a melancholy melody played on a cor anglais - has ended. It's like having a new (and doomed) relationship and then it's over and I'm left mourning that amazing person that was temporarily in my life.

I could tell you parts of the plot of Mockingbird but why would I ruin it for you? But to give you a few pointers, it has themes of suicide, end of the human race, recovery from addiction and what might happen if everyone stopped reading.

What I really want to talk about is the difficulty I find in finding fiction I enjoy.

When I love a book I love it and never want it to stop: We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Book of Lost Things, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, The Time Traveller's Wife were all books that have in recent years made me go yeah - writing, fiction, that's where it's at.

But there are so many books - and I won't name them here - there are so many books that I read maybe 4 pages of the intro and just can't get the groove going.

After reading Mockingbird I thought maybe some more sci-fi was my thing - so tried some others from SF Masterworks series who published it and nope, I just hate them. Either the writing - in a gruff macho style with characters with no inner life - or ridiculous fantasy guff where everyone has a silly made up name.

So my point is? I love fiction but finding fiction I like is hard. How do you find fiction you like?

Fuck you Windows, that's a step too far

2012-06-08T20:34:00.000+01:00

Recently been working on a laptop a lot - a 13" Macbook - and a friend turned up with his 20" one and I found myself overcome with screen lust. The huge expanse of space on the screen looked like an open vista compared to my cramped little hovel.

I thought yeah, I'll get one of those, but a quick check on the Apple site priced them at £2000. A huge sum for a laptop, and frankly I've had a lot of computers stolen so I'd probably only own it for six months before someone thieved it.

So I think don't be a snob - get a Windows box, using Chrome and Gdocs isn't going to be much different whatever OS you're on. And £600 for a Windows 20" laptop is no contest.

So I get this thing and I hate it - utterly hate it. Touching it makes me angry.

The first thing I try and do on it - open a SSH session and I remember that Windows doesn't have SSH and that the command line is just some vaguely DOS thing. OK - install PuTTY - no big deal but still irritating and a reminder that this thing isn't based on something solid and Unixy.

But it's the second thing that really makes me lose patience with it. I need make sure my work is backed up from the start - I have NAS drive plugged into my router which is perfect for daily backups. Turns out I can't do it. Not on this version of "Windows Home Premium" - you're only allowed to back up to an external drive.

I press the upgrade button to see what I can do about this - £120 to upgrade to a version that allows backups to a network drive? Utterly taking the piss. £120 surcharge to use my own property. This is Mafia level bollocks. Protection money.

Fuck you Windows laptop I think. Fuck you. You're going to be taught a lesson. So I installed Ubuntu on the box to teach it to behave.

UBUNTU! My wife likes shouting this in a fake African tribal leader voice. Is this racist?

Now I have a laptop that backs up. Huzzah. Although it also does a lot of other very weird things that are quite fun. I've been enjoying nerding out installing command line utilities that play MP3s and load up Twitter. I have no idea whether I'll be able to pull off living in Linux world and still do my work - I haven't had to do any photoshopping yet and the thought of Gimp or trying to get Photoshop to work under Wine is a bit daunting.

Anyway, I've been living with the thing for about a week so far and I've managed to get a B3ta newsletter out with it without any obvious pain. So a cautious thumbs up so far...?

"Trapped in Technology: Internet Internet" - I wrote a song!

2012-06-07T08:14:00.000+01:00

Very pleased to be able to show you the project I've been working on with @Peepholecircus & @Superpowerless - part one of what my wife has been calling "my husband's rock opera" whilst mocking me ever-so slightly. Click the above video. Watched it? Right I'll give you some background.

Background

For series 4 of @Glinner's wonderful show IT Crowd I was asked to make a game to promote it. This I did with Matt Round and in the process I hand drew some pixelly memes:

I really enjoyed drawing these and thought they'd work well for a song about the internet - so I wrote one. Taking a jokey version of my own personal journey on with the web from radical evangelist in the early 1990s to the partially disillusioned addict of now.

Like many of my generation I spent the 90s disengaged with politics and saw the internet as this massive liberator that would sweep away old power structures and makes us all in the words of John Lennon, "classless and free". Such nonsense is called cyber utopianism and I partially blame publications like Mondo 2000 and the odd bit of Wired for promoting it. But still, seductive stuff and heady days even if it did end up with all of us just being data to be mined by Facebook.

So I write my song - my early days fiddling with Gopher on the terminals in Wolverhampton Poly to more recent times with the worry that sitting on my arse has just made me fat.

An opportunity turns up to work with Mondo Media (no connection to magazine) and I seize it to produce my project with a bit more showbiz. I get people I know from B3ta to help me realise my vision. @Peepholecircus to make a lego style 3d video and the brilliant @Superpowerless to rejig the backing track to make it sound bigger and bolder and frankly 100 times better.

I genuinely hope you enjoy this - I've put a lot of myself into this project and also my crap pixel art did just about make the final cut.

Internet Internet - Lyrics

I first met you internet in '92
You were green on black on a texty VDU
You were gopher and FTP and usenet
I fell in love in that moment and I'll never forget

I posted my first trolling that very night
"The Emperor VS Gandalf - who would win in a fight?"
Then I found a fan group for Paul Weller
And amused myself confusing him with Uri Gellar

Internet, internet
I'm trapped in a chair
I'm never gonna leave you
it's a love affair

Then along came the web with photos of cats
I downloaded Mosaic and got me some of that
I made my first homepage by pressing 'view source'
And stopped attending lectures on my uni course

I got myself a background gif satan inside
I made myself a smiley shirt and wore it with pride
I downloaded Doom and played it til I's giddy
And uploaded geocities really cool midi

Internet, internet
I'm trapped in a chair
I really need a pee now
but I'm still sitting there

Then came the age, the ages of memes
Hmaster Dance, Rick rolling, don't cross the streams
leakspin, lolcats and numa numa
keyboard cat, o rly owl and William Shatner

Internet, internet
I'm trapped in a chair
I'm shitting in a bucket
And I'm smelling like a bear

But now the internet is mobile, I've got in on my iPhone
I'm staying on my chair, Because I now weigh 48 stone

So watch the bloody video! (As maybe you missed it at the top of the page)

Understanding the world though the lens of half remembered old pop music

2012-06-06T21:41:00.000+01:00

The Manic Street Preachers once sang, "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" - and the phrase has been playing in my head following the alarming story of the unpaid labour stewarding the Jubilee and being offered no accommodation beyond sleeping under a bridge.

Ugly words like serfdom come to mind and no longer sound like alarmist hyperbole.

In all significant ways baring one there is nothing new here. Borderline slaves build our laptops and supply much of our food - but the difference is that overseas is out of sight and out of mind. Like many of us, I read No Logo in the early 2000s but did I do anything about it other than feel vaguely guilty when I bought a t-shirt for a couple of quid? Nope.

I tolerated it and now my children are next.

My kids. My three children in a world where I wonder what work prospects there will be for them? Struggling to think of anything now that even knowledge work like photoshopping on national newspapers is outsourced to India. (Credit to Private Eye for the following story)

Oh now got another song in my head, "If you've got girl trouble I feel bad for you son, but I've got 99 problems and the deindustrialisation of the Midlands and the North (including light industry of the South) ain't one."

BTW: I was going to include the actual photo of where the Manic's got the phrase from but it contains the image of a dead child and it's still shocking to this day - so be warned before clicking.

An open letter to columnists who say "Don't read the bottom half of the internet"

2012-05-05T13:30:00.002+01:00

There's a little meme I've been hearing recently. Columnists repeating it, "Don't read the bottom half of the internet".

What they mean is comments on stories are often hurtful so avoid them.

Now there's a certain logic to this. Avoiding the haters is one strategy but it's utterly, utterly flawed.

When you turn off the feedback loop you lose the good bits. It's like having a sore finger and cutting off your arm. You need to keep listening to the world, else what on earth can you write about?

I'm reminded of the John Updike line: "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over animation. One can either see or be seen."

So keep listening. I don't mean you shouldn't block an annoying troll, but to use trolls as a reason to stop listening to everyone is a form of creative suicide.

Now the class war bit.

Disengagement also suggests a level of contempt for the reader. There's a chippy voice in my head that hears it as: "here's the class traitors whispering to each other 'don't listen to the proles.'"

I can't help but see the class issues here. It's even in the language and the structure of the page, "the BOTTOM half of the internet". Like the servants' quarter in a Victorian house; below stairs.

The power structure is the columnist at the top of the page, and the horrible 'pond life' (a phrase also commonly used by TV producers) who do it for free at the bottom. Don't read them, the columnists say. They say nasty things about us.

Well of course they say nasty things. They're given a smaller voice by the class system encoded into the very structure of article (top) + comment (bottom). All they can do is lob word bombs up the page whilst the columnist gets to write out their entire opinion at the top of the page and beam it to 100,000s of readers via a popular news site.

My advice to high profile columnists is remember you are in a lucky privileged position. Writing isn't dreadfully specific skill - it's taught to millions via our schooling system. And opinions? Well I've yet to meet people without opinions. Yes you are probably quite good at your job and you probably struggled to get there, but it's a bit like being a successful actor or popstar - plenty of people have the ability few get the opportunity.

BTW: To head off some inevitable criticisms. Yes I do know what getting hateful feedback is like. I'm not a columnist but I've run moderately well known websites for over 10 years. I've had a death threat to a member of my family. I've had my phone number printed on Facebook with calls to abuse me. I've had weird things sent to my house. I've been sent such poisonous emails that I've been left raging, smashed things & then slumped leaving me unproductive for days.

However vile the abuse, remember this is part of the price of getting a public voice. Stay grateful. Don't kick the proles - the work might disappear and both of us could be back at the bottom of the page seething about the people at the top of page who do this for a living.

Imagine what your editor would say if the comments went and never came back? The words P45 spring to mind. Then you'll be looking back at the trolls through rose tinted spectacles.

Why looking at politics through the lens of Mr Hypocrite vs Mr Freechoice is unhelpful

2012-05-03T23:57:00.001+01:00

The Boris / Ken election has consumed a lot of my mental space recently. Many of the media attacks on Ken have been based upon accusation of hypocrisy - which I don't want to address here, not the specifics of possible hypocrisy but how that's a such a sideshow.

I've been thinking of a parable. An example I've consciously made extreme to emphasise the point that policy is more important than the personal details of how an individual behaves.

Imagine a person - let's call him Mr Hypocrite - he's murdered someone. He's a murderer. No doubt he's a rotten egg but he's planning to enact policy to make sure all murderers are jailed. "Utter hypocrisy!", the newspaper columnists shout. "He doesn't practise what he preaches!", the people repeat.

Now the other guy. Mr Freechoice. He's never murdered anyone but he's planning to make laws that people should be free to murder. Blimey.

Who do you want making policy? The Mr Hypocrite who makes murders go to jail? Or the Mr Freechoice guy who transcends hypocrisy?

The obvious point I'm trying to make is the policy a politician enacts is more important than how a politician personally runs his own life. Mr Hypocrite overall makes sure murders are banged up (what a hypocrite) whilst Mr Freechoice actively makes our society more dangerous.

Out shitty media: it makes us debate the person and not the policy & this is an utterly cack way of understanding the choices.

How To Stop The Daily Mail

2012-04-05T12:03:00.000+01:00

This week it's Samantha Brick, last week it was something Liz Jones said and next week I imagine it’ll be Jan Moir. You don’t need this rubbish in your life, it’s destructive and insulting and yet with social media it’s almost impossible to avoid.

My twitter feed is full of Daily Mail links. People hating it, people pretending they are so superior to it all, people going ‘oh they’re just super trolls, ignore it.’

And so you’ll ended up reading it through gritted teeth.

I haven’t read the Samantha Brick article. Yes I’ve seen reactions to it. But the bilious shit hasn’t reached me. How can I be so strong? Simple. I’ve had the whole site on a DNS block for the last six months.

It’s an easy thing to do and you can do it at home OR ask your IT person to do it for your office. Here’s how.

1. Go to OpenDNS.com and sign up for an account. It’s free.
2. Add ‘www.dailymail.co.uk’ to the always block drop down
3. Go to your router and change your DNS to use opendns instead of your ISP’s DNS.

Then when someone links to a Daily Mail story via Twitter – even when it’s hidden via a shortened link – you’ll be free. Free I tell you. Liberated from this utter nonsense. Do it now, I implore you.

This is what the Daily Mail now looks like to me:

Better isn’t it? Now take my advice and do some bloody work instead.

UPDATE: Several people suggesting Kitten Block as an alternative - a Chrome / Firefox script that changes the Daily Mail to pictures of kittens. This is a fine project but OpenDNS wins because

1. There's about 6 devices in this house capable of displaying the Daily Mail - phones, ipad, laptops etc, and OpenDNS blocks them all in one go.

2. When something is blocked by OpenDNS it takes a good 5 mins to unblock it. This stops temptation.