Soulmates

Each Saturday in the Guardian Guide there is a section of personal ads. This section also features two 'Soulmates of the week'. These are excerpts from the profiles of people on the Guardian's online-dating site. Here's a selection of them from the last few weeks (click on the images to enlarge them; Blogspot seems to have its own ideas about how big I want images to be).




Read them? Good. Did you notice anything, something that they had in common? Exactly! "They all seem like cunts." Couldn't have put it better myself.

Someone is choosing these people each week. It might be that this person is performing a practical joke and the hilarious resolution is yet to be delivered. More simply, they might be making a statement to regular readers – Online Dating: sail the boundless ocean of banality, electronically meet a thousand 'outgoing' people who are also 'a bit introvert' and like nothing better than to have 'a few beers and a few laughs with friends in the pub'. Wit and charm will be but a distant memory as you discover shared passions such as 'going to restaurants or the cinema sometimes'.

To join the ranks of a group of insecure, romantically unsuccessful, boring people would be scary. I imagine that they would hide behind the arcane language of early twenty-first century, codified, courtship practice. Knowing references to phenomena such as 'the third date' would abound. I seem to remember that on Friends the third date was known as 'the fuck date'. This strikes me as a singularly terrifying prospect. First of all, you will need to choose a set of clothes that are every bit as clean and appropriate as the clothes that you wore on the first two dates but, crucially, are not the same clothes. It may be that you have to resort to buying entirely new clothes. In many ways this evening's meeting will be the culmination of several hours work in various date-venues over the past few weeks displaying the most socially-acceptable aspects of your tightly-corseted personality. Devil may care post-nightclub sex is not on the cards; this is the test drive for, the ominous-sounding, LTR. Candidates will be assessed on: the size and shape of their bodies; the arrangement and relative size of their facial features; their choice of shirt; the number of buttons that have been done up on that shirt; the tenor of their voice; method of eating asparagus; the co-ordination manifest in their choice of shirt, socks and shoes; annual income; judgement of whether or not I am the sort of girl who thinks that you should pay; competence of tipping/giving-orgasms.

And yet there is still hope. In January, the Guardian published a selection of personal ads from the London Review of Books. Many of them are very funny (again, click to enlarge).

Pictures

Quentin Tarantino

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Prince William

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Lord Lloyd-Webber

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Prince Harry

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The guy who used to do the sport on Scotland Today or someone involved in the SPL or a jockey.

Seasonably Warm Weather

Seasonably warm weather today. Many planes and many jet trails in the sky. This brought me to reflect on how we take for granted our easy mastery of the skies. Although, it is not so much our mastery of the skies but the knowledge of a few individuals. I do not know how to build aeroplanes or to endow them with the magic that causes their constituent parts to forget that they should be bound to the earth, nor does anyone that I know.

These meditations brought me to imagine the following scene.

For two centuries humans have lived in the Glorious Robot Future. Sorrow is long departed. But they grow restless and a delegation is sent to meet with robot representatives in The Temple Conversal; a proud but unused structure built in the early years of Robot Future to accommodate discussion between the humans and their unseen robot servants.

   Upon entering the Temple they find a light-filled columnated room with a large round table, at its centre fresh fruit that seems the gleam with vitality. They sit at the table and wait. A beautiful man descends the stairs, comes to stand by the table and face the party of human representatives.
     "You are robotic?" asks one of the human delegation, an old man with an athletic build, reminiscent of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
     "Yes," says the beautiful man.
     "And these fruit..."
     "Artificial."
     "You have perfected biological creation," says the man who looks like God.
     "Perfected is the word," replies the beautiful robotic man.
     The humans each raise an intrigued eyebrow.
     "I will not die," says the robotic man. Each of the humans is beautiful and wise but they do not compare to this ultimate specimen. The robotic man senses that they feel humbled, clasps his hands behind his back and reasserts the feudal order, "My masters, on what business do you come to the Temple?"
     "The conquest of the heavens," says a woman.
     "I see," says the robotic man.
     "We will need ships, ships capable of travelling through space at many times the speed of light. Out scientists thought it impossible..."
     The robotic man smiled, "Human 'scientists' thought many things. Were you to show a ball-point pen to scientists of termite societies they would not think its creation possible."
     "Then... you think it might be possible after all?"

     "To make ball-point pens? Well, of course..."

     "No, no, superluminal flight."
     "Ah, my apologies. Let me say this: we robots have learnt much about human history; we wished to anticipate your desires. The impulse to explore is marked among your kind. I think we may have some things that might interest you. If you would follow me through these doors."
     The humans rose and followed the robotic man. Thus began a marvellous age in which the glories of Robot Future extended across the galaxy.

Cocaine

This business was in the news yesterday. Apparently the efforts of drugs enforcement agencies across the world have resulted in an increased wholesale price for cocaine. Prices on 'the street' have remained stable but the purity of the drug has declined. In 2004 the purity of the cocaine seized by police was on average over 50 per cent; it is now just over 30 per cent.

We might imagine (arguably naively) that certain drugs are illegal because we must be protected from the harm that they can do us. The primary reason for enforcing the drug laws must be to prevent us from acquiring these drugs and thus protect us from harm. It is not certain that the rise in the wholesale price of cocaine is causally related to the authorities making it more difficult for those that trade in the drug; the decrease in the strength of the pound may also be a factor. It could be that this is an ill-founded claim made to create good PR for drugs enforcement worldwide. But if the rise in price can be put down to enforcement, it seems that the effect of enforcement has not been to protect the public from a harmful substance but to make the harmful substance that the public are managing quite easily to acquire more harmful by reducing its purity.

This may not be the only the only effect of work of drugs enforcement agencies (cue wild conjecture): it may be that their activities are making the business of trading in drugs more perilous than it already is by frustrating supply routes. Perhaps it has resulted in more drugs-trade-related deaths. If they have been at all successful then it will have resulted in more people having to spend time in jail, more people's lives being branded criminal.

If these are the effects of enforcing the drugs laws then what is the point? How can making cocaine more dangerous be good news?

In Portugal, there are no criminal penalties for possessing personal quantities of drugs. This policy has been successful in reducing the number of people taking drugs and increasing the number of people with drugs problems seeking treatment.

Decriminalising the trade in drugs would be another thing entirely. It is fraught because it would mean that governments themselves were selling or, at least, sanctioning drugs. But if the only effect of enforcing the current drugs laws is to make taking drugs more dangerous and not to decrease their availability, it may be time for the authorities to desist. If the trade were decriminalised then young people would not find themselves inducted into an illicit market and made criminals.

It would be impossible for a country to do this unilaterally. But it seems that much of the harm done by illegal drugs is a product of their being illegal and it must be worth thinking about changing this state of affairs.

I have not previously known what I think about the illegality of drugs. In this piece I try on an opinion that is fresh and new to me. It should not be taken that what is written above is the pure revealed essence of What I Think On The Matter.

Blogflash!

Got an anonymous commenter on the The BNP article with a bit of nonsense on him/her if yous are interested.

Robot Future

I hinted in the previous post that I would elucidate on my true politics. It is a programme called Robot Future and it is revolutionary in its scope. Robot Future is achieved through the following phased process:

• Global IQ Test. Everyone in the world is subjected to an IQ test. Those who score in the top 20 per cent of this test or who already have expertise in artificial intelligence are immediately set to work developing robots, robots to fulfil our every need.
  
• The rest work in agriculture and industry supporting the robot developers. The robot developers can recruit as many people as they deem necessary to perform tasks that help them in the development of robots.
• If anyone dissents however inconsequentially and for whatever reason they are killed immediately. NOTHING MUST JEOPARDISE ROBOT FUTURE.
• Once all the robots have been developed no one need ever work again. Robots work behind the scenes and cater for every human need.
• The education system teaches a lot of philosophy and (as pupils will never have to work) they are instructed on how to live well.
• They are also taught about the appalling atrocities that were committed in the robot development stage. THESE MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

I also constructed a less violent version of this plan but I decided that it is unworkable. It was based on an insight of Bertrand Russell's in In Praise of Idleness. He notes that in the entire course of human history the development of new technology has always been seen as an opportunity to produce more rather than to work less. (In the same book he recommends that the human race be accommodated in Oxbridge-style colleges). My revised version of Robot Future (called Robot Future v.II) involved directing all future technological developments at less working rather than more producing so that eventually all work would be undertaken by machinery. I decided that since an iron fist would be needed to bring about this change of attitude we would as well to go with the assured iron-fist route of Robot Future v.I and get it done quicker.

Karl Marx was of the opinion that as the forces of competition increased the proportion of capital outlaid on labour-saving machinery the rate of profit will fall. This, thought Marx, will lead to the eventual collapse of capitalism. I have no idea how this relates to Robot Future. Sorry.

Under Robot Future all humans will live as members of the idle rich. They will be free to pursue their interests, do nothing, grow carrots, hump, read Middlemarch, build kick-ass sand castles. Some people will be worried that without employment these humans will be unable to find fulfilment. This may indeed be the case for some of the first generation of Robot Futurees who were used to the to the old way of doing things. But the subsequent generations, with the benefit of the outstanding robotic education system, would not have this problem. According to Alain de Botton in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work the idea that we are to find meaning in our day-to-day employment is new. Other cultures have sought happiness in their leisure time.

What I need now is recruits. We'll start by lobbying the UN and so on but if that fails we will need to take more drastic action. It began here.

I apologise to people that I have bored with this theory before. But, then again, why did you read it all?

Citadel del Fouls

I know someone who (if only he had the vocabulary) would call me a champagne socialist. Instead, when he briefs against me he struggles to properly describe the kernel of no-goodness at the heart of my withered soul. He lumbers around near to what he means to say. And he's pretty much got it right. The fullest expression of my ideals would probably be in communism. I imagine a state of affairs where people have a monk-like indifference about the relationship between the nature of the work they do and how much they receive in return. That society's credo would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". The trouble is that this quixotic dream shrivels in the cold bath of cynicism, apathy and greed that is the rest of my psyche. It is only used for the purposes of buying newspapers and judging others.

(My real politics – after several years studying the subject – may most accurately be termed Foulist-Robotarianism. I may write about that at another time).

In addition to this, I am an atheist. This probably has its origin in early childhood but it has been galvanised more recently by friendships with evangelical Christians. You can take the horse to a Christian Union quiz social but you can't make it accept Jesus as its own personal saviour, as they say. In fact, the horse will be apt to resent any further attempts to make it accept Jesus.

In spite of this I have no trouble imagining what my beliefs would be were I either politically right-wing or religious. For some reason I have well-developed ideas about what I would think and the sort of things I would say that sit in my brain like the developer levels on Goldeneye; unplayable except with a GameShark (I suppose I am using the GameShark here as a metaphor for a life experience that is sufficiently harrowing for it to wholly change my values and beliefs, which is a strange thing to use a GameShark for).

If I were a right-wing sort of person I would think the following things. There is a moral value to hard work and personal responsibility. It is good to get up early. Despite this people should, more often than not, be left to their own devices. High rates of income tax for the very wealthy are not dreadful because most of those guys are Daddys' boys who don't deserve those jobs but it's a pretty raw deal for people who did work their way up. The Royal family do not interest me. Our economy isn't built on social workers. Business and greed are not synonymous. It's good to see someone running their own shop; real pride of ownership; not like these lackeys in the supermarkets. We can't all just be selling each other car insurance; some of us need to make stuff.

Were I a man of religion I would eliminate superstitions as much as possible. No demons, no miracles, no visions, no angels, no ark, no Eden, no virgin birth. God is imminent; he is everywhere and he is everything. In death, we all come to know God, we are God and we are one. No more sui generis Fouls, no more sui generis you. It is blissful; like looking into the sun and it not hurting. The blinkers are off and we know everything. Supreme gangsta shit, we dream gangsta shit. No judgment and no punishment. We know the nature of our crimes and we now ourselves and everyone else.

It's difficult to know what these phantom ideologies are for. The right-wing one definitely has a voice in my head like an unimpressed father. And I feel that I ought to apply his standards about working hard to my own life if not to anyone else's. The religious ideas are perhaps meant to be an aesthetic improvement on my friends' Christian beliefs. They are more modern with sharper lines and a more metallic finish. Perhaps these alternative and unused beliefs exist in preparation for the well-publicised process of a person's views becoming more conservative as they get older.

I got that picture of a (right) wing from a Conservative blog but I had to flip it horizontally... because they'd used a fucking left wing. It was under the heading "What next for the right?"

*Update: having looked at it again I can't tell if that is a right or a left wing. So they may not be idiots.

Blogflash!

Newsflash! I no longer have time for blogging. Instead I will be spending all my time on my new hobby: changing the way my blog looks. Talk among yourselves.

Layout!@£$%^&*(*&^%$

I'm playing about with the layout of this blog today so expect it to look fucked. It'll look snazzy by tomorrow hopefully.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&GNGNFNnfg;;;;';afwe';';'''';34(*&*^%^&*)(*&&^$&^&*)&^%$&^%^£%^%^%^%^%$^&*^&%££@£$%^&*&^$£@£$%^&**&^%$£@£$%^&*

The BNP

If there’s one thing that we’re supposed to be good at in this country it’s discriminating against people on the basis of their class. Why is it then that we have got ourselves into a position where on June 4 we might be sending a new BNP MEP off to Europe? Thanks to proportional representation, if the BNP get 8.4% of the vote in the North West of England in the upcoming European elections then they will have a seat in Brussels. At best this will be colossally embarrassing; at worst it’s the first step on the road to full-blown Naziorrhoea.

The BNP is not representative of the working class. But the working class have more justifiable reasons to feel aggrieved about immigration than the middle class do. Table 1 shows that respondents to the 2006 British Social Attitudes survey who identified themselves as working class were less inclined than respondents who identified themselves as middle class to agree that people from abroad who settle in Britain have a right to call themselves British.

These data do not show a huge divergence between the two groups but I want to keep going with this blog post and it has no foundation other than the lazy generalisation that working class people are more likely than middle class people to be concerned about immigration and support the BNP. Moreover, I was quite taken with the opening sentence of this blog when it came to me; it is for the sake of its preservation that I proceed.

The experience of immigration for working class and middle class people is different. For middle class people immigration means North Indian Frontier Cuisine, great sushi and Slumdog Millionaire. For working class people it might mean increased competition for jobs and sending your children to a school where 40% of the pupils do not have English as a first language.* Some people will have more thoroughgoing reasons for being in favour of relatively open immigration but middle class people who approve of immigration for whatever reason must be aware that they are can scarcely help but be complacent given that it is unlikely that it will adversely affect their lives.

In the coming years I look to the Tory party who have behind them centuries' experience in ignoring and marginalising everyone other than the elite. If they bring any of that skill to bear then I'm sure they could crush the BNP. In the meantime we do not have a Tory government to rely on and we will have to find other ways of halting the BNP at the European election. Students that have moved away from home to go to university have an opportunity to vote in local elections where they go to university as well as back home. This has always seemed to me to be a appallingly undemocratic state of affairs and I have not previously taken advantage of this loophole. I could have voted for the congestion charge in Manchester but because I am unlikely to remain in this region after I graduate I felt that it would be unfair for me to express my will in the referendum. I might like to have a say in the presidential election in the US but it is right that I am not allowed to.

Incidentally, this was not a view shared by the Guardian who in 2004 launched Operation Clark County and encouraged readers to send letters to voters on Ohio advising them on who to vote for.

However, this might be just the time to put this undemocratic set up to good use. If we were able to mobilise tens of thousands of middle class students with no interest in the future of the North West to vote for anyone other than the BNP then it might be possible to stop the BNP gaining a European seat. Such an effort in indeed being organised by Hope Not Hate. It seems that in Britain today we still have a political set up that allows us to keep the marginalised disenfranchised if only we have the courage to use it.

I should add that I was inspired to write this BNP blog because an article about the BNP kept my article from getting the top spot on the Most Popular section of the Student Direct website. A far right forum called Stormfront encouraged BNP sympathisers to troll the message board for the BNP article to create the impression that the BNP is more popular and has more internet presence than it actually does. It is my opinion that it is their fault that my article was never on the top spot and it has nothing to do with the BNP article being better, more interesting and more thoroughly researched than mine. They're going to be sorry they crossed me, eh?

*These claims are not based on any real research; I made them up so you should take them with a pinch of salt. I recommend Maldon sea salt. The advice on how much a pinch of Maldon sea salt is is contradictory; you should keep your own counsel. The Maldon sea salt box says, "Its pronounced and distinctive 'salty' taste means less is required, an advantage for those who wish to reduce their salt intake." On the other hand, Nigella Lawson says that it is less salty than table salt and you should use more.