The Double

Those photos I took of Robert Wringham can now be seen on his flickr.

Graffiti Misunderstanding

Saw a great bit of graffiti in Gorbals leisure centre this evening:

The Famine is over
Why don’t ye go home

This was followed, in a different hand, by:

It’s Asian people
Feeding Scottish people
Lazy Scottish people.

There is much to love in this exchange. I like the use of the word “ye” in the first one and the fact that the second guy has clearly misunderstood his intent. The first refers to the sectarian idea that 19th century Irish immigrants should go back to Ireland (despite now being dead) because their potatoes are now free from blight.

The second guy appears to think it is the typical “why don’t you go home” piece of racist graffiti and has cleverly rebutted this perceived slight by pointing out that the Scottish are lucky to benefit from globalisation, where cheap labour helps keep down food costs. I’m not sure if the last bit about “lazy scottish people” is a qualifier to the previous statement or just a general assertion about the Scottish. Either way, from my perspective, as a cataloguer of stupidity it is a charming touch.

Gemini

As a child, my family and I would often sit around the dinner table reading our horoscopes to one another, hoping to get an insight into what the Gods had in store for us. We did so with an air of skepticism, knowing that it couldn’t possibly be true but being occasionally struck by an uncanny coincidence. I suspect part of the pleasure came from hearing something about your life that you wanted to believe.

For instance, I was fascinated by the positive attributes that Geminis were supposed to have:

• Intellectual
• Charming
• Entertaining
• Upbeat
• Witty
• Attention-loving
• Creative
• Energetic
• Imaginative
• Outgoing
• Optimistic
• Clever
• Dynamic
• Youthful

How could they possibly know me so well? Something I felt even more when I looked at the supposed negative traits:

• dualistic
• self-interested
• restless
• over-stimulated
• fickle / inconsistent
• impatient
• vain
• critical
• boastful
• ego-oriented
• tricky
• temperamental
• “two-faced”
• insensitive
• mercurial

Is it possible that by seeing these attributes at an early age they came a self-fulfilling prophecy? It almost certainly informed my photo experiments of a few years ago, where I confronted myself with myself in various ways. For a while, this mode of photography became my thing, but until yesterday I hadn’t done one for ages. It was only after Wringham suggested that I dust down my tripod for one last photo shoot that I remembered how much I enjoy it.

The ones I did with him will appear soon enough, but until then here’s some of me that I took to replace my embarrissingly unrepresentative old facebook picture.

Rape Me

I was struck today by a billboard featuring a newly married couple in full wedding regalia, smiling and happy, with the caption: “this is not an invitation to rape me.” Whoa, I thought. Rewind! What?! Smiling couple + rape = a weird juxtaposition.

Below the caption were the five immortal words “.co.uk” (dot coe dot you kay) and I realised that it must be some funky guerilla marketing campaign for a new alcopop — cleverly subverting the modern fear of sexual aggression by placing it next to the sex-starved horror of modern marriage (present company excepted).

Like the fastidious citizen journalist that I am, I checked out this unwieldy url and found that it was an advert for a Scottish rape charity. There are apparently other billboards featuring one woman about to wank a man off and another woman with distended nipples and no bra, neither of which are apparently an invitation to rape. I wonder if they will come out with another advert showing what is an invitation to rape; they seem to be implying that such a thing exists.

What they don’t appear to recognize is that although rape is a disgraceful, unacceptable act, there are gradations of dress and comportment that excite or undermine the male sexual drive. For all the virtues of modern sexual equality, it is always going to be difficult to overturn millions of years of mammalian evolution.

What do you think?

Siobhan: One Victim of the Credit Crunch

It is the dream of all journalists to live in interesting, historically significant times. If you told a journalist that by fanning the flames of the current financial crisis they could cause the collapse of civilization they would probably buy a bigger fan; just so long as they can write the valediction in the op-ed page the day before.

At present, in the early (?) stages of the crisis, the press are scavenging around for everyday credit crunch tragedies such as unemployment, reposession and the decline in consumption. Of the latter, the press have enjoyed noting the decline of M&S and the rise of Aldi and Lidl.

I was in Aldi last night, doing my weekly shop, and saw with my own eyes how much more popular it is now than 6 months ago. Where once there was peace and serenity, now there is noise and jostle. The staff, having to cope with thousands more customers, seem to be suffering the most. On the face of one checkout girl, Siobhan, the tragedy of the credit crunch is writ large.

6 months ago, Siobhan was pretty and vivacious, chatting with the customers about their plans for the weekend. She used to do this whilst scanning the products with an alacrity that I can scarcely fathom (by far the fastest I have ever seen). Now she is harried, checking out products with a promethean sigh at the endless queue. It is a shame. She is being ruined by the recession, her glow has gone, her vivacity replaced by desperation, her cheeks are sunken and her make-up badly applied.

You could argue that premature aging is a given in the callous world of the modern hypermarket and that she has been lucky to have escaped for so long. Perhaps I should take her aside, as a sophisticated French woman once did to me when I was working in Asda, to tell her that she shouldn’t be working there and that she deserves more. Even if she doesn’t follow my advice, my words may stay with her in dark times when she asks herself if this is all there is.

I recently watched Chris Martenson’s peerless explanation of the current financial situation, Crash Course, and was struck by the graph showing how the declining value of money causes people to work so much harder. This high-stress, high-volume strategy that chews people like Siobhan up in a mere six months, surely it hasn’t always been like this? When we restart society after the crash, let’s consume and do less: it might save the planet and prevent the inner death of people like Siobhan.

Depressive Unrealism

There’s a chap, let’s call him A., on my livejournal friendslist who writes the most mindbogglingly depressive posts about how much of a failure he is and how he wishes he were dead. To be honest, it is becoming a bit tiresome and even his friends are starting to ignore him. Possibly this is what A. wants. Or possibly his friends think that using the reverse psychology of pretending not to care in the hope that they achieve more than offering constructive advice that doesn’t appear to work. The strangest thing about the situation is that, on the occasions I’ve met him, he has been witty and affable. You have to wonder what is going on in his mind when he says, publicly:

Why go to work and pretend that I care about it? I’m not good enough, I’m never going to be good enough. I’d rather just stay in bed. I’d rather just drop down onto the tube line and lie over the rails just before train comes. I’m worthless, I’m a failure, I’m never going to be good enough. I can’t do anything; I don’t do anything, I just lie in bed all day, and I don’t want a job because the path between how I am now and how I would need to be to be a real man (earn £50,000 a year, have a mortgage, wear good shoes, look after myself, clean up properly) is just a ridiculous pipe dream. It’s not being a loser that hurts, it’s being given a brief glimpse of what it would be like to be a real person.

I used to think I understood him. Like A., I have employed statistics to reveal a deeper, more cynical truth about human nature, I sneered at therapy culture, and agreed that mild depressives have a more accurate picture of the world than rosy-spectacled optimists. What I can’t understand, though, is the lack of will to do anything systematic or drastic in an attempt to solve at least a few of his problems.

On the few occasions that I have felt catatonically depressed, I have taken a scorched Earth policy to the things that I believed held me back. I went teetotal, took my computer games to the charity shop, started running on a regular basis, became vegetarian, reduced my caffeine intake, gave up smoking, stopped posting on livejournal, took up yoga, and read self-help books. I did all the things that you’re supposed to do, not in order to become a mega-success but just to feel happy in my own skin.

During these times of depression, I am drawn to Eastern things like Lao Tzu and yoga, things which reject egotism. For those who spurn the Orient, these ideas have been Occidentalised by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in the concept of Flow, whereby you lose yourself in a challenging, engaging activity (people like Steven Johnson include computer games in this category, but to me they are still abject timewasters). The sense of accomplishment you get from actually getting something done often serves as a foundation from which to plan your escape route.

Thinking about A.’s predicament has made me start to formulate what I hope are universal tips that may help him, others, and myself when feeling down in the dumps.

Take an attitude of cultivation not extirpation
Rather than expecting to be accomplished without any failures along the way you should think of your life as being like a plant that you have to cultivate. It may have a crooked trunk and weird branches but it can still bear fruit. If you want to pull the whole thing up from the roots, you’ll be left with nothing.

Don’t care (about external validation)
I used to get so worried so anxious about what other people would think of me, whereas now I don’t care. I am not particularly interested in external validation. I assume that something like it will arrive if I perform to my own standards. For instance, if I wanted to have a book published I may end up frustrated by the indifference of agents. If, instead, my goal is to write the best book I can then I know that the goal is within my power to achieve.

Think of the end, not the means
I used to hate getting up any earlier than I absolutely had to, in order to do yoga, but now it is second nature. What gets me up is thinking about the ends (a limber body, no RSI, less sports injuries, an oxygenated brain) rather than the means (having to leave a nice warm bed). The same can be applied to any habits that you find it difficult to stick to.

I will most likely revisit this post and add to it when I can. It is helpful, I think, to mark down those lifehacks that work rather than merely consigning them to a dusty journal.

Designers and the End of Liberalism

Design and Liberalism are so tightly intertwined that when a designer confesses to being right wing, no one really knows what to do or what to say. It’s like Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, where the kid is only right wing because he has a small tumour in his brain. Right wingers are either mad, bad or not in possession of the full facts. As such, the Liberal’s first reaction is to try and help them. We all know people who are racist or homophobic, but don’t for one minute think that they have any access to the truth. Indeed, we explain away such views as ‘ignorance’.

So when Andy Rutledge, a well-respected, much-read web designer published a piece of obscene anti-Obama propaganda, the web design community assumed it must be satire. When they had a closer look and saw that it was so vitriolic and lacking in any ironical nuances, they started calling him names and/or disowning him by unsubscribing from his RSS feed. From my perspective, the reaction was risible. The purpose of the design was to wind people up and in this he succeeded. No one attempted to engage in any debate with Rutledge, because Liberals can’t imagine that any sane individual wouldn’t agree with them. Indeed, there was a whole book by Fukuyama devoted to the idea that Liberal Democracy was the be all and end all. What a joke that was!

People who think that Obama will change anything are as deluded as those who think McCain will make things any worse: both are consumed in short-termism, vacillating to the whims of the moment, incapable of comprehending the enormity of the challenge humanity faces if it is going to survive beyond the 21st century. Whether we will be able to do what is necessary (reduce human numbers, work together on a global basis, stop eating so much methane-producing meat etc) when the problems of peak oil, food shortages and climate change really kick in remains to seen, but I doubt it.

Fruit Stickers

Every day I doodle, sketch and take notes in a humble spiral bound notebook. With my trusty Papermate Non-Stop (sic) pencil, I jot down reminders like “ecfbac = light green. cf0 = darker green.” Alas, posterity will not be able to marvel at these electric thoughts as I tear off the soiled page at the end of each day, taking care to remove the ruffled slice of paper that sometimes gets caught within the spirals.

Given that there are only 80 sheets of paper in each notebook, they rarely last more than few months. However, I am ekeing out the life of my current one as long as possible, after idly deciding to affix fruit stickers to the cover. The results can be seen below:

I hadn’t appreciated the beauty of fruit sticker design before now. They are arguably the smallest canvas available to the graphic designer, but that hasn’t stopped their designers from utilizing an incredible variety of techniques to get people to look at them. I’m not sure what their goal is, but would guess that by being so small, they influence consumers.