Return of the British S*itcom

I’m not even going to bother writing some anecdote about how I came to see BBC1’s ’Big Top’; which is what this article is about. But it could just as easily be about Miranda, Lab Rats, Home Again, After You’ve Gone or any number of abominable sitcoms that have surfaced over the last few years. In fact, I shouldn’t have titled this article with ‘Return’ as these shows have never gone away. Before I go on to pick the bones out of this rancid turd of a show let me tell you all something: British comedy is wildly overrated. Sure there are some great examples of  British comedy shows; but there is an innumerous list of failed, awful British sitcoms that no one will ever remember.

Big Top is a paradigm example of one of these shows. It’s not really a surprise considering that writer Daniel Peak was weaned into comedy writing with a stint on ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.’ What is surprising is that he got that gig by winning a BBC Comedy New Talent competition. What a load of bullshit. As with many of these dire shitcoms the writer attempts to create an instantly likeable comedy show by emulating almost every aspect of cherished 1970’s sitcoms. Canned-laughter. Innuendo. Hammy over-acting. Gags. The trouble is that most of these shows from back in the seventies are equally awful. There are a few old sitcoms that stand the test of time, some that were ‘of their time’ but cease to be relevant to todays epoch and a large number that were just crap to begin with (Take the Carry On series – it was in essence a long running joke about some guys trying to forcibly molest some women LOL). The redeeming features of the shows that stood the test of time were great characters, elements of drama and well crafted comical scenarios, not laughter tracks and sexual gags. However shows like Big Top overlook these factors; mainly due to the limitations of the creators. They merely create makeshod facsimiles of things that people thought were funny, and lose any of the charm in the process.

Big Top itself is populated by a strangely credible cast; which is one of the most perplexing aspects of it.  Amanda Holden takes the lead role and, no matter how low your opinion is of her (I think she’s a fairly decent comedy actress), she could do a lot better. The rest of the cast: John Thompson; excellent in Cold Feet should know better, Tony Robinson; should stick to his interesting historical programs, Neil from the Office; wtf? I thought he was cool, Stella from Eastenders; was funnier when she was psychologically abusing a young boy, and Bruce MacKinnon; who’s cameo in the Office (Jimmy The Perv) looks to be nothing more than a clean patch on the soiled piece of toilet paper that is his career (anyone see Home Again?) Throughout the episode, the actors rarely gave it their all; as if they knew deep down what they are doing is embarrassing and wrong; like a comedy-actor version of a Bushtucker Trial. However, the awkwardness was not aided by the actors having to pause for a few seconds after every line to allow for the laughter track.

There really is no excuse for dross like this anymore (NB for anyone writing a comedy show – someone contingently having a Russian accent and getting occasional turns of phrase wrong is not in itself funny. It’s not what Borat was about; and if you thought it was, then the real humour probably went way over your head.) There have been a number of really excellent forward-thinking comedies that have raised the bar for everyone over the last decade or two. Even shows like The Mighty Boosh, which I think, personally, suck, have progressive elements; it’s not just a re-hash of old shit. Shows like Big Top are on a whole different level of shit; a much lower level. They are sloppy, cynical, half-arsed and pointless; an affront to anyone who happens to watch them.  Of course there will be people that watch these shows and laugh; but most of these people would have a chortle at Schindler’s List if it was accompanied by a laughter track.

In Jurassic Park they warned Richard Attenborough that bringing back a long-dead species could have terrible, unforseen consequences. The same is true for these types of sitcom; they may have had a place in the world forty years ago, but there is no need to resuscitate that decaying corpse again. Of course in reality the main problem that would face Jurassic Park is that the Dinosaurs would die after a few minutes due to the difference in the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. And so it is with the shitcom; it can’t survive in today’s atmosphere of comedy. No matter how many laughs you record and add to the show it can’t cover up the huge cracks that run through a production that is suffocating on it’s own lack of substance.

Big Top is another poignant reminder that the casket of the ‘Classic British Sitcom’ should remain closed; for it’s own sake and ours.

Click on the image to view an episode of Big Top; but, seriosuly, don't bother.

Animals!

I went out the other night to get some food from round the corner. On my way through the alley that leads to the station I felt a funny sensation. I stopped dead in my tracks, cocked my head to one side and inhaled through my nose. There was something in the chilly evening air; something that told me, ‘winter’s coming,’ in the way a ruddy-nosed farmer bumpkin would as he ushered you in out of the cold. There was something about the scent in the air that just conveyed the notion of seasonal change, not in language, but through a sensation. This must be what sparrows and geese and the likes feel before they decide to migrate south. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt something like that; something primal. I’m pretty sure we experience these things all the time. And in these instinctive instances we have irrefutable evidence, I believe, that we are animals.

It’s not something that you would think about often, probably, but when we talk about ‘animals’ we’re actually talking about ‘other animals.’ If I say ‘I love the taste of the roasted flesh of animals’ I can paraphrase that as ’I love the taste of the roasted flesh of OTHER animals.’ If you strongly disagree with this then, I’m afraid, you are grossly mistaken. You are part of a historical lineage of zoophobics that have driven an ‘us and them’ wedge-shaped misconceived distinction between humans and our zoological brethren.

For some reason, there seems to be a pervading sense of egoism amongst humans that leads great numbers of us to refute our connection to the animal kingdom. It is something that I don’t quite understand; there doesn’t seem to be any motivation to distance ourselves from other animals.

The most common ‘evidence’ that humans are not animals is to do with lavatory etiquette. If you stop the man in the street and tell him he’s an animal he’s most likely to retort:

‘Animal? I’m not a  fucking animal! I don’t go around fucking shitting everywhere do I?’

I apologise for the language of the man on the street. he is essentially drawing the distinction between humans and animals based on the fact that one set politely excrete into a porcelain bowl whilst the other romp around spreading their wanton fecal discharge with apparent glee. I say ‘fact,’ when it’s not actually a fact. If you look at the habitats a number most animals, there will be areas that are designated for defecation. Apart from misguided scatophobia, another common reason is that animals go around having sex all the time, and humans don’t. We have some decency. I can only assume that this desire to distance humans from animals generated from distorted Victorian notions of etiquette that seem to still persist to this day. But, in all seriousness, fuck the Victorians. Just fuck ‘em; that’s something that even the man on the street would agree with.

This zoophobia has been around much longer than the Victorians though. As far back as the ancient Greek civilisation, and probably beyond, humans just could not come to terms with the concept that they were animals. This has lead to centuries of anti-other-animal gip; over the years we have robbed them of souls, pain and feelings  ’real’ intelligence. These are things that people have, not animals.  It seems to be hardwired into the anthropocentric mind of Man that we can’t be animals. It is such a simple fact, but it seems so hard for us to accept.

There may be a reason for this; brain-related, of course. The brain is separated into two hemispheres; the left and the right. The right hemisphere deals with our immediate situation, the present moment and our experiences of that moment. It is this hemisphere that gives us our direct connection to our environment, it puts us right in the middle of our experience. The left hemisphere is concerned with taking information from the present, comparing it to past experiences and creating hypotheses of what will happen in the future. It gives us a notion of ‘ourselves’ as figures that exist in a timescale. It also gives us our ‘inner voice,’ which allows us to deliberate things and make rational decisions.

The difference between humans and almost every other species of animal is that our rational faculties are highly advanced. We can form complex hypotheses about the future and can comprehend concepts that extend past our own immediate life and situation. Because of our reliance on the left hemisphere of our brain, we sometimes take for granted our right hemisphere and everything it brings to our experience. In a fascinating TED talk, neurologist Jill Bolte described her experience of having a stroke, whereby her left hemisphere shut down faculty by faculty. She describes a great euphoria she experienced as she was left in the power of her right hemisphere, an extremely powerful, primal feeling. She also lamented the fact that we can choose to indulge our right hemispheres and experience these things, but we choose not to.

Aristotle once said something along the lines of; if you take the animals that appear most wretched to our senses, upon closer study you will find more similarities between them and yourself than dissimilarities. This is a particularly insightful observation, made thousands of years ago; many people distance themselves from animals because they look at how different they are, rather than the ways in which they are similar. In those moments where you sense something, or have a deep desire for it; those moments where you feel the seasons changing or become alert to a distant danger; those moments you share with a whole host of other animals. I assume that those moments are brought about due to the right hemispheres of our brains, the side that Dr. Jill Bolte implored us to reconnect with. And I think that’s a decent plea, sometimes you can derive a real nice feeling from just leaving the left side of your brain and immersing yourself in your experience. Moreover, these are experiences you can share with most of the other animals around you, in one way or another.

So perhaps the zoophobes out there are just victims of the left-hand side of their brains. We see ourselves as being purely rational identities, with a context and a place on a timeline but we cannot see this in other animals. Therefore we assume that there must be some decisive degree of separation between us. But if you deny your animal nature, and you neglect all the things that we have in common with other animals you could be missing out on a whole array of great experiences.

So come on. Admit it. Admit that you are an animal. It doesn’t mean that you have to run around, naked, defecating willy-nilly. That’s a choice we all have to make for ourselves.

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They Say Romance Is Dead.

Last night I was doing a bit of research for a forthcoming article about the so-called ’science’ of picking up women and I came across a particularly horrid piece of work entitled ‘The Truth About Women.’ Published by an anonymous author, the purpose of the piece is to give the (male) reader an insight into the inner psychology of women. Sounds harmless enough; but as it unfolded it appeared more and more like an extract from the sex-offenders manifesto; a series of tricks you can deploy to force yourself onto the mentally inferior inhabitants of planet woman. I’m going to give you a choice selection of his wisdom, but if you want to read the full article please click the image below.

The Truth About Women - by this guy (probably)

I will quote from the original text using a green/brown colour; the colour of raw sewage, as I think it’s fitting. He begins by  pointing out:

…that I am not a misogynist…I love women. But I AM a sexist, in the sense that I believe women are vastly different than men and, according to the standards that men hold for other men, women are inferior as well.

I was willing to take him on his word over the whole misogynist thing; but then I found this analogy: (NB the dog represents the woman and the steak represents sexual activity)

Look, would you leave your dog alone with a steak? You can’t hate the dog for doing what’s in its nature. You can’t trust a dog, BUT you can trust a dog to BE a dog.

Yeah… so, OK, he is actually a misogynist; but I thought he said he ‘loved’ women?

Let me point out right now that my Modus Operandi doesn’t change in the slightest if she single or if she has a boyfriend or husband. I just do my normal routine and I fuck her.

Ah, when he said that he loved women he meant that he loves to have sex with women. That’s not the same thing. I love it when I get some sweet palm action from my hand, but I wouldn’t argue that my hand should be treated with the same respect as a person. Essentially women are just hands to this guy. Hands with breasts and vaginas. And mouths. And hands.

I have slept with over 200 women in my life. I am sleeping with 5 different women right now. They are all normal, healthy, well-adjusted, good-looking (8+ on the looks scale) professional women.

He reels out this little gem near the beginning, which works because it is proof that his special tactics work on women; otherwise how would he have slept with so many women? I also have to give him credit for his multitasking skills; As he’s writing this article ’right now’ he’s in the middle of a six-way orgy. That’s dedication. If I was having sex with five women I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. If I was having sex with one woman I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. In fact, even if I got the urge to hand-jive I’d probably stop writing for a minute to open up a new tab. I guess he’s just a more dedicated writer than me.

But a small group of men get laid ALL THE TIME, and fuck LOTS AND LOTS of women! It’s evolution at work.

That’s a direct quotation from The Origin Of Species.

He then gets down to the meat of his article; his tips for us ‘loser guys’ who spend ‘hundreds / thousands of dollars on whores without getting any play.’ His tone is so cold and stern it makes his advice seem like a checklist for a date-rapist.

* Don’t be sexually judgemental in any way. A woman’s worst fear is to be perceived as a slut. She will suck your toes and take it in the ass if she thinks you don’t view her poorly for it (and she knows her friends won’t find out.)

Although it always helps to bring out a knife to encourage her, just in case her worst fear is actually being murdered or something silly like that.

* DON’T TRY TO IMPRESS HER IN ANY WAY. Don’t show off. Don’t talk about accomplishments or possessions. As soon as she perceives that you are trying to prove yourself to her, she loses all interest.

No shit. By ridding himself of any redeeming features he has this aspect down to a tee. I don’t think impressing women is something this fellow will ever have to worry about.

*She will start asking you lots of questions… This is usually the time when I throw in a few fake vulnerabilities, like pretending I’m shy or insecure about something. I know it’s fucked up but women need to see that there are at least a few small holes where they can sink their hooks in you. They get uneasy if you are too perfect.

Fake vulnerabilities; like how you are terrified of social connection, or how you came close to shooting up your school when you were a kid, or how the smell of blood really gets your juices flowing or how you still resent your mother for walking out on you as a kid. Maybe then you can do some fake crying too, and a little fake screaming. Yeah, fake.

* BELIEVE YOUR OWN BULLSHIT. Chicks do not look at your excuses and try to see if they are bullshit or not… because that is the logical thing to do, and chicks are not logical.

His penultimate point. And probably the most illuminating. This guy might have started believing his own bullshit when trying to talk to women, but somewhere along the line it has spread to his whole life, or what he thinks his whole life is. After reading the first few paragraphs i thought it might be funny, but it really isn’t. This guy is a genuine dickhead; reduced to writing what is essentially fantasy erotica without the graphic details. The things he believes about women contain as much truth as the things he believes about his life.

Anyway, in the next couple of weeks I’ll be writing an article on the whole world of the ‘pick up artist,’ which will elaborate on some of this shit you have witnessed today. As for now; I’ve got a date with seventeen soon-to-be ex-virgins, rated 9+ in looks, followed by a trip to America where I will convince Michelle Obama to cheat on her husband  by manipulating her inferior dumb-chick brain. God I love women.

Surreality.TV

Those of you with Sky TV at your disposal, I’m sure, will sympathise with my plight. Despite having hundreds of channels to choose between; at any one time I find it hard to find a program I actually want to watch. Of an evening I can spend hours watching the Channel Selection screen just scroll by. At these times it is the mainstream television channels that I feel letdown by. Over the past year this disillusionment with mainstream television has forced me into a dark corner of the televised entertainment universe; a corner far from the comfort of Top Gear repeats on Dave (111.) My telly time is now spent trawling the epic line of forgotten channels that stretches from 580 – 996. It is a murky sprawl, populated by disfigured husks of television programs, stripped bare. The religion, shopping, gambling, chat and adult channels all fall into this makeshod collective; haunting the latter end of your television guide. It can be a disturbing place to be; but it can be a hard place to leave.  These channels can be easily dismissed by the BBC-watching tourist that punched in the wrong channel on the remote; but, for me, there are more to these channels than meets the eye. As a collective I believe these channels are the true reality TV.

Reality TV as we know it today does not actually represent reality; it is merely a tag attributed to any program that the makers do not admit to scripting. What aspect, exactly, of watching a micro-celebrity quaff down a punnet of stinkbugs in a jungle is meant to represent reality? Instead of reality, all we are served is a relentless stream of absurd scenarios that may or may not be centred around people who, until agreeing to do the show, led somewhat normal lives. This is fantasy of the highest order, make no mistake. The TV that represents true reality is found in the tainted section of digital television.

Just another normal day from my normal life

These forbidden channels depict reality by representing what it is to be person in this society at exactly this point in time. They display a range of truly human elements common to all of us: greed, desperation, loneliness, desire, resilience, the list could go on. Let me get one thing clear; these channels are not entertaining, not in the least. But they are somehow hypnotically engaging. The mainstream channels bring us artistic representations of what real life is; but these are fantastical, romanticised. True reality TV shows us what our society is; stripped to the bone; a mirror of our own lives. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that all of these channels were created by Lars Von Trier as part of another pretentious project to encapsulate pure, unadulterated ‘real life.’

The capacity that these channels have for mirroring reality comes from their reliance on real people. On one side you have the channel; populated by real people whose one job is to engage with other real people on the other side of the screen. There are no real stories to be found; but there are plenty of characters. Much like life you are presented with an unrelenting stream of seemingly mundane encounters with people that, when you look back on it, seem to couch some kind of significance or meaning.

It is the population of these real-people characters that convey the true aspects of our lives as people in this epoch:

(201) The Unexplained Channel – The slight look of guilt in a fat, bearded psychic’s eyes as his caller breaks down on air upon discussing her late husband; the look of a man who knows he is a fraud, but had always assumed his lies were harmless.

(878) Chatbox - The defeat in the voice of a middle-aged woman, pleading for a genuine man to engage her in conversation; it is an expensive call she has made many times.

(646) Pitch TV – The shared appreciation of absurdity between the telesalesman and the viewer as he tries his best to convince the world that the ‘Cross-stitch World – Floral Design’ package is the ideal Christmas gift for any family member.

(950) LivexxxBabes – The sheer boredom in the face of the naked young woman as she thrusts her pelvis up and down; counting by minute the money she is making.

(662) JML Active – The worn down plastic veneer of the former gym-instructor that has spent the past two weeks tacitly trying to convince cripplingly self-conscious men that buying a ‘Crunch-o-nator’ is perfectly heterosexual.

 (861) Gala Tv – The Old Woman calling in to the live Quiz Show at 3am; she has nothing left in her life except a vague greed mixed with a vague desire to achieve something in the twilight of her life. She gets the wrong answer; again. Never in her last days will she win that prize money; and even if she did she would have no use for it – it is merely a vehicle to while away the last few hundred hours of her existence.

One of the special powers of these channels is that they, as soon as start watching, transform you into one of the characters on their sparse stage. You can play many parts: the consumer, the lonesome gambler, the serial masturbator. However the part that is most usually played is the sneering cynic, laughing at the pathetic people on display; oblivious to the fact that these people’s lives are your life. The stowaway on a sinking ship, sniggering at the impending deaths of those around you as the icy water creeps slowly up your neck. lol.

But this all seems a bit dark, a bit bleak; and life isn’t all that grim, right? Right. Mainly these channels are just boring; like all the parts of your life you can’t remember anymore. Only taken as a whole do they have any real significance. And whilst they do show up some of the uglier, troublesome sides of life, they also show the resilience of people. Amongst these brash, hokey sets, unsellable garbage and white-hot studio lights there are a bunch of people who, like those of us on the other side of the screen, are just trying to get by in the face of it all. Whether it be by selling shit you don’t believe in, shaking your ass in front of a camera, searching a chat room for someone who’ll hold you or just sneering at the plight of others; we all want something that makes our lives that little bit better, if only for a fleeting moment.

So you can keep your Family Fortunes and your immaculately crafted nature documentaries; enjoy them, I pray. But when you sit steeped in the haze of fantasy and romance; I’ll be here: sprawled out on my sofa, basking in the bare light of QVC and Babestation. The light of true reality. And if you ever see me there you might well think to yourself:

‘He’s experiencing life to the fullest - maybe I should too.’

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Spookerstition!

The sun rose up this morning to bring to an end another Halloween. Drunken monsters across the land staggered like zombies back to the comfort of their abodes, vomiting along the way; whilst little costumed kids sat at home in the midst of a pile of freshly acquired confectionary, pushing their diabetes dial up to eleven. Same as it ever was. This year I stayed at home and went to bed before eleven, resisting the temptation to once again dress up as a skagged-up Anna Nicole-Smith, post OD. The whole evening passed me by, but it did give me a chance to reflect on the superstition and folklore that underpins the Hallowed Eve.

 Nowadays that superstition surrounding the dead is manifested in the dressing-up as a famous monster from folklore. A large number of people will dress up as ghosts, witches, zombies, werewolves and vampires. Many others will don green face paint, stick bolts in their neck and claim that they are a ‘Frankenstein’ when really they mean they are ‘Frankenstein’s Monster.’ Movie theatres bombard us with classic horror movies and shops spew out ’spooky’ promotions; mainly sweet promotions that, in the true spirit of Halloween, push children towards an early grave. In the midst of all this commercialisation and fun, no one has time to think about the questions that were originally posed by Halloween. Questions about mortality, re-birth and mysticism. Does this mean that people have simply outgrown ye-olde folklore and superstition? Far from it. It seems that there is a vein of half-baked superstition bullscat that transcends Halloween hoodoo.

 I’m not going to talk about people who believe in werewolves and zombies because they are too few and too far gone to save. I’m not even going to shoot down people who sharpen their canines, wear leather trenchoats and drink some amounts of human blood to prove that vampires exist; I’ll just leave them to masturbate over those vampire books that were written by that Mormon woman to promote Christian abstinence propaganda. The superstitions I’m going to look at are commonly held in this society and stem from the notion that you can, somehow, survive the death of your body.

Ghosts. You wouldn’t believe how many people believe in ghosts. The idea is that when you die you, after becoming a metaphysical entity, can get trapped in the physical dimension and end up haunting various places. The idea would be a lot more consistent if ghosts had no effect of the physical world; but, of course, if they didn’t then no one would ever have ’seen or ‘heard’ or ‘felt the presence’ of a ghost. I don’t know what’s more amazing; the fact that metaphysical entities can have an effect on the physical world or, given that ability, ghosts only seem to want to make occasional noises or flashes of light.

If I were a ghost I’d want to get to a research lab straight away and tell a scientist to analyse me. Instead, it seems that most of our ghostly pals seem to want to hang around in dungeons and cellars, emulating the noises of small fragments of stone falling from decrepit masonry; what a bunch of jokers. OK, so some ghosts are better than that. They can talk to people, and you can actually see them. Except no two people have actually seen the same ghost at the same time, nor managed to capture a believable image on camera. It’s funny how, upon seeing such an apparition, most people seem to assume that it’s a real ghost rather than a phenomenon caused by an aberration in their incredibly complex brain. If we can learn anything from Scooby Doo it’s this; if you think you’ve seen a ghost, it’s more likely to be a careerist librarian in a mask trying to scare people away from some treasure.

The next area of superstition is closely related to ghosts. It is the belief in spirits, that when you die you become a spirit and you go to a spirit plane and can only talk to psychics. Psychic mediumship is an age-old tradition. It’s a tradition of scamming people, but a tradition nonetheless. Nowadays we have a number of TV psychics, who act as mediums (media?) to their live in-show audiences. Even more people believe in this nonsense. OK, the idea of a soul going to another place is rooted in many world religions. But the notion of being able to contact that soul and communicate with it; no religion endorses this view. Yet the vast majority of people that buy into this, certainly in America, consider themselves Christian. If Christianity were true, there would be a lot more psychics telling people that their relatives were burning in the fires of Hell and held deep-seeded resentment towards them. Instead the spirits are supposedly housed-up in a non-religion-specific ’spirit plane.’

Assume that this is true; we would get a view of an afterlife that went like this: Spirits have to wait until their relatives are on a television show with a psychic medium. They then have to try and contact the medium. Much like ghosts, they appear to be jokers and only offer cryptic clues; many of them only distinguish themselves by a certain letter and only refer to broad topics (‘I’ve I’ve got a B here, maybe a Ben, or Benny, or Burt; he wants to acknowledge ‘the children.’) For one thing, if I were a psychic I’d do more than just chat with a bunch of spirits about their families. You have a direct link to the fucking spirit world. Find out what happens when you die! What is the spirit world like!? Don’t just pass on trivial messages. The inaccuracy and broadness of the psychic just seems to be sloppy. Surely a better psychic could convey more information. It would be like asking for train times at a station and the conductor relying, ‘Hmm yes, I’m getting a train at 12, or 11, or maybe 1, there’s definitely a 1 there, it’s heading to… I’m getting an L, maybe somewhere in London, maybe Luton and it’s telling me to acknowledge NS… which could be non-smoking or no standing…’  Poor craftsmanship.

A lot of people will tell you that it’s the fault of religion that many people have this idea of surviving the death of your body. I don’t think it is. It is a view that is common to nearly all religions in some way, but I think that this is a manifestation of something we feel as human beings. As humans we feel like we have absolute control over everything we do. this feeling, or need even, for control leads us to anthrocentrism; the idea that we, as people, are in some way special within the universe. It is this intuition that has made us ignore our close similarities with animals and justified the propagation of the human race above anything else. We may not literally believe it anymore but, to some extent, humanity is still the centre of the universe. This intuition also leads us to assume that nothing can destroy us. We separate the physical, relating to our bodies, and our minds; assuming that one can exist without the other. I think that this means that many of us attach ourselves to any ‘evidence’ that we can survive death, without question.

Ironically, Halloween is one of the times whereby people are having too much fun to think about their superstitions. I’ve no qualms with religious people believing in an afterlife etc; at least it is part of a self-supporting web of assertions. However, when we get down to ghosts and talking to spirits; it all seems a bit too desperate. There are gross, insurmountable inconsistencies contained within the notion of the two. Even though their existence stems from a deep-rooted desire to enforce the belief that we can transcend death, is their not something beautiful about the truth of the situation: We, as people, cease to exist the moment a certain part of our brain stops receiving oxygen and then the organic matter that used to belong to us is shoved in a box and dumped in the sod where it is slowly ravaged by micro organisms and infested with maggots. Happy Halloween one and all. x

BBC Race Gaffe Hysteria: A Cracker of an Article

Shit is going down at the BBC. It’s been a few weeks since I wrote about the BBC’s intention to push the BBC1 watershed back to 10 o’clock and the nervousness surrounding potentially offensive content being broadcast. Since then the BBC’s jitters have shown no sign of relenting. We’ve have been privy to three ‘race rows’ (NB – I hate this term a great deal; it just serves to hype up what are, in most cases, pretty boring quibbles) in past month concerning BBC programs and it seems the BBC is pretty much going to pieces. Let’s have a look at the three offending gaffes that have got Auntie in a tailspin.

1. Anton Du Beke, a dance instructor on BBC1’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing,’ exclaims during the show rehearsals that his dance partner, Laila Rouass, looks like a ‘Paki’ after undergoing a fake tan session.

2. BBC2 Snooker commentator John Virgo claims that there is a ‘chink’ in the armour of chinese snooker player Ding Junhui who was struggling in the final of the Snooker Grand Prix.

3. The repeat of ‘This Week’ gets pulled after host Andrew Neil referred to black co-host Diane Abbott as ‘the chocolate hobnob of late-night telly,’ following a segment about biscuits.

Certain members of the public, and more worryingly certain members of the BBC, seem to think that the best way to deal with race gaffes is to band each individual instance together and set some single precedent that deals with all of them; their favourite seems to be to shut their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and scream until racism goes away. Whatever happened to taking each case on its own merit or lack thereof? It’s amazing what you can do if you just calm down and think things through.

Let’s take the first instance, the ‘Paki’ incident. Firstly, the gaffe occurred off-camera during a rehearsal, so censorship and broadcasting laws can eff-off straight away. That is not to defend Mr. Du Beke; in fact I think he’s a slimy, probably bigoted nob. You can’t really defend the use of the word ‘Paki,’ there’s no double-meaning to it and it’s steeped in decades of racial hatred and violence. Du Beke released a statement claiming that he ‘was not racist and did not use racist language’ which is funny because he was widely reported as having used racist language, which he admitted. Maybe he forgot, or maybe he meant he is a racist and does use racist language, I guess we’ll never know. Essentially, we are left with a situation that the BBC’s internal policy governing the behaviour of employees have to deal with; the same way any company would deal with an employee overheard using racist language. There was certainly too much hysteria surrounding an incident that no one ever actually saw. Brucie [Forsyth] felt the same; he said everyone should ‘lighten up’ and then babbled on about ‘the good old days’ when people would guffaw at casual racism and there were no such thing as legally recognised marital rape.

The Virgo ‘chink’ case is a tricky one. I did not see it myself, nor could I find any video footage of it. The term he used, ‘chink in the armour,’ is a well-worn phrase, especially within the realm of sports commentary. I really feel, contrary to a select few moral pioneers, that I can’t judge this incident without seeing the context in which it was said. If it was remarked in a sneery, ‘nudge-nudge wink-wink’ manner, then that is inappropriate as it is a blatant attempt to undermine someone on the basis of their race. However, Ding, at the time, was losing his composure; on the brink of defeat. The phrase does seem appropriate to use at such a time in a snooker match, if we disregard race for one second. Until I see the footage I do not have enough information to either condemn or defend Virgo’s behaviour. In this case, the decision should be made by people who have actually seen the footage and should be based on contextual evidence rather than the mere use of the word ‘chink.’

The third case I find the most troubling; mainly because there is actually a clip of the offending ‘gaffe.’ Observe:

I’m sorry you had to witness that foul torrent of racial hatred that got this repeat of ‘This Week’ pulled. That was sarcastic, for the record. Firstly, the link came after a segment on biscuits hence the slightly grandpapa-ish transition to the co-hosts; that gives us a bit of context. Secondly, you’d have to have the mindset of a racist in the first place to instantly infer race from someone using the term chocolate. Thirdly, why is no one up in arms about Michael Portillo being compared to a custard cream? That’s right; cream. The white confectionary filling. With custard, no less. Yellow custard; a definite swipe at Portillo’s hispanic heritage. How did no one spot this three-pronged racist assault? Perhaps because it didn’t exist. Despite this, you can be sure there are few morons out there that believe the appearance of the BNP on Question Time and the comparison of a black woman to a chocolate hobnob within the same week is more than mere coincidence.

I hate the term ‘PC gone mad’ as much as I hate the term ‘race row.’ Political Correctness is a set of attitudes and judgements; incapable of succumbing to insanity. It’s people that have gone mad; and I think they truly have. As I said in my last BBC article; the problem is not that there are fanatical censorship nuts (there have and always will be), the problem is that the BBC are yielding to these lunatics. I have a horrific vision of a future where televised sport is cancelled after a commentator describes a football match between two predominantly white teams as ‘ a cracker of a game.’ But this isn’t ‘A Christmas Carol’; the BBC are giving me no sign that this dystopian imagewill be erased.

I am not condoning the broadcasting inappropriate, racist language; far from it. However, if we impose a ban on certain ‘double-meaning’ phrases in certain circumstances then we are limiting ourselves. Perhaps the best way that we could describe the winter weather conditions in Kyoto is ‘nippy.’ Perhaps the most accurate description of a group of loud, white geese is ‘honky.’ If these descriptions are clearly not racially charged; why should our expression be limited. With each individual incident we should take a deep breath and judge it within its own context. If the BBC sets precedents that govern over every single incident then it strides with even more force towards the seemingly inevitable censorship on television’s horizon.

The One With The BNP

My nerves were on edge all day. I fidgeted relentlessly. As I walked the streets, trying to run down the hours, I acknowledged knowing looks in the eyes of strangers. They felt the same. We all had one eye on the clock. Questions floated by on the high street; ‘What time is it on?’ ‘Where’s it being filmed?’ Ten thirty-five. London. By nine the excitement was palpable. This was the biggest thing to go down in British politics since… ever. The greatest heavyweight bout of recent times; who would come out on top? In the red corner; the racists, in the blue corner; the liberals and the man in the middle, holding the two snarling dogs apart; David motherfucking Dimbleby. The time came. We held our breath. It’s time. It’s ‘Question Time.’

The run up to the BNP’s first ever appearance on BBCs ‘Question Time’ was riddled with debate and conjecture. The main bone of contention was whether the far-right party should be given the platform to speak on such a reputable political show. Many people argued that by giving the Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, this platform it would legitimise the policies of a party that many consider to preach racism and hatred. Ken Livingstone argued that when staunch racist members of the BNP see their leader preach from such a high position it will spur on more violent race-crimes, especially against the muslim community. Conversely, many said that the BBC must allow Griffin to speak to maintain their political impartiality; free speech was on the line. Indeed, PM Gordon Brown claimed that the BNP would be exposed for what they truly are when Griffin preached his hatred on the BBC. All this hype-talk really got me going; whether it was tacky rating-chasing or not, there was no way I was going to miss it.

You could be forgiven for thinking that last night’s Question Time was just going to be one big anti-racism gang-bang  against Nick Griffin; he was going be chewed up and spat out with his ringpiece in tatters. In truth it wasn’t the glorious demolition that most people had tuned in to see; mainly because of Griffin’s persistent pretences of moderation but also because of the evasiveness of most of the panel which was populated by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, the Conservative shadow minister Baroness Warsi, Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne and playwright Bonnie Greer.

The show began in a rather raucous fashion which made me a tad uneasy. It was the pecking-party bloodbath we had all anticipated. I can’t really remember the opening exchanges too well, as I recall it was essentially a number of audience members shouting ‘Racism Sucks!’ and being applauded. Griffin denied most of the charges brought against him, including the one of racism, and laughed along to the majority of jokes that were made against him. He probably thought it would make him seem like a laid back guy, but it appeared more like the laughter of a victimised schoolboy chubster that pre-emptively calls himself fatso to try and fit in with his aggressors. It was awkward to say the least.

Jack Straw did his best to fight naff rhetoric with naff rhetoric by harking back to the good ol’ World Wars and Bulldog Churchill before Griffin gave a nod to his extremist followers by effectively calling Straw’s Grandad a pussy. Oh snap!

It was an opening exchange that was more akin to an exploitation chat show than Question time. I half expected a muslim woman to burst onto stage claiming she had a text message that proved Nick Griffin had fathered twins with her; though, the way Nick was constantly craning over Bonnie Greer, it seemed more likely that he would make out with the african-american playwright as a finale, to prove he wasn’t racist. Indeed, the first fifteen minutes would have been better suited to Jeremy Kyle’s moralistic ranting than Dimbleby’s softly-softly tutting.

In truth, Dimbleby was a fine host, and came across better than any of the panel. The most enjoyable moments were watching Griffin squirm as Dimbleby reeled out numerous incriminating quotations against him. Bizarrely, though, it seemed that Dimbleby had been paid a sum of money to advertise video-sharing website YouTube. Almost a quarter of his input was dedicated to referencing YouTube videos or mentioning Twitter. I thought he might end the show by posting a link to his most recent Facebook album; but he didn’t.

After the turbulent opening, the show gained a more sustainable pace. Topics were discussed in full, and there was a lot less jeering and cheering. Griffin did his best to present himself as ‘the nice guy’ and even claimed he had revised his views on the Holocaust ‘cover up.’ One smarmy audience member addressed him as Dick Griffin by doing a pretend slip-of-the tongue (LOL). He, as a non-white Brit, challenged Griffin as to where he would be sent if the BNP got into power to which Griffin responded that he could stay. That was pretty charitable, I thought, as I wouldn’t really miss anyone that lowers the tone of serious political debate with  peurile snark. Griffin’s most laughable moments came towards the end of the show. Firstly he lamented the fact that tours of the Lake District had been ceased due to the fact that only white people were attending (!!? – I suppose non-white immigrants are too busy taking our women and jobs to appreciate the scenic beauty of Lake Windermere.) His second oddball remark was that ”””’’some people”””’ find ‘the sight of two grown men kissing very “creepy.”‘ Creepy! Like an abandoned farmhouse at nightfall. Note how he specifically mentions ‘grown men.’ Maybe he doesn’t think two underage boys kissing is creepy. Maybe he thinks it’s hot (Ad Hominem.)

The most notable aspect of Griffin, above and beyond whatever perverse ideologies he harbours, is that he is undoubtedly a politician. His evasiveness, deceptiveness, his sneer, his phillibustering and his facade were equally matched by Jack Straw as he flailed like a turbot on a fishing line to avoid admitting that Labour’s immigration policy had contributed to the disillusion of the white working class; the same disillusion that is preyed upon by the BNP. Barroness Warsi also slipped from her moral high ground as she refused to tackle claims that she was outspoken against civil partnerships; maybe she too finds gay men creepy. Out of the politicians, Chris Huhne came off the best. Then again, he didn’t have any awkward points to evade; a luxury of being a Lib Dem panelist. He did, weirdly, seem to advocate a militant authoritarian stance on border control at one point when far-right and liberal combined to double-team Labour’s immigration policy. Bonnie Greer responded calmly and concisely to begin with, and dealt with Griffin well. However, by the end her interjections became more tangential and long-winded and she also said something about Neanderthals that I think was probably historically inaccurate. I couldn’t help feel that she was brought in mainly to bring some sass to a notoriously stuffy, white middle class affair (cf. Reginald D. Hunter’s introduction to ’Have I Got News For You.’) 

Right at the end of question Time, the show got all ‘Meta’ by asking whether that very show had been ‘an early Christmas present’ for the BNP; essentially the debate that was raging in the run up to the show. The response was unanimous; the BNP had the right to speak on such a platform. Griffin maintained that the BBC, though a disgraceful arm of the militant liberals, had done what was right by its constitution. I agree (not about the militant liberal thing.) 

At the end of it all, the BNP Question Time showdown probably didn’t have the effect that either the liberals or the far-right was hoping for. The BBC came out of it well; I’m sure the ratings went through the roof. However, I think both sides were preaching to the converted. Most people recognise that the moderate facade of the modern BNP is a sham and covers up disturbing pervasive racism, sexism and homophobia. Fans of the BNP won’t have been dissuaded from their association based on a grilling from some liberal Londonders. Question Time will not have changed anyone’s views, so in terms of nullifying or promoting the BNP, it was kind of pointless. But it had to be done. Free speech was the true winner yesterday.

It can only be a dangerous thing to deny far-right parties a platform; it would surely drive them underground and justify the feeling of victimisation that the BNP is founded on. After all, they have two MEP seats, in a way they have earnt their platform. Most people may find their views, policies and tactics abhorrent but denying them a voice is just an example of silencing a minority. I like to believe that a combination of free-speech and an informed public will lead to the democratic marginalisation of extremist parties. Every time Nick Griffin goes on a show like Question Time he has to pander to the floating voters by appearing far more liberal than he truly is. Every time he tells a black man he would let him stay in the UK in the BNP were in power, there will be one or two militant extremists sitting at home thinking ‘is he really just lying to them, or does he mean it?’  With every step towards enticing a moderate, expansive support he will alienate some extremists. These extremists are the heart of the BNP, fuelling their radical right-wing, probably fascist policies. I hope, if this continues, he might end up in a farcical situation whereby he has accidentally double booked meals with both the liberal media and the extremist backbone of the BNP, at the same restraunt. He will have to run between both parties telling them what they want to hear. He tells the BNP hardcore that he was lying about not deporting non-white Brits. He then says he needs the toilet; running across the restraunt he removes his Nazi attire and sports a green cardigan as he sits with his BBC chums, telling them about how more of his worldviews are changing. At the end of all this running around, changing guises, spinning lies, switching roles he’ll end up dazed, half-naked, half-clad in an S.S outfit with a gay skinhead liberal wife, telling the BBC how the BNP liberal media won’t let indigenous mulsim-Brits pull up the drawbridge. Basically he’ll be fucked.

That’s what I hope will happen anyway. We must continue to allow the BNP to have a platform to speak. If we keep informed of their contrived moderation-speil we can catch them out when they do reveal their true policies and alliances. At the moment Nick Giffin is acting out a paper-thin facade that he will not be able to maintain. If the BNP is pushed underground there is no need for the facade and we’ll be left with a bitter nucleus of violent extremists. So let’s keep speech free, let’s debate with people we abhor and let us exercise our right to condemn those views we find most repellent. If we do this then maybe in a few years Nick Griffin will have a lot more time on his hands to take those Lake District walks that he so enjoys.

Cover Stories

There are many things in life that I can’t help finding funny. A number of these things I shouldn’t really find funny; and I’m not talking here about making jokes about recent world tragedies. The things I am talking about are things that really shouldn’t make me laugh as much as they do. I can’t explain why they do. One of those things is amateur bands doing terrible covers of well-known songs.

I said just then that I couldn’t explain why I find these things funny but I’ll give it a shot anyway. There are so many elements to terrible covers that contribute to their humour value. Firstly, with any cover, the band have the huge task of making an already popular song their own. A cover only works well if their is an original slant on the existing track. You have to make it so that people, when they hear the title of the track, forget the original artist. Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah; ’nuff said. Really bad covers of songs just end up as an insult to the original, which is pretty funny if the group in question happen to be a bunch of innocent kids. The youth of the cover band is another humour factor. You end up with a bunch of kids on stage, trying really hard to play one of their favourite songs and an audience of people thinking ‘How dare you insult us this way!’ Disproportionate anger directed at children is something that always makes me titter. The main source of laughter is the music itself; for a really bad cover you want every instrument out of tune and sync. You have to be able to question who sanctioned the band playing at whatever event it is.

However, these are just words; the proof of the pudding is in the watching of YouTube videos capturing horriffic cover songs being played live. I have chosen my three favourite covers; songs that are so bad that I have actually grown to love them. Enjoy.

Iron Man Kiddies’ Cover

The start is promising, I’ll give them that. However it soon descends into something unholy. I love the nonchelant drummer, he just plays whatever the hell he wants whenever the hell he wants. Some might say that he’s a rubbish drummer but I think he’s busting out complex algo-rhythms (get it) just to fuck with his little guitar buddies. I can’t knock ‘em though; all I did at that age was eat and cry, these kids have more balls and musical talent than I probably will ever have.

The Least Epic Final Countdown Ever

This band don’t have the same excuse of youth. Whatever you think of Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ it is a pretty epic song; something which the band have underplayed on this cover. The main keyboard hook has been reduced to a tinny twiddle that sounds like a MIDI-piccolo. The guitar is in full-metal mode which makes one note indistinguishable from the rest. Indeed the only thing epic about the cover is the horriffic but booming tuneless vocals. I think his vocals would only be appropriate if it were actually the countdown to the apocalypse; they would certainly convey the relevant dread for the situation. Saying that, it might well be filmed during  an apocalypse because there ain’t nobody around watching them. At least the drummer was alright.

Smells Like Teen Performance Of Nirvana

This is my favourite cover of all time; no joke. I can’t even say anyhting bad about it. These young rockers have captured the quintessential essence of grunge. The music is about making people feel uncomfortable; forced down the audience’s throat; the guitarist gives up on a number of occassions, he can’t be bothered – probably a nihilist. The most striking thing about the piece is the performance of the frontwoman, wow. She don’t give a shit. This could well be a video of a future world-beating noise rock band. And the guitarist adds a little swing solo. Awesome.

There you have it. Though they do make me laugh, there is something noble about a terrible cover. I applaud the bomast of these performances. There’s nothing worse than a bland cover version, which is why I like these guys more than Mark Ronson. In conclusion: Mark Ronson sucks.

Sextraneous Coinage

I can’t be the only person that’s getting frustrated with this societies obsession with sex. I don’t mind people being sexually obsessed; but when it spills over into everyday language I can’t help but wonder, ‘what’s the point?’ Over the past few years there has been a trend within mainstream media to coin new sex-based terms by attaching the prefix ’sex’ to words that usually begin with ‘ex.’ I can understand the rush of being the first person to perform this linguistic feat, but for it to seep into the mainstream;  just… how? This portmanteua-a-go-go has spawned many now commonly used phrases.

Sexpert is the main one that is banded around. A sexual expert, no less. For one thing; sexual expert sounds much more authentic than sexpert. Sexpert sounds like ’sex spurt’ which just conjures up images of ejaculation on an almost volcanic scale. Nasty. Another one is ’sexercise;’ the exercise you get whilst having sex. It’s all well and good, but why divide exercise into sub-categories in the first place? and since we have; where are all the other categories: flexercise – the exercise you get from flexing, spexercise – the exercise you get from putting on your glasses, andrexercise – the workout you get from wiping your arse. If you don’t want those, don’t have sexercise. Another one is ’sexploitation,’ exploiting someone for/through sex. Why have a term which, I assume, is supposed to be raunchier than the orginal; for acts which encompass grooming, forcible intercourse and involuntary prostitution!

However, I know I can’t turn back this tide of linguistic amor like some puritan, sex-hating King Knut. So I figured, if we already have these pointless word combinations, why don’t I coin more; just so I can have the kudos if they ever filter into the mainstream:

Sextravagance - the  initiation of unnecessarily complicated sexual acts or positions with the intent of showing off to a partner/ watching voyeur.

Sexpletive - the involuntary utterance of an expletive during sex. (NB does not count from remarks such as ‘this is shit awful.)

Sexpectation - The assumption that a person will sleep with you based on insufficient evidence.

Sexorcism - The cleansing of a possessed person’s (usually child’s) soul through the act of penetration. (Insert Catholic Priest joke here.)

Sexhonerration - The vindication of someone that was illegitimately declared as a ‘bad lay.’

Sexaggeration – A common practice amongst males whereby the purpotraitor greatly exaggerates his sexual prowess in order to woo a mate.

Shaggregate - The aggregated total number of sexual partners that a person has had to date.

There you go. Feel free to take these new, pointless words forth. I personally look forward to the impending day where each sentence we speak is reduced to one unique combination of parts of words that were present in the original sentence. That’lbefucbrilliawon’it?

the sun goes down on a little Sexcursion. Get it!?

Emoticons: The Last Stand Against Virtual Aprosodia

Let’s begin with a brief experiment, it involves two stages. Stage 1: take out your mobile telephone. Stage 2: open up your message inbox and check your last ten messages. Chances are, hidden in amongst these brief, probably mundane pieces of text you will find a colon followed by the right-hand side of a parenthesis. Chances are you will recognise this as a smile. This is the most basic example of an emoticon; in essence a rudimentary symbol that represents a facial embodiment of an emotion. Chances are you will have paid no mind to these symbols, passing them off as trivial or frivolous. You were wrong to do so. During the course of this article I will be attempting to prove to you that emoticons are crucial tools in combating the virtual aprosodia generated by faceless, voiceless communication.

 
Emoticon is a portmanteau of the words ‘emotion’ and ‘icon.’  The emoticon is a representation of a facial expression; added to plain text  to symbolise the mood of the author. The first recorded internet emoticon was included in a proposal by Scott Falham in 1982. The earlier emoticons were constructed from punctuation marks. The smile and from represented by : ) and : ( respectively form a simple image of an expression with the colon representing the eyes and the bracket representing the mouth. Although these simple emoticons are still widely used today, there are now hundreds of increasingly varied emotional representations at the disposal of every Blogger, Facebooker and Twit. With the rise of MSN Messenger in the mid-nineties came a new wave of more detailed emoticons; tiny .gif  pictoral images that could be inserted into text to represent the key members of the human emotional spectrum. The popularity of these images created an unstoppable upsurge of new emoticons that became a micro-industry in its own right. Internet users can now purchase new bundles of animated, hi-definition, three dimensional graphic representations of emotions. If you list every emotion, whether or not you include complex states such as Schadenfreude, the number of emoticons vastly outweighs the number of  emotions. It is not surprising then to discover that most of these new emoticons are not even based on emotions at all. In the circles I move around, ‘goat-face,’ ‘hippie,’  ‘butt-head’ and ‘wang’ are not commonly instantiated emotional states.

 
Of course, here I’m being purposefully facetious; nowadays most emoticons are merely decoration; pictures and animation to liven up text-based conversation, primarily aimed at teenagers. And therein lies the problem for emoticons, they are seen as childish, annoying. The property of blogging net-geeks that like to playfully suffix nouns with –age (ergh). The drinkers of ‘beerskis’ and pilots of ROFLcopters. Emoticons have become banded up in the universe of quirky youngsters, a universe which is of no special interest to people that don’t know how to pronounce ‘pwn’ correctly. But emoticons do have a special place of interest, a special function, for anybody that communicates with people in text form. Before we look at what this function is, let us look at what it saves us from.

 
Aprosodia is ‘an acquired or developmental condition marked by an impaired ability to comprehend or generate the emotion conveyed in spoken language.’ It prevents the victim from understanding the emotional content of words that they hear. It is similar to the condition aphasia, which prevents the sufferer from comprehending the content of language; for aphasiacs the audible or written words have no attached meaning, and sentences do not relate to propositions; formal language is essentially meaningless to the aphasiac. Conversely, formal language is the only part of verbal communication that has meaning for the aprosodiac, with the complex nuances of tonality, feeling and emotion absent. Imagine you have an aprosodiac friend that spills the salt at a mealtime. You chuckle and utter, ‘you idiot’ in a wholly non-malevolent manner. Your friend will not pick up on the most important information you are giving her; the fact that you find the scenario funny and charming. They will only register the formal information, that you are picking her out as an idiot. However, if the friend in question were to be an aphasiac, she would understand the crucial information, without actually comprehending the meaning of the statement. As Dr. Sacks recalls in his terrific The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, it is incredibly hard to recognise that a person has aphasia. Many aphasiacs appear to understand the propositions that they are given in conversations. Often, the only time they are caught out is when they are presented with written words, out of context. This suggests that our full understanding of language requires a full comprehension of tone and context and, on occasion, this understanding may be reached without the faculty to comprehend linguistic entities.

 
So how does this apply to our emoticons? Well, when we use emoticons we are adding them to written, most often typed, text; such as text messages or online chat messages. The purpose of these messages is to communicate conversationally as we do when we are talking face to face or on the telephone. However, in these circumstances we have a face and/or a voice to communicate to us the tonal/emotional information; the information that cannot be comprehended by aprosodiacs. When we translate this form of communication to text it becomes somehow ‘disembodied.’ We are essentially seeing the content of communication as an aprosodiac would.

 
Take this scenario. You receive a text message from a partner reading, ‘when are you coming home?’ The meaning of this question is immediately apparent to us, yet after we have comprehended this our mind must set to work ascertaining the likely tone of the message. Is it a nagging comment? Is it a cute reminder that your partner misses you? Have you forgotten a prior engagement you were due to attend at home? Have you been playing warhammer in a Korean internet cafe for four days straight? Certainly from my own experience, these are the questions that I end up asking, sending my brain into a brief spell of disarray. The reason you  feel this way is because your brain tries to compensate for the lack of emotional information presented by the disembodied text. When you read text, you will probably find you literally hear a voice in your head, adding correct tone and inflexion to the words you are reading. We find it hard to truly understand words if they are not grounded in tone and emotion.

 
Therefore, our emoticons function as guides for our ‘inner voices,’ denoting which tone the sentences should be read with. A smile emoticon at the end of a sentence will enable us to read it with a pleasant, comforting tone; whilst a sad face will load the reading of the statement with a tone of worry or disappointment. Essentially the emoticons save us the hassle of trying to generate a context in our mind; from which we ascertain the probable tone of the message. Without the emoticons, we find ourselves with a glimpse into the confusing world of the aprosodiac.

 
Why then, you may ask, have emoticons not been used in millennia of literature? Why do we not need images to tell us which tone to take sentences in the context of a body of literature. Here, I think, we have to make a distinction between literature and text-based communications. Commonly, successful writers are adept in the art of utilising words. They take years to craft works of literature, gauging which words will correctly convey the appropriate tone, conjure up the most illustrative metaphor etc. When formal language is crafted in such a way, the nature of the words themselves are enough to convey the correct tone, rhythm and emotion.

 
However, when we are conversing through text, we do not have the time to craft our words so carefully. Text-based conversation is about real-time gathering of information in the same way as face-to-face or telephone conversations. We need to be able to reply rapidly, and therefore we need to have the ability to take in the relevant information rapidly. The use of emoticons in depicting the mood of the author allows us to access vital emotional information about the messages we receive almost instantaneously, thus acting as a lubricant-of-sorts for our text-based communications.

 

 Most of this article is based on hypothesis and conjecture; I have not performed any definitive studies nor have I any great body of evidence outside my own experience. But hopefully this article has convinced you not do beat down on those little pictures of facial expressions too much. If there is any truth in what I have proposed then the function of emoticons is to take a load off of our brains; always a good thing.  Moreover, for millions of teenagers; holed-up in dark bedrooms around the globe, emoticons may be the one thing that allows their communication to have any emotional significance until the day that they venture outside and, aprosodia permitting, discover the emotional significance of a genuine embodied smile. Geeks >:-(

 

Is this what you want, you monsters!?