If I Name This Post 'Sextuple Mumbo Jumbo', That'll Increase Traffic To The Blog, Right?

I think it was the late (and in my estimation rather great) Blake Snyder, author of the screenwriting book Save The Cat who came up with the concept of 'Double Mumbo Jumbo', and it's something I've been thinking about a bit recently.

Double Mumbo Jumbo, put simply, is the idea that "as an audience we can only buy one piece of magic per movie" (or, I'd say, book or play or other medium). Where Blake says 'magic', I like to think this equally means coincidence - for my money, Spider-Man 3 suffers from Double Mumbo Jumbo in the plotlines relating to the Venom symbiote (to non-comic geeks, that's the black costume-thing which bonds first with Peter Parker and then with his rival) when it happens to land first near Peter Parker's moped (if memory serves; I've only seen the film once, and don't plan to watch it again, even if it means verifying details for a blog post) and then it's roaming ownerless again when Peter Parker's workplace rival is out and about in the area.

I think the second story in Pulp Fiction suffers from this sort of coincidence problem as well, though I know a lot of people hold that film in much higher regard than I do.

It's not just a problem which you see in films, either (though the example I'm about to give was, I think, adapted to film): the novel Perfume by Patrick Suskind is very well-respected and was given to me with strong recommendations by a friend, but when I read it I couldn't get past the fact that the main character had no personal scent (which struck me as being biologically unlikely) and also had an extrememly sensitive ability to detect odours.

This felt like a cheat to me, as if the author realised that someone with a truly super-powered nose would be unable to smell anything beyond the scent of their own sweat and clothing. I didn't buy it, and as a result the rest of the book felt hard to swallow, built as it was on a foundation that I didn't find particularly sturdy.

This has been on my mind a bit recently, because in the novel I'm currently writing (due for completion about half an hour before the heat-death of the universe, longtime readers might suspect) I have various 'secret' government agencies and bodies, and I don't want to have too much stuff that looks like a fudge - whilst I'm confident that most readers will accept that there are bodies within government and the military which don't appear in annual reports and budget publications, I don't want to make it look as if I've made them 'secret' just so I haven't got to do the research on Home Office heirarchies and departmental responsibilities and the like.

In a strange - though hopefully understandable - tangent, thinking about the concept of Double Mumbo Jumbo has partly explained to me why I find the following advert irks me more than it probably should:

The advert doesn't really make sense to me on any level - and yes, I know it's meant to be a bit out there and surreal, but consider the things that we're supposed to accept:

• He's so fond of sausage rolls he's cloned a miniature dog to say what he can't
• He carries the miniature dog in a jewellery box in his pocket
• He had it in his pocket, but initially wasn't intending to hand it to her (note how he turns away at first)
• The 'garage lady' accepts what appears to be a gift of jewellery from a customer
• The miniature dog speaks english (with, I think, the voice of Mathew Horne)
• The dog knows which button to press on its (also miniaturised) keyboard to start the music (which is either drum and bass or garage, I think - I'm not bothered about either of those choices really, though I hope it's the latter as it would be appropriate given the setting of the advert)

It just feels like the advert-makers have hit the 'random' button in an almost cynical way, as if throwing diverse stuff together like that immediately equates to something surreal and/or clever. The main problem I think I have with it is that for someone who's "just a bloke", and apparently incapable of expressing himself, he's gone to a lot of trouble (and a weird kind of trouble) to express his gratitude.

In fact, within this universe where we can create speaking miniature animals to perform tasks we humans can't, I'm surprised that there are petrol stations at all, as the normal rules don't seem to apply; surely the pumps dispense some kind of liquid boulders, and the 'garage lady' is in fact the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, wearing a human outfit to disguise the fact that he's come back as an oversized moth (I'm aware that many insects' tracheas don't function once they get above a certain size, so this is an inherently unrealistic proposition, but given that the shruken dog apparently suffers no difficulty breathing despite his size and being enclosed in a small box, it seems all bets are off). Actually, it's strange that this bizarre world they inhabit has sausage rolls and money in it at all really. What are the odds of that?

I can live with the odd quirk or wrinkle to things - and as I understand it, much of the 'magic realism' school of writing is based on the world as we know it reacting to strange and unusual things happening - but it needs to be balanced, I think. The Queen in Alice in Wonderland boasts "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast", but that advert seems, to me, to be a case of Multiple Mumbo Jumbo, and so I can't swallow it (then again, as a vegetarian, I was probably unlikely to swallow anything related to sausage rolls).

Come to think of it, no wonder the chap in the advert accepts the strange world he lives in: it's clearly the early hours, and maybe he needs to believe the six impossible things I list above before he can have the sausage roll - that is, his breakfast.

Ah, Remember When Columnists Used To Talk About The Wire All The Time? Those Crazy Bygone Days

I've come to appreciate that there's a lot of hype and nonsense around many TV shows - particularly ones which a lot of journalists are watching but in which yer general public show less interest (The Wire, Mad Men and the like), but the quote on the front of this forthcoming novelisation of the TV show The Killing may set some new hyperbolic record:

Seriously, Radio Times? Sarah Lund, who's been in 30 episodes of a TV series in the past five years (and only shown in the UK in the past 15 months) is the top female detective in the world? That seems rather short-sighted, almost as if the person claiming it has a very short memory indeed, or at best is a bit caught up in Killingmania. Has the source of that quote never heard of Jane Marple? Or even Jessica Fletcher?

Now, it's possible that the publishers of that book are being rather selective with the quote, so I went looking, and found this: The Radio Times Rundown Of The Top TV Women Police Officers, November 2011.

Sarah Lund above Jane Tennison? Oh, Radio Times, you disappoint me.

In Which I Refer To My Gag, And Those Put In Place By Others (Who Shall Remain Nameless, At Least For Now)

As the writer of a radio gag about superinjunctions back in 2010, you're probably thinking I've got an opinion on this currently rather hot topic. And you'd be right.

For those of you who are a bit unclear on how they work, a superinjunction is an injunction which stops someone saying something, or even reporting that they've been ordered not to say it. And regardless of what you think about the issues of privacy or press freedom or Judges making law or the Human Rights Act or whatever, lurking behind most of these cases seems to be one common factor: someone did something they'd rather you didn't know about.

Most of the instances which the press have become very excited about have involved men putting their winkle somewhere they shouldn't have, though in the Trafigura case it was more a question of alleged business naughtiness; but it's still a case of people doing stuff which they know would reflect badly on them in PR terms. Whether it's sleeping with someone you're not married to, or paying someone to place items up your bot, these are things which are likely to make people tut and buy papers and think less of you. Which is why people who have a public image to protect, and sufficient money to afford it, seek a superinjunction.

And it's from this that the more tangled debates stem, and I think this pretty simple thing is easily overlooked in the more messy and interesting-seeming debates which are currently taking place - which is a pity, because all of us have to take responsibility for our actions, and if we do something we're not proud of, it's not the place of the law to hide that. If you're in the public eye, the media will be very interested in everything you do - this is not new, we've seen it since the times of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis, and if you have a propensity for behaviour (sexual or otherwise) which might not do your career any good, you probably have a choice to make about which to pursue.

But if you're going to do something which you'd rather people didn't know about, and someone does know about it, using a legal mechanism to try and pretend it never happened strikes me as both disingenuous and a little bit childish; it did happen - and it's interesting how this is rarely at issue in these cases, it's more a question of damage limitation - and if you thought it was a good idea at the time, maybe you should be adult enough to admit it, rather than trying to gag people who know about your indiscretion? It sounds like the worst kind of denial, like the Dead Parrot sketch or something, shutting your ears to the reality of the situation and hoping that the world will reshape itself to match your delusion.

And this bugs me because I like to remember things which often seem to get removed from the history books: like when the Chinese authorities opened fire on hundreds of students in Tianenmen Square, or Cheryl Tweedy (as was) assaulted a woman in a nightclub toilet, or the way the newspapers criticised Diana, Princess of Wales in the months before her death. All these things often seem to be forgotten or overlooked, but they happened, and it feels like 1984-style Doublethink to act as if one thing's the case (it didn't happen) when you know the opposite is true (well, yeah, it did happen).

In psychological terms, holding two opinions that clash that way is seen as a likely cause of 'cognitive dissonance', that awkward feeling we have when two ideas in our head don't quite sit together; most galling when we realise that our opinion on something doesn't actually square with the facts, but, well, doing stuff and knowing at the time it's not so bright, or realising that after the event, is part of being a grown-up and taking responsibility for your actions.

A prospect which some people in the public eye appear to have a bit of trouble accepting, so I can only hope that the adulation and money helps take the edge off. The poor dears.

Whereof One Does Not Know, One Should Talk Louder, And Perhaps Intersperse It With Swearing Or Colourful Metaphors

Words people say without knowing their true meaning - an incomplete list:

"Infer"
"Metatarsal"
"Draconian"
"H1N1"
"[Whitehall] Mandarins"
"Machiavellian"
"Svengali"

Your contributions are, of course, welcomed; the Comments section eagerly awaits your input.

Big Ups To All My Haters, As I Believe The Song Puts It*

Well now. It's been a while, hasn't it? If it provides any kind of justification for my absence, I've recently had a job which took me out of London (and away from easy access to a full-size keyboard), but now I'm back.

And what, you may wonder, have I decided is the best way to re-commence regular blogging activities? Why, tis nothing less than the perennial subjects of love and hate... well, kind of.

Love and hate, we're often told, are two sides of the same coin. Or there's a thin line between them. And so on. Basically, we're often fed the idea that the two of them are very close together - it's simple enough to see why, they're both extremes of feeling or opinion, and particularly in the field of emotion, disappointment and annoyance with someone we've formed an attachment for can easily cause us to become equally vehement in our negativity towards them; in films and TV shows, it's often quite common for characters who spend a long time being antagonistic towards each others to end up smooching, though I have to say that (relaxed licensing hours notwithstanding) I haven't seen that happen quite so frequently in real life.

If we're going to be honest about it - and I think we ought to, as life is often more complicated than simplistic presentations of emotional duality in programmes such as the Jeremy Kyle Show would have us pretend - there's actually a long distance to travel between love and hate, if we're using the words in their strictest sense. I love reading, and it would take quite a lot of negative reading experiences (that is to say, bad books or whatever) before that affection for the activity turned into hate. I'm sure you can think of things which you enjoy immensely - would it really take the equivalent of a coinflip, or a hop over some imaginary line, to make you hate them with equal intensity? I doubt it.

In reality, the line between love and hate, when viewed in three dimensions, manifests as a vast plane, with slight disaffection and indifference and irritation with at various stages between the two extremes. And if love and hate are sides of a coin, we should be honest enough to admit that it's actually more of a cylinder than a coin, with enough stages and distance from one side to the other as to make the particle acceleration corridors at CERN look like a cupboard for the electricity meter.

I increasingly feel that there's a problem with people presenting arguments or opinions in a way that suggests you either love something or you hate it; you're either a fan or a hater. And whilst we've often seen this used to simplify political debates - in 2002, a popular simplification was to suggest that any doubts about military action in Iraq equated with approval for the regime of Saddam Hussein - it also seems to be used increasingly in relation to more everyday issues.

Let's take an issue which, in and of itself, doesn't really matter, but which is often portrayed as some kind of ideological battle; the question of whether Apple products are better than PCs. To read a lot of review columns, or to hear people talk, you'd think that one was vastly superior to the other, and that using the opposition's products is the action of a seriously ill-informed person, whose brand allegiance (in whichever direction) is akin to that of a brainwashed dupe. The reality, of course, is a lot more nuanced - let's be honest, both have their merits (Apple's stuff is visually appealing, reportedly more stable [the iPhone 4 signal problems and iOS's tendency to eat battery life could be argued to have undermined this in recent times, though], and generally held to be technically superior; PCs are cheaper, and used in more workplaces and so more familiar) and their flaws. But the problem is, nowadays, you'd think that people either have an Apple or Microsoft logo tattooed on their heart, and this means that the discussions tend to be polarised - and this simplification means that facts get overlooked - such as the fact that Microsoft helped Apple financially in the 1990s by giving them $150m to bundle Internet Explorer with new Macs as the default browser; so, that big hatred and fighting between them you read about in the press? Probably more like business rivalry, but of course that's not so interesting, and it's more fun to portray their customers as engaged in some teeth-baring hatred.

The major problem I have with this situation is the way it reduces everything to a non-discussion, and removes any possibility of people conceding that their so-called opponent has a point (watch the way politicians will invariably try to ignore facts or events in debates, even if empirically and provably true, which don't make their argument look entirely true, as opposed to the best-guess opinion it really is). It means you can't point at flaws in anything without being labelled a 'hater' or 'anti', even if you're only trying to say that something has weaknesses in certain areas (cases in point: Lady Gaga is really not as stunningly original as many people insist, and Steig Larsson writes a lot of exposition).

As I've mentioned with tiresome regularity on the blog, my favourite TV programme of all time is Twin Peaks (it is my equivalent of Mark Kermode's love for The Exorcist), but I'll cheerfully admit that it's got flaws (the second season loses its way, certain storylines are just risible, and it's painfully clear at certain points that they're just making it up as they go along). As long as the catalogue of weaknesses in something doesn't overwhelm the things we like in it, then there doesn't seem to be any problem in liking it, but there's equally no problem in admitting it's not perfect - very few things are unimprovable (despite what the most vocal supporters might say).

Am I asking too much? Is it really now the case that you're either a rabid fan of something or a hater? I'd like to think not, and I'd also like to think that it'd be possible to see discussion of topics (and by 'see' I mean 'encounter', though if televised debates - on whatever topic - would like to actually show people admitting the strengths in their opponents' arguments and the weaknesses in their own, I'd welcome that) which actually reflect that there are many waystations between the positions of support or loathing for something, whether it be a political stance or a work of art or a brand of cola or whatever. Much of the time, opinions on things fall into the median, grey band of 'meh', and it feels to me that pretending that you have to pick a position at one end of the spectrum and fight it doggedly with closed ears and mind is oversimplifying, and doesn't actually enable a proper discussion to take place.

Although - ahem - I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I'm not so convinced of this that I don't welcome discussion of it. That would be hypocrisy, and of course the Post Comment button exists for your input (and not just about Apple, Gaga or Larsson, ideally)...

*That would be the number "They Know", by Shawty Lo Featuring Ludacris, I believe. Not really a fan, but it seemed appropriate to refer to it, by way of illustrating that merit may lurk where we don't expect it.

Slightly Further To Yesterday's Post, But Not Entirely

A new word for your dictionary...

Jedward [Jed'wood]

1. portmanteau n. Contestants John and Edward in ITV talent contest The X-Factor in 2009. Their elimination sparked a very short-lived campaign of complaints.

2. n. Slang term for any item which excites a great deal of interest for a brief spell and is then forgotten as though it had never existed. Often applied to workplace tasks whose lasting impact is inversely proportionate to the importance placed upon their timely creation at short notice, as in:

"Dave, I need a full report on the last six years' sales figures for the MD, by tomorrow morning."
"If I bust my guts to deliver it on time, will he actually read it, or is this another bloody Jedward?"

Good-Bye To All That

As a year comes to a close, it's traditional to look back on the its various events and achievements.

Being a non-traditional sort, though, I'd just like to take a moment to talk about something which I hope we'll see the end of when midnight chimes. I don't want to sound overly negative, but it'd be nice to see this one thing go when the year ends. And that thing is...

People taking offence on behalf of other people.

Actually, I should probably qualify that slightly - it's more a case of people continuing to take offence (or claiming to, but I'll get to that in a minute) on behalf of other people, when those others have either said they're not bothered or they've accepted an apology.

The obvious example would be the Daily Mail-led campaign to continue to be shocked and horrified about the prank phone calls to Andrew Sachs, but this year we've also seen a fuss about Ben Elton making jokes about the Royal Family; there are probably other examples, but the key thing about all of these events to my mind is the fact that the person who was directly affected by the remarks accepted an apology from the so-called offender (or, in the case of the Elton 'fuss', saw the joke, it seems. So it is a bit odd that people who are not directly involved should continue to stoke the fires of outrage, when the one whose feelings could be legitimately stung is moving on and getting over with it.

I suggested above that the people who get all offended about such matters aren't truly offended, and whilst I don't feel that's the case about all such instances, I think a lot of the time the vicarious offendees are taking a slightly odd delight in feeling affronted. I'd been struggling to verbalise why people might want to do this - beyond the fact that, unfortunately, some people seem to take delight in being angry more often than not - but fortunately, a line on an episode of The West Wing I was watching summed it up for me:

DONNA: ...they're shocked and appalled and disappointed but really, they're none of those things, they just wish they were. So, never miss an opportunity to feel morally superior.

And I think that's at the heart of it - a lot of the time, these 'campaigns' seem to be organised not with the intention of ensuring respect for the monarchy, or ... er, that people don't ring grandfathers and talk about their granddaughters' sexual activity (not actually one of the biggest blights on society today, I suspect), but more of allowing the person being shocked and horrified to feel that they're morally superior to the miscreant whose actions they're so very appalled by.

To use a phrase I've written before, I question their sincerity. Yes, many of the jokes that people claim to be so appalled by may not be incisive or sharp, and may well be ill-judged, but they rarely seem to merit the big hoo-hah that follows; a lot of the time, the involvement of newspapers (especially in cases where the BBC can be given a kicking) makes me wonder how much of it is a crusade for social justice, and how much of it is a decision to try to have their paper spearhead a campaign against [whatever] by way of making newsprint seem important and current and relevant in the face of stiff competition from 24-hour news channels and new media.

On a meta- level, you might well ask why I'm so bothered by this when most of the attacks have been on comedians and writers and the like; surely, one might think, it's paradoxical at best and hypocritical at worst for me to be offended on behalf of these other people. And I might agree, but for the fact that I, and everyone else who spends time watching TV or film or listening to the radio or reading, suffers if we live in an environment in which producers or publishers are constantly examining works in case they offend, they might offend, or someone might take offence at the very possibility that they might offend someone else. Whilst many people are aware of the protests at the time of the release of Monty Python's Life Of Brian (pictured), it's all too easy to forget that now, just under thirty years later, it's seen not only as one of the funniest films ever made, but one of the most insightful about the nature of religion and belief. At the time, it was deeply offensive and shocking and blasphemous, but now it's held up as being a classic of intelligent humour, and without its creators being able to risk offence those insights (and jokes) would never have been made.

I wouldn't want to pretend that Frankie Boyle's joke about the Queen's ladyparts is likely to be as respected as "You've got to think for yourself! You're all individuals!" in years to come, but an intellectual climate in which material which might possibly offend any portion of the audience has to be excised is a perfect breeding ground for intellectual stagnation, and - ironically - TV schedules full of material which, by its sheer blandness, I find deeply offensive (for example, the currently-on programmes All Star Family Fortunes and All Star Mr And Mrs, whose titles and content differ so wildly I'm surprised Trading Standards haven't intervened).

In 1990, Salman Rushdie wrote the Hubert Reid Memorial lecture, entitled "Is Nothing Sacred?"; due to his life being threatened for some words he had written on religious matters, Rushdie was in hiding, and so the lecture was delivered by Harold Pinter. In the lecture, Rushdie argues the case for literature being allowed to say things and propose ideas that people might not like, and compares literature to a small room in a large house, in which anything might be said:

"The room is empty, but there are voices in it, voices that seem to be whispering just to you. You recognize some of the voices, others are completely unknown to you. The voices are talking about the house, about everyone in it, about everything that is happening and has happened and should happen. Some of them speak exclusively in obscenities. Some are bitchy. Some are loving. Some are funny. Some are sad. The most interesting voices are all these things at once."

A similar analogy might be struck for almost any form of media or other means of communication, and whilst I'd strongly urge you to read the entire lecture, if you apply Rushdie's 'room model' to a medium you care about - whether it be film or TV or radio - then the final line of the lecture, even if slightly edited, cannot fail to give pause for thought:

"Wherever in the world the little room [...] has been closed, sooner or later the walls have come tumbling down."

And on that relentlessly cheerful note, this blog bids farewell to 2009 - and, hopefully, to the idea of taking offence, or pretending to take offence, at jokes or comments or ideas, specifically those which relate to another who is notably less concerned by them. I question the sincerity of those who do so on a regular basis, and so perhaps we can close the door (with a hearty slam) on this practice as we leave this year - indeed, this decade.

Eleven Months After I Posted My Theory, Confirmation Arrives

In January, I asked if this poo level of service had been experienced by anyone else.

In December, a survey by Consumer Focus finds that 55% of people polled had suffered the same stupidity.

I'm actually more jealous than surprised or annoyed; I wish I got paid in advance for failing to provide a decent service, but unfortunately my day job expects me to actually do the work before handing over any money.

Perhaps performance-related pay for parcel deliveries is the way to go?

A Never To Be Repeated Offer

Available for a limited time, a boxed set containing a DVD which contains the highlights of two previously-released DVDs, one of which featured the same material as the other but performed in a different venue.

Buy early for Christmas!

"But Professor, Isn't There A Danger That It Could Become... Self-Aware?"

Many years ago, there was a BBC series called The Living Soap. It was a short-lived fly-on-the-wall documentary series about students in Manchester (so, fly-on-the-magnolia-painted-wall, then).

This was back in the early 1990s, and it was prescient of a lot of current TV reality fare, in that the students were filmed going about their everyday lives. However, unlike the majority of such shows which you'll see now, the episodes were put out at much the same time as they were being made, which caused it to become a bit self-regarding; if memory serves, people in the show would find out things others had said or done by watching a previous episode and seeing events they'd not been present at, and this information would affect how they behaved. Or people in the street would insult or otherwise engage with members of the 'cast', on the basis of how they'd been portrayed in previous episodes.

Obviously, you can't really aim for or maintain verite in that kind of situation, and the show was pulled earlier than planned. But I rather enjoyed it at the time - I've often found myself interested in programmes showing what happens when people are shoved together in an environment; perhaps because I've lived in a variety of shared houses in the past, both as a student and later in life. Anyway, the main lesson which seemed to be learned from The Living Soap was that you shouldn't broadcast episodes of this sort of show while it's still being filmed, as you end up with a snake-eating-its-tail situation.

A similar show (which started at around the same time) is MTV's The Real World. Sticking together a handful of young people (have I just coined a collective noun there?) in a flat or apartment and filming what happened, this show's one of MTV's biggest successes, and runs to this day. We can pretend that it's a fascinating social experiment or whatever, but really the appeal of the show is a more base one, that of having a good old nose at people's private(ish) lives. I'm not being snobbish in saying that, as I have a great deal of fondness for The Real World, particularly the Seattle-based season.

The production company wisely chose to film all the episodes of The Real World before airing them, which seems to have worked on the whole, but the fact it's broadcast, and has been for many years now, means cast members occasionally have things like "Real World sucks!" shouted at them in the street during filming. But more pertinently to the point I'll get round to making eventually, the long-running nature of the show means that it's become a bit of a magnet for people who want to be on TV or use it as a springboard to other careers.

I'd see this as a problem in production terms, because instead of having a programme about (say) seven average-ish people trying to get along in a flatshare, you end up with a flat containing a number of almost-stereotypes and wannabes: racists are invariably put alongside people of other races, political conservatives are put with liberals, homophobes with gay men, and so on. Add to that the fact that some of the people see the show as their calling card to stardom (despite all evidence to the contrary about such a ploy), and you can end up with an apartment which appears to have been deliberately populated with wannabes from a number of carefully-selected demographics (as The Onion pointed out).

Sure, it's still interesting to watch (that base level of interest I mentioned above still applied), but it's certainly a drift from the original intent, and a more self-regarding one again; perhaps inevitably over time, seeing people arguing over who gets what bed apparently isn't enough, and instead there's an expectation that the audience will want to see an alcoholic bisexual jumping into a swimming pool and losing her bikini top or something (Real World Hawaii, I think). In much the same way, Big Brother's first series featured a mix of people, but by the time the show was facing the axe, the house appeared to have been populated by caricatures whose motivation for auditioning appeared to be either a desire to seek the attention they didn't get in their childhood, or to get a photospread in Nuts, Zoo, or both. No wonder Big Brother's ratings fell, why watch TV when you can see people attention-seeking or disrobing on any High Street in the UK any night of the week?

All of which brings me, circuitously, to the current series of TV singing talent contest The X Factor. I've not been watching this year, instead preferring to glean my information about the show from the front covers of pretty much all print media in the UK over the past month or so; in terms of long-term imprinting in my brain, this is pretty much the same as following it anyway because - let's all be honest - the turnover of 'stars' in this programme makes a McDonald's counter look like a place where people linger. There's a current thing where Simon Cowell's issuing press statements about an act called Jedward (whose schtick seems to be that they're twins with haircuts like Yahoo Serious in Young Einstein) saying how much he hates them and wants them out, which of course makes the oh-so-wilful (though not very perceptive) audience vote for them to remain in the show... that's phone voting, which of course means that money from each call goes into the coffers of SyCo, the production company behind the show, which is owned by, you guessed it, Simon Cowell. I don't know Cowell personally, but I don't know if the best way to show your disapproval and disagreement with him is to give him money. It looks suspiciously like positive reinforcement to me.

The link between the 'reality shows' I referred to earlier and The X Factor, I feel, is that as time has gone on, the latter has similarly had to up the ante; it's become abundantly clear that the venn diagram-style overlap between the viewing audience and the people who'll buy the winner's CDs is pretty slight, so the voting process (with the call-in votes that cost money) becomes the greatest element of the story; fights - verbal and physical - or romances between the contestants fill acres of newsprint, the judges are friends or bitter rivals depending on which day of the week it is, judges issue decrees stating that certain acts are bound to win or should be kicked out, and there's an amazing amount of speculation about who'll get kicked out this week and who'll win, even though that's almost incidental (as the music is, much of the time) to the majority of the viewing audience.

It doesn't seem to be enough that someone with moderate singing ability (and I say 'someone' as opposed to 'some people' because groups rarely win - in fact, has a group ever won The X Factor?) is plucked from obscurity, given some voice training and a new wardrobe and propelled to the top of the charts by a huge marketing and management campaign - a series of events which is rare and unusual enough to surely be of note; it seems we need them to have overcome some personal hardship such as a life-threatening illness or the death of a supportive relative, a vicious bit of catfighting in bootcamp, a bad choice of song in the semi-finals, and then some pantomime slating from one of the judges, before being crowned the winner and releasing some suitably rousing song in time for Christmas. And then they’re promptly pretty much forgotten about for the best part of a year, when they’re wheeled out to ride the (almost identical) wave of publicity and hoo-hah surrounding the new series (unless they don't bother, which sometimes happens; Leon Jackson, for example). The show may be startlingly aware of itself and the need to feign conflict and drama and tragedy, but it’s reliant on the viewing (and voting) public being oblivious to such machinations.

Many years ago, I went for an interview for a job in Virgin Megastore. The chap asked me what kind of music I liked, and I replied - as I probably would now - that I tended to like bands or artists who had more than one album to them. The chap looked vaguely appalled, and I didn't get the job - only years later did it occur to me that the 'one hit album or single' churn was probably a sizable amount of business for music shops, and by extension the music industry. And in a similar way, I suspect that the production team of The X Factor has realised that the journey (a word which is often used without any kind of self-awareness in such shows) is more important than the destination. You may not be able to convince people to splash out on the Eoghan Quigg CD, but you can issue 'shocking statements' to try to convince them that paying for premium rate phone calls to keep Jedward in the race for first place is worth it. Or pursue any other tactic to keep press coverage running between shows and generate a sense of importance about the whole thing.

I know what you're thinking: John, you think about this stuff waaaaay too much. And you might well be right, but I say this in response: Everything I've said above about The X Factor has almost certainly been thought (if not explicitly stated in meetings) by people on the production team. I'm not a marketing and money-making genius, but you can bet your calls made after this time will not be counted but may still be charged that SyCo has several such geniuses on their payroll.

Anyway, I want Jimmy Nipples to win. He's still in it, right? No? Oh. He must have been knocked the other week or something. See, told you I wasn’t really paying attention to it.

Maybe She's A Giant Who Lives In The Flat Downstairs And Has Smashed Through

I can't be alone in having spotted how many adverts or pieces of packaging seem to feature smiling or laughing people.

The implication, I guess, is a pretty straightforward one: Look, the good-looking people in this picture are in close proximity to this item and they're smiling! If you buy this item you'll smile too, and you might become a bit more good-looking! Straightforward to the point of insulting your intelligence, really.

As a result of having deconstructed this aspect of advertising in my head, I find myself often a bit bewildered by billboards and print ads, and asking questions like 'who are these people?', 'why are they just laughing?' and things like that. It's very disconcerting, especially for the chap who was stood next to me when I saw the pictured item in Currys yesterday.

I appreciate that it's tricky to try to make adapters particuarly appealing, and so Devolo's packaging people have decided the best thing to do is to put a picture of a pretty lady on the box, but... but what the hell's meant to be going on in that image? Is she supposed to be lying on the floor down by the socket and looking over her shoulder coquettishly? If so, her elbows must be resting about three inches below the level of the floor.

I think about these things too much, don't I ? I think I'd better go and get a cup of tea.

We'll Be Moving Our Anna Karenina Update To The Docklands Light Railway So We Can Shoot The Final Scenes

If you live in the London area and have somehow missed it, just a quick note to alert you to the impending London Underground strike.

Unless something happens in the next couple of hours to avert it, then the entire tube network is going to be pretty much dead from 6.59pm tonight for a period of 48 hours.

In theory, this should mean that tubes will be back up and running from 6.58pm on Thursday, but given how good London Underground are at meeting timetables at the best of times, I wouldn't be expecting to see any trains rolling up to platform edges and opening the doors until Friday morning.

All pretty ho-hum really, but one line in the Transport for London press release on the strike amused me:

"Among other things, the RMT has also demanded ... improved travel facilities"

Yes, RMT, I think a few million other people may have asked for better travel facilities in the London area over the years. Good luck with that request!

The Dead-Headed League

Offer of the week from the always-interesting DVD firm Network is One Summer, a series from 1983 which was written by Willy Russell and stars - as you can see from the picture - a young David Morrissey.

I'll be honest : I don't know anything at all about the series (though it's clearly got a pretty good pedigree) - what really caught my attention was the quote from the Daily Mirror which is reproduced at the bottom of the DVD cover:

"David Morrissey and Spencer Leigh are most beguiling."

I'm more than willing to believe this is the case, but it's almost impossible to imagine this sort of turn of phrase appearing in a TV review in the Mirror nowadays, isn't it ?

Assuming that quote's contemporaneous with the series's original broadcast date, I find myself somewhat amazed that in 26 years, the Mirror's writing style has changed from sounding like a character from one of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories to... well, sounding how I suspect characters will sound in Guy Ritchie's forthcoming Sherlock Holmes film*.

*This comment is, I realise, the very embodiment of prejudice; however, the idea of a re-imagining of the Holmes canon really does smack of a paucity of originality. Intead of 're-imagining' or otherwise riding the creative coat-tails, how about 'creating', or even plain old 'imagining' new characters?

He's Only A 'Mad Scientist' Insofar As He Gets Angry When People Make Unsubstantiated Claims Or Use Pseudo-Scientific Talk. And Who Can Blame Him?

There's an idiot of my acquaintance who claims to be able to heal people by waving his hands around them whilst they stand up.

He tried it on me once, and confidently told me that I had some back pain, which I told him was not the case, and cheerfully asked him why he'd missed the fact I had a blinding near-migraine headache which was rendering me half-blind in one eye. Hmph. He also claims to be able to heal people over the phone, so he doesn't even need to be in the same place as them. I don't know if he's genuinely deluded or lying to extract money from the unwary, but I think that on any reasonable assessment of, y'know, facts, it's pretty clear what he's saying isn't true.

Mind you, I wouldn't want you to think that I'm equating belief in such matters with idiocy - he's an idiot in many other regards, but as that rather strays into personal stuff I needn't share here, I won't go into any more details; suffice to say people who know me well, and of some of the events of the past five years, will know who I'm talking about.

Anyway, as hot is matched by cold and day is twinned with night, so such idiocy is balanced by intelligence; nature, they say, abhors a vacuum, and I guess it also dislikes a prevalence of empty brains, for there are people in the world who are very happily married to the accumulation of knowledge through verifiable experimentation and the accretion of provable facts.

Such a person is Ben Goldacre.

Ben - and I'll call him that so he doesn't sound like a Bond villain - writes on the subject of Bad Science in various newspapers and his blog of that title, and is frequently a clear voice of sense in an area which is all too often (and, it seems, all too easily) rendered indistinct and vague by all sorts of new-agey woo-woo. If you haven't visited his blog before, I recommend a look.

And it's because of a recent update to his blog that I'm posting; some time ago, Ben suggested it wasn't right that vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was taking out adverts denouncing the use of AIDS drugs in South Africa, and promoting his vitamin pills at the same time. Mr Rath took umbrage with this, and sued Ben and the paper that his comments were published in, claiming libel. The case went on for over twelve months, until Mr Rath withdrew the case - but by this time the costs involved in fighting the action were around half a million pounds. Steps are being taken to recover this money, but in the meantime, the removal of the legal action means that Ben's free to add his chapter on Rath to his book - also called Bad Science - but in order to get the information 'out there' to as many people as possible, he's also put the entire chapter on the web.

You can find it as a PDF here or, if you don't have Adobe Reader, it's available as an MS Word document here.

I'm ashamed to admit that, whilst I've always enjoyed his blog and print work (and he came over well on some TV consumer-thing I saw him in the other week), I don't yet own a copy of Ben's book. Methinks I should set about remedying that...

Reluctant Post, As It Might Be Seen As Providing The Oxygen Of Publicity, But...

... seriously, I wasn't overkeen on providing yet more coverage of a topic which is already very much covered elsewhere, and yet another post which just makes a cheap joke about something I've spotted, but I felt I had to comment on the latest issue of OK! magazine.

It is, as you can see, a tribute to Jade Goody, with the dates of her life and death given on the cover. This strikes me as rather questionable for two related reasons:

1. As of this writing, Jade Goody is still alive (very ill, granted, but alive), so they could have waited.

2. If they had waited a week, it would have meant that their Jade Goody Official Tribute Issue would not have been issue number 666.

I mean, come on...

Unintelligent Design: DairyStix

Staying in hotels is, of course, one of life's great delights; as well as televisions with fewer channels than one can watch at home, and showers which have two extremes of temperature (Inferno and Arctic) and nothing in between, there's always the thrill of using the 'tea and coffee making facilities'.

If the room has a fridge, you might have some real milk, so you can make a proper cuppa, but more often than not, you're likely to have a kettle, cups, teabags, and, in some form or other, UHT milk. UHT milk is obviously handy for hotel-owners, as it lasts for ages (decades after we humans are dust and gone, the giant radioactive cockroaches will still be finding stashes of it and drinking it in an attempt to fend off Causium-234-induced osteoporosis), but it doesn't taste very good at all… by which I mean it tastes of virtually nothing at all, being more like a homeopathic version of Tipp-Ex than milk.

Anyway, UHT milk used to be supplied in hotel rooms (and on trains and service stations and other strangely neither-here-nor-there places) in little pots, like miniaturised yogurt pots, with a foil lid; as Ben Elton noted in the 1980s, these pots appeared to have been spot-welded shut, so it was a battle to get them open, invariably resulting in you showering what little 'milk' lurked within all over the place. And Ben was right to point this out, but the so-called solution is no better, quite frankly: ladies and gents, the milk processing people and hospitality industry proudly present (while the rest of us just resent)… Dairystix.

Yes, all the lack of flavour of UHT milk, now in a longer-than-it-is-wide foil tube. Apparently taking their design cue from those Mr Freeze ice pops which can be found in the Walls freezers in newsagents in summer, the idea is that you tear the end off the 'stick and then pour the milk (well, it's UHT, so I use the term in its loosest and least-accurate sense) into the cup. Which would be fine, if the ends actually tore off in anything approximating a straight line. But that's not likely to happen with the 'dotted lines' you have to tear along, because they're coated with plastic and so you get an untidy tear along it. Which, when you squeeze the tube, means the milk comes out of two or three places in the end of the tube, like a man trying to urinate after someone's stapled the end of his prepuce (if that comparison appalls you, you may want to stop reading now - there's worse to come before this rant is over).

The reward for all this is a pathetic splash of not-milk, which barely coats the bottom of most cups. So you have to put two in, though you'll be lucky in most hotels to get more than two of the sticks per person, so you'll have to think carefully about when you drink your tea. And even then two isn't really enough to make it look like tea. And the reason for this is pretty pathetic; these milk sticks, like the milk pots before them, contain a minimal amount of milk.

In fact, I'm such a sad pedant that I actually did a bit of research to try and find out just how much (or, rather, how little) UHT milk is contained in a DairyStix. Appallingly, it is 12ml, or about 4% of a can of Diet Coke. So, all that effort wrestling with the end of it and then you squeeze down the length of it several times over, resulting in a spray in unexpected directions? All of which is - frankly - little more than the overall quantity of the average male ejaculation (where do you think the group 10cc got their name)? Perhaps it's in some way connected with the choice of films on the in-room TV.

Anyway, my friends, as something that doesn't work and yet looks quite modern and flashy, this is a pretty classic example of Unintelligent Design. Yes, perhaps I love my tea a bit too much, but it seems that the makers of DairyStix and similar items treat the making of tea and coffee with a little bit less love than they should, given that it's part of how they make their living.

First In A Possible Series Of Posts In Which I Take Phrases Which Are Used Without The Brain Being Engaged First, And Refute Them With A Picture

The accused:
The fashion phrase "double denim disaster", used to describe someone wearing both jeans and a denim jacket.

The refutation:
Mr S. Stevens of Wales.

Further evidence to be taken into consideration:
Mr E Presley of Memphis (to be confirmed).

As This Post Demonstrates, 140 Characters Would Not Be Remotely Sufficient To Contain Me

I suspect it's part of the would-be contrarian streak in me, the part that likes to think it's pointing out the nudity when everyone else is admiring the cut of his majesty's new threads, but I tend not to get into things as quickly as other folks.

An example of this was my reaction to the film Pulp Fiction - at the time, everyone was raving about it so much that I actively waited until the attendant fuss had died down before seeing it. I have an almost instinctive mistrust of the 'general opinion' - possibly born of often feeling on the fringes of things at school and college - as well as a tendency to like things with some degree of longevity; I once blew a job interview with a well-known music retailer (at a time when I needed an income) by carelessly stating that I liked music by bands who had at least two albums in them "and not these horribly disposable and interchangable musicians who are here for a couple of singles, there's a big fuss about them, and then they're gone" (into that category I rather feel that Katy Perry may fall, and Lady Gaga too, but time will tell).

In all honesty, I think it's because I don't like to say things which I don't mean, whether deliberately or not; returning to Pulp Fiction for another example, it was voted greatest film of all time in a 1996 Empire film poll, a mere two years after it was made, which struck me as recent memory playing a large part in the voting (and indeed, a decade later, it was no longer top of that poll, having been usurped by … er, another film from 1994 [The Shawshank Redemption]). And on a personal level that kind of thing tends to mean a slightly embarrassed admission that "maybe I was getting kinda carried away with things, caught up".

That's kind of normal on a personal level, though the more public one is in the initial proclamation, the more embarrassing the semi-retraction. Obviously, there are a lot of public figures who've found themselves in this sort of situation over the years (though politicians increasingly seem not to bother with this sort of thing, but that's probably right as they make fewer, and less important, mistakes than the rest of us), and indeed there are some in the spotlight even as I type.

All of which is my typically verbose run-up to explaining why I won't be joining Twitter in any kind of hurry. A couple of friends have urged me to join it with some zeal, and whilst I can see they're enjoying it, and the service is clearly breaking through into the mainstream at the moment, I don't see myself signing up in the immediate future. Maybe I'll think about it once the fuss has died down and if all the people who I'd like to communicate with or 'follow' are still members in a year or so, but given how many people who urged me to join Facebook are no longer participants in it, I do wonder what proportion of my friends who are current Twitterers will be as active this time next year.

For those of you who are keen and eager for me to join, then, it looks as if disappointment awaits. If it's any consolation, much of my scepticism comes from two people of my acquaintance whose Facebook exploits very much coloured my opinion of such matters (and if you wonder why I compare Twitter so much with Facebook, well, isn't it just the Facebook status line? I think it is…). Let's call them persons one and two…

Person One told me that I had to join Facebook, and that if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to contact her in any other way. No e-mails or anything like that, it had to be Facebook or nothing. Oddly dogmatic, as if she was on commission or something, and rather undermined by the fact that friends who do have Facebook accounts say that despite them sending her messages via that method, she still doesn't respond for months at a time. Hmm, not the best advert.

Person Two, I have to say, is someone whose Status Updates are works of inadvertent comedy genius, in that they're the very worst kind of information about her life. If she's not posting cryptic comments such as 'ah well, it'll be okay' which are presumably designed to elicit queries as to what she means, she's posting the most insanely mundane items. The other week stated that she was 'eating Weetabix', which remained current for about ten hours, suggesting either a large bowl or a small spoon - or both. I'm painfully aware that many of my blog entries (certainly including this one) venture into self-absorption and the sharing of trivial minutiae, and I really don't think I - or the world at large - would benefit from me having a new method of telling you what unimportant nonsense I'm up to.

Anyway, all of the above justification-stuff may have the tinge of the negative about it, so by way of trying to leave things on a more jolly note, I would politely point you towards the picture at the top of this post, which I think is a rather good gag on this matter, and also towards the silly reports about the way the musicmaker Calvin Harris has been known to update his status on Twitter. Quite similar to Person Two referred to above, I fear, though I think his tongue may be planted in his tweet, as it were...

I'm not ruling Twitter out forever, but at the moment? Nah. A quick search for my name on t'internet turns up my e-mail address if you want to get in contact with me, and those of you who have the number of my mobile phone (something else I resisted for a long time, incidentally) will be all too familiar with my gramatically-perfect text messages. For the time being, the world will have to content itself with these means of communication.

And some might say - with good reason - that it's more than enough.

And I Won't Be Surprised If The 'Pretzel Fainting Incident' Is Revealed, In His Memoirs, To Be Something Rather Different

It's an embarrassing thing when a band or music artiste you like puts out a not-so-good album, especially if you've previously been vocal in praising them. And in much the same way, it's awkward for people who've made allegiances to political parties or even particular politicians, only for them to do something boneheaded or prove themselves unworthy of that support.

That said, I think that the annals of history are unlikely to view George W. Bush as a very good president at all. In fact, all things considered, I think it's probably very likely that he'll be viewed as the worst president that the USA has ever had. And, to my mind, rightly so.

Putting aside the issue of the non-finding of bombs or similar in Iraq - let's leave that as the GOP elephant in the room, as it were - and the fact that he permitted torture and detention without charge (both in contravention of the UN Declaration on Human Rights) on his watch, let's look at the record from the only perspective which seems to matter to many people - that is, the economic angle.

When Bush entered office, the federal budget surplus was $127bn. Last year, the federal budget deficitreached $455bn, and is expected to top $1trillion this year. That's not good, is it? Obviously, a lot of this has been caused by expenditure on … er, let's say international diplomacy, but even more of it is the result of the current economic situation, much of which appears to have been caused by banks. Now, one might argue that this should be blamed by the banks, but if you're in charge of a country, you have the power to regulate banks; if you don't do so and it all goes round the U-bend, it's about as surprising as … um, well, the last time this happened as a result of unregulated lending institutions lending too much money on bad mortgages. Those who don't learn from history are indeed condemned to repeat it.

Anyway, it's all too easy to kind of write off Bush as a joke president, and the last eight years as some kind of comedic aberration, which would be fine if it many of the consequences of the last two presidential terms weren't so un-funny. Here, though, is my favourite Bush-era joke, courtesy of Alan Moore:
Q: What do you call an eight-year-old Iraqi kid with no arms, surviving family members, or unblackened skin below his waist?
A: I don't know. I was shouting at the TV and I didn' t catch his name.
Ha ha ! It's hysterically funny, isn't it? Now watch this drive.

So, I can't say I'll be sorry to see the man go, not at all - but that doesn't necessarily mean that I think Obama will be the cure to all ills, so please don't go thinking that I hold any brief for the Democrats either. Though the fact Obama can string a sentence together suggests he may be nearer to the sort of candidate for the role that an electorate might hope for. And that, in essence is much of the reason why I'll be pleased when Bush is out - there seems to be very little in his record which suggests that he's fit to hold high office, and I think it's a hard-fought argument to suggest that he's the best man for the job, or the best representative of the USA. He's supposedly quite charming in person, and great at the people-stuff, but that's probably more appropriate for the mayor of a small town, or maybe the captain of a bowling league, if you want to play it safe.

None of this, I hasten to point out, should be construed as an attack on Americans per se - most USA-born folks I've ever met have been perfectly decent people, and their motivation and drive to better themselves (in whatever way they define that) is probably a lot stronger than that of the UK; M'colleague once pointed out the difference between the UK and the USA thus: "In the UK, if people see a Ferrari drive by, they'll sneer at the rich swine. In the USA, people see a Ferrari drive by and decide they'll work hard and buy one with the money they've earned". A simplification, yes, but it's certainly a difference that I've seen for myself, and it's an admirable one. My point is, the american people deserve a better figurehead than they've recently had. Whilst I had serious reservations about John McCain's running mate, the man himself seemed more plausible than Bush (when he spoke about war, he actually knew what he was talking about) - then again, even though he wasn't elected President, he seems to be otherwise employed, playing Colonel Tigh in Battlestar Galactica.

Lots of words here on this subject, but for those of you who prefer political issues in numerical form, I'd urge you to have a look at the summary of the Bush era created by the US-based Magazine Harpers, which can be seen here. I would politely draw your attention to the amount of time he spent on, or en route to, holiday.

Speaking of things on the newsstands, the picture accompanying this post is the 'variant cover' of the current issue of Amazing Spider-Man, featuring President-as-of-tomorrow Obama. There's been quite a bit of news coverage of this, for some reason, and when I went to my comic shop of choice the other day, I asked if they'd had much call for it. The chap behind the counter said yes, they had, but as it was a limited edition item, they'd run out almost immediately. "Quite a few people seemed to be buying it as a historic thing," he said, "to note the event". We agreed this was odd, as people could buy something a bit more immediately relevant, such as the newspaper that comes out that day. Or that week's Time magazine. Though probably not, I'd like to think, the plate.

Always Rings Twice? It’s A Miracle If The Postman Rings The Once

It’s probably fortunate that I didn’t have a blog at the time, but a few years ago, the local sorting office decided to start telling lies about me. I’m sure of this, because various bits of post – including test items that I sent to see if my suspicions were true – were returned to sender with a sticker on saying ‘Gone Away’. It was annoying (especially as it was just before Christmas), and ultimately a serious problem, as the bank (not entirely unreasonably) saw the ‘returned Gone away’ on my statements and suspended my account. Thanks Royal Mail, I hope you enjoyed the money that you were paid in advance to perform a service.

Anyway, that eventually stopped – though not without a lot of hassle from my end – but in recent weeks it appears that the local postman has found a new way to not do his job properly but still take home the pay. A fortnight ago, m’wife was home and went to check the post at about 11am, and saw that there was a ‘Sorry You Were Out’ card on the mat. However, not only had there been no buzz on the buzzer (and she wouldn’t have missed it, ours is very loud), but the ‘attempted delivery’ was noted as having been at 11.45am. Being one who enjoys a touch of sarcasm, she immediately called the local sorting office and asked if our postman was the owner of a Tardis.

They made suitably apologetic noises, and confirmed that yes, the parcel was waiting to be picked up – given that we’re nowhere near the end of the route, it seems probable that the parcel never actually left the sorting office, and that the postman had decided to drop the card in without trying to deliver so he didn’t have to carry the parcel (not a large one, incidentally). I mentioned the above in passing at work the next day, and a colleague agreed this was likely to have been the case – he’d heard a card being dropped through the letterbox (without any knock or ring of the bell), and run down the road after the postman and asked for his item, to be told that er, um, actually the parcel’s back at the depot.

This morning, we received another Sorry You Were Out card – again, with no buzz at the door – and after Mrs Soanes and I had grrred and ground our teeth a bit, I Googled to see if other people had experienced the same level of non-service from Royal Mail. I expected a few matches, but there were literally dozens of people who’d received You Were Out cards with no attempt to establish if they were in fact out. Startling.

Those people, mind, were strangers, and so I’m keen and eager to know if you good people, who actually have names and some of whom I’ve had the good fortune to actually meet in person, have had similar experiences. Have you chased a Royal Mail employee down the road to be told they don’t actually have the item? Have you had cards dropped through without the doorbell being pressed or a knock at the door? Or are you a Royal Mail employee who could disabuse me of the notion that sometimes the post staff just write up the Sorry You Were Out cards in advance, and leave the items at the depot so they’ll have less to carry? Like the Jeremy Kyle research team, we want to hear from you (though you won’t get shouted at ).