Cold.

So cold.

I forgot to title this. Here is the title.

So I'm writing a book.

Here is the first line:

"‘Hello, and welcome to the News at 10,... oh-three, well, that’s mysterious, but there we are. [...]"

TV and/or 'Why people call it the idiot box'.

This weekend I went home, and I mean home home. Whilst there, I decided that to pass some time I would sit around and watch some TV with my mum. This activity lasted roughly 3 minutes before I genuinely could no longer sit there listening to the arrant idiocy spewing out of the cretins who - somehow - have taken over the visual medium. I didn't realise quite how inane television had become since I'd trotted off to university. Even though I still own a cretin-feeder here in my house, I tend to only use it for the three shows a week I enjoy, and for watching DVD's on (and occasionally tapping some kind of controller-ma-bob).

Yes, I must have missed the memo where 'King of TV' decided that "from henceforth, nothing of any intellectual merit can ever be produced. Unless it's a period drama. Directed by Stephen Poliakoff. Starring Billie Piper." I fairly renounced atheism and boarded the lunatic-train, just so I could ask the human race for redemption from eternal damnation. If any proof of our hellward-bound lifestyle was needed - which I sincerely doubt - then here it is, live and unedited: 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, three-hundred-and-sixty-god-damn-five days a year. I wouldn't have thought it remiss to ask terrestrial television to occasionally include something that wasn't set in the Victorian period; then again, this kind of pseudo-period, woefully-researched dirge is infinitely more enjoyable than anything made by Channel 4 or ITV anymore. When did REALITY (and it genuinely hurts me to say this) TV become such big business? Did something happen whilst I was asleep in '07? Was there some kind of nationwide neurological virus which caused everyone's IQ to drop by thirty points? There needs to be some reasonable explanation for why this kind of visual bollocks appeals to people who - as far as I was aware - aren't or weren't of subnormal intelligence.

Let me flick on my television now, and see where my hundred and forty-odd quid is being pissed.

BBC1: Songs of Praise. Rated 9.9 for... well I haven't a clue to be brutally honest. This is lowest common denominator tripe, tubed directly into people's empathy and guilt brain. I see no other reason why a show of religious singing could garner viewing figures in the millions, when the country's 'church attendance' must rank at around 8 people a week. I've nothing innate against this kind of programming, if there are people to watch it; what I take issue with is that it's 35 minutes of people singing hymns. This week includes "Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending"; yeah, I'm in the mile-high club, too. I genuinely don't understand why religious propaganda gets such a good press, unless, of course, it's working. Heaven help us.

BBC2: Live Tennis. The final: Novak Djokovic vs. Nikolay Davydenko. Presumably after they've finished running around and grunting, they'll both receive prizes for "most stereotypical Russian names. Ever". Or at least they would were I in charge of the ATP (get me). Again, nothing particularly against the showing of live sport. I do take slight issue with the fact that sport that has seemingly nothing to do with us gets poured down our throats for hours on end, but when our national football team play in the world-cup we're forced to pay to watch them on satellite. That strikes a discordant note. Then again, I suppose it just fits in with the rest of this abortive conglomeration of stupidity.

ITV (here comes the good stuff): A Touch of Frost. For anyone outside of armchair-suburbia, this show basically features one of our most lauded, and ancient might I add, actors ambling around poorly constructed, not-at-all-believable crime scenes; sporadically stroking his moustache, and making horrendously laughable puns at the expense of unpaid extras. "Pawnbroker Peter Lawson [I kid you not] is shot dead in an armed robbery at his premises and Frost's investigations unearth a tragic family secret." Just before you all suffer heart-attacks at the suspense of this, it gets better. Also, bear in mind, as of this sentence, it is 5.34 in the afternoon: "He is convinced Lawson was killed by one of his children in revenge for years of systematic sexual abuse - but the truth turns out to be even more chilling." Surely it cannot be more chilling than pre-watershed incestuous paedophilia? This kind of moron-baiting should include a "please leave your sanity at the door" caveat. How else are we to believe the narrative inconsistencies, the lamentable acting, the contrived plot? David Jason is fine, but he should really go away now.

BBC1 will have a type-cast slot for him lined up already: "Now on BBC1 a bumbling 'real-life' parody set in a cardboard village starring David Jason as the proverbial doddery old man not really capable of supporting his own hackneyed eccentricities. Billie Piper stars as the daughter who helps him mop up drool. Rated 5 stars."

Channel4 (oh yes, we have made this show out of the bottom of the bucket): Deal or No Deal? I dare'n't spend too much time laying into this laughable piece of crap, because nine-million other people have beaten me to it. I will say a few things, however: This isn't a game-show. Noel Edmonds is wonderful in a sort of 'creepy-uncle' way. It's borderline cult behaviour. It's the best thing on Channel 4 today.

My heartfelt apologies to anyone who didn't understand any of that above, but I assure you it is both accurate and funny... The idea was that this woeful line-up would amply demonstrate just how banal television has become, and how depressingly predictable. It has come to a point where you could watch television without watching television. Or at least you could if the box hadn't ruined your imagination, leaving you utterly incapable of fantastical thought.

I will outline where my problems come and how I suggest we fix these. Then I will briefly recommend the two shows that are worth watching, and that originate from this country, and from these broadcasters (shown above).

The first, and major, qualm that I have is that TV doesn't necessarily need to be educational. I'm not one of these anti-television lobbyists who herald the televisual age as the beginning of the end. If you think that the populace need to 'get their learndings' from the television, you're either completely correct, or a patronising git. We have systems of education for teaching, the last thing you want after working/learning is to be preached to by some pompous-dickhead wearing a floppy cap lecturing on the functions of neurons in the production of pain reactions. Or something. No, I'm not one of these people, I credit myself with more intelligence than that: evidently because I haven't been watching any TV. I believe that TV can be as asinine as it wants, as long as it's bloody interesting. Not just the same ideas reformatted and republished to be consumed by the same god-awful people over and over again. Not anymore will I tolerate Big Brother Series 97; no longer will I drool through 'A touch of Frost: Crime in Spain', and no fucking longer will I be bludgeoned to death by 'Hole in the wall'. If you don't know the third-named, I strongly urge you to youtube it: it's fantastically puerile.

Obviously, as far as 'entertainment' is concerned, there is a certain level of subjectivity. I am a stalwart defender, however, of the thought that subjectivity is not limitless; that you cannot do or be as you please and brush it off as opinion. I could quite easily create a pen where monkeys fling faeces at each other all day, I would also be in my subjective rights to call this entertainment and market it as such; I would not, however, be justified in doing so. Once you start marketing a niche show simply on the basis that 'some people might find this entertaining' you have gone too far.

Reality television - apart from its horrible and unforgivable ballsing of the word - cannot, and will not, ever be called entertainment as long as I live. It is the lowest of the low. It epitomises how lazy and abhorrently boring some people are: that they would rather live vicariously through people they don't know - and people who are less stimulating than they themselves, I might add - than go out into the world and give things a go themselves. The people that go on those shows: good on you. The people that watch them: get out, you're pointless. Fling yourself off a bridge. Here are a few which might help you on your way to hell.

So if TV doesn't necessarily need to be educational, but it quite clearly isn't entertaining, what service does it provide? Well, aside from being a gargantuan drain on the audience's pockets, it does that which the 21st Century lifestyle necessitates: it kills time, and it distracts. This is why I'm perfectly content to not rush the BBC and burn it down for being offensive to my very being. In the so called '24-hour society' that we live in, this kind of mind-numbing distraction is obligatory to the survival of our race. It's as if the fates have destined our race to spin slowly in the centrifugal forces of work and benumbing idiocy. On one side you have the distraction of work and its need for survival, and on the other you have the distraction of the idiot-box and its need for survival. In the middle, crucially, you have that omnipresent urge to commit suicide. I have drawn a Venn diagram to demonstrate how this works, but unfortunately the people who code this site don't have any brains, so I will have to upload it in its link form:

http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss280/nuguns/Venn.jpg

I take affront with the way in which TV conducts itself, however, and why it's 'needed'. I'd like to think - with my wanton idealism - that there are more proactive and beneficial ways of distracting ourselves from the mind-numbing mundaneness of 21st Century living. Naturally, as a profligate optimist, I'd also like to think that people are content enough in their lots to not really need a constant distraction to lure them away from the tempting embraces of suicide. Alas, as an occasional realist, I do acknowledge the need for this, if this is as it is. I do think, however, that there are better ways of stimulating yourself of an evening. Writing, for instance, or having a conversation. Browsing the internet for information (not just updating your shitting Facebook status with something like "nothing on tv. surfing web. lol. not relly. no surfboard. lol"); maybe penning a novel, or darning a quilt, or baking a cake, or reading a book, or watching a movie, or staring listlessly out of the window, or, perish the thought, going the fuck outside.

I am a firm believer in the power of the environment as a healer. If I were ever to qualify as a psychiatrist or general practitioner - ha-ha-ha, can you imagine!? - I would often recommend the use of anti-depressants and exercise concurrently. Call me stupid, but I genuinely believe that just getting out and walking, or going to the shops, or going for a drive into the country, can act as a temporal distraction. Try it, you might be surprised. That's if TV hasn't wilted your bones or something. No, but seriously, you don't even need to go out, I believe that if people just stopped with their incessant tv-watching, and had the occasional conversation with their spouse/friend/child then familial or friendship dynamics would be improved. Not only that, but improved exponentially with the less amount of television consumed. That's what it is. Consumption.

As for how TV conducts itself, well, I feel the previous 2,000 words speak for themselves, really.

Oops. Kinda banged on a little there. I will move swiftly on - and I can move swiftly, because I don't watch a lot of TV ;D! So if TV does its job as it does, and successfully, if immorally and tediously, then what other problem might I have with it? Hmm, let's see:

1) It costs too much money.

2) It's infantile.

3) The people on it are paid too much.

4) It's ubiquitous.

5) It's boring.

Ha, I bet you thought I was going to cover all of these at length. No, even I am not that silly, I realise I've probably battered my one reader down to an eighth of his brain by now, so, hello there, recesses of his mind!

I will simply prod a little at 4): how TV is always there, how TV never goes away, and how TV is that weird feeling you get when you're walking along late at night and feel like someone is watching or following you.

Evidently, the first two are the same, and the third one is just my little joke. Nay, the first two are important, I feel, because it's saddening that it's true. TV truly is the bane of my life, I swear, you cannot get rid of it, however hard you might try.

As a mildly lazy sod, I approve of 'things for convenience'. I like local shops that have obscene open hours: as long as my house doesn't sit beneath the lurid, neon glare of their chav-baiting signs; I like cars which go fast and make a "vrooom" noise, and I like how easy it is to make a three-course meal at home. I wouldn't, however, classify TV as a convenience; a convenience - contemporaneous to our modern-day lifestyle - denotes a survival need made easy. We all need to eat, travel, shop, talk, sing, dance, laugh, etc., we do not, however, need the TV. I know this is grossly over-simplified, has gaping holes in its logic, and makes me sound like a proper bore, but I think the roots of it are germane enough. If something improves the quality of ones life, then perhaps we should praise it; if it merely makes ones life easier, perhaps we should not.

Just before I go away and watch TV (not really), I will just point out the shows I like and why I like them. So here they are, all two of them:

Spooks: A hilariously over-the-top parody of the 'action-show'. Set in Mi5, it charts the weekly terrorist threats to our national security; the beautifully stupid love-lives of the protagonists, and the silly facial expressions the head of Mi5 can pull. It doesn't take itself too seriously as a TV show: main characters are killed off almost weekly in ever-increasingly grotesque ways (the week that lass had her head shoved in a deep-fat friar springs to mind). There's none of that linearity that we've all come to expect from shows; sometimes you genuinely don't know what will happen. Even our top secret agents sometimes fail and bombs go off. All that is known is that the country won't be totally destroyed, because then there'd be no more.

As a side-note, I was so engrossed in this last week that at one point I was literally agape at what I was watching, and I started dribbling. You could easily have shoved three fists down my throat. If you'd wanted to.

Top Gear: Fabulously irreverent buffoonery conducted by three 'should-know-better'-middle-aged men. Looks at cars, drives cars, forces the presenters into ludicrously farcical challenges (such as build your own police car). It's just funny, and doesn't really care what people think of it. It also helps that it is hosted by a man who epitomises the way this country should be: he doesn't care what the public think of him, or his opinions. I may not agree with him, but, by jove, I will defend his right to think it, Sir.

Please. Turn it off. Read a book.

Sleeping.

Why when I go to type "sleeping" in my title box does Google auto-fill decide that what I really want to write is "Sleeping naked."? I really don't think I'm of an age where that's a part of life I particularly want to explore any more than: "OH, you do? *fucks*". I can only assume it would link me to some horrendous, soft-core pseudo-porn meant to arouse 12-year olds or something.

Speaking of 12-year olds. No. Not really. That would be a disgusting segue. Nah, I genuinely am a bit lost today as for what to write about. A little ironic given my antepenultimate post, but I will struggle on nonetheless. I want to make this passably interesting because I am going home for a few days, and will have more interesting things to do with my time than sit in front of a computer. Not really, but I will be doing things. How frustrating. I hate things. They're so boring.

I wonder which god dictates irony; I wonder if their sides ache from years of laughing at us all. Hmm.

Just spoke to the man from Warchild about doing some work for them. He seemed pretty amenable to the proposal, so that's nice. Oh, and one of my friends is meeting the editor of Q tonight, so hopefully that might be an 'in' - however thin. I need to think of a new way in which I can break into this area, because I don't think convention is going to suit me - in fact, I don't think that kind of boring 'working your way up' is at all for me; how mundane and commonplace. I want to do something with my life, make a difference. I know people always say this, but I mean it. I want money. I want charity. I want a house. I want a boat. I want children to live. Bah. Maybe I should come up with some invention that revolutionises the way we do some process or other; shame I'm so useless at mechanics, science, maths, and with my hands. I guess that kind of rules out that idea, so let's move on. I will just have to become a successful author: this will be my grand platform, from which I can launch a career destined for the dizzying heights of fame grandeur. And you, dear reader, will be the cushions that I land on when I realise this is all just a fragment of my ruptured imagination. You shall be the gently rolling grass bank onto which I can drop slowly, and roll anonymously away upon. That will be nice. Just causing a scene would be something I would enjoy immensely. Just appear, do something really weird, and go away again. Write a novel which makes people genuinely stop in their tracks and weep with joy, and then just vanish into the sunset on a... horse or something.

On that subject, I've been monging around on other people's blogs (and, if anyone reads this) there is some interesting stuff out there. The operative word being some. By this, I of course, mean that there is a whole load of unbearable rubbish. I pray to the fictitious gods that no one flies past mine with the same level of scorn that I have for theirs. And... also, why does "next random blog" (or whatever the button is) take you to the same twenty-five pages every single time? I swear to fuck if I end up on that awful proselytizing Christian couples' page again, I will be forced to commit the greatest human atrocity since 9/11. I will go over there and pound their god-awful perfect, suburban, off-hue, tan, mother-crapping faces into internet-nothingess. I cannot abide that whole "My name is *whatever*. I am a mother. I am a Christian." That's great, be proud, but stop defining yourself by a bunch of characteristics which by no means embody who you actually are. It's the same as me going:

"I'm Jack. One day I hope to fulfil my purpose on this planet by procreating. I live my life by several other people's rules."

Great. At least say how old you are, or what you enjoy, or who you are and why you are; you're not a Christian, you are Christian. When did these things become lost in the fabric of ephemera? Semantics are bloody important people. Saussure wouldst be spinning betwixt his grave and purgatory; suspended animation in a nightmarish world of indecipherability as created by him. What a fabulous irony that would be.

Nah, I've nothing against you if you want to follow a religious lifestyle, but I have an issue if that becomes your defining trait; mainly because it can't in and of itself be an idiosyncrasy and thus, by default, cannot be a defining trait. There we go. Another irony. Chalk it up. No, I have no problem with you for being that way, but I will take issue with you when you start spouting this kind of "I was saved by Jesus" rubbish. No, you weren't, you were saved because of your own internal strength; you were galvanized by Jesus, you were never saved by something non-existent. It defies all rational explanation. I don't hold much with this kind of impromptu, spontaneous emotion which suddenly saves people; no, I believe in connections and explanations. Somewhere along that line there is a moment when thoughts boiled up to the surface, to join other ones, and these were sparked together by a memory, or a thought; and thus I said to you you are saved.

Maybe they were saved, I dunno.

I won't talk about religion anymore, because I could probably go on for three-hundred million hours.

I will just say, however, before I leave, and I genuinely don't intend this to be offensive (for once):

The Bible is the greatest work of fiction. Ever.

I sincerely believe that. It is beautiful:

"My transgressions,O Lord, are multiplied: my transgressions are multiplied, and I am not worthy to behold and see the height of heavensfor the multitude of mine iniquities."

Sublime. If they existed for no other reason than to inspire that. God bless them all.

Yes!

Also, I've figured out how to attract more people here:

I LOVE JESUS.

Edukayshun.

Yesterday - pre'phany - I was going to speak about education (or as one of my lecturers so 'amusingly' commented "edukayshun"); however, the twilight ramblings caused me instead to discuss imagination. Looking back, also, I apologise for how little sense yesterday made. As for edukayshun, I had kind of lost my impetus after delaying it, but I have been reinvigorated by one of today's headlines: "School lessons to tackle domestic violence outlined". I think this ties in quite neatly with my thoughts on education, and I will outline them (hopefully) quite briefly ahead. They will basically revolve around ideas of: why we need to teach pupils not to beat their children, why post-compulsory education needs a curriculum, and why junior and senior school suffers from the national curriculum.

Briefly, for American reader(s... lol), the national curriculum is a regimented set of guidelines which dictate what is taught at what age across the country. This means - in theory - that all children get the same education, and know the same things. Sounds... logical I think you'll agree. We'll see, anyway.

So, yes, kids are being taught that domestic violence is wrong. Sounds like a fairly reasonable idea on paper, yet if you actually think about it, it paints a sorry fucking picture of our society if we need to educate future generations that abuse is wrong. Surely that's an inherent and socialised train of thought. I don't seem to remember ever being taught that 'beating up a child' is wrong, yet I seem to know that: probably because I wasn't brought up by wolves, or by people with soup for brains. I just find it astonishing that this kind of thing, which is only necessitated by immorality and disgusting behaviour of the minority - supersedes the education of why it's wrong. It's all well and good to tell a child "This is wrong. You don't do this", but if we're entrusting them with these kind of ideas, there needs to be a communication of the rationale, too. I hate the patronising kind of teaching we do in this country. Children will respond if you treat them as they want to be treated: like adults. I appreciate that it's a difficult thing to impart to a 5-year old, but like I say, it shouldn't be necessary.

It's the kind of proof I have waited for all of these years: that the British education system is fundamentally flawed by condescension and talentless teachers who teach the test. In year 9 I was told that plants drink water. In year 10 I was taught about osmosis. In year 12 I was taught that everything I had been taught in year 9 was wrong. It makes no sense at all: if you feel children are unqualified or unable to understand information, don't teach it at all, and especially don't teach it incorrectly. I would have said misinformation is more damaging than no information at all. We now reach a cross-roads for the future of the British education system: to our left we have understanding and societal integration; and to our right we have information. Homosexuality isn't taught in schools, particularly, nor is alternative culture, nor atheistic principles, nor compassion. Yet we feel that without tackling these issues we can foreshadow and prevent bigotry. "Bigotry is wrong": why? Teach them the why, not the how.

We can phase out this kind of disgusting, despicable behaviour if we teach children the fundamentals of a co-operative society, not just that A is right, and B is wrong.

So, that's my first problem with British education, my second is the national curriculum. Phased in around the late '80's it was meant to bring cohesion and cogency to the education of children en masse. The product of this hilariously mis-planned idiocy is that now children have an education in sweet-fuck all. Adolescents are 'taught the test', useless information like R.E. instead of 'how the economy works'; they come out with little to no practical knowledge which could aid them in the real world. Most of the things I learnt were researched and expounded upon by my own want; bless the internet and libraries. Things like mythology for English, things like philosophy for politics, things like history of ideology for my functioning in society. These things are neglected for pointless information on osmosis, on homoeostasis, Pythagoras' theorem, how to bake a cake, how to do needle-point, how to conduct a beep-test. Pointless and arbitrarily crafted information to spoon-feed to children to get them through their pathetically constructed exams; "marks for showing your working out". It's no wonder we have a disaffected generation entirely disenfranchised and apathetic to the economy, to their government, to the state of the world and to poverty and the like. There is no general knowledge anymore, no care for old music, or AD history, people don't know the Mayans, or their own lineage. Take this harrowing statistic, story:

"One in 20 Scottish children think Adolf Hitler was Germany's national football coach, while six percent believe the Holocaust was a celebration at the end of World War II, according to a new poll.

One in five also mixed up Hitler's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels with Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who wrote a diary of her time hiding from the Nazis in an attic."

That's where we are.

With the national curriculum.

What does that tell you?

It goes on:

"13.5 percent [of 9-15 year olds] thought he invented gravity in 1650 and seven percent thought he coached Germany's football team."

Please don't think I am kidding, because I am deadly serious. This is what 20 years of Conservative/Labour inbreeding has brought us to. This is the alleged nadir of knowledge. We're paraded around as these fonts of knowledge, smarter than we were 300 years ago, 200 years ago, 2000 years ago: are we? In relative terms do you genuinely believe we rationalise information more adeptly than our primitive forefathers? I sincerely doubt that. It's time for the infighting to stop, and for this country to realise it has made its own bed, and now it is time to lie in it and dribble itself to eternal sleep.

The whole system needs total and complete overhaul; it needs to be revolutionised and modernised, it needs to be facilitated by people who have been through this system, not by those who designed it. It's a sad, sorry fucking day when our average politician is in his late 40's. No offence to anyone in their late 40's, but you aren't of the generation that needs fixing. You guys are alright.

Let me move on to post-compulsory education, before I blow a vein. Fuck knows which one. Presumably the jugular. Thanks GCSE science, that's some top-notch anatomical knowledge I've got there.

When I say post-compulsory education I do, of course, mean university. Not college. I don't care about college. College was a joke. The problem I have with university is that it is taught by people 300 million times smarter and more experienced than the students; and these vocational professions - including pHd's - do not include a 'how to teach' caveat. They're all wonderful people, I am sure, but they are not taught the rudiments of communicating complex information to a class of average intelligence students. If our school system worked then perhaps we would not be at this impasse, but we are, and we have to work with that. There's no order, no system in place to facilitate a median of information: this leads to disinterest and apathy. People cannot engage with that which they do not understand.

There needs to be something in place which either educates the educators at how to communicate complexity simply, or there needs to be regimented lesson planning. Not a national curriculum, hell no, but something which facilitates an improvement. There is this whole 'go to university' drive by the government, but it is a neglected sector. It's fiscally well off, but logistically flawed in most elements: fees that cripple current students, or put-off would-be attendees; poor or no communication between the government and universities; and a system of education woefully neglected. It makes me sad to think there is such a gulf between university and school education. You go from total spoon-feeding, with bibs included, to wholly independent study. No wonder you get languorous students moping around the corridors looking dazed and confused. There is no preparation, no foresight; there is no education about education, and people drop out because of it.

Come on, world, wake the hell up. Please.

I'm sorry. It is really good.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Jackrawrus.

When I was around 9 or 10 years old, I had a teacher; that teacher put me under enormous amounts of stress and had incredibly high expectations of me. Now, those of you who actually know me will be slightly confused by that, given the fact that I am not really above a norm of intelligence, and you'd probably be bemused as to why I was singled out for this 'special' treatment. Never fear, so was I. It's a fairly hazy time for any recollections I try to make, but I think it's fairly safe to assume I was depressed and confused. In the same way that some parents try to live vicariously through their enforced prodigious children, I was subjected to that kind of 'hot-house' treatment; where each and every thing needs to be bigger, better, faster, smarter, harder, longer, etc.. Long story short: developed a mild form of OCD and went a little bit insane. Again, I think it's safe to assume that my predilection for clinical neatness is probably attributable to this period of mild insanity that I went through. Fortunately it turned out to be a manageable phase, and one which I was able to overcome - most of - by the time I had graduated onto my senior (or middle) school. The only remnants of my younger self which plague me today are a slight tendency towards quadruple checking locks, cookers, heating, windows, taps, etc.. Frustrating to say the least, but comparatively minor and tolerable.

Anyway, what I wanted to discuss in relation to this nostalgic jaunt down horrifying-memory lane is the power of the imagination. I might have given that away from the title, but that is why I threw in that loosely connected introductory paragraph: keep 'em guessing, boy, as my... fictional coach of a non-existent sports team I would never play for never said. The link was meant to be that my OCD was driven by a sort of extra-sensory or metapersonal compulsion; not necessarily a dictative alter-ego, but a definite and disparate separation between my rational self and my other. I'm not sure why I was thinking about this last night, I was probably checking the back-door for the eighteenth time since I went to bed. Oh, no, I remember. It's because I suffer from chronic insomnia, and as I lay there last night staring vacantly at my off-white, artex ceiling I started to wonder why some people's brains can't switch off. Why there's no consistency for the ability to power-down. I concluded that some people have too much imagination, and that this dictates their subconscious thought-processes, hence the lack of sleep. Too busy playing out the irrational hypothetical of chance. Admittedly it was a grievously flawed conclusion (well, probably), but you'll forgive me: it was 5.15 in the morning when I had this pseudo'iphany.

Anyway, this quite obviously lead me onto thinking about the why and the how of the imagination, and the different ways and means by which people are affected by it. Naturally, the reasons are too multifarious for me to cover in any sense of detail here, but I will outline why I find the imagination so enthralling, and thus why I have chosen to do it for my dissertation next year: The Gothic and the Power of the Imagination.

I think the imagination is so insanely fascinating because it's so infinitely unfathomable; it epitomises everything that the human body and mind isn't: infinite, unfenced, liberated, free, unguided, stimulated. It's each and every thing that a human mind aspires to be but can never achieve. You're beautiful in your imagination, you're smart, you're insane, you're a god, you're a snowflake. Boundless and immeasurable in your soaring freedom. The freest a man can be is in his imagination; where the confines of the mundane, dreary, 24-7 lifestyle fade into nothingness, and the brain can display what it truly desires. Now, this is all mindless idealism (as per), because obviously the majority of dreams and imaginations are the product of misfiring, or subconsciously prodded synapses shooting off random specks of information which become assimilated into your consciousness and confabulated together into a piece of vaguely coherent film. I'd still like to imagine - if you will - that the imagination is this colossal vastness, this gaping chasm into which you can fling yourself at any moment; soon to be plunging down into regions you couldn't even dream of, surrounded by these situations incomprehensible. Truly, and wonderfully, brilliant.

I feel unbelievably sorry for those people who seem to have a limited or fragmented imagination; those creatively stilted individuals who need to be sequestered eternally under a form of arbitrary guiding principles in order to function. I cannot bear to picture a landscape so hellishly sparse and unpopulated. How do these people escape the monotony and hatred? Where is their place of quietude and solitude? Just as living within the concrete jungle affixes the permanence of apathy on a person, so must living only as you are, not as you could be. I don't even understand how such people manage to go through post-compulsory education, let alone survive without committing the greatest ever mass-suicide. Or, I dunno, maybe that's over-reaching their imaginations? No, I was blessed with a fabulously replete imagination; and if you'll forgive the counter-intuitive bollocks I'm about to state - I'd be hard pressed to find a situation I cannot comprehend or picture.

I don't mean to obfuscate, but this is an incredibly odd concept for me to try to deal with. Normally I am firmly rooted in two camps: hatred, and physicality. I try to tackle obvious ideas which any idiot could see were wrong, and how they could be fixed; I also tend towards the loathing side of life. This kind of mindless happiness and glorification of a process is something alien to me, as is the metaphysics of this idea, so you'll genuinely have to forgive me if I seem to have no point/not go anywhere/make no sense.

This 'imagination' helps us evolve our society, it facilitates the creation of new ideas, of new ideologies, of new buildings, of new infrastructure; it is the imagination which underpins the intelligence which permits these advances (or regresses, if you're with me). It is the ability to quest outside of the normative structures rigidly imposed upon us by the unimaginative faculties of our brains; these abilities which help us reach our ideals and fulfil our greatest wishes. Without our imaginations we are lifeless and useless. Mere marionette in the sadomasochist's favourite show.

I could never attend to an essay, subtlety would be entirely lost on me -- imagine not being able to intimate. It'd be like that awful Ricky Gervais film where no-one can lie. It is these undercurrent ideas which help us build upon ourselves, gives rise to the abject, the self-efficacy and the Cartesian self-awareness. The outside sense of perspicacity where we can transplant our minds into the nebulous and transcend any physical boundaries restricting our knowledge of self -- to have those thoughts and hallucinations, those epiphanies when you see you as you really are. Like when you hear yourself recorded for the first time and you say "I don't sound like that... Do I?" As here where you first reach these unexplored ideas of the self, when you float above and beyond your physical self and look down upon who and what you are. Without our imaginations we could not comprehend these ideas - the rational brain is only capable of explanation through imagination.

With hindsight comes great insight, and here we reach such a juncture ourselves: previous to this crepuscular realisation, I was discussing blogging in general with a friend of mine who tried to set up his own. He became disheartened, started to hate what he wrote, and eventually (albeit quicker than normal) gave up. The one thing he mentioned, however, that struck me as strange was that idea of "I had nothing to write about". Now, if you've followed me across the... 4 months or whatever it has been since I started this, you will see that quite often I start my ramblings with the caveat "I don't know what to say today", but you will have also seen that I then tend to go on to speak for 4,000 pages about nothing. I don't think I've ever sat down to spout and had nothing to say; sure, I've had days and weeks where I've not written anything, but that's because I rejected every idea (and the ones you get to read got through... Jesus). Those ideas were too petulant, too infantile, too hackneyed, too simple, or too complex. Yes I've encountered writers block, but writers block and lack of things to say are two very, very different subjects: one is when you cannot discuss a certain issue, story, whatever any more, the other is when you're a husk and have nothing of interest to say about anything. Now, I can say this and still keep my bollocks - even if my friend reads this - because I know for a fact that he is interesting, otherwise we certainly wouldn't be friends. He just has a kind of stilted or fragmentary collection of neurons or something. Something prevents him from being able to communicate - however haphazardly - his ideas onto the page, or screen.

This kind of binary further fascinates me, and it fascinates me because I don't understand it. I can imagine it, sure, of course, I am the king of imaginaria, but I can't understand how people can have been created so different. I would have thought an active and rigorously tested imagination was inherent in all sentient beings. Perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps there is no link between a lack of imagination and lack of interesting things to say. These people might just be incredibly unlucky and not be able to facilitate the process of forming these thoughts into rational ideas, or whatever, peut-etre, but unlikely.

For when I soar wildly above the clouds of cognisance, gently caress the beaches of unexplored, unreal places and objects, I cannot dare to dream of a life without such escapism.

Vegetarianism.

So, here it is, the promised prolix re: vegetarianism, and/or why they get slated by people for no apparent reason. I wanna look at a few different reasons which I've assumed are the (aforementioned a long time ago) justifications: sanctimonious propaganda, pescatarianism, whining-complex, and lack of balls. This entire liturgy will be based on my critical observations of people who assume the vegetarian-hate; and thus, as these are just my assumptions, please don't take anything I say as fact, even though - let us face it - it probably is as good as fact. As the banking world says: "[I am] doing 'God's work'".

Well the first point is pretty self explanatory [sidenote: had to work incredibly hard not to add a comma splice after "well". It's something I must get out of the habit of doing.] What you have with any kind of ideology, lifestyle, en masse personality is an inherent proselytizing; it's latent, and sometimes dormant, but it is always there. Now, I don’t think we can take that as a platform for any kind of criticism, so I will have to assume that this complex is inadmissible, and thus assume that the issue is taken with the individual, rather than the ideology. Now, it would be less than accomplished for me to continue this train of thought with this kind of bias dragging me back, but this, unfortunately, is the first launch-pad for criticisms against vegetarianism.

People don’t like sects of society which attempt to convert them – there is an understandable fear surrounding that kind of ‘cult’ behaviour; it is apparent throughout religious ideology, through political manipulation. In short, through that which people fear most: organised, autocratic, dictatorial leadership. There is a natural prejudice against anyone seen as propagating a certain lifestyle, it is seen as intrusive and obtrusive; no one dare enter my ideological yard, for fear of the secularised, fictionalised, non-denominational, politically-correct wrath o’ the Reaper. Alas! for us rational beings there is an acknowledgement that in fact that just because people belong to a certain sub-sect of society that they are obliged to try to convert. I know I mentioned that ideologies are naturally ‘conversion friendly’ but that does not necessitate the follower being the same. Individualism, people. It is precisely the same as any kind of bigotry, or ideologically-bred hatred, xenophobia; there is that natural reticence human beings feel when their self is threatened. Freud would call it repression, I would call it the destabilisation of the consciousness; that intrusion of a differing – and alien – perspective which causes upset to the sense of self; the consciousness.

So if we step outside of that kind of myopia, we might be able to realise that people aren’t necessarily going to try to convert us to their way of life; of course, there will be some people, but the minority in this case does not represent the whole. Once we step outside of that we can see that in fact these people are just existing with a different lifestyle, and one that cannot be criticised as ‘unnatural’; the eminent-idiot towline for anyone wishing to criticise vegetarianism. This kind of perspicacity ruins the whole ‘conversion’ debunking, and it leads on to my first (if you can believe it) point: sanctimonious people. Yes, that’s not a criticism; that’s laughable.

We cannot attempt to critique a person for being sanctimonious, because it’s so utterly (and ironically) natural to have that kind of subjective superiority. I don’t want someone telling me that I’m a bad person because I eat meat, but nor would I want someone telling me that I was going against the natural order – as dictated by who exactly? Antiquated ideas of natural selection, etc.?- so I can understand both positions. Every story, and all. There’s also not going to be a sudden and insane downswing in the sales of meat: a few people not eating a bit of pork every now and again (Jews, anyone?) will not suddenly bankrupt the agricultural sector. If you want to play the Darwinian card, then I will play it right back at you: it’s called evolution.

So let’s not go there. Thankfully for you I think I’ve amply covered propaganda and lack of testicular fortitude (in my head that rhymed..., sigh...) and so I will rush on to pescatarianism. Now this one, I hate to say, I can appreciate on no levels at all. This entire plateau revolves around the idea that we can criticise someone for poor taxonomical knowledge or something, I dunno, never really looked into it. Yeah, it’s feeble to pretend you’re a vegetarian, but could not the excuse just be the fact that pescatarianism is a niche and pointlessly self-contradictory idea? Basing a lifestyle on an axiom of preclusion and inclusion of the same ideals is kind of silly so I don’t think we can have a go at people for choosing that. Like bi-sexuals who are gay and choose to stay with the guise they’ve created for themselves? Could also be the fact that these people don’t know about the word or choice? Or could it be that they don’t see the issue in this kind of negligibly interesting miscategorisation? I think it’s the last. People aren’t as hung up as you; now who’s being sanctimonious? The whole world is riddled with these fabulous ironies, I swear to God, no wonder Eliot was so fucking popular; she saw these kind of streams that others completely missed. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever realised this profligate hypocrisy until I started venting about them. I guess it’s the kind of thing you take as accepted and commonplace, so you don’t think about it. Dunno.

I’ll wrap this up like a quarter-pounder with cheese because someone criticised me for going on too long. Admittedly my response was: don’t fucking read it then, jesus, it’s not exactly designed to be fabulously entertaining. Whoever heard of a would-be author trying to entertain people? You want entertainment? Go to the circus.

The whining-complex has been lightly touched upon earlier by me, brushed with the fine bristles of empathy. So from caressing, to stabbing repeatedly in the head with a 4b pencil, here it is, my rationale behind the dismissal of “vegetarians whine at me”. People whine at everything. In case you’ve missed the last 3,0000000000,0000000,0000 (this is how numbers should be written) words I’ve written since I started this blog, my underlying and underpinning argument (I pray you did notice it) is that people are people they are not necessarily their traits. The traits form the person. I said to someone only yesterday “you're meant to like people, regardless of their faults; not dislike them because of them” and I think it translates fairly admirably. It should be irrelevant what people want to do, and whether or not they want to moan at you or bitch at you or pretend you’re an idiot for not listening to them. There’s a simple solution to this problem: tell them to go away. Whining is not a sect-exclusive trait.

And I love meat more than you can ever know.

Oh do fuck off.

ARG!

Sunday November 22nd.

So that's it, folks: end of another week, time to turn over that fresh leaf. Don't worry, the leaves are infinite; what with it having been Autumn up until a few weeks ago. The Autumnal spirit of decline can infect you still, never fear.

We're drawing to the end of November, and I, for one, am really glad that we're doing so. It has been a terrible month; incredibly taxing both academically and emotionally -- and let's face it, the two don't work that well together. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that neither of them work particularly well as singularly either. Yeah, screw it, in my utopia (Jack's Republik) there will be no emotions, nor challenges; it will be an autonomous creation of passivity and personal stasis; never a fear of unrequited love, concepts of humanism lost in the ebb and flow of apathy. Much like Britain. But with nicer parks. Not that you can appreciate them, you emotionless droid!

Work coming out of my ears, deadlines; a heavy burden of despair and lethargy pressing down on the shoulders innumerate: capitulate, procrastinate, fail, succeed. Wait a few years for results. Not wanting to set an antecedent for the rest of the year, but I can't help but feel that failure is significantly more likely than success. Unfortunately my laughably verbose style is not well suited to coursework. I can splurge my prolix all over exams: perfectly suited to a situation where the only criterion is to get down as much information is as little time as is possible, whilst displaying a needlessly fanciful style and structure. The mellifluous voice - so unsuited to a laconic tone - affords ample opportunity for extravagant demonstrations of quasi-intellectualism; where two words will suffice, thirty are used; typifying the style necessitated by inordinately complex and unworkable questions. See my point? Exams are hard, talk shit. Can be said in five, but oh so much more enjoyable to be said in 25.

No, it's been a long month and I suspect December to be much in the same way. Fortunately I have now almost completed all over my coursework for my pre-xmas deadlines, and only left myself with a few bits and pieces (read: two essays) to do over the break. Speaking of the break, it is disappointingly structured: break up ludicrously early, and return unfathomably soon after New Year. Who wants to return to move back to uni on the first Sunday after New Year? What a terrible, terrible, terrible decision on the part of some pen-pushing neanderthal. Not that I'm undermining the capabilities of your average office-drone; au contraire, mon ami, I am merely suggesting - just a suggestion - that to design a calendar with that much of a lack of foresight demonstrates a phenomenal lack of intelligence.

That is all. I'd talk more but there are two things I really want to do: watch Transformers, and make myself a veggie keema naan. That's a meat-stuffed piece of spiced flat-bread to you and I; well, at least you, I like to attribute correct names to foods, as, well, they are what they are, silly. Fortune was smiling her gay smile down on me yesterday when she allowed Tesco Express to sell me Quorn mince at £2 for 500g. Fabulously felicitous, I am sure you will agree.

Incidentally I am not a vegetarian, I just adore some veggie substitutes; both for their protein, and for their lack of fat. Oh, and they taste nice too; much easier to spice accurately (the more, the better). I don't understand why vegetarian people get such a bad press, maybe that's something to discuss at a later date. Christ, I must sound like the weirdest philanthropic misanthrope. Maybe that should be my moniker. I'll ponder it.

I won't.