Wilds FAQ

Boom! As they say here. Two updates in one week. Unreal.

As a visitor to Freedom from one of the lesser nations, the more inquisitive Freedomzens often ask me about the lands beyond their vast defensive walls and the eternal watch of the Knights of Homeland Security.

"London" they begin - for finding my alien name difficult to pronounce they choose to call me after that particular tribe, it being known to them from the darkest reaches of their history - "what of the peoples in the lands outside our fortress-erected-to-liberty-and-the-right-to-carry-loaded-guns-into-schools TM? Have they heard of Bob Dylan? Do they know about the Jesus? What do they think of us? Answer us," they demand, "else we must ask our garden labourers and we prefer to communicate with them by shotgun semaphore."

Well now I've decided to answer some of the most frequent questions here, so that I don't have to repeat myself all the time and can simply refer the Free to this very webpage, until all traces of my existence are eradicated under the auspices of the PATRIOT act or by a Big Mac dissolving me from the inside.

Q. Why does the letter 'u' appear unnecessarily in many of the words of your archaic and nonsensical language?

A. Oh mighty citizen of Freedom, the true realization of God's vision for the mortal beings of Earth and my superior in all ways, thank you for asking this question. The reason is that 'u' is the first letter of the words union and unloaded, a sign of our subservience to communist (spit) socialist (gouge out an eye) gun controlling (slash wrists and look pitiful) masters.

Q. What do the lesser peoples call 'pants' if not 'pants'?"

A. That particular word has a sacred meaning amongst the tribes of the wilderness and instead we wear 'trousers' woven from pubic hair. Not our pubic hair you understand, instead from your divine sewage, gracing us from pipes high in the walls of Freedom, we gather the lustrous discarded clippings that your civilized image worshipping society justly discards. The trousers of a warrior of some status may instead be made of the much prized skin of the ferocious PETA activist. Ruffs are still very fashionable.

Q. Have you met the Queen?

A. We all meet the Queen at birth, for she is our brood mother. In a giant chamber of fine bone china beneath the palace, her majesty toils, laying thousands of eggs a day from her elongated abdomen the shape of a well groomed corgi's backside, while part submerged in a lake of tea. Haven't seen her since then though, and she never writes. Bitch.

Q. Can you savages read?

A. Certainly, we read obsessively about your history and culture in the hope of repeating your achievements and understanding your magicks.  Our book-shoppes stock a variety of popular works by American authors, such as the Book of Mormon, Agatha Christie's Parrot and the King James Bible.

Come back wires, all is forgiven.

Last week airports, a hotel and a convention centre all worked in unison to provide me with glacial, erratic or non-existent internet access. It seems that the 'free' in 'free wireless' is the same 'free' associated with 'lunch' and 'speech'. What I mean is that it is bullshit.

Travelling is aways fun for me because of the stress, delays, bad food and violation of natural law that is air transport (it's right next to homosex on the Pope's naughty list). As always, things of debatable interest happen when I wander through the herds of charmless cattle that constitute my species. Here I will relate some of those things, in words.

While crossing between terminals on an airport train I had to endure, because of the volume, two students discussing their classes. Actually it wasn't really a discussion; one stared vacantly at the train window and merely grunted, while the other barked nonsense that clearly no one, including his companion, really wanted to hear.

"Yeah she was pretty hot for an academic advisor. If I was into the whole cougar thing..." 

My boss and I laughed out loud, not least because the orator looked like he wouldn't stand a chance with a 'pretty hot' woman of any age, especially when winning them over with his personality was so obviously off the cards.

We were delayed by an hour when leaving, because our pilot hadn't arrived. Apparently his plane was delayed. Once he did turn up and we made it into the air, he attempted to reassure us over the intercom: "We shouldn't be too late reaching our destination, because we have a lot of buffer time in the schedule and a strong tailwind, which is unusual when you're flying east". A troubling statement from the pilot when we, the passengers, were under the impression that the plane should be heading west.

On the final leg of the journey, in a tiny turboprop, the fifty something woman sat next to me suddenly asked how I was. The first answer that came to mind was, 'Perturbed that someone I don't know is asking how I am', but I lied instead and replied, "Fine thanks, how are you?" She smiled warmly and said that she had been hoping that a handsome guy would sit next to her. I apologised and then asked, "Are you flying home?" She was, and proceeded to tell me about the local area, her family and her love of the Queen Mother. In fact she was so friendly that on landing she showed us where the baggage carousel was and offered to give us a lift into the city. Increasingly concerned that we were going to end up in her deep freeze, I explained that we needed to stop at the convention centre first to register. This led to my boss and I getting the train and coming across the Pacific Northwest's version of tourist information. A girl with knee-high argyle socks, dyed red hair and Elton John glasses helped us buy our tickets while I shared a look with my boss and tried to suppress sniggers. Oh all important leading 's'. 

The convention centre provided no respite from the assault of the unsettling because cheerleaders were everywhere. Not the astonishing thighed, mannequin faced, devotees of the vacuum that are college cheerleaders, but the potbellied, makeup-by-drag-queens, vacuum neophytes that are highschool cheerleaders. It seems that our week long conference was sandwiched between some sort of event for pushy mothers to live out their dreams vicariously and the national librarian's congress. Thankfully the conference finished and we left before the librarians arrived - I don't think I could have stood all that cat hair in one place. On one day I walked from my hotel to the convention centre, enjoying the fine weather and the vibrant culture the city is famous for, by which I mean a homeless guy combing out his long grey beard in the reflection on someone's car window.

Something that struck me as I sampled the many and varied restrooms at the convention centre and in airports during my journey is the current worrying state of digestive health in this nation. Washing my hands and listening to the death screams of yet another tortured anus, I couldn't help but think that the toilets of my youth had not sounded like rectal killing fields. 

Comparative Listening

Let's consider these lyrics from Public Enemy's quite fantastic 'She Watch Channel Zero?!'

Hey yo, lemme tell you a little som'in,
I'm'a take all your soaps, an' then I'm gonna hang 'em on a rope,
You know what I'm sayin'?

Here Public Enemy have used an absurd pun to describe just how much they don't like televised serial melodramas, or 'soaps' as they are otherwise called. Even with Flava Flav bouncing around, probably with a grandfather clock hanging from his neck, they manage to make inciteful social commentary.

Now consider these lyrics from Jay-Z's 'Empire State of Mind' featuring She lost her Keys:

I'm the new Sinatra, and... since I made it here,
I can make it anywhere, yea, they love me everywhere...

or perhaps

Shit, I made the Yankee hat more famous then a Yankee can...

Here Jay-Z informs us that we should build a temple to him and another to his celestial penis, because he is so awesome. This is why mainstream rap ain't that great anymore, I mean he even did an album with Linkin Park. Shit.

Here's a picture of Flava Flav though, which goes to show... Actually I'm not sure what if anything we can learn from Flava Flav.

Standing on the shoulders of ants

The news used to really piss me off, either they were reporting something stupid, or the reporting was itself manifestly stupid. Then I realised that getting angry wasn't going to stop people on the other side of the television being superstitious, or backward, or ignorant, or lazy or anything in fact. So I started laughing instead and found this to be a more fulfilling experience. The news is basically there for entertainment anyway. How much of that stuff do you really need to know? How much of it do you act on? How much of it do you act on just because it's easy? A nice day out in the capital marching in protest anyone? How about signing a petition because you care enough to use a pen? Throw some loose change at Haiti while you're at it. And then there's all the stuff that you actually could do something useful about, but the news doesn't bother with because it's dull. Elderly people slowly dieing alone, when just a few visits a week from someone with free time for a chat would make all the difference. But that would be really awkward right? And dull. Some old person you don't know, they'd probably want to talk about dentures or darning socks or something. Or the war. Or they might even be some elderly person you do know, which is much worse. Probably ask why you're not married yet and when you're going to get a real job. If they don't mistake you for your brother. No, doing good close to home is weird and unpleasant. Much better to do something you wanted to do anyway, but get yourself sponsored so a reputable charity can sort the messy stuff.

So apparently I do still get angry about the news. The reason for this latest outburst of hypocritical drivel on my part is, as so often the case, facedick. It's one thing for the news to put out a load of old balls, it's quite another for your friends to relay it all over the place. Certainly some 'feed' posts are informative. However let me give you a rule of thumb. If the relevant linked article features the phrase "a study has shown", "a new study", "psychologists" or something similar, don't pass it around. Don't even read it. It'll be bollocks, wildly speculative or just plain obvious.

For example "New research shows there is a link between being politically active and wellbeing" means, "thinking you're making a difference makes you feel better", probably because otherwise you'd be forced to face up to what a merciless waste of space you really are. And that can be depressing. This example clearly falls within the remit of the third member of the above triumvirate of pointless. "Study shows that playing with wii causes RSI" also fits into this category and helpfully crops up every time there's a big console release. At least this latter case is quantifiable, repetitive strain injury being a genuine medical complaint. Studies about 'wellbeing', 'crowd psychology', and 'the appeal of 16th century literature based pet names' are usually based off questionnaires using the highly accurate '1 to 10' metric, as in "how would you rate the accuracy of questionnaire based studies on a scale of 1 to 10?" There's a reason that drug trials are carried out with placebos in double blind tests. It's because questionnaires invariably attract bullshit results and need to be carried out really really carefully even when used in conjunction with objective data (e.g. 'Is the patient dead or not?' 'Has their arm regrown?' instead of 'Do they feel like it's regrowing?').

Questionnaire-centric studies really find their calling at school, as a core feature of GCSE geography coursework, or 'colouring in' as it is often known. Here their vagueness and ease of execution are appreciated by students who don't want to run the risk of having results that can actually be checked and found in error, and most importantly who have only just remembered that the coursework needs to be handed in tomorrow. So next time you're going to post that study, please just link straight to the crayola home page instead. They have over 1000 free colouring pages for you to print out that are far more worth your time, and your friends' time. I draw your attention to this fine specimen.

Climate science isn't questionnaire based, but from the depiction in the media it might as well be. I am fed up of hearing people say "The science is clear." The only totally clear thing is that the Earth is finite and people are making a big mess faster than it's getting cleaned up. This will clearly be a problem at some point. Exactly 'when' is still up for grabs, though it shouldn't matter anyway if you don't want some future generation to be confined to small toxic islands, slowly eating their way through a dwindling reserve of tinned spaghettiOs (TM). Then again, if they're going to be anything like previous generations I'm not sure they deserve any better.

PS. Don't read New Scientist if you are interested in science.

PPS. I have experimented with italics in this post to indicate emphasis. How does that make you feel on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being 'constipated' and 10 being 'very clammy'?