On The Brink

OK, I know a number of my regular readers will probably already know about this and will be able to talk about it more knowledgeably, so, first, look at the Save The Internet site, which is all about Net Neutrality. And then – is this something that’s only going to be a problem in the states or will this affect us in the UK too; and if it doesn’t affect us, are UK service providers likely to go the same way too?

Because I suppose if that is what happens, we can wave goodbye to the blogosphere and all the community and debate and interesting little corners that goes with that. If the internet were to basically consist only of Facebook and Google and Gmail and other big websites… what would be the point of that? Blogs would go back to being email circulars and I’m sorry but I don’t think I’m arrogant enough to spam peoples’ inboxes daily with my vague, half-formed thoughts and wonderings, and I don’t suppose many people are, and further more, I check blogs at my own pace and time and if they were just disappearing into my inbox I wouldn’t bother reading at all, probably. Webcomics would just disappear – Jeph from QC and Randall Monroe from XKCD may be able to earn a living from XKCD and Questionable Content but that’s because currently, running a site isn’t that expensive in the scheme of things. They won’t have the economic clout to guarantee service of a reasonable speed for users to view their comics, and that’ll be that, won’t it?

Or perhaps I’m missing the point. How worried should we be?

It’s in the name. I think four is far too young to be at school. You barely know your own name, your hands aren’t developed enough to hold a pen, and it isn’t fair to expect you to play nicely or sit still. Frankly I don’t know why we even try at that age. I’m moving to Sweden, or Denmark, or Norway.

I have no idea what’s going to happen. I have no idea, either, what I’m going to want, and whether what I want this time next year is going to be the same as what I want now or somehow entirely different. And so it doesn’t matter that I don’t know what’s going to happen, because I also don’t know how I’m going to feel about it, so I basically have to assume that whatever it is it’ll be fine; because even if you could tell me what’s going to happen, how I feel about it now and how I will actually feel about it could well be two entirely different things.

So actually, yes, it’s all OK. Even though sometimes I would like someone to drop out of the sky and whisper in my ear, tell me about my future, promise me it contains Nobel prizes and a real-life Daniel Craig/Mr Darcy hybrid and a car that drives like an Aston and runs on solar power or the breath of fairies or something. It’s not going to happen (the sky person thing, I mean, not the Aston thing, that’s a definite). I don’t know what’s around the corner and, if I’m honest, I’d rather not find out too soon. It’s like reading the last page of the novel when you’re still only just getting up to the dramatic bit. You really don’t want to spoil the ending or know about twists in the tail, they’ll surprise you soon enough.

First please understand that I am not Jeremy Clarkson and I am not a total killjoy and I am in fact a cyclist myself. ‘Am’ may be a slight inaccuracy given that I had my bike stolen two years ago and have been borrowing my sister’s ever since. But I did used to cycle everywhere back in Old Home Town, and I come from a family of People Who Cycle. My grandfather used to race, I believe. So I’m definitely qualified to have this rant. Obviously.

Anyway, there are a lot of people out there who just shouldn’t be allowed to ride bikes. Ever. At all. Anywhere. At least not without reading this handy little list of Things You Bloomin’ Well Ought To Know first. So – here it is.

• A basic, boring point, that I wish I could say I think all cyclists in Britain already know. You cycle on the left-hand side of the left-hand lane on the road. Not in the middle of the lane, certainly not in the middle of the road, no – you cycle exactly a foot from the kerb if not less. If you don’t have the control over your bike to stick to this, go and practice in your local supermarket car park in the dead of night. Or a school playground. Or your local park. When no-one else is about and assuming that you’re lucky enough to live near a park in which you probably won’t get knifed or mugged whilst trying to do this.
• Stick your left arm out when you want to go left and your right arm out when you want to go right. Technically you should also flap your right arm about when you’re slowing down to a stop but no-one does this so you’ll probably just confuse people. You should also indicate when you’re pulling in and pulling out too, just like you would in a car.
• This one is so insanely obvious that I could cry. Yes, you’re making me cry. You do not have wing-mirrors, OK? So you’re less reliant on visual cues than most other road-users. You’re also bloody vulnerable. So WEARING EARPHONES IS KILL-ME-NOW LEVELS OF STUPID. Okay? Do I need to go into this in more detail?
• On the wing-mirror thing – look over your shoulder. Seriously. Whenever you do anything. As if you were in a car. Remember?
• Technically it’s illegal to ride on the pavement. If you’re a total idiot, though, I think most people are probably happier if you stick to the pavement on big roads at busy times – as long as there are absolutely no pedestrians or plenty of room to ride round them. If there isn’t room to ride round get off the bike. You’re too stupid to deserve to ride it anyway and it’s best for all of us otherwise I might just lose it and beat you to death with my shoe. You’ll have to wait while I take it off though.
• The legal position on lights is that you have them full-on when you’re riding in the dark, and flashing while you’re walking your bike along. You have to have a white front light and a red back light. You should not ride with flashing lights, this is just stupid, people will have no idea that you’re on the road and actually cycling at a decent pace.
• Bags on handlebars really aren’t terribly clever. I have learnt this from personal experience. Handbags over the back or shoulder aren’t great either. Really your options are to get a basket or panniers or leave your possessions behind or wear a rucksack because otherwise the off-balance weight and swinging of the bag will, someday, pull you off your bike, or get caught in the spokes or something. Not ideal.
• If you are sharing space with pedestrians – there are, after all, plenty of shared pedestrian/cyclist paths – get, and use, a bell.
• Please use your brain, idiot. If you have one of those New Cameregg child-trailers that basically turns your bike into a mini-rickshaw (personally I think these are daft, I mean, at what point is it a good idea to put your toddlers a foot above the ground, on the road, with nothing more than a tent and a large flag to warn other people of their presence? You wouldn’t put your kid’s play-tent up in the middle of the road, would you – so how is it suddenly a good idea just because it has wheels?) then please remember it is not a fucking snow plough and don’t use it on narrow pedestrian/cycle routes. The whirring of your wheels really isn’t sufficient warning to me that I’m just about to get swept off my feet and knocked into the brambles and to be honest I don’t really want you to use your bell in order to warn me that this is about to happen so that I can voluntarily hurl myself into the brambles instead. So. Baby-trailers. Not a good plan on the roads for the sake of your children; not a good idea on the pavements for the sake of everyone else in the entire world.
• If, as a cyclist, you’re not sure how to negotiate a big junction or a roundabout or something, get off and walk. Seriously. It might just save my blood pressure if I don’t have to stand on the pavement and watch you improvise your way around the junction, narrowly avoiding death and causing thirty cases of road rage along the way.

I think that’s probably about it. I would like to point out that I have witnessed examples of all the above today (or at the very least, this week) on my walk home from work. I didn’t actually end up in the brambles, if only because Mr New Cameregg Trailer Guy just happened to cycle past me on a bit of the path which was mercifully surrounded by green and verdant lawns. I had to do some fairly nifty diving to avoid him, though. And no, I didn’t get a word of apology. After all, Mr NCTG was being super-environmentally-virtuous and we mere mortals, just walking, which somehow doesn’t have the same environmental caché, these days, does it?

Sorry, chaps. I mean, I’m all in favour of cycling. I think it’s a quick, enjoyable and environmentally sound way to travel whilst getting fit and seeing some nice scenery (if you’re lucky enough to live or work or socialise somewhere pretty) but I do think there are ways of doing it, and ways of doing it seriously wrong. And I know I’m not perfect as a cyclist I’m sure – I can be overconfident, I almost certainly ought to wear a helmet, and I have a terrible habit of ending up trying to cycle in inappropriate shoes or skirts and therefore concentrating more on not flashing approaching drivers than I am concentrating on the serious business of Neither Dying Nor Killing Anyone. But at least I know what I’m doing and now – with my handy guide – so do you.

*Nern is a family in-joke. It seemed appropriate here and is roughly equivalent to total and utter retard, without any of the non-PC connotations of that word, being as how my mother made it up one day under no provocation whatsoever.

I don’t really understand how anyone can shop there. Or ASDA, or Tesco, or wherever else, for their clothes. I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. You know they’re made in a sweatshop by blind five-year-olds with missing fingers doing a million-hour day for a pittance (I admit I may be exaggerating slightly). You all know it.

I’m not brilliant. I still buy clothes from M&S (which is, ethically, very nearly as bad as Primark etc) and H&M and so on. I do try where possible to buy things second-hand, but I will admit, I like shopping, I like new clothes, and if you’re looking for a well-fitting pair of jeans in the right shade of blue or whatever you’re more likely to find them on the highstreet than you are in your local vintage store, and until I’m a lot richer, I really can’t afford to buy basicsy highstreety stuff on a regular basis from fairtrade stores such as Ascension, much as I would love to do so. And yes, the other day, I did buy some socks from Primark. It was an emergency and I do feel guilty.

And as a Christian, where our faith is all about loving the Lord our God, and loving thy neighbour as much as thyself… how can you possibly treat your fellow man, by proxy, so badly? How can you call yourself a good Christian while you boast on your facebook profile about the suit you bought for some completely unbelievable sum from ‘Primarni’? While you actually boast about the cheapness of your clothes? Now, I’m all about good value. I’m not that kind of a snob, I’m not going to look down on you because you bought a cheap suit, but you have to look at those prices, think about the price of cloth and so on and think, hang on, surely getting a suit for under £50, shirt, shoes, tie and all, should be technically impossible? What’s going on here? Where is the money being cut from?’. You surely have to be suspicious of something that costs so little – you must realise that someone’s paying for that, and that someone is probably the poor woman who sewed the buttons on and doesn’t get paid or won’t be given work tomorrow if she doesn’t manage to make 20 suits in an hour or something.

It should be no more shocking that my Christian friends boast about Primarni than that my non-Christian friends do. I have always argued that atheists are as nice and have as much of a developed conscience as Christians – why would I argue otherwise? But somehow, when these days seemingly every church has a fair trade stall and a link to all kinds of fairtrade this, that and the other, when you’re looking at upstanding pillar-of-the-student-church-community types, it still brings me up short.

I want to interfere, but I don’t know that I know this guy well enough. Personally if I was interviewing a student for a job, I wouldn’t necessarily even expect them to own a suit. If I was employing a student, I would understand if they wore their old school trousers etc until their first pay packet. It’s not impossible. And for crying out loud I know full well that the Oxfam where I work has a lot of suits in at the minute. Honestly.

I read on The Forum Whatever about Rapelay, a Japanese video game which, well, read the article here, which will tell you no more than you need to know.

The thing is, though, it’s a game where the aim is to rape people; why is it that that seems so much worse than games in which the idea is to gratuitously kill others who are unarmed? I don’t have a problem with violent games in which you’re actually in combat with others who are also armed and it’s kill-or-be-killed, because there is an objective to your violence and it’s not absolutely the entire point of the game. The point of the game there is your own imaginary survival; fair enough. But when you’re not at risk from the people you’re killing how has that become acceptable (e.g. in Grand Theft Auto) when surely it ought to ring as terrible as this rape-simulation game? Or is there a reasonable justification for feeling that a game centred on raping girls and women is in some way morally worse than a game which is primarily about killing innocent bystanders?

And what about films? When is it acceptable to portray graphic, violent rape scenes, and what do we mean by ‘in the name of art’? Is it OK if you’re trying to shock your audience, but not if you know they’re just going to get off on it? And is that the true difference between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture?

There are some strange things out there. That doesn’t mean all Christians are strange. But I think this is pretty strange, and this is even stranger, and if you need a good giggle, or just to raise your eye-brows in mild shock and consternation, or just the excuse to stop reading about mast cells, Major Histocompatibility Complex proteins, anything with weird greek letters in, or your packing list (yeah, you think your day was bad?), well, click on those links. You’ll get the idea pretty quickly.

Oh post-scheduler, you save my life once again.

Anyway. Procrastinating found me this quiz. It shows you the percentage of votes one way or the other for each individual question rather than giving you a breakdown at the end, so look out.

Basically I am apparently abnormally naked. There is nothing I will not do, or have not done, whilst naked – with the exception of cooking. Somehow that seems to me just a bit weird. Also I’m convinced I would scald my stomach or get hot fat spat at me or something, somehow. So logistically it’s stupid and it would feel very odd. But skinny dipping, sunbathing, night swimming, sleeping, check check check check. I enjoy and will happily do all of those things, at least, on my own or in the presence of similarly-minded friends. I will get naked in the pool changing rooms, which are communal, without a qualm, though there are cubicles if you want them but the floor is wetter in there because they’re nearer the showers and they’re dark and I’m too blind when I take off my glasses.

Don’t go thinking I wander round naked all the time. I don’t. I just don’t have a problem with it.

Apparently I will happily talk about me being naked on my blog. Oops. Whilst I’m at it, I’ll also tell you about my new stockings…

(jokes. I have no stockings. I have no idea how to wear them without looking like a goth, or one of those people who thinks vintage clothing is for actively recreating a sort of 1950s-fakery-arcadia, or a prostitute or something and I am none of those things. It’s a shame because I think they’re kind of sexy but they’re probably a nightmare to take off in a seductive (or at least not actively off-putting) fashion especially if like me you’re about as dexterous as a mentally challenged goat).

…read this. It’s by Janet Street Porter so it’s no surprise that it’s paragraph upon paragraph of utterly insulting, uninformed, discriminatory, ignorant and errant nonsense.

The point is though that she should not be able to get away with publishing an article like that. I mean, would she be allowed to write an article saying that, say, homosexuality was a myth? Or that it wasn’t possible to be transgendered and people should just get on with being whatever gender their body appears to be? Doesn’t just reading those last two sentences just make your toes curl with how utterly offensive that would be? So therefore how come she can publish an article in which she completely rubbishes depression?

So, what you’re going to do next is you’re going to complain to the Press Complaints Commission using their handy form, which you can find by clicking the ‘making a complaint’ box. They ask you to read a couple of things first, they don’t take long to skim and it’s worth doing, it’ll take you a couple of minutes, no more.

There’s also a Facebook group here where you might find more information on what action ends up being taken if any. Please just don’t think, ‘oh it’s Janet Street Porter it’s bound to be awful, end of’. Because yes. It’s JSP. It’s bound to be awful. But it doesn’t need to be so horrifically offensive or so freakishly delusional.

Mental illness is real. You don’t need me to tell you that, though I have, time and time again. Ask any person on the street if they know or have ever encountered someone with depression, and the vast majority will (if they’re being honest), say yes. It’s another one of those ‘my best friend is black’ things: a lot of people might think that depression is something people say they have in order to get out of doing the washing up, as we say in my family (long story), except in the case of ‘my best friend so-and-so, she really had it’. Well, so do an awful lot of other people. No-one would choose to sit around in bed staring at the wall if they didn’t have to. No-one would give themselves that label, that stigma, if it weren’t true. And it is a label and a stigma and don’t tell me it isn’t. Talk about glass ceilings.

Anyway, please write to the PCC. This is important, folks. Seriously.

I always kind of assumed that when I was a bit older or something I’d get bored of large swathes of the internet. That I’d use Facebook and email to stay in touch with people but other than that, well, nothing. That I’d stop writing a blog, I’d stop going on MSN and talking to people there, I’d stop reading webcomics or other peoples’ blogs.

I still kind of believe that. There’s a bit of me that thinks there’s something a bit weird about, say, married people who blog – about baby’s first word or that funny thing that happened on the way to the supermarket or their in-laws hilariously outdated and dodgy political views or whatever – that I blog because I’m single, I spend a lot of my time on my own working in my own little bubble and so this is an easy and itneresting way of reaching out to the rest of hte world without having to leave my desk. Even now part of me thinks this is a little bit sad, somehow. That I ought to be outside at the pub or drinking coffee with friends – except that I spend a significant chunk of my time doing those things already, it’s not as if I’m lonely, so that can’t be why I do this. It’s not as if I don’t have massively interesting and informed debates with my friends over coffee and tea and ale in the real world, either, it’s not as if I haven’t subjected them all, severally, to the rantwhinebitchwhingebrainsplurge on the subject of my education, miseducation, or otherwise, just for a recent example, more than once.

I do also assume that somehow once I am ‘an adult’ I will somehow no longer have the time for this virtual world. But it’s not as if I’m not incredibly busy at the moment, either, and it’s not as if keeping a blog requires huge amounts of time or thought – words just flow from brain to fingers and I write them, it’s as simple as that, it’s only irritating that I type so fast that my hands get slightly out of sync and the letters get in the wrong order sometimes (I hope you’ve all got as used to ‘becuase’ as I have, because it’s there to stay and I’m sorry), or my other favourite, my brain goes completely doo-lally and we go in for phonetic typing such that ‘in sync’ becomes ‘in sink’ and ‘there’ ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ are simply confused because they all sound the same so surely (thanks, Brain) it doesn’t matter.

So. I’m unlikely to run out of the time to have a blog. And you all know me, I’m unlikely to run out of things to say. And, not to boast, I’m not likely to run out of readers. And it’s my primary means of contact with some friends and although those friendships (if that’s what you can yet call them) are gradually moving into emails and even, tentatively, real life, we don’t always have the time for five paragraphs of intense social commentary in an email when you can write a comment just to say, hello, hope you’re OK. So what is going to happen? When will this stop? Does it stop?

And what about Skype and MSN? It’s on in the background, I’m usually on ‘appear offline’, I haven’t had an online conversation with anyone for weeks, actually, a few people have attempted to catch me, I’ve tried to say hello to one or two people in the rare moments that I have the time and am not doing something more useful or more relaxing, but, ships in the night. But sometimes it is useful. When you don’t want to phone because it’s expensive or late at night or you’re also trying to hang up your laundry or whatever. When you just want to quickly organise something with a group of people. When you want to stay in touch with home friends and you’re at uni – I think that’s its main use for me. And, shamefully, those conversations you start having which are very lighthearted and backgroundy and you’re working at the same time but then gradually you get all deep and serious and late night and emotions come crawling out of the woodwork and actually those are conversations that perhaps you’d never dare have face to face because that’s just scary and will I be any better at talking about my feelings when I really am a grown-up? I doubt it. Not, actually, that I’m all that bad at it, when it comes to it. Bite the bullet, say what you’re really thinking, no-one needs a screen to hide behind except that equally you’ve made me blush, or I really don’t want you to see/hear me crying and thank god if we’re on MSN I can be far more matter-of-fact and nonchalant. Don’t tell me that you don’t sometimes prefer it like that.

I think my dad feels that it’s kind of sad that we all still use these forms of communication that we were desperately attached to when we were fifteen. But I think our use of them has evolved. Who still has song lyrics for their MSN name, or uses some ridiculously unreadable font and a billion animated emoticons? I can’t imagine still having conversations over the internet in real time when I’m fifty. But equally, it’s somehow quite useful, and I can’t see why or when it’s going to stop. I think the internet has changed our lives and the course of our lives to come more than we can quite imagine.

But I really, really don’t want to be a fifty-year-old blogger with an MSN account and a webcam. I want to check emails once a day, and otherwise, read a book, phone a friend, watch telly. Possibly have facebook. Check the news online sometimes from work during a tea break. That’s enough internet. No more internet. But really, what would be wrong with occasionally skypeing my sister, say, or putting pictures up on this blog of the kitchen units I just built, (YES I will build them myself, I got all inspired by my neighbour’s handbuilt, home-made kitchen and now I want to try) or writing about my thoughts on the new Green PM or the end of oil or whatever.

Oh, future, you weird and scary thing.