I'm a Twat

In my first two posts here I directed a stream of unremitting invective at all of the people of the world. I have called them idiots and twats, described them as pointless and insipid, and implied that they are shallow and self-deluding. Now I'm going to turn the gun on myself, as it were. I am going to assert that not only am I a twat too but that I am the biggest twat of them all.

People who have read my other posts may well have realised this already; there is plenty of evidence there. For a start, I am about as pompous as twelve posh school headmasters put together. Witness the phrase "it is my contention" in the first post. Witness also the context in which I used the word 'witness' in this and the previous sentence. Consider the Shakespeare quoting in the first post (incidentally, I have never read A Winter's Tale; I had read that quote in the paper. Look, here it is:

http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9653083

But did I make it clear at the time that that was where I found it? No... because I'm a twat). I'm sure you can find countless other examples of my pomposity. In fact, let's have a competition! Leave a comment on this post citing all the instances of pomposity or general twatishness you can find on this blog and we'll see who gets the most.

Of course this problem of mine extends well beyond this blog. I have the love life of a giant panda that works nights. I buy the Big Issue and then - rather than putting it in my bag - carry it round in my absurdly clammy hand so other people can see it and think well of me. More damning still, I laugh raucously at my own jokes; louder than anyone else. I not only don't remember people's names but don't listen when I am told them in the first place. I sneer unreservedly at people who are better able at enjoying themselves than I am (again, see my first post). I am a snob about music, food, books, tv, films, words and how people decorate their rooms. I judge people by the clothes they wear. I spend most Sundays telling people the endings of films with big twists in them. I like to toss foreign coins to beggars. Before the introduction of the electronic system I used to spend time forging seat reservation slips so I could have whole train carriages to myself. I'm a founder member of a group that organises annual trips to Center Parcs for Holocaust deniers. I have a Stanley knife that I use exclusively for scratching rented DVDs before I return them. If I know that I will be getting on a crowded bus or tube train I don't brush my teeth that morning and have a plate of scotch eggs, raw onions and Flamin' Hot Monster Munch. If I'm having a meal out with a large number of people I will pay roughly £3 less than I know to be the total cost of my order. I take a couple more bags off baggage carousels in airports than I, strictly speaking, own. I also like to purchase small quantities of drugs before I go on holiday, which I sneak into the hand baggage of my travel companions in order to free up space in the hotel room.

I know what you're thinking: "Who doesn't? This is the sort of stuff everyone gets up to now and again. Don't be so harsh on yourself!" And you'd probably be right. I suppose the important thing is to be aware of our failings. "Know thyself," said the Ancient Greeks. I think that's what I've been promoting here. Deep down we know we're all twats and it is realising this wherein our best hope lies.

People Are Twats

My previous post dealt largely with explaining that young people are rubbish. This time I want to do some broadening out of this theory. I was unduly fair on what I termed 'older people'; I said that they were "of worth to society" and "had something to say". I want now to show that these claims are demonstrably untrue. All people are, in fact, twats.

I doubt that it is would be easy to find an empirical argument for this so, to begin with, I want to deal with what conclusions we can come to inductively. The first - and perhaps most obvious reason - for thinking that people are twats is that they never tell you who to make cheques payable to without prompting. In the history of humanity no one has ever composed an initial letter, email or advertisement soliciting money that included information about who to make cheques payable to. This means that other people have to spend innumerable non-life-affirming hours trawling through company websites, phoning 'any queries' numbers with no one at the end of them, or sending emails that weeks later receive replies saying, "sorry, we've already sold out of tickets/ cheap printer ink cartridges/ vibrating eggs."

It's self-evident that children are twats: they still like toys and spend their time going to weddings and classical music concerts so they can wail during the quiet bits. And I explained why young people are twats last time. So it is now incumbent on me to give an account of why people older than young people are twats. In the previous post I, to an extent, suggested that experience breeds insight and wisdom and therefore "things to say". It is a sad fact that this is seldom the case: 43% of people aged 45 and over can only think of concepts in terms of where their children or their aquaintances' children go to university. A smaller, but sizable, proportion can only think of concepts in terms of Agas. There is also a trend for the complacently unfunny among these people to go on programmes like Grumpy Old Men and talk about how bloody hilarious becoming middle aged is. Eight in ten of their jokes follow this format: 'these days I groan when I get out of a chair.'

A response to this argument might be to say, "What about Gandhi, Mother Teresa or national treasure, Stephen Fry? Surely these people are not twats?" My answer is: I have not met them. My experience with other people tells me that they most probably are/were twats. I know this in the same way that I know the sun will rise again tomorrow, if I don't eat I will become hungry and if I go to Manchester's Opus nightclub I will not enjoy myself.

If you need further convincing, I suggest you watch the first episode of Armando Iannucci's 'The Armando Iannucci Shows', which covers this ground in far greater depth than I have here.

*1/3/09 — the misuse of the word empirical in this post is a source of undying embarrassment for me; I am a philosophy student for chrissake's! I am not going to change it though; let it stand as a monument to my stupidity.

Young People Are Pointless

A few weeks back I was at a party of a school friend in the town where he goes to university. The party lasted into the small hours and towards the end my friend - having decided the oppurtunity for romantic conquest had passed - sat me down to have a talk. After a brief preamble about how the booze seemed to have dried up, he returned to one of his favourite subjects: the importance of enjoying yourself while you're young given the Unrelenting Drabness of Working Life. He said this pointedly because it is his opinion that I spend too much time cooking food and reading newspaper weekend supplements; activities that it would be better to save for middle age or later. I would like to take issue with the assumption that being young is any good. In fact, it is my contention that there are plenty of reasons for thinking that being young is completely awful.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people would disagree with me on this and you can see why. Consider, for example: staying up until sunrise at a beach party vs. getting up before its light for work; a thrilling sense of vitality and possiblility vs. a growing awareness of your own mortality; going out six nights in a row vs. six visits to the toilet in one night; a spur of the moment road trip to Morocco vs. having unexpectedly to drive out to Stenhousemuir at 9.30 on a Thursday evening; living in a flat full of hilarious mates vs. dying in a care home. The case appears to be open and shut. But I don't think so. All of the things commonly taken to make life fulfilling are generally absent from youngs lives. Fewer of us are in meaningful and loving relationships, fewer of us are raising children and almost none of us having the satisfaction of knowing we are doing useful work and that we are part of a community. Instead, we lead empty, pointless lives. For those of us without religion or a significant other we face the universe from a position of existential purity; just a person, pissing into the unforgiving void.

Another problem is that as a young person you have to hang around with other young people who are, with few exceptions, vapid idiots. Young people have not done as many things as older people so they do not have as much to say; they resort, instead, to saying things like, "I want to watch Neighbours," and, "when does the new Artic Monkeys album come out?" The intellectual zenith of most young people's lives is having said "belated birthday". Young people don't know anything: I'm young and I certainly don't. I met a young person the other day who didn't know what a brillo pad was. In comparison, older people know how to do things like building bridges, conducting public spending reviews and putting up shelves. Nor are young people funny. The comedian, Russell Howard, of BBC2's superfluous, scripted, improvisation show Mock the Week is known for being very young and he is one of the least funny men in living memory.

In short, young people spend there time wondering if its already too late to get involved in the man cardigan craze and their more mature counterparts are of worth to society. Young people are insipid twats and there is, at least, a chance that an older person might have something to say. Shakespeare may have agreed with me: in "A Winter's Tale" an old shepherd says,

"I would there were no age between ten and three and
twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is
nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging
the ancientry, stealing, fighting-"

So there you go. Sorry about the pretentious ending...