Time to Boycott Starbucks

Got my cynicism hat on. Starbucks gives money to gay marriage cause. Anti-gay marriage group calls for a boycott. Cue ridiculous online petition to say 'thank you' to Starbucks. It does lead me on to the question: how stupid does Starbucks think we are? Anyone should be able to see that Starbucks knew they'd stir up controversy among the religious insane by doing this, and the backlash to this could only be good PR.

Obviously generating good PR has got to be the primary motivation behind all corporate charity donations, but this one smacks of focus-groups and self-appointed social media gurus and brainstorm sessions and decaf soy lattes. What I mean is: let's not seriously allow our opinion to be swayed in favour of Starbucks because of an obvious marketing gimmick.

In the meantime I will be continuing my own personal boycott of Starbucks. But this is because I refuse to spend more than I would on the ingredients for an evening meal every time I want a caffeine hit. And for the record this isn't me endorsing some other cafe, I drink coffee that I make myself alone in my room. Coffee isn't a party drug.

Back to gay marriage, I've been reading some interesting stuff written by gays who are against gay marriage. I nearly wrote 'from an LGBT perspective', but most of what I've been reading has largely been written by and about gay men, without much of a nod to B, L, or T. But hey, we got left out the sandwich. (This is not a joke I thought of myself, but I love it and had to retell it.) I think there's a bit of an issue with how in the media the issue of 'gay rights' is often played out as if it only affects gay men, with other sexualities and gender identities being largely ignored. I'm about to do just that, but it's only because I'm trying to draw on my own thoughts and experiences. I'm aware this isn't the full picture.

This article makes the point that 'traditional marriage' as we understand it is a recent invention, and that part of the magic of being one of them gayers is being all nonconformist and challenging tradition.

Certainly, there were always members of the gay community who would rather not have borne the burden of existential difference, who would rather have stayed who they were while seeing society change in such a way that who they are might be allowed to count as normal. The domestication of same-sex desire is surely a good thing for these people. But their individual advantage does not mean that the world as a whole is not losing something, and it has been one of the great fallacies of the liberal defenders of gay marriage to assume that what is good for any given individual is for that very reason good for society. The loss we have in fact suffered is one akin to the loss of some mighty species of wild boar as it is bred downward into a fat, ugly, lazy, edible pig; or to the move of indigenous Amazonians from the rainforest into squalid urban slums. In each case, one may insist that the absorption of these once-free beings into the dominant world order is a bit of progress for them: the pigs will now be well fed (until they are slaughtered), and the proletarianized Indians will eventually benefit from some small dose of welfare-state largesse. But in each case there is something the world is losing. 

I don't know how much of this I can agree with, but the author is definitely on to something. As western culture has come to terms with the fact that we're not mentally ill and we're not deviants, the tendency has been to try to get us to act like straight people. Instead of being discriminated against, we are being told to assimilate. As far as marriage rights are concerned, I'm siding with the well-meaning straight people who think we should have the right to tie the knot. In this country we already have equal marriage laws in everything but name, and I don't see how the government's plans to make same-sex marriage the real deal is actually going to change much. Except annoy some fundamentalist Christians. This is obviously a bigger issue in the US because they don't have an equivalent in every state, and there's a lot more fundamentalist Christians out there. We should let the pig breed downwards, because some of the pigs really want to breed.

But I will side with the author of the above passage, in that I don't think all we should all shut up and get married. Here's a wild boar who intends to stay wild.

In 1991, the year I was born, the word 'heteronormativity' was coined. I bloody love this word. I suppose it's one of these annoying trump cards that I can invoke whenever, like an equivalent of 'white privilege'. Straight people, even with the best of wills, cannot escape their heteronormative viewpoint and will never understand what it's really like to be gay. We're different. And while we should be grateful for the increasingly tolerant world in which we find ourselves, we shouldn't be afraid to retain a distinct identity. We don't have to embrace outdated institutions in order to prove ourselves, and we don't have to pretend we're just like straight people who happen to like cock.

Homosexual relationships are different to heterosexual ones.

And as for marriage? The primary reason for getting married nowadays is economic. In the event of your partner dying, you'll inherit everything, and if you're worse off financially you can get some money off your partner when you get divorced. This second point applies mostly to women who've sacrificed their careers to have children and has thus ended up earning less than their husbands. 'Traditional marriage', where you get married once and then you die, is itself dying. People are cohabiting and marrying and getting divorced and remarrying in an endless cycle of constant nuptials. You have to ask yourself why they bother.

Who says we shouldn't question the idea of marriage? Marriage, to me at least, is a relic of a paternalistic society where women are traded like cattle, passed from father to husband. It's not fit for purpose. I question the logic of 'gay marriage' when it's clear that most people, and possibly men in particular, are not exactly wired towards choosing one person to form a long-term monogamous relationship with, and sticking with that person for the rest of their life. Which is not to say it's impossible, some people end up meeting 'the one' and live happily ever after. But equally, some people stick around in unhappy relationships far longer than they should.

Promising to stick with someone until death do you part is placing a heavy burden on yourself should the relationship start to turn sour. You've made a promise not to cut your losses and run if it's not working out. No, you will stay and try to make the relationship work until either things improve or you never want to see his face again. And of course when this happens you will feel guilt, shame and regret. You can't reflect that you had a good relationship that ran its course - no, no such luxury for you. Your marriage was a failure. Is the fight to legalise gay marriage about what we really want, or is it just another notch in the civil liberties bedpost?

Bigots like the Coalition for Marriage argue that gay marriage is an attack on heterosexual marriage. If anything, it's the opposite. It will have no effect whatsoever on straight people's unions, but it's what it does to the gay way of life that's the real game changer. We used to be outlaws, now we're bickering in Ikea.

I digress. We should totally change the law to allow gay marriage for one reason and one reason alone: it will annoy the fundamentalist Christians. Enjoy your Starbucks.

Hockney, Trees and Tablet Computers. And a Story About a Bus Journey.

Yesterday I went to see the David Hockney exhibition and it was pretty interesting. I didn't like it as much as the portraits one from a few years back, but I'd say that's more to do with me liking faces more than pictures of trees. Actually this is a complete lie, the real reason I liked the portraits one more was because there were lots of male nudes. Pictures such as 'Naked Guy Getting Out of a Pool' (1966) is always going to have an edge over 'Some Trees' (2008) for me at least. Although I will applaud him for making some effort to appease me by including a bit of film featuring some male ballet dancers jumping about in tights.

Anyway, there were a few old paintings from way back when, which were there to show how he's always been fascinated by landscapes but it was mostly focused on the changing English countryside and different light conditions through the seasons. There were a few paintings where he'd returned to the same scene in different months of the year and some where over the same few days he'd done both a painting in the morning and a painting in the evening. Some of them were really quick field sketches and some he'd done in his studio from memory, and 'let his imagination run free'. All I can say is, he definitely found a few shrooms as he was traipsing through the countryside. Trees aren't purple.

Hockney is obviously a creative genius, master draftsman and all-round total babe, and it's really cool he's still so busy and trying out new things. Like drawing on a shiny tablet computer that I will not refer to by name. (I could pretend my refusal to name such a device is an attempt at BBC-style brand neutrality, but it's really cos I hate it with a passion and don't want there to be another page mentioning it on the internet.) These drawings were blown up and printed really big on paper. They were obviously good drawings but I didn't like the medium. And this isn't due to some bizarre vendetta against Apple, it's because the lines were all a horribly uniform thickness.

If you expected to find this post entertaining, look away now cos I want to make a geeky point. The computer thing he was using has no pressure sensitivity so unlike using a wacom pad on a proper computer you can't have lines with varying thicknesses, so it's completely inappropriate as a paintbrush substitute. It would be fine if you're using it to imitate something like a fineliner or a really sharp pencil if you're doing a line drawing, but when you use it to imitate a paintbrush it comes out looking kinda horrible. If you want to draw the branch of a tree with one brushstroke it will look all wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

There were drawings documenting the onset of the spring, and they were arranged in chronological order. It was interesting to see how his technique changed as he adjusted to his new drawing tool. I liked them until I looked at them too closely. My advice to anyone going to the exhibition is to stand as far away from them as possible, and squint a bit. That way you can't tell they aren't real paintings.

There was also a video installation where he'd driven really slow round the countryside with nine cameras on his car. I liked this a lot, and I think all hospitals should play it in their waiting rooms. Although admittedly it might not be the best way to spend NHS money. I now realise I've made a suggestion that would only ever be taken up by private hospitals, which sort of compromises my socialist principles. Damn.

Anyway, I found it interesting overall, and if you want to read a slightly more coherent review of it, I would suggest you read this one.

Accompanying me on my trip was my mother, and seeing as we were so close to Soho and I thought it would be funny, I insisted she let me take her for a drink in a gay pub. She also thought this would be fun and we came up with a brief specification for somewhere to drink: reasonably quiet and with somewhere to sit. In the end this yielded no results but we settled on the Admiral Duncan seeing as neither of us had ever been there and it's a bit famous after it got nailbombed in the nineties. As we entered I got asked for my ID which I don't usually find insulting, but I did this time on behalf of my mother because I felt like the door guy was accusing her of trying to take an underage boy into a bar full of screaming queens. Crappy dance music from the mid-noughties was playing and the wine wasn't very cold. I don't know if it's cos it was a hot day or something, but my mum got really really drunk after one glass of wine. 

We got a bus towards St Pancras and sat on the top deck whilst having a bit of a girly chat about ex-boyfriends. My mother was talking some guy who'd managed to impress her once by being a bit 'edgy' and 'interesting'. 

"He wasn't even attractive. He was an ugly thing. And he was Irish," she said. Now, my mother is half-Irish and had a turbulent relationship with her crazy Irish mother, so it's become a bit of a joke in the family that my she now hates the Irish, which is a semi-acceptable pretend prejudice to nurture for comic effect when you're in your own home, but you might want to tone it down on a crowded London bus. But my mother wasn't exactly sober, and a tipsy Mrs Oakley doesn't mince her words.

Also not exactly sober was the guy sat immediately behind us, who was what you might describe as 'a drunk', in the old skool sense. He was also Irish. I heard him muttering under his breath, a sort of husky, smoky slur. "What's she saying ... Irish ... who does she think she is" type stuff, barely audible. Not audible at all to my mother (who was in full flow), but I could just about hear him. I'm not sure if he knew I could hear him or not. 

From his point of view I could see why he was pissed off at my mum but by the time I'd noticed we were already on another topic and I reasoned that it wouldn't be worth trying to steer the conversation towards getting my mum to retract the sentiment expressed. My mum doesn't really hate Irish people, but I didn't want to interrupt the conversation just to get her to clear this up. We were also chatting a bit about my ex-boyfriends and this didn't escape the notice of Drunk Irish Man, or as I will now refer to him, Drunk Irish Homophobe. 

Mutterings assumed a slant of "gay boy ... disgusting gay boy ... fucking disgusting gay boy ... who does she think she is with her gay son", etc. My mother isn't exactly deaf but I was gradually realising that her hearing is not as sharp as mine. She had no idea he was speaking. And she didn't until she asked me what was causing me to be in complete hysterics as we walked off the bus.

Overall a fun day. If you wanna go see the Hockney exhibit then hurry cos it's closing in a couple of weeks. If you want to skip the really long queue then go to Cass Art by Trafalgar Square and buy something. They'll give you a barcode on your receipt you can scan and you also get a pound off entry. Cheers guys.

Conspiracy Theorising Again

I notice a total of four seemingly unrelated facts:

1. Siblings like to help each other out. For example, the night before my interview to study engineering at Oxford, my sister (a maths student) invited me to stay at her student house and we spent the evening practising questions for my interview. Thanks babe.

2. Janet Jackson hasn't been singing a lot recently.

3. Janet Jackson on record sounds a bit like Michael Jackson.

4. Michael Jackson is now dead.

I've put one and two and three and four together, and have come up with a truly sensible conspiracy theory. Janet Jackson can't sing, she was always miming along to songs Michael had lovingly recorded for her. Cos that's what brotherly love is. Slightly (only slighty) altering your voice to make it sound a tiny bit more feminine and singing "nasty, nasty boys, gimme a nasty groove. Nasty, nasty boys, lemme see your nasty body move."

All because your sister can't hold a tune.

Conspiracy Theorising

OK so Tulisa off X Factor has been caught being naughty. I watched the Channel 5 News Today and it appears she's posted a little webcam message to acknowledge that yeah it's her and also to make the guy involved look like a dick and her look like the hapless victim, which I suppose she is. Lesson to learn: either don't make naughty videos of yoself, or don't get famous. Annoyingly for me this means my life is a tireless crusade towards the goal of dying relatively unfamous, cos damn girl that Tulisa aint got shit on me.

(This is of course the kind of joke that not only might have a certain appeal towards whatever general readership I may have picked up so far, it also will instill terror into the heart of my darling mother. And this, to me at least, is a bit funny.)

But of course when considering any sex tape, we must not forget that famous old chestnut, Paris Hilton. Of course in the case of Tulisa this was not so much a sex tape as a clothed-woman-kneeeling-down-and-playing-with-an-erect-penis-and-sometimes-putting-it-in-her-mouth tape, or to put it more concisely: a blowjob tape. Channel 5's and indeed Tulisa's vocabularies do not appear to extend to the word 'blowjob' (I could have sworn it's in the OED though) so watchin the news there was the somewhat baffling spectacle of them all referring to the whole experience as an "intimate moment".

Now allow me to veer off topic for a sec: I'm aware that I don't actually watch Newsnight that much, but it was the budget and everything yesterday so I thought I'd treat myself. I will now explain to you what I consider to be an "intimate moment". Hopefully you will be lucky enough to read this post before BBC pulls last night's Newsnight off iPlayer, and supposing you are, clicky if you will this linky, and drag the slider to zero minutes thirty seconds. As Paxman offscreen reads off his autocue that "the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is here to tell us why he's happy to have George Osborne's speech written on his tombstone, and his Labour shadow to tell him why he's a disgrace", the two of them stare at each other for a full 11 seconds.

It is possibly the most romantic eleven seconds to have ever been captured on film, as if they both want to fall in love with each other but him being the CSttT (I have invented this as an acronym cos I'm too lazy to type his title out fully) and her being his shadow, in true Romeo and Juliet style (for some reason over the past few months I have taken to always pronouncing Juliet as 'Huliet', in a spanishy sort of way), their love can never be. Their 11 seconds on Newsnight is as close as it can ever get, but oh my what an 11 seconds. The intense staring, the coy flick of the hair, the half smile ... great artists have spent years trying to craft great art from those tiny glimpses of passion, and I'm not enough of an artist to try to do it justice.

But back to where I was before I got distracted ... oh yes, that Paris Hilton. It's not as if she was ever taken seriously in a way that could possibly have been damaged by that shocking revelation that she had gone so far as to have had sex. Out of wedlock and everything. And if anything, she did very well and it boosted her career. The ridiculous thing about the response to a naughty sex tape is that nobody would bat an eyelid about what Tulisa actually did in the video.

Supposing her ex boyfriend wanted to sell a story to a crappy tabloid, 'Tulisa Performed Blowjob' is not a particularly inspiring headline. As much as I hate the tabloid press, I do respect them occasionally for their funny headline puns, but even they couldn't turn either her the name of her old band N'Dubz or her surname Contoslavos into a decent giving head-based gag. Maybe if she'd been involved in some sort of BDSM type stuff they could have gone for "Tulisa ContoSLAVE-os" or something, but this is just wishful thinking on my part.

The guy whose willy is the centre of the furore, after having been named and shamed in the webcam confessional video from Tulisa, responded by saying . "To find the truth both sides of the story should be heard b4 passing judgement #thatisall". So he's kinda denying responsibility I suppose.

I've put on my detective hat and there are basically four ways this video could have surfaced in the way it did.
One: he leaked it on purpose.
Two: he sent it to some friends to show off, and they sent it on etc and then someone leaked it.
Three: whatever electronic device he had stored on it got stolen and they leaked it.

I've just realised there are actually five ways it could have got leaked, I was building up to my grand finale and everything at number four, but that's now been pushed back to number five.

Number four: some kinda hackers from Anonymous or LulzSec or one of those put it on Wikileaks. (You never know what that Assange is up to nowadays.)
Anyway, number five the big finale here, the conspiracy theory you've been waiting for has come out to play: she did it.

I have not been keeping too close an eye on this woman's career but she was in that rubbish band then did some X Factor judging, I'm pretty sure she sang one night with a contestant and proved she was good at singing and all, but her name is not ringing any bells with me as a solo star in her own right. So maybe this was done for the press attention in a deliberate way to launch herself as a solo singer.

For the purpose of making my misinformed conspiracy theorising more legit as good old fashioned misinformed conspiracy theorising, I have resisted the temptation to click her wikipedia page and find out if she's in fact already released a solo album or summat. I think if I had this knowledge it would undermine my ability to be misinformed. Like that old maxim goes, knowledge is power. And I had the same primary school teacher (Mrs Humpage) for both year 4 and year 6, and I can't actually remember which of those school years it was that we studied the Tudors. But I can remember the authority with which she said "Power always corrupts". And she may have been referring to Henry VIII at this point, but her words have stuck with me.

What has also stuck with me (somewhere in deep recesses of my brain, waiting til now to be awakened) is the absurdity of the fact that when the head teacher of our catholic primary school left, it was so openly discussed that Mrs Humpage was the most senior teacher there and was the obvious choice for headteacher, except she wasn't catholic, so was therefore not a contender. She simply could not be trusted with the responsibility, lest she led us all to protestant hell.

And at this point I realise that despite my many noble attempts to regain my train of thought, I think I've concluded the main point of this essay and am now rambling on about my primary school. Mrs Humpage, you were a lot of fun. Nighty night.

Stupid Things People Say/Do/Eat #1

During termtime I work in my college bar one night a week, and was recently approached by someone who asked for "a vodka and lemonade on the rocks". I'm not one of these smug experts about all kinds of drinking stuff and I have no formal bar training other than how to work the till, but I'm pretty sure that this guy was an idiot. A drink "on the rocks" is a spirit or something over ice with no mixer. It isn't any old drink with ice cubes in it. He thought saying "on the rocks" sounded cool, but it made him sound like a nob.

Yesterday I saw a guy driving an Audi TT convertible. In gold. Fair enough if you've got enough money to get a TT then it's kinda cool even if it's a little bit flashy. It's admittedly a nice car and everything. But getting it in gold makes you look like a nob. 

Some of my friends think it is acceptable to ruin a fried breakfast by putting ketchup all over it. And not just a little bit of ketchup, a huge blob of it all over the place so the smell gets in your nose and it ruins my day. Ketchup should be on chips only. Otherwise you're a nob. 

Oh and by the way, the same is true for brown sauce.

MY ONLINE FEUD WITH A NIGHTCLUB

SO I HAD SOME BEEF WITH MY LOCAL NIGHTCLUB SO I GAVE THEM A PIECE OF MY MIND. I DIDN'T DO IT STRAIGHT AWAY BUT THEN A FEW NIGHTS LATER I DECIDED TO WRITE THEM SOME BEEF. I WAS KINDA WASTED AT THE TIME SO MAYBE I WENT TOO FAR, BUT I DON'T EVEN CARE IF I WENT TOO FAR, I NEEDED TO TELL THEM BITCHES THE WAY IT IS. 

THEY DIDN'T HAVE AN EMAIL ADDRESS ON THEIR SITE THEY JUST HAD ONE OF THEM ONLINE FORMS BUT IT ALSO SAID THE NAME OF THE GENERAL MANAGER WAS PETER SO I DECIDED TO LEND MASELF AN AIR OF AUTHORITY BY STARTING IT WITH "DEAR PETER". HERE'S WHAT I WROTE:

Dear Peter,

I went to Batchwood on Thursday with a friend visiting from Sweden and we had a really nice time overall. The music was good, the paint party was something neither of us had been to before and the music was really good.

There was something about the night though that really annoyed me. We had already decided we were going to Batch and were walking from a cashpoint to Lloyds at about 10pm when three people with Batchwood Hall polo shirts approached us and gave us some flyers, which they said would give us discounted entry of £3. It didn't actually say anything about this on the flyer and my friend asked about this, they said this was fine and we just had to hand them in on the door. They also said something about the flyers being valid til the end of the month for this

When we got to the club, the woman on the door didn't know anything about this and said we had to pay £5 entry. My initial thought was that this was some kind of clever scam being run by the management of the club, to lure you in with the promise of discounted entry and then refuse it. This now sounds like something of a ridiculous conspiracy theory because obviously even on a less busy night you don't want to end up making all your clientele feel all annoyed and cheated - it seems obvious to me that what this was is a communication failure somewhere.

Somewhere down the line either the flyer people got the wrong end of the stick or nobody remembered to let the woman on the door know that the flyer people were advertising discounted entry ... anyway it annoyed me, it was only £2 extra each but when you're on a night out and you expect to pay a certain amount it's annoying to find out that it's more than that. This isn't an angry letter, I just wanted to pass on my dissatisfaction with that one aspect of my night so that this is something that can be improved on and you can continue to give your customers a high level of customer service.

All the best,

Tom

YEAH I TOLD THOSE BITCHES. I STARTED A FLAME WAR. SHIT GOT REAL SERIOUS. HERE'S WHAT THEY SAID BACK.


Dear Mr Oakley
 
Thank you for your email.
 
I am sorry to learn that your visit did not meet with your expectation on this occasion; please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused.  This matter has been taken seriously and the General Manager responsible for this club has been made aware of the issues you have raised.
Customer feedback is invaluable to us and I thank you for bringing these matters to our attention.  Once again I apologise for the inconvenience caused on this occasion and I hope this experience will not deter you from visiting the club again in the near future.
 
Kind regards
 
Kirsty Shute
The Luminar Group Ltd

 THIS IS WAR. THEY THINK THEY CAN JUST BRUSH ME OFF WITH SOME KIND OF APOLOGY. THEY THINK THAT MAKES THIS ALL OK. THAT'S WHAT THEY THINK. OH REALLY. OH REALLY REALLY REALLY. WAR.

Brief thoughts on the budget

I'm painfully aware that I'm too lazy and ignorant to write a properly reasoned argument against the injustices I perceive in yesterday's budget without merely repeating things that have already been said by people who understand it all a bit better than me, but allow me if you will a moment to jot down some alternate suggestions instead.

1. Anyone earning less than the threshold for the 40p tax rate has the right to demand 5p of anyone who earns above 150k, at any time of the day and in any situation. It is a legal requirement for them to then provide you with a five pence piece. You can only ask for a 5p coin once a day though, although if you ask a different rich person on the same day then that is allowed. A quick spot of googling informs me that there are 275,000 people earning this much, and realistically it is unlikely they will want to carry round a massive wheelbarrow of 5p coins themselves. Thus over a quarter of a million jobs will be created which will stimulate the economy and bring down unemployment. Hooray. As well as this, I'm pretty sure there aren't currently enough 5p coins for this, so jobs will be created in manufacturing these coins. And finally, supposing the supply of 5p coins cannot keep up with demand, the coins will end up being worth more. And of course as the pound is in fact just twenty 5p pieces, this will make the pound worth more, and thus we will outperform the dollar and the euro. Everybody wins.

2. Miranda Green will be made in charge of hair for both Newsnight and Question Time, and in fact any vaguely serious news-type show on the television (so not Sky News obviously). It's hard to tell whether her slightly messy all-over-the-place-but-looking-effortlessly-cool look was due to hours of trying to look messy and effortlessly cool, or if she just didn't have time to go for the sort of regulation "me on Newsnight, me boring" that all the other ladies on the show did, but it was bloody fabulous and I like her for it.

3. Miranda Green will be brainwashed into supporting the Labour Party.

4. Miranda Green will teach me how to say the word "no" like she did when she was asked if she would have chosen to cut the 50p tax. The mixture of authority and surprise at having been asked such a bloody stupid question was enough to melt my heart, even though a few minutes later it solidified again and then froze over (like a block of Lurpak in a freezer) when she started attacking the shadow cabinet and saying they weren't fit to rule etc.

At this stage I now realise that 3 of my 4 points are about Miranda Green, freelance journalist and former policy advisor to the Liberal Democrats. I watched a bit of Newsnight last night and she made something of a lasting impression on me. Anyway, point five has now formed itself in my brain.

5. George Osborne will stack shelves in Poundland. For no salary. Until he dies.

This is Major Tom to Ground Control

Fucking hell I've finally started writing. This has been nagging at me for a while to start doing it and now I finally am. I can feel the world at my fingertips, or my brain leaking out my fingertips onto the keyboard and into cyberspace. It's truly dizzying. Anyway, as is probably already apparent, I can't write very well due to the fact that I've basically not had to write prose of longer than about a hundred words in any kind of serious academic or professional context for over three years. So my style is going to be horribly sloppy and conversational and will hopefully sharpen up over time, although what this really means is I will be locked in an endless struggle to sound like neither a whiny teenager nor a pretentious Martin Amis wannabe. But let me make one thing very clear: I am a martin Amis wannabe. But I definitely mean this in the same way that I'm a Kate Bush wannabe (it would be nice to be able to write songs and do kung-fu in the woods) - I don't consider myself a serious contender here.

Anyway, I shall be writing here on this page about a range of topics that I find interesting, some of it will be sort of personal but I don't want to just write about myself in case this makes me look like a cunt. I am sort of terrified that this is exactly what will happen, so for all ye naysayers who already think I'm a cunt, please please please give me the benefit of the doubt because I don't intend to come across this way. I can be gushingly confident in real life that I appear to be a nice person and I'm hoping that I will be able to do the same thing on here. I do however note that the voice in my head as I write words can be a little different to the voice in the reader's head, so for the purpose of entirely removing any responsibility for anything I might say on here I would like to announce that this is in fact a bizarre parody of myself, written by me, and there are of course several layers of deep irony buried in everything I say here. Including when I'm being really serious about stuff, except sometimes not.

I spent a good ten minutes pondering over whether or not to write under my own name, some sort of ridiculous false identity or as myself, and I eventually decided to write as me. (Although I am tempted to develop a crappy pseudonym at some point.) Not just so I could shamelessy self-promote, but also to curb my temptation to go off the rails with ridiculous opinions and hyperbole and stuff. The downside to this is that my mother will definitely be reading this (Hello Mummy darling), so if you've come to read stories pertaining to my secret life as a drug-dealing rentboy then you'll have to look for my other blog. (See! I'm doing humour already!)

At this stage I will assume whatever tiny readership I have is whoever in my circle of friends has seen a link I've posted (SHAMELESSLY) from some sort of social network but on the offchance I turn into some kind of cult celebrity (you never know) I suppose I should quickly jot down a few biographical details. One of four children, raised in St Albans, currently a second year undergrad at Oxford. Studying engineering for some reason. With a little bit of French as well. I'm pretty socialist in my political views and am a big fan of the militant homosexualist secularist vegetarian agenda. Disclaimer: I am not a vegetarian, I just push vegetarianism as an ideology because if what I have heard about keynesian economics is true, a drop in demand will equate to a drop in the price, so I'm ruthlessly campaigning in order to enjoy a steak dinner more often. Anyway enough about me, I will be following up this post soon. Ciao.