Blue Man Sings The Whites

I hadn’t been to the Royal Air Force Museum in the better part of twenty years, and the fact that I’d never taken the boys there before borders on unforgivable. This sorry state of affairs was rectified at the weekend, with a happy afternoon spent wandering around assorted airbourne purveyors of destruction, death and misery.

I particularly enjoyed getting a close-up look at an English Electric Lightning. Like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, the Lightning has features that are a bit odd or even offputting taken in isolation – the over-under engines, the beer-belly fuel-tank, the strange positioning of the missile hardpoints just below the cockpit, the big wide stupid chin and hamster cheeks, the over-wing drop tanks, the air intake around the nosecone, the weird lips - but the overall effect is stunning. The Lightning looks like the designer dropped a paper dart on the table and said “Tell you what. Let’s make one of those fly at Mach 2.”

As you might expect given the gap between visits, there were a number of changes and additions to the last time I was there. Getting to walk right under a Vulcan bomber was a highlight, and one that really brought home the sheer monstrous size of the thing. The fact that it even got off the ground boggles the mind, it’s quite literally bigger than the whole row of three terraced houses that we live on. Flying it must have been like trying to pilot a medium-sized Baptist church. Of doom.

My favourite addition was the brand new Milestones Of Flight hanger, though – a light, airy space filled with aircraft of varying degrees of historical significance. One of the first things you see as you enter the hall is an extremely cool juxtaposition – a Bleriot XI monoplane of the type used to make the first crossing of the English Channel and the RAF’s current state-of-the-art fighter.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Between the year 909 and the year 1009, technology advanced from the sword all the way to the slightly fancier sword. Between 1909 and 2009 we’ve gone from a machine that’s basically a big t-shirt wrapped around a couple of cheap photo-frames with some bicycle wheels lashed on the bottom and an engine that we’d laugh at if it were powering a scooter, to the Eurofighter Typhoon. We’ve gone from the Model T to the Bugatti Veyron. We’ve gone from candlestick phones and manual switchboards to the Internet. We’ve gone from TS Eliot to Dan Brown. We’ve gone from workhouses to child labour in the Far East. We’ve gone from cities choked with smog to impending global environmental cataclysm.

Sorry, sort’ve lost where I was going with that toward the end.

Still – crikey, Charlie. The acceleration of technological progress, the sheer pace at which humanity is churning out life-changing innovations staggers me. In less than a century, we’ve gone from 37 minutes to fly the Channel to less than a minute. What on Earth (or beyond) do you suppose we’re going to manage in the next hundred years?

 
More fun from BEtEO, this time via Twitter and The Internet’s Famous Richard Gaywood – the collision of great literature and base commerce. It’ll come as no suprise to some that this is an idea I’ve not been able to leave alone since it crossed my path. My best efforts to date:

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
 ”My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
 Nothing beside remains: round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.
 Next time, use Ronseal Double-Action Wood Preserver.”

“To imagine the future, imagine a boot smashing into a human face forever. Ooh, nice boots! http://www.clarks.com.”

“This is not just a liquor never brewed,
 From tankards scooped in pearl;
 This is M&S liquor.”

“The barge, like a burnished throne burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sales and so perfumed that the wind was lovesick with them. Then it hits you – this is way more than a cruise! Royal Caribbean International.”

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all
 Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
 Maybe she’s born with it – maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Talk to Frank.”

“I grow old! I grow old!
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled!
Unless I take advantage the great menswear bargains available in the BHS winter sale.”

“So twice five miles of fertile ground
 With walls and towers were girdled round:
 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
 And here were forests ancient as the hills,
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
 Visit Centre Parcs – for a British holiday the weather can’t spoil.”

“Because I could not stop for Death
 He kindly stopped for me
 The carriage held but just ourselves
 And Immortality.
 We’d have been able to fit four kids and the family dog in as well if Death had been driving the new Vauxhall Zafira.”

Don’t care if I’ve missed the boat. Convention is a load of foetid nadgers anyway. Why is February 14th the only day that society demands you appreciate who you love? Why is Christmas the only time of year you’re supposed to be decent to your fellow human beings?

I digress.

Best these are posted in public because I’m the most lazy, useless person on the planet and I have the willpower of a thing with no willpower whatsoever. Any prodding / goading that my friends, acquaintances and Internet chums would be so kind as to direct toward me regarding any of the below will be gratefully received.

1 – Write more.
Specifically, at least one update a week for the rest of the year. I’ve not been happy with anything I’ve posted on this blog since it went up (the post regarding active vs. passive objectification is the closest to a decent piece to date), but I’m a firm believer that the first step to writing something good is to write stuff that’s rubbish. My blog posting has always come in fits and starts as my enthusiasm’s waxed and waned and that’s not good enough. My writing muscles have atrophied and the only way to get them back to something approaching shape is regular exercise. So.

2 – Read more.
I used to be a voracious consumer of books, unable to go anywhere or do anything without a paperback for idle moments. At some point I’ve let TV and podcasts sidle in to become the killers of my spare minutes, and in no way is that helping my writing. Also, I’m going to try and avoid reading anything I’ve read before. There’s tons of stuff I’ve barely touched from my birthday and Christmas and that’s absolutely criminal.

3 – Photograph more.
Actually, I’m off to a semi-decent start on this, having got some semi-acceptable shots from Monday’s crazy snowfall. But the only way is up, because my flickr only seems to have two pictures posted last year which is beyond pathetic. I’ve got an expensive camera that’s far more capable than my meagre abilities justify, and it’s about time I started using it to something approaching its potential. At the very least, I’m going to finally commit to memory how aperture numbers work, because shamefully I can’t keep it straight in my head whether higher numbers = wider aperture and whether opening the aperture increases or reduced the depth of field. God, I’m so rubbish I make myself want to hurl.

4, 5 – Eat less and exercise more.
Obv.

That’ll do to be going along with. Sorry this is so navel-gazey and thoroughly unedifying but hey – blog, you know?

Whilst discussing/ arguing with a few contemporaries about the return of inexplicably still-somewhat-mainstream misogyny-fest Miss World, I found myself faced with a couple of separate but related lines of argument from folk who’ll defend to the death a woman’s right to be displayed like a side of pork in a butcher’s shop window.

“Well, it’s not like people watch football players for their brains either, is it?”

“Proposing to ban everyone from modelling, are you?”

Here’s a photo I took on holiday of an advertising standee in a swimming shop that I hope helps illustrate my response.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being attractive. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a person primarily being valued for their physical attributes above their mental ones. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a person’s profession being based primarily on those same physical attributes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with modelling, even.

But look at that bloody thing up there. If I’d set out to create a satire of how the bulk of the media presents images of male and female beauty, I don’t think I could have come up with anything more perfect.

“You are MAN! You are POWER! You are STRENGTH! You MASTER your environment! GRRRRAW!”

“You are WOMAN! Stick you bottom out a bit more, we can still see some of your swimsuit.”

(I hesitate to point out even in jest that the bloke at the top is intent on riding his long, thin pointy thing into the wave’s big wet hole. Holy Sigmund Freud, Batman!)

That’s the difference between watching Tommy Smith dance down the right wing on a Saturday afternoon and gawping at Miss World contestants. Yes, you’re objectifying both in a sense – you’re certainly not bothered about either’s intellect or personality. But one is active, the other a completely passive request for approval. Taken in isolation it’s probably not that big a deal, but it ISN’T an isolated example – with few exceptions Hollywood, TV and adverts all repeat the dichotomy that’s writ large in that ad. Men are told to Be All They Can Be. Women are told that Some Day Their Prince Will Come. It’s patronising, it’s reprehensible and it leaves all of us culturally poorer.

I don’t want to ban Miss World. I don’t want to take away anyone’s right to do whatever they choose with their body. I just wish that as a society we’d see beauty contests for what they are – a tacky little symptom of a much wider malaise.

So. Despite giving not even so much as a hint of bad behaviour since the day it was bought, my XBox seems to have suddenly developed a terminal illness. Whenever the AV cable is connected to the console, it won’t power up, gives one red light on the power ring and spits out an error message. It’s remotely possible it’s the cable that’s the problem, but that’s not the way I’m betting.

Naturally, this is happening exactly THREE FLIPPIN’ DAYS after its year’s warranty expired, and so far angry phone calls to the shop I bought it at and Microsoft’s support line have produced nothing except a £50 repair bill. Given all the technical problems that Microsoft’s relentlessly shoddy hardware design has had, you’d think they might be a bit more understanding and helpful, but apparently not. Even so, I’ve shoved in a polite-but-hacked-off email so fingers crossed.

I’m a poker player (of sorts). I grasp the theory of how pot odds work. I know that it’s a bad idea for an opponent to call your pot-sized bet when he has nothing but a gutshot straight draw, even though there’s a chance he could win. In the same way given that the majority of problems with gadgets happen in the first six months, I understand that if there’s less than a 30% chance of a given electrical device falling over between it being one year and three years old (which there always is), then the at-least 30% extra you’d pay for the three-year extended warranty is a rubbish deal (which it always is). I realise that I’ve saved tons of money down the years by not shelling out for these bad-bet warranties.

Doesn’t make it any less frustrating and irritating on those occasions were you play the percentages correctly but lose because the long-shot draw comes up, mind.

Let me tell you about my birthday.

I had the day off, partly for birthday-related reasons but mostly because we were having a new sofa delivered so I had a very nice morning putting together my new Lego Y-Wing (it’s utterly lovely, if slightly fiddly thanks to loads of little pieces providing suitably authentic greebling. The engine nacelles were particularly fun to assemble and particularly awesome-looking) and playing some FIFA (fun but flawed – the excellent “Be A Pro” mode that sees you controlling only one player is ace for giving you ten other people to blame for your terrible performance).

About half-eleven, the sofa arrives. Delivery bloke ambles through the hallway, has a good look around and declares that It Is Good. He goes back to his lorry and gets the sofa which then completely fails to go through the front door. Delivery Bloke requests that I remove the front door, but initial attempts to remove the screws holding the hinges in prove awkward and mean an estimate of about half an hour to get the bloody thing off. Delivery bloke declares he has other deliveries scheduled and so can’t hang around. Delivery bloke sods off.

Bear in mind that the previous night we spent three hours plus dismembering the old sofas and carting them out the door, so we now have – count it! – no furniture in the living room.

I call my wife, who a) bought the bloody thing, b) was assured by the salescreature that it would go through the door and c) made doubly-sure by making a template of said sofa and checked it against said door. She calls the store and throws a wobbly. They tell her that the delivery blokes will finish their regular deliveries then fit us in at the end, and call us well in advance of their arrival so I’ve got time to get the front door sorted. Elaine says that as soon as she knows the time, she’ll arrange to head back from work to give me a hand. Coolio I think, and get back to pinging proton torpedoes at the cat and trying to break into the FC St. Pauli first team.

Half-one, I get a call from Delivery Bloke. They’re on their way and will be with me in 10 minutes. Cue panic. Elaine has to cancel her afternoon patients and comes rushing home, arriving pretty much the same time as Delivery Bloke, whereupon a second inspection reveals that the living room door’s going to have to go as well along with an extra block of wood that’s been attached to the frame to allow a smaller door to fit the door-hole (industry term). The door itself comes off easily enough, but the frame refuses to budge and eventually causes Elaine to attack it with an electric saw. Still, after maybe 20 minutes all the offending bits of our house have been removed and Delivery Bloke goes and gets the sofa.

Which still doesn’t fit through the front door.

Elaine calls the shop and throws Wobbly II – Judgement Day. Shop are singularly unhelpful, my personal highlight being when they asked if we had patio doors that we might try to get the sofa through. Oh YES! Because if we had patio doors, we DEFINITELY would have spent the last half-hour MUTILATING our sodding HOUSE to try and FIT THE COCKING THING THROUGH THE BLEEDIN’ FRONT DOOR, wouldn’t we?

Meanwhile, Delivery Bloke is on to his boss, who suggests that if we’re willing to risk a bit of scuffing we can try completely unpacking the sofa, chucking a blanket over the upholstered end and see if we can wedge it through the door. Given the huge sofa-shaped gap in the front room, and the fact that in a house with three kids, two dogs and a cat the bloody thing will end up hammered in no time anyway, we’re desperate enough to give this a whirl. And bugger me, if it doesn’t work after the necessary application of brute force and ignorance. Elaine and I collapse in an exhausted heap of stress until four hours later when I head out to go to poker and discover I’ve left my car’s lights on all weekend and flattened the battery.

Aaaaaargh.

After an infrastructure collapse destroyed BMStW 1, and BMStW 2 and 3 exploded, by my reckoning this site’s due to disappear in mysterious circumstances 48 hours after becoming fully operational.

Yeah – the digs may have changed, the nerd references never will.

Anyway, everything from the old site has been consumed by hosting-based apocalypse and so I’ve been forced to take the frankly scary step of getting my own webspace and taking it on myself to get things up and running. One Famous Five-Minute Install of WordPress later (total time: 2.5 hours) and here we all are again.

The furniture’s likely to get shuffled about a bit over the next few days and weeks while I try to make myself at home, but hey - if you’ve had a hole in your life that can only be filled by mediocre humour, half-baked quarter-informed screeds on subjects nobody else on the planet remotely cares about and terrifying levels of self-involvement then it’s your lucky day.

It’s good to be back.