The Lost Art of the Semicolon

Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines further on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.
- Lewis Thomas

The semicolon is, apparently, going out of fashion. Ignoring for the moment the fact that those articles are all at least a year old, I have noticed a tendency in modern useage to eschew this much misunderstood punctuation mark. Whether this is due to ignorance, uncertainty or inverted snobbery is difficult to say, but I'm firmly convinced that the final wheezing breath of the semicolon would leave the English language poorer.

Not to go all Lynne Truss, but the rules as they stand aren't all that complicated. The first and simplest is in a list, to separate items which are already made complicated by multiple sub-clauses and commas. The semicolon is weightier than the comma, so you use it to mark the end of each item and let the internal commarage fight among itself.

Purpose two, and this is the one I would fight to protect: linking together two complete and otherwise independent clauses. It's easy to write simple sentences. They're short and punchy and tend to stick out. More complex sentences allow a certain poetry to leak into prose, with their subordinate clauses bringing a lyrical elegance to the page. Of course it's possible to go too far with regard complex sentence structure, creating something of a Frankenstein's Sentence where clauses, embedded in the middle of already multiply nested clauses, lead the reader, increasingly bewildered, deeper into a labyrinth of deepeningly, perhaps maliciously, postmodern prosody, occasionally branching off on diverse and whimsical tangents to discuss matters such as whether postmodernism, as a genre, could even be said to truly exist or if, as often claimed by those perhaps rightly suspicious of the difficulty of telling postmodern from poorly written, it's just a backlash against the rigid formalism of the 50s, or possibly an outgrowth of the punk era, although both of those arguments are undercut by works like Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which so severely pre-empt the period usually associated with 'modern' art, never mind postmodern, that they might be called pre-modern postmodernism, before returning to the original thread of discussion, which starts to resemble nothing so much as an Escher staircase (and parentheses never help, of course), with such abruptness that the reader, even if they were able to hold all the necessary information in their heads, and adequately separate all the red herrings and other superfluous data from the central line of syntax, is likely to faint, grow nauseous, or most often hurl the offending material at the nearest wall.

Yes, it's easy to write simple sentences. It's easy to fall into the flow of words, too and let them unfold flowerlike on the page. But what a semicolon alone allows is for a conceptual link to be built between two clauses; there's none of the comma's wishy-washy prevarication, nor the full stop's rigid demarcation. Only a subtle nudge to the frontal lobes, taking the reader gently by the hand and leading them to some secluded beauty spot they might otherwise have missed. It's punctuation as a intellectual tool, designed to provoke unexpected thought; yet at the same time the semicolon is an aesthetic necessity, slipping perfectly into the niche between comma and full stop. It's a pause with an authority the former lacks, but which possesses none of the latter's vulgarity; it adds rhythm and soul to an otherwise empty page, and I wouldn't do without. To so thoughtlessly abandon so delicate a tool seems a sign of Neanderthal crudity, like the proverbial hammer-wielder to whom every problem resembles a nail; or perhaps, as George Bernard Shaw once acidly commented, it is simply 'a symptom of mental defectiveness'.

Finally, in answer to Richard Hugo's graceless charge that the semicolon is not only useless but ugly to boot, I leave you with an opposing view:

It's the way the curve of the lower section seems to slide past the absolutist dot of the upper section. Irresistible!

- tsuki_chama

Ich stelle ein Minarett auf mein Hausdach

Nothing is worse than active ignorance.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My friend Jim moved to Switzerland a while back, to live with his girlfriend Olivia. They're getting married in February.

But today she, who is usually so proud of her country, was full of disgust. For the Swiss people have spoken, and the building of minarets is to be outlawed.

In a country with around 400,00 Muslims, where Islam is the second largest religion, there are currently four mosques sporting minarets. Four. One minaret per hundred thousand worshippers. That's one seriously complicated rota system they must have going there.

Martin Baltisser, general secretart of the Swiss People's Party (SVP) which first pushed the referendum, told the BBC: "This was a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power." Which is a very serious issue, I'm sure you'll all agree. But even the BBC had such difficultly finding a picture of a Swiss minaret to accompany their story that the image they eventually put on the BBC newspage has a church spire in the background. I'd like to think that this is some subtle and brilliant piece of satire on the part of the BBC's image sourcing department, but really, is there any more obvious a metaphor than that?

It's not unlike the apocryphal tale of an American woodsman, living in a cabin on the side of a mountain, utterly alone. One day he looks out, sees a faint puff of smoke rising from the next valley over. he shakes his head, mutters something about the neighbourhood getting too crowded, and starts to pack.

Of course, for all the mockery, this sort of thing is worrying when considered in the context of the French headscarf ban and other anti-Islamic legislation. Never mind that the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Switzerland would violate international law if it bans minarets, or that the Swiss justice minister has said "a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies". Legal issues aside, the damage this sort of thing does - not just to Switzerland's image but to that of the entire western world - is incalculable.

It's an act of collective stupidity about on a par with...well, I was going to say voting for Hitler but even that probably seemed like a good idea at the time... Voting Bush in for a second term, maybe. I can't think of anything more likely to alienate the Islamic world and turn moderate young muslims into potential extremists. You may as well start publishing obscene cartoons of Muhammed on state documentation and be done with it.

Tolerance breeds understanding. Understanding breeds respect. Respect breeds harmony. Don't people get that? Or are they so terrified of anything 'alien' that they'll lash blindly out and create the very enemy they fear. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - when the first suicide bomber hits the Geneva underground, all those people who voted against 'Islamisation' will turn to their similarly ignorant friends and say 'I told you we couldn't trust them.'

There's hope, though. A referendum isn't the same as writing the ban into law, so pressure groups and human rights organisations have time to start building opposition. And Facebook already has a protest group suggesting Swiss residents start erecting minarets on their rooftops. Like with the Trafigura incident, perhaps new media can make a difference, exert some pressure and change the shape of the skyline?

Moving on

All things must change to something new, to something strange.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Last night, for the first time in a good long while, the Soton geeksquad were all back together. And although it was a staggeringly good party, I felt something this morning which cast it in a slightly more melancholy light.

While the hangover wore off by midday, something of that feeling remained. Seeing everybody together, laughing and enjoying themselves like we did at the best of times, only reminded me how rarely I see them all now. University was another time, another life, a common bond which drew us all together. But when it was over, one by one, they all drifted away. Back to the places where they came from, or to distant jobs, or to new relationships.

And now my friends, my good friends, are scattered around the country. Around the world, even - my oldest friend, whose best man I'll soonly be, lives in Switzerland with his fiancee, and has made a life for himself there. Time passes and distances stretch, and we accumulate the scars of growing old - the houses and children and responsibilities which come of adulthood. And against the bright colours and high contrast of new things, the past is a sepia-tinted picture in an unfashionable frame, fading into obscurity. It takes effort to remember, to keep the picture bright, and no matter the good intentions some things always get forgot.

So here am I, about to take a new job in a new town, and I wonder how many of the friends I've made at work will remain a part of my life. I'll meet new people, make new friends, and see them every day. Will we meet up on occasion, those old friends and I, and remember why we cared? Or will they fade, like all things must, into the shadows of memory?

Ding!

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
- Eleanor Roosevelt


I started playing a game called Borderlands about a couple of weeks ago. It’s a first-person shooter masquerading as an RPG, which means that the excuse for Rambo-esque levels of mindless violence is an endless proliferation of noble quests, fetch-and-carry exercises, hunting expeditions and attempts at ethnic cleansing.

The reward for all this effort? Experience, of course. The slow accumulation of those arbitrary little points, mounting towards the blessed number at which the counter resets and I achieve the unlimited powers of a level two Hunter. Which will let me go out and kill and kill again, with more effectiveness than ever before, and face greater challenges and fiercer foes, that I might accumulate more experience and rise to the pinnacle of human achievement that is level three, that I might become yet more powerful and render yet greater species of wildlife extinct, that I might accumulate more experience and reach the demigodhood of level four, at which point I can depopulate whole continents with the mere twitch of an eyebrow, gaining unprecedented piles of experience in order to reach level five, at which point…

You get the idea. In less entertaining games, this is called grinding – the endless, tedious repetition of the same actions in order to access content not yet available. I remember with gritted teeth my month in World of Warcraft’s torturous, mindless xp-mills; I see my better half’s inexplicable addiction to Facebook’s FarmVille, the very definition of pointless grind.

When you play a regular shooter, it’s for the exhilaration of combat and to progress the storyline. Borderlands, and any other RPG, you play for the levelling up. Everything else, including any pleasure taken from the front-end gameplay itself, becomes secondary. The very existence of experience levels changes the dynamic, defining the game not in terms of storyline or other abstracts but with reference to a series of short-term goals. But even though it’s a series of diminishing returns, as the reward is separated by increasingly longer periods of time and effort, we still do it anyway. And not just do it, but become addicted, obsessed with ‘just one more’. Why?

Probably because there’s something very comforting about the straightforward relationship between work and reward. Humanity has a tendency to reduce the irreducibly complex to something simple, straightforward, easy to understand. Look at Fox News, if you’re struggling for an example. Life isn’t simple, it isn’t easy to understand cause and effect. Things happen for reasons nobody really understands, and there’s no guaranteed correlation between the work that you do and your reward. That handsome chap at work spends most of his time surfing the internet rather than working, while you do all the little jobs nobody wants to do – who do you think’s going to get promoted?

But a level-based game quantifies that relationship, allows you to reduce something indefinable to something manageable, and rewards you just for showing up. It’s a guarantee that if you spend enough time, you will succeed. It’s replacing the uncertainty and challenge of skill-based gaming with the promise that enough time spent grinding through easily beaten enemies will eventually give you the tools you need to win. And since knowing your level and the level of your enemies lets you predict the victor of any given combat with reasonable accuracy, it’s simple good sense to play cautiously. When the reward for facing significant opposition is far outweighed by the penalty should you fail, the very game itself is rewarding you for avoiding risk. It’s a situation guaranteed to promote boring, grind-heavy play.


And those aren’t skill-based tools, like the sort of hand-eye coordination you develop from playing too much Pac-Man, but statistics-based ones. Abilities within the computer, not within yourself. Abilities anyone with enough time and patience could receive.

It’s this certainty of success, combined with humans’ tendency to break long-term goals into a series of smaller ones, which makes the level-based approach so successful, and so attractive. When carrying out a long, boring job, or at the gym, on the treadmill, who hasn’t started calculating halfway, one-third, one-quarter checkpoints? The sense of achievement you receive from hitting those goals, and the promise of a similar feeling when you reach the next one, provides the emotional drive necessary to continue at an unpleasant task. And keeps people coming back for one more hit, keeps them paying money into the coffers of MMORPG designers.

And these factors make grinding inevitable, even in a game which is quite a lot of fun. In something like FarmVile (no, that’s not a mis-spelling), it’s the whole of the game. And the addictive qualities of levelling are prompting quite sophisticated monetization of browser-based games. By allowing players to pay actual money for virtual cash and bypass some of that tedious grind, the developers are creating a built-in gold farming system and guaranteeing themselves a steady revenue stream, while those developers who eschew grind-based mechanics in favour of less exploitative (and more enjoyable) innovations are being left behind.

When I was a teenager there was a Playstation game called FutureCop, which had a side-salad game called Precinct Assault. The objective was to capture turrets and outposts, gaining points with which you could generate mini-tanks, which would then sluggishly trawl the length of the arena and eventually, hopefully, breach the walls of your enemy’s base. Naturally, he was trying to do the same to you. Your opponent was a computer-controlled flying machine called ‘Sky Captain’, who was tougher, faster and more manoeuvrable than you were. While you trudged around the arena on foot, he flitted over walls and away, claiming turrets you couldn’t reach and conducting hit-and-run attacks on your columns of tanks. All the odds were stacked against you.

But when you beat him on the hardest difficulty setting, after three hours of focused, controller-gripping tension as the balance of power wavered your way and his… when that little tank crossed the threshold of his base, and Sky Captain produced such a howl of frustrated rage that you shivered a little, in front of the screen… that feeling’s something I’ve never experienced since. I was lifted into the sky, tapdancing on clouds. And the reason I felt such elevation was the knowledge that I’d done something remarkable, something which had required genuine effort, genuine skill.

I didn’t just turn up.

Viva la Twitter!

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
- L. P. Hartley


Many moons ago, on LiveJournal, I emptied a bucket of bile (and possibly vitriol) over Twitter. I attacked it as a meaningless string of inanity, which had replaced the often insightful and interesting blog posts my friends used to produce. All this was rather undermined by the fact that I had never actually used Twitter, or dared step within 140 characters of it. In the tradition of techno-luddites and Republicans everywhere, I feared that which I did not understand.

Well now I'm a twitterer, for reasons far too complicated to explain (i.e. I've forgotten), and I thought it might be interesting to talk about one way in particular that my opinions have changed. Because while I remain convinced that Twitter comes in a poor second to longer forms as a medium for profundity and discussion of complex topics, there are indeed areas in which it excels.

Recent events rather prove the point - a quick look at the Trafigura super-injunction scandal shows that Twitter can do great things. In a way, this isn't new; with sufficient time and organisation, the populace have always had the ability to bring about change through sheer weight of public opinion. The Velvet Revolution, the Orange Revolution, The French Revolution... the tradition of public outcry in the face of injustice or oppression stretches back throughout the whole of human history, no doubt as far as the skins-clad cavemen who grew tired of the taste of half-cooked mammoth and dared to stand together to cry 'Ug!*

*"We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more!"

The key phrase in that paragraph, though, is 'with sufficient time and organisation'. The most effective revolutions arise spontaneously, without pre-meditation, in response to some defining incident of such magnitude or horror that otherwise quiet, unassuming people have no choice but to take action. Through word-of-mouth the news passes, swelling the ranks of the disaffected.

Before Twitter, before mobile phones and the internet, pamphlets and independently-minded newspapers were the revolutionary's weapons of choice. The spread of information was limited, slow, and organisation took time to build to a critical peak - time the object of public disapproval could use to scatter the embers, to crush opposition or discredit it. The sort of entities which tend to provoke outrage - governments, corporations, law firms - have the resources in place to defeat all but the most determined revolution, given the time to marshal them.

But the faster the news travels, the less time the establishment has to get organised. And in this age of immediate communication, Twitter is the ultimate means of collective action.

Watching news travel is like watching the spread of a particularly virulent disease; one person is infected, then their friends, then carriers from that group spread out to other cells of friends, carrying the message. The spread is exponential. And what Twitter does is take that one step further - there's no need for the news to be carried, or actively promoted in any way which requires actual effort. It's automatically thrust into the faces of everyone you know, not to mention a whole bunch of people you don't. And the minimal effort required on the part of the tweeter just makes it more likely that people will jump on the bandwagon; it doesn't cost them anything, in time or money or intellectual engagement. So why not?

There's another name for this: flash mob. In 1973 Larry Niven wrote a short story called 'Flash Crowd' where instantaneous, practically free teleportation technology results in a sort of large-scale version of the motorway jams and secondary accidents caused by ghouls slowing down to gawp at the scene of a crash. A minor riot is reported, and people from all across the world jump in to see in-person, then as the flash mob grows it gets further air time, and more people come in - not just to gawp, now, but to take advantage: to loot, to cause mayhem, to sell a cause.

The internet has its fair share of this, too. The Slashdot effect, where a website collapses under the weight of interest generated by a casual mention on a larger site. Hackers using denial-of-service attacks to cripple their target websites. And now, through the sheer size of his audience (close to a million followers and counting), Stephen Fry is a one-man DDOS attack.

He may try and deny it, but any time that many people listen to you, that's power. You have the ability to influence the way in which people perceive events, to create the first impression you want people to have. Maybe it's unintentional, but the effect is undeniable. You think the Trafigura affair would have been quite the same if Carter-Ruck had twittered first to nigh on a million followers?

Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to take a closer look at the difference in reporting between Fox News and CNN, or the Guardian and the Daily Mail. At its extreme, you get William Randolph Hearst's infamous quote regarding the Spanish-American War: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."

So what happens when someone not so well-intentioned as Stephen Fry, or even someone simply more politically minded, begins to wield that sort of power? Will we get that 'Fifth Estate' Fry speaks about in his blog? Or a new form of media, born from the ashes of the old?

Or will we get a revolution?

NaBloWriMo

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.
- Isabel Colegate

Sothere's this thing called National Blog Writing Month, where you have to post an entry every day of the month. Ali pointed it out first, then Nick wowed LiveJournal by decloaking (and thus proving the cat to be alive) to say he'd be doing the same.

And in the long tradition of bandwagon-jumping, I'll be joining them. But I reserve the right to refuse use of the acronym NaBloWriMo, on moral grounds.

The Match (reposted from LiveJournal)

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.

- Bill Shankly

Up the steps and out into the open, the stadium unfolding around me like a baby universe. It’s massive, open to the sky and yet enclosed, curled back on itself like space and time were contained within. A mess of contradictions. The pitch itself, so huge and empty on television, seems something from a Subbuteo set; close and cramped and intimate, the players huddled together on a postage stamp of lush grass. As I watch the ball rises high into the pre-twilight, and I can see the silver/black panels spinning back against the direction of its travel. The muted thump of the strike which sent it rising starlike reaches me a heartbeat later, as if the distance between me, in the stands, and the cherished turf on which dreams are birthed and broken was far greater than it appeared. The sound is coming from another world, impossibly distant from the one I inhabit. All it would take to cross over is to step past the advertising hoardings surrounding the field, to pass from the mundane to the fantastical. All it would take is to break unbreakable laws. All it would take is everything. Easier to rise unaided into the warm summer sky, or step from here to the surface of Mars.

There’s a man in the stands behind the away side’s goal, high up in the furthest rows of the ever-standing fans, who is turned away from the match as if disinterested. He raises his arms and beats out a rhythm against the Plexiglas, a rhythm which resounds within the soul of everyone who’s ever been a child: dum dum, dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum…

“Go Saints!” comes back from every corner of the ground, even those where nobody sits or stands. Even from the narrow strip of blue-clad outsiders, huddled together against contagion, tricks of the stadium’s acoustics turning them traitor to the team they love. Again he beats the tune, hammering the unyielding plastic with the length of both arms, fingertip to elbow. Beating himself into a frenzy as the rhythm picks up speed, faster and faster. Dum dum, dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum, “Go Saints!” More voices join the chant, caught up in the quickening current of elation. Faster and faster, faster than seems possible, plausible. His hands are a blur, arms must be bruised and sore along the length of them, but still the beat goes on, dragging the voices that rise in admiration and defiance towards the crescendo. Towards the whirlpool at the centre, and the end of all things, that drags him down and consumes whatever’s left of him. That fleet of voices that followed him is fractured, scattered, left reeling and dissolute as he sinks into his seat. For a minute the stadium is quiet, still, becalmed; there’s nothing but the background murmur of quiet conversation and the soft shouts of the players at their game.

In this time somebody from the other team scores. And I’m surrounded by angry men and women rising from their seats, hurling oaths and curses down upon the heads of the triumphant player. And on his team-mates, on the defenders who allowed his sacrilege, on the referee who didn’t stretch forth one hand, messiah-like, and prevent it. But nothing compares to the barrage of hatred reserved for the away supporters. The die-hard fans, the ones who have been standing since the game began, are all turned as one away from the pitch where their heroes struggle to turn back the tide. In military ranks, timed to the beat of Plexiglas percussion, their arms stretch out and back and out, hurling thunderbolts to strike their rivals dead. The howl that rises from their throats is a feral one, a challenge and an affirmation of tribal bonds, a howl learned in the dark days when flint axes and fire-hardened spears were civilisation’s greatest gifts.

“Red Army!” One voice, loud and defiant. The chant is picked up by two more, four more, ten more. “Red Army!” A thousand more. Each time it builds, swelling as more voices are added to the cry. “Red Army!” It doubles and redoubles, ringing from the seats and the goalposts and the foundations until the whole stadium resonates to the song. There’s something terrible about it, about the way it goes on and on and never dies. It rises and falls, rises and falls, a tide of devotion that surges from one end of creation to the other and returns, undiminished. It never grows tired but gnaws away at the soul, patient and enduring and eternal. “Red Army!” It falls away, retreating from the shore, leaving you battered in its wake, then swells again as great as before. There is no guiding voice, no figurehead to lead the chant, only the unconscious ties of loyalty and devotion that bind these thousand voices as one, and the inescapable rhythm of the tide. “Red Army!”

This city is my home, and these are my people. I have never before felt even the slightest care for the fortunes of Southampton FC but now, with that primeval chant in my ears and in my blood, I belong. I roll my eyes when others rise and swear; I offer mocking laughter in place of crude limerick; I deploy acid sarcasm rather than a rolling chant announcing the referee’s masturbatory habits; but the feelings that drive me are the same. Less keenly felt for being only fresh-awakened where others have bathed their souls in it for all their formative years, yet alike in direction and purpose.

When the match is over, a great roiling mass streams from the gates of the ground. Marching as one through underpass and over railway bridge, holding the same pose. Head bowed, hands thrust deep into trouser pockets in search of some miraculous reversal hidden there, offering up glimmerings of golden hope to tilt the balance of the game some small part back towards the centre. The conversation is of the referee’s failings, of players who exceeded expectations and offer promise for the future, of injuries feared and prophesised. Strangers share their insights and opinions, differences forgotten in the face of uniting disappointment. Even my ignorance is valued; I am unbiased, impartial, and my opinion of the team’s performance is taken not as the tentative offering of one who knows nothing of football but as a validation, as the irreproachable judgement of a neutral party. Acceptance is offered unconditionally, my presence alone enough to give me merit in the eyes of those whose worlds never collide with mine. I was there, and that’s enough. I was one of Us.

Football has a hold over this country more secure and more lasting than any religion could dream of, and now I understand a little part of why. It’s something tangible, something real; your colours are plain, worn openly without fear or shame. When you gather in stadium, in pub, in living room, you are bound to each other who wears the same shirt as you. It’s simple, it’s tribal, it’s a challenge of physical prowess where greys are banished in favour of black or white. Religion offers only abstracts, promises, doubts.

Small bloody wonder, eh?

Starting Anew

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

- Albert Einstein (atrib.)

Time to return to the blogosphere, I think.

The Second Coming

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wished he was certain of.

- Mark Twain

I'll admit that it's not exactly two thousand years, but sixteen months is a long time to leave a blog stewing. You know how it is - you put dinner on, settle down in front of the TV for five minutes... Three and a half hours and a Babylon 5 marathon later, smoke's billowing from the oven and the alarm's shrill wail is waking the neighbours.

All the flavour should have gone out of the meal by now. And yet... it's still here - and there're fresh ingredients in the pot, no less. I have to say I'm a little dismayed by the poor showing, though - the internet is not what I thought it was. Sixteen months? The entire blog should be buried in spam by now, but all I got was two offers of porn, a casino deal and a slightly confused US Ranger. Clearly my cult status is sadly lacking.

So perhaps a second coming is required. I'm told Jesus is running late, and the crowd are getting impatient. He hasn't even done a sound check yet! So now's my chance. A young, unsigned talent, waiting for his big chance to explode onto the faith scene...

No, I know my limits. The idea of being bottled off stage by hardcore fans of the sandal-man himself doesn't appeal, so I'll keep my god complex to myself and make do with a return performance in this blog. Rambling and eccentric as my writings are, perhaps in another two thousand years a scavenger picking over the ruins of Earth might come across them and draw some sort of spiritual enlightenment from them. Perhaps he might spread the word? Add a few gospels of his own? Pass the writings down the ages, with each generation mangling them further...? This is all veering a little too close to a Chris de Burgh lyric, so I'll abandon that train of thought before it derails.

Nonetheless, faith can spring from all sorts of places. If the bizarre fantasies of a second-rate science fiction writer can inspire a bunch of high-profile believers, perhaps there's hope for me yet. Now I think about it, though, your very own religion seems to come with an unpleasantly heavy set of responsibilities, and I can't even cope with paying the phone bill. Think of all the things done in the name of god (any god), and it'll set you weeping. Crucifixion, crusades and intolerance, and that's without the fire-and-brimstone half of the Bible. Don't even get me started on televangelism - there's a wealth of hypocrisy commited in the name of God right there.

Jesus isn't the only one, though. I'm sure even L. Ron Hubbard's looking down from the great Spaceship-Beyond-The-Veil to which all SF writers go, and wishing he could manifest a leg with which to give Tom Cruise such a kicking. In Hubbard's name, most likely a few hundred people in need of mental help will go off their meds. Tom Cruise told them Psychologists are evil, and he's a movie star. He must know what he's talking about!

Count me out, thanks. I've no particular desire to take the blame for future crimes, be they murder, genocide or simple religious idiocy. You see, that's what I dislike the most. With religion comes absolution, the idea that the buck can be passed to an entity that may or may not exist, and that I just can't accept.

I'm reminded of a story, most likely apocryphal, told of the German military towards the end of World War Two. Hitler had been on the receiving end of a couple of assassination attempts, and as a result the general order was passed that any officer suspected of plotting against him could be immediately executed, without trial, by whoever suspected them. A rather extreme precaution, and one open to the most horrendous abuse. Schütze Freidrich's Oberleutnant yells at him for having a quick smoke behind the barracks? Big mistake. What's to stop Freidrich, upset at losing his roll-up, yelling "You betrayed the Führer!" and putting a bullet in his commander?

Nobody has the right to unconditional absolution. Each and every creature on the Earth must take responsibility for their own actions. Anything else, it seems to me, is simple cowardice.

Scrying the Future

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.

- Abraham Lincoln.

Will I be glad that I made the decision to begin an English Literature Degree, or will I regret it? That was the title of the first piece of work I was set, and it got my mind working enough that I actually posted something here for the first time in months. I know you've missed me really.

Here's my reply to the question, anyway. Somewhat somber and introspective for me, I know, but never fear; I'll be back to my usual cantankerous self soon enough.

I cannot really answer this question as only after the course will the truth be revealed. I can say that I believe it to be a good choice, for if I thought otherwise this passage would not be being written.

I base that belief on my hopes; that I might find confirmation in this course of the direction I have chosen for myself and learn more of Literature, a topic the importance of which justifies the capital letter. The latter, at least, is guaranteed by the subject matter, while the other is less certain. Its realisation can come only with success. This course is a test I have set myself, that I might discover the truth of my own self-beliefs.

Failure will set me adrift in the world, for I am the sort to take failure hard and dismiss success. I fear to find that English, just as Chemistry was, is not for me. The thought that this could be a knee-jerk reaction taking me as far from my previous study as possible is never far from my mind. But more than that I fear that I will do the best I can and still not succeed. When one has no interest one can at least claim lack of motivation as an excuse and cling to the knowledge that one is capable of more. But to sink your heart into something and still fall short, that is the greatest failure of all.

The most dangerous dream.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.

- Saint Augustine.

A long time ago, on a continent far, far away, there was a man, and he had an idea. It was a fairly simple one, truth be told; of life, liberty, and happiness. The naïvety of it was staggering, and true to form, this idea turned out to be more complicated than it seemed, as most simple things eventually do.

Skip to the here and now, and my hasn't the world changed. There are telephones and t.v., cars and quantum physics, aeroplanes and atomic weapons. Technology has it's foot on the accelerator, and the needle's in the red. One would think that the planet today would be barely recognisable, but amid the mercurial swirlings of society one thing remains constant. Fashions come and go, crazes pass in the blink of an eye, but human nature will never change.

For we are creatures who dream. We hope, we plan, we aspire to greater things.

It doesn't sound too bad, does it? I've touched on the importance of hope in an earlier rambling, but I fear I may have neglected to mention one vital ingredient in this witches' brew. The capacity for reason, for tolerance and understanding. For there's nothing more frightening than a man who knows... not just believes but knows that he is in the right. No doubts will assail him, and nothing anyone can say will ever sway him from his course.

The dream of a better world can be a dangerous thing. It's for the greater good, after all; those who stand in your way deserve no sympathy. If they only saw what that well-meaning man sees, they would understand. The ends justify the means, surely, when the end is such a beautiful thing?

Beware the man who lives for a perfect world; to him life is valueless. All that exists now could be bettered - and it will be, if he could just... reach... that dream. Those ground beneath his feet, they understand, right?

Right...?

It'll be alright on the night...

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
- Aldous Huxley.

University is expensive, even for a stay-at-home type like me. A better socially-adjusted student than myself spends a small fortune every week on the essentials of life; beer and parties. Add on top of that such luxuries as accomodation costs, bills, tuition fees, books and food, and you've got the sort of sum to make you wish for the Midas touch, despite the niggling side-effects. No, these days we're expected to pay through the nose for our education, an expression that's likely to gain worrying accuracy as soon as they figure out a way to put a tax on air.

So why is it that a degree seems to count for so little these days? Employers are looking for something else, something more important than the hard-won eductation that leaves students empty of pocket and damaged of liver - they're looking for experience.

This begs the question: how does one become experienced if one can't get a job? A metaphysical conundrum that could leave your mind chasing its tail in bewildered circles, it nonetheless has a simple answer. Of course, if your mind thinks it has a tail to chase then frankly you're in enough trouble already, and I think the experience you're in need of is more of the psychiatric kind.

Employers don't want the world, although that'd be nice. Nor do they want blood, and I suggest you don't offer. They just want some sign that you're not one of the university pod-people, those strange and soul-less beings that flourish in the greenhouse of academia but wither when exposed to the real world. They want to see that you're a human being, not a Triffid; a well-rounded individual who can bring not just intellectual skills but a genuine presence and enthusiasm.

That's why I feel a great pity for those sheltered things that come to Uni and work without pause or respite, distaining the social side in favour of their books. There's a big bad world out there, and not only has it eaten your grandmother but it fancies a taste of you as well, as you skip merrily along in that nice red cloak of yours. You need to come out of University wielding a baseball bat, not waving a feather duster. That's not going to do any good when "what big teeth you have" is closing in fast.

Experience in the field is like gold dust... no, like great big lumps of the stuff, rare and something to be treasured. Employers don't expect it, though they can hope. No, they are the prospectors sitting by the edge of the stream, scooping pan-fulls of gravel from the river and searching for that tell-tale glimmer to an otherwise unremarkable rock. These days a degree is nothing special, nothing to make you stand out from the crowd. It takes a little experience in the real world to make you shine.

So what I've learned is this: make the most of your opportunities, and live life to the full. University is a practice run for reality, for as Shakespeare said, "...all the world's a stage" and this is a dress rehersal. When the curtain rises just hope you've got enough practice, and play the role like your life depended on it.

Because - in a way - it does.

Living next door to Hell.

Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful.
- Marshall Ganz.

As I write this, it's either too late in the evening or too early in the morning for any sane person to be up and about. The rest of the house is quiet, not least because I live with cardboard cutouts who think ten-thirty is a reasonable time to go to bed. Fair enough, maybe it is, some day in the distant future when your back's giving you trouble and bifocals are your latest fashion statement, but not when you've just broken into your twenties and student life holds you firmly in its grip.

Just before someone else points it out, I'm aware that I've just argued both ends of the paragraph against one another. Oh well... what's life without a little inconsistency? Besides, I left a narrow window of normality between the hardcore party-poopers and the insomniacs, even if I do appear in that second category.

Back to the point. See, I'm learning from this already. Isn't the Internet great?

I sit here, Moody Blues playing softly in the background as I scan the room for inspiration, and from outside comes a blissful silence. It is late, after all, and most people are asleep. Except... The quiet of the night is shattered by an incoherent bellow from the open window. Ah, the neighbours. Everybody needs good neighbours, so TV would have us believe, in which case I can't but help think we've drawn the short straw.

Our student house is a decent one, as they go. No cockroaches, no fungus colony in the bathroom, and when the boiler leaks poisonous gasses we can generally rely on the landlord to come along and fix it before we all succumb. I'm yet to be mugged or offered particularly exotic drugs, and gunfire in the local area is at a minimum. All things considered, it's a pretty good place to live.

If you ignore the gateway to hell that sits beside it, that is.

That's got to be it, I'm beginning to think. Strange smells and clouds of noxious fumes constantly issue forth from its windows and other openings, while at the most unsocial hours soul-chilling sounds can often be heard from within at volumes to make the eardrums bleed. But all this pales into comparison next to the infernal creatures that dwell within.

Filthy, misshapen things that screech inarticulate profanity at one another, they squabble constantly among themselves. Seeming never to leave what passes for a living room in that foul domain except to fuel their vices, the beasts live on the edge of constant conflict, requiring only the smallest thing to tip them into the precipice of 300-decibel hatred. A misplaced lighter, a lack of drugs, someone refusing their perfectly reasonable request to be waited on hand and foot - these and others are the catalysts that begins the cacaphony of insults, accusations and death threats. At any time these fights might break out, for none of the building's twisted inhabitants seem to work. Sleep too seems to be alien to them, for many are the occasions that - woken by a call of nature, or perhaps some diabolical influence - I've risen to hear the same angry voices at four a.m. Specific types of demonic interference might be a welcome interruption to sleep, of course, but Succubi these certainly ain't.

It drove me to the edge of sanity at first; some would say beyond, though they're the sort of deluded idiots who'd tell you there are no Secret Lizard Overlords. These days, however I view my neighbours with a sense of pity. What hollow lives they must lead, empty of purpose and devoid of meaning. No friends ever visit - though the police seem to be on first name terms - and among the tenants of the house there seems to be at best an uneasy truce. Sad almost, to see them go through a parody of existence where nothing remains but anger. They tear at each other's souls through a desperate hunger to feed the void within, while their bodies and minds waste away in kind.

I watch them and I think, this is where one stands when all hope is spent, frittered away on idle fancies and grand plans. It is a currency you can't afford to waste, something that must be invested with care, metaphysical gold. I sit here with the assurance of youth and I know I'll never be like them. You see, I value my dreams.

A to B via Z.

A definite purpose, like blinders on a horse, inevitably narrows its possessor's point of view.
- Robert Frost.

Why is it so hard to get to the point? Maybe it's just me, although I never thought myself particularly flighty, but it seems as though remaining focused on the discussion in hand is like a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey where the unfortunate equine keeps on moving.

Last night's rather somber tirade on the downfall of western civilisation, for example, was instead intended to develop into a jab at the education system and the way it forces children into choosing their life's path too young, juvenile cannon aimed too early and too far. What you choose at GCSE limits your choices at 'A'-level, and that hampers you when the Great University Decision rolls around. Your entire life revolves around a decision made at an age when the only thing that matters is the latest Boydrone gossip or worrying if Mum knows about the magazine under your mattress. Hardly the state of mind in which to plan your future, is it?

But I digress. The moment for educational bitterness has passed, and for once I'm going to try and stay on topic. Where's that donkey got to...?

Do all writers find it this hard, or am I alone? It's all too easy to become lost in the fog of the point in hand and forget the reason you wandered into the mist in the first place. There are gorrillas in there - Sigourney Weaver, too - and you may never reappear. Mapping out the work beforehand is one option, of course, but in doing so much of the spontaneity is lost. It's like the difference between a boxing match and a movie fight - throw the actor in the ring and he's lost without his choreographer.

Nope, it looks as though the only way to finally pin the tail on the donkey is to edit. To rein one's errant creations in and point them at the heart of the matter, no matter how hard it may be. To pile on yet another simile, writing isn't like herding sheep. You don't let your charges wander all over the mountainside, doing what they will. No, all donkey references aside, writing is like running a stable. Words are horses, not sheep; leave the gate open and they'll be gone, back to the wild. You've got to train them, watch them, lock them up at night. Only when they're broken can they be released. And to that I've only got one thing to add...

...Horse whispering is harder than it looks.

The price of having it all.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm Forbes.

Education is a funny thing. There are millions out there in the backwaters of the Earth that lack any at all, people that would give anything for the chance to read and write. You can't eat books - not easily, anyway - but being able to read them is still the most important thing there is. Often it's not for themselves; you watch endless charity donation shows on TV and hear again and again how these subsistence-level people speak of giving their children the chance for a better life, the chance to become lawyers or doctors or engineers.

If I were cynical (far too young and innocent, naturally) I'd say that they're thinking of the money an educated person can earn and the food it can put in front of them, but what's wrong with that? Hey, maybe you can eat books after a fashion. For a life where the greatest concern is filling your belly it's difficult to see beyond such unrefined boundaries, but the joy is that they don't have to. Leave that up to the two-year-old gnawing on the cover of that biology textbook; given the chance they'll seize it, and it only gets easier from there. Each generation takes another step up the ladder, building on their parents' understanding and growing to appreciate education for education's sake, not just as a means to an end.

Of course the truly great thing is that it's a one-way process; once they take that first step along the road there's no going back. Why turn away from something that can see your family fed and housed and clothed? The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions but the path to a brighter future is hardback and leather-bound.

First-world children don't have that drive. They've never been hungry. Oh, they may have experienced the odd stomach-rumble or two, but they've never reached the point where roadkill looks appetising. They know what the future holds, they've seen it already in their past. A comfortable house; a boring job; loving spouse; kids; possibly a dog if the hair doesn't set off their allergies. Jump through the hoops the education systems holds up and the world to come won't be much different; the house might be worth a few thousand more, the ring on wifey's finger might have two diamonds rather than one. There's no risk, nothing to lose. For all but the most ambitious or forward-thinking it's just not worth the effort.

We've had everything handed to us on a platter and we assume that life will go on much as it does now. It's strange how us civilised folk seem to feel the world owes us something, whereas those who have nothing are prepared to struggle for even the smallest bite. We could learn something from them, we who have never had to fight for anything. We need to shrug off the malaise and remember what it was to feel angry, to be denied. You never know, it might do us some good. It might make us appreciate what we've got.


I doubt it, though.

Falling at the first hurdle...

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
- Thomas Mann

So... a weblog? Being the self-depreciating kind of fellow that I am, I would wonder what I could bring to the internet that a thousand million other monkeys with typewriters haven't already. Not the complete works of Shakespeare, that's for certain. I suspect - know, in fact - that there are enough badly-written accounts of life in mundania on the tangled web as it is without my adding another, so I'll come right out with it from the start.

This isn't the sort of 'blog that acts as an outlet for teenage angst, even though at twenty-one I've got a lot of it saved up, with interest. Nor is it going to be a hum-drum detailing of the minutae of my existence in a desperate attempt to find some meaning. Hopefully it'll also avoid becoming a catalogue of my woes, though Bagpuss* only knows I can be a self-pitying sod at times. No, simply put this is a place to write about whatever issues concern or interest me from day to day, and principally to keep me writing.

So, you have been warned; expect no consistency in topic or tone, and certainly no high standard of meaningful thought (I am only young after all, and everybody knows the youth of today are ill-educated hoodlums). This 'blog is a method of fending off the writer's block that hangs over my head like the Sword of Damoclese, nothing more. If it amuses or intrigues you, my apologies; 'twas but an accident, and I doubt it'll happen again.



* - For Americans and other strange creatures who aren't aware of Him, Bagpuss is the star of a short-lived TV series from my childhood. A cat made entirely of scrap cloth and curiosity, His busy social schedule involved sleeping, eating, yawning and examining the strange objects brought to Him by his mouse-cult followers. Clearly this is a life to be idolised, I thought; the media seems to hold similar beings in high regard, after all, and who am I to go against their wishes?

His adoption as some sort of personal deity wasn't far behind, and it seems to have worked so far - I'm not dead yet, after all. When I do kick the bucket, however, I'll try and let you all know what the afterlife's like - I've always felt being asked to choose a religion without this knowledge is rather like taking a job without considering the pension plan, and I'd hate to leave potential Bagpussians with their spiritual retirement fund lacking.