Holiday Traditions

Two of my holiday traditions were very nearly lost this year.

The first is to be in a certain place at a certain time. The increasingly disruptive weather has threatened plans of this sort for thousands of people in dozens of countries. When I realised that this tradition was under threat my initial thought was not to panic. Other people realising that I may not be in that certain place at that certain time were far more unsettled about the idea. I understand this. But the reason that I was no panicking was because I knew that this was one day and that, symbolic though it was, it could be replaced by another with the same sentiments.

This tradition is in tact. The second tradition is under threat as I type this. Again, it involves me being in a certain place at a certain time and a friend of mine being in a certain place at a certain time. This is a younger tradition than the aforementioned one but it is observed on a yearly basis nonetheless. Another very unfortunate circumstance has seriously hampered our ability to fulfil this tradition. However, we are pursuing alternatives, knowing that it is not the specifics of the tradition that are important.

Holiday traditions are important. However, it is the emotions and reasons that have created them that are more important. The idea of a tradition is to recreate these original emotions and to show commitment to these emotions. While it is easy to identify these emotions with specific times and places that is not their basis. The thought really is what counts because it is the only thing that we truly have control over.

These traditions may well fall soon but so long as we observe their foundation their importance will be retained.

-The English Student

Travelling Anxiety

Travelling at this time of year is always an anxious experience.

The airports are jammed, the roads are bogged down and even sea routes become a chore as mass migration happens all over the world. Naturally, taking part in this experience is enough to make anyone nervous. When you couple this with the volatile weather that constantly threatens to disrupt holiday travelling the whole situation becomes a bit of a nightmare.

But I wonder if travelling anxiety is not something that is felt all year. There is something very unsettling about travelling, particularly travelling by air. You arrive at an airport, get in a plane and arrive at another airport. The movement while in the plane seems virtual. You can look through a window but at times this is more analogous to a television screen. The sights from an airport window are so unusual in our daily lives as to make them unbelievable. So, instead of a more tangible or usual journey by car or bus, plane journeys feel like teleportation devices that require you to sit in one room for a set period of time depending on where you are being teleported to.

This form of travel breaks up our internal spatial map. This is not helped by the factory packed, generic look of airports that is common around the world. We enter an airport, exit another and suddenly realise that we are in a different country. Surely the real anxiety of plane travel is the fear that it is not actually taking place. We must be naturally cautious that the whole process is a ruse or sleight of hand and that our understanding of the planet is absolutely false.

While none of this will comfort me while travelling tomorrow, it may make my travelling anxiety more cerebral and thus more tolerable.

-The English Student

More Wikileaks Backlash

"Backlash" has become the word of the week so I shall engage in a bit myself.

The backlash from the release of diplomatic cables has the website Wikileaks bouncing around the net looking for a safe haven. This backlash resulted in people like Joe Lieberman demanding that sites like Amazon cut all ties to the website. This backlash resulted in a coordinated attack on anti-Wikileak websites that caved in to political pressure. This backlash has caused us all to begin questioning the very core nature of the internet. My backlash does not wish to show support for any individual or group embroiled in this controversy. There is almost too much opinion flying around this situation. In fact, I would rather investigate the nature of the lash itself.

Cloud computing, blogging and global communications have all had a pretty easy time of it up until recently. Anyone clamouring for a reduction in what they felt was the pervasive influence of these media could simply choose to opt out. Or rather, they believed that they could opt out. This controversy has highlighted just how integral the internet is in society and it has done so in the guise of a major threat to the freedom of information on the internet. Again, I am not stating an opinion on whether information should or should not be curtailed on the net. The point I am driving at is that the honeymoon period is over for 'Web 2.0'. It is becoming increasingly obvious that it must now gain a political impetus in either opposition or agreement to global politics in order to protect its own existence.

Some critics seem to view two possible outcomes of this situation: the end of political influence on the internet or the end of the internet as we know it. A third, less exciting result is equally possible: the crisis will crumble without any resolution. The politicians will go back to their camp with Assange's scalp, the hackers will go back to theirs with a safe domain for Wikileaks. The world will keep spinning. However, to ignore the lessons and potential threat to both sides caused by this argument could be fatal to either one.

While this controversy may go away, it leaves the fundamental question of "who owns the internet and the content of the internet" utterly unresolved and increasingly urgent.

-The English Student

Stasis

I do not feel well.

A cursory glance at my last few posts on this blog clearly point to a fairly uncomfortable, cynical and depressive perspective that I am developing. I dare not even read these posts, for fear that I will find some kind of pathetic author that is either clamouring for attention or truly floundering. I am not even sure which would be worse. Regardless, I feel compelled to stand by these posts as I wrote them for a reason and know that they will not result in people judging me because they will not be read.

But I can read them and I am reading the usual feeling I get at this time of year. An unnerving creeping sensation that pervades my entire outlook on life, my social interactions with people and my opinion of myself. I felt the exact moment that it began. I was walking through a capital city on the first truly cold day of winter and felt suddenly and utterly hollow. I felt broken. While this has not been a constant sensation, it is one that surprises me with its ability to lay me low at almost any given time.

Over the week I did find some kind of possible cathartic method for dealing with this. It is surely not just the winter that has brought this mindset on, but it feels appropriate to blame the winter nonetheless. Getting some pleasure that is unique to the season may be a way forward. I enjoy planning Christmas parties, making snow 'sculptures', drinking mulled wine, eating winter food and sitting with friends in front of a warm fire. The senses can be treated in a way that is not possible at any other time of year. I need to harvest as much joy from these sensations as I can to defend myself from this crippling (if you will pardon the usual gross hyperbole) drain.

Perhaps I will survive another winter and perhaps next year I can do more than survive.

-The English Student

My Personalised Zahir

I was starkly reminded of Borges' Zahir recently.

At times this image comes to mind: a coin that has been scratched and perpetually haunts the owner who cannot rid himself of it. The owner does not even want to get rid of it. Yet it weighs so heavily on their mind as to drive them utterly insane.

I actually began to identify a person I knew as my Zahir. Meeting with them upset my nerves and made me very worried. They were like a coin that I could not or chose not to rid myself of. Yet they did nothing whatsoever to justify this. They are a truly brilliant person. The fact is, I saw them as my Zahir because they reminded me that I am a terrible person. My evasion of this person hammers home just the kind of emotionless shell that I am.

This post underlines the fact even more so. The audacity that I have to actually think of a living person with real emotions and a real vivacity as a drain on my existence makes me physically nauseous. How dare I. This is despicable behaviour and my callous rape of this image for writing material is vile. My word, my non-existent reader, my mind: do not make this worse by pitying me. The only Zahir is my utterly rotten mind. I am monstrous.

I am scum.

-The English Student

Social Positioning System

Sometimes I do wish that I could turn my brain off in social situations. It would spare us all these overblown analyses.

I was amongst a group of fairly new friends. Things were going well and there was plenty of enjoyable and pleasant conversation. Two people that I had never met before were introduced to me and my night took a turn. These people were lovely, open and friendly, while I was not. I became quiet, practically mute and watched in awe as a friend, having just met them himself went on to have a brilliant conversation with them. I skulked off to another table without even an excuse or a good-bye. The more I write about this, the more disgusted I get with myself so it is time to move on to the imaginary significance I have dreamed up for this event.

I have always found excuses to be on the outside of social activity. For a long time, being on the outside was a physical alignment. I could not go to certain events because I lived too far away or I would not be able to return home after them. People understood this and recognised what felt like a genuine desire to be a more social person. I believed that this was a reason, when in fact it was an excuse. Perhaps people know this and forgive my anti-social behaviour.

I cannot be entirely scathing to myself on this point. I have made quite a few friends recently and have in a sense, moved closer to the centre of this group of friends. But even if I have moved closer to the centre, that does not mean that I have allowed the group to move closer to my centre. Becoming more honest and more open might let me position myself closer to people.

My word, it might even give me a chance to be happy.

-The English Student

Vanilla Advertising

A seemingly trivial event just happened to me that, as usual, I am about to blow out of all proportion.

I was sitting in a fine establishment waiting for a fine friend of mine. Arriving first, I took a seat at a table and absently watched the nearby television. There was a sporting event on it that I took little notice of and at the finishing of the match, a usual generic series of advertisements began playing. At some point during these advertisements, the sound to the television was remotely turned off and music began playing instead. I did not even notice this change until into the second advertisement. The music so perfectly fit the visuals that the change was negligible until overt.

My initial thought was that the song was just one of those pieces of music that you would expect to hear during an advertisement. It was light, had some inoffensive lyrics and was of a tempo that either matched up well with an advertisement, or served as a suitable contrast to the action of an advertisement. I just assumed that this song was an ideal candidate as an accompaniment to advertisements.

This is probably a harsh judgement on the musician. The more I heard the song the more forgiving I was. In the end, I have to conclude that this little instances makes more of a statement in relation to the advertisements rather than the song. These broadcasts were so generic, so utterly forgettable that I was not even able to discern a difference between them when the same sound was played throughout. I title this piece "Vanilla Advertising" not just because of the implication that all of the broadcasts were essentially the same. I like the taste of vanilla and the effect that this music had on my viewing was also relatively pleasurable. I was able to view them as a whole piece, not containing a contrived agenda and overall, not having any real effect on me.

It is remarkable how small events like this can truly threaten the pull of the advertising world.

-The English Student

What is going on above us?

There have been a plethora of serious air incidents in the past two weeks.

The massive threat from an Al-Qaeda plot to blow up two cargo planes has been well documented. The planes were loaded with explosives that managed to cross various border and security controls and were only found after a tip from a Saudi agent. Following this, a plane crash near Karachi on Friday killed twenty-one people, while a Cuban plane crash killed 68 the previous day. Coupled with the grounding of the Qantas A380s due to engine flaws equates to a terrifying sky-scape.

The fragility of this mode of transport is in one sense quite shocking. Plane travel is a standard method of travel. While it can be a nuisance, it is a necessary nuisance of modern life. The benefits of flight have far outweighed the inconvenience of it. However, when you scale things back and look at the actual process of flight, the whole prospect is far more terrifying. We get into large metal containers, strap rockets to them and hope to survive the natural conditions of weather and gravity that would utterly annihilate the attempt when given the chance.

It takes a string of high profile incidents for unobservant people like myself to actually notice this fragility. Perhaps it is better this way. After all, we do not want to take the place of McEwan's protagonist in Saturday; thinking a plane will crash and therefore causing it to do so. All of these fragile modern conveniences teeter on the brink of destruction and threaten to sweep our entire method of life away with it.

Is it better then to grieve the loss and destruction caused by these incidents than to dwell on the fragile systems that caused them? Doing so creates an argument that some life is expendable so long as it maintains the structures of life.

-The English Student

Academic Inferiority. Intellectual Inferiority.

Compensating for your failures is a massive part of life.

I can hold my hands up to many examples of my many failings, yet I have begun to doubt a foundation I would usually fall back on. My grades in school and college have all generally been quite high, and while I never deluded myself into thinking that I was very intelligent, I did believe I could effectively play the academic game. If I felt I was lacking in a certain area I would simply sit down and beat it into myself. In short, when I saw an academic problem I believed that I had the tools to solve it.

I now question this. I am currently surrounded by a host of brilliant people and am beset by what seems to be an academic mountain. I have begun to wonder if I never really had the right equipment to scale such peaks or if my own training was somehow flawed. Perhaps other things have begun to distract me or perhaps I was always destined to struggle in this situation.

More worrying is the possibility that it is not an academic issue, but an intellectual one. At my current point I am determined to employ my past tactics of throwing myself into a certain area to absorb absolutely everything that I can. Should this fail, I will be in serious trouble. So this post is a mantra, a demand, a spark.

I will do my best.

-The English Student

An Assault on the Humanities

The economic tide seems to be turning very sharply away from the humanities.

In various countries in the last few months, a trend of cutting back money going to this area in local culture and universities has become obvious. Governments are clawing back funding and placing it into areas that they deem to be more economically fruitful. These include most notably the sciences and the effort for these countries to create unique selling points through technology. The hope is that these measures will create new jobs and allow these countries to once again flourish.

Well pardon my obvious bias, but this is absolute nonsense. How can anyone possibly make a judgement on what projects and areas will become profitable when they are in their genesis? In fact, massive 'economic worth' has been gained through breakthroughs in the humanities, that bring in academics from all corners of the world, sell books and give more monetary value to a country's culture.

This is a fine argument that many more intelligent than I will be able to properly mount and pursuit. I find myself reluctant to give my full backing to it however, as it engages these governments in their own discourse. That is truly what is at stake here, a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of the humanities. People are taught another method of thinking. Whether you agree or not with a certain thinker is almost irrelevant in many academic circles, the important point is how you create an argument to defend your position. Thinking outside formulaic scientific discourse is so important that an assassination of the humanities amounts to a direct attack on our ability to think and articulate new things.

This is not an attack on the humanities, it is an attack on Humanity.

-The English Student

Face Association Game

I like word association games.

They test the mind, force you to think of synonyms and antonyms and increase your overall vocabulary. I have found however, the I have begun to play a face association game that has far less benefits. When I see people walking near me, or down the street I have begun to naturally compare them to other people that I know. A part of me thinks "that is" a certain person even though that is nigh on impossible in my current situation. So in effect, I associate their faces with those that I am familiar with.

Instead of increasing my knowledge as word association does, face association decreases it. People are not so easily typified as words and as such, I am forcing them into certain groups that in reality do not exist. I show a severe lack of creativity and indeed, a fear of new people if I perpetually go to pre-existing knowledge to perceive them.

There is an even worse example of this 'game' that I caught myself playing a few days ago. Two people that I had newly met became associated in my mind with others I knew previously. In the one case, I disliked the person I knew originally and had to force myself not to feel this way about the new person, who incidentally is completely opposite. In the other case I associated this person with someone that I greatly liked and in that way did not give this new person a chance to impress their own benefits on me. Thankfully I have recognised this and taken steps to rectify it.

However, I must be diligent in my avoidance of this face association game.

-The English Student

Re-rooting

Prepare for a tiring ecological metaphor.

At times I cannot help but wonder at my own position within the world. I have my home, routine, friends and family and this is what takes up the vast majority of my time. However, I have begun to wonder to what extent these things actually define me as a person. Effectively, they are the soil that my growing tree has nestled in.

This is not just an aimless conjecture and it is not a re-hashing of the nature/nurture debate. I want to know who I am and this seems to be constantly wrapped up in what I am doing and even more importantly, where I am doing it. I cannot pass through our capital city without making a judgement on a place or remembering a past experience I have had there. I will often bump into friends and associates in the city. I become defined by all of these places.

So this has to be a partial reason for my removal from my capital city to another capital. Being an ancient oak tree, set in the ground and immovable is actually a frightening prospect when you do not choose it. I do not hold any ill will to my previous soil and the prospect of returning there either temporarily or permanently is still a very attractive one.

However, for now I need to be like a potted cactus, taking some of that soil with me and yet being more open to change.

-The English Student

Marketing Failures

I have been watching too much television lately.

As such, I have been exposed to quite a lot of terrible marketing campaigns. On a basic level there are three types of poor advertisements. If an ad is obscure in its message and relation to the product or service it is hardly effective. In addition to this, an advertisement that is dishonest about the true benefits of their product or service must be counter productive. A final irritating advertisement style is one that attempts to annoy a consumer into buying their product.

There is one famous advertisement that employs this last method. It is so loud and brash that it would be impossible to ignore. It revels in how cheap the presentation is and the obnoxious presenter is encouraged to irk the listening in every possible way. Is this truly an effective marketing method? Whenever I see these advertisements I take a silent vow to never give them money and thus punish them for their negative marketing techniques. It cannot be denied that the brand is well known on the back of these ads, just not well respected.

All of this was put into stark contrast when I visited a company that has one of the best marketing departments in the world. They use clever and unique ploys. They do not try to bully the consumer or even try to make outlandish claims about their products. Instead, they generally use humour and guile to convince people that they are deserving of our money and this is the benefit of positive marketing campaigns.

Even if we are being tricked into giving up our money, at least we feel good about it.

-The English Student

Linguistic Love

I am quite sick of the misuse of words that should only be used in almost entirely unique situations.

The word 'hate' gets thrown around a lot these days. A quick search of my blog did not reveal many uses of the word but I am well aware of how much I overuse while speaking. "I hate that drink", "I hate those jeans" and other ridiculous uses of the word have completely undermined the power of the word. It gets to the point where I have to use qualifiers like 'absolutely hate' and 'thoroughly hate' to emphasise my feelings.

The word 'love' follows similar patterns. Again, looking back through this blog I have not fallen back on the word too frequently, except in relation to music. Indeed, it is one word that I concentrate quite strongly on avoiding. For many of my friends, on any drunken night out the word will be thrown around with reckless abandon, expecting it to be used again in response. I have mostly managed to evade this as I am very conscious of not diluting a word that should stand for an absolute purity of feeling.

When these words are over-used they become practically meaningless. If someone tells me that they love me what on earth am I supposed to take that to mean anymore? If you say that word and subsequently experience something stronger how do you express it? By taking away this expressive capability can you even understand your own feelings? I will most likely be faced with the drunken 'L' word a lot this week and I do not know how to deal with it.

I hope that I can be honest while retaining a remnant of linguistic integrity.

-The English Student

Fury

For the first time in my active memory, I became completely furious over this week.

Sure, I can get angry at times. This is especially likely to happen when in work and assaulted by a barrage of stupidity. These fits of anger are just that, flashes of rage that bubble across the surface. Like everyone, I have learned a good deal of control over this and can generally smother the anger before I do something stupid like lashing out.

The anger I felt over the week was of a completely different nature. It was a fury that was very slowly building inside me as the slow realisation of a situation was dawning on me. I could feel it rising as something unstoppable that needed release. It did not help that this situation was entirely my own fault and that this rage was directed at myself.

Thankfully I did not do anything completely stupid. I almost broke a phone and did have to take seriously deep breaths to gain a modicum of calm. In the end though, I managed to harness this fury and learn something positive from the situation. If there is something wrong and I have the power to do something, I will resolutely pursuit these options to their end, without rest. My rage spurned me on and forced me to action.

In the future, I must continue to force it to bend to my will.

-Then English Student

Pointless Controversy

Thankfully, Reverend Terry Jones (importantly not the same person as the legendary comedian and all around nice guy Terry Jones) has backed down from his plan to burn the Qu'ran.

Freedom is an iconic symbol of the USA. It is cemented into the mindset of the population, regardless of whether or not this freedom actually exists. I am guessing that this is the reason why there is such controversy over Terry Jones' now defunct plan to burn the Qu'ran on the anniversary of the September the 11th terrorist attack. After all, is it not the right of an American citizen to say whatever they want, do whatever they want and express whatever they feel?

If you want to create an anti-Islamic protest on the anniversary of a terrorist attack well that is the right of a free citizen, despite how astonishingly insensitive it is to both individual victims that have suffered and religions that have been blamed and suffered. It is very important to note the position of the United States government at this point. At no stage was the reverend threatened with arrest or censor for his actions. He would have been within his legal rights to burn the Qu'ran.

He would not, however, have been within his rights as a human being had he carried out his plan. The law may say it is alright to burn a sacred text, but why would you? Sarah Palin has likened the issue to that of the Islamic prayer centre that is due to be installed in New York city. I wonder how she could possibly have missed the very basic difference between these two acts. The building of a prayer centre is designed to foster understanding and repair bridges, the burning of the Qu'ran is an act of antagonism. One is constructive, the other is deeply destructive.

There is a difference between law and morality. The truly ignorant are those who choose to do everything they can within the law and claim that they are acting morally.

-The English Student

Consuming Consumption

Why do we try to get products and commodities physically inside of ourselves?

I have been mulling this idea over for a little while now and the more I think about it the more examples come to mind. When is the last time that you physically hugged an inanimate product? I have done it recently to a much-treasured new item that I bought and it did not strike me as strange. Absolutely, I was doing it mostly in jest to show people how much I appreciated the product: I hardly believed it was a real item. But the very manner of that hug is striking. Products do not actually get mentally or spiritually closer to you with a hug, as might happen with another living being. Instead, they just get closer to physically being inside you.

Another example is a common trope in narrative and also one that I noticed just last night. Instead of trying to 'ingest' commodities, we do the same thing with the money we would use to buy them. A friend of my jokingly kissed a coin last night, some celebrities are said to sleep in piles of money, while the influential Scrooge McDuck swam in it. If we were presented with a bowl of currency and spoon would we delve into it with relish?

Perhaps all of this is just a pose. It is possibly something that we do playfully and in the process, highlight the inanimate nature of the objects through the contrast with conscious beings. There does however seem to be something slightly more sinister in the pattern. It seems that to an extent, we apply sexual desire to commodities in order to prolong our ownership of them. In the same way that we continue our genes, we also continue our possession.

As usual this is just conjecture, yet I will embrace commodities with far more reserve in future.

-The English Student

Peeling Pictures

My posters and photographs have begun to give in to the forces of gravity.

I do enjoy covering walls and wardrobes with art work. There is a certain method to decorating these spaces that requires a bit of thought and taste to get just right. These posters give real character to a room and effectively make use of walls as blank canvas. You can also change things whenever the mood takes you and reconfigure the whole feeling of a room.

Gravity has a tendency to do this too. I have not bothered changing around the art work on my walls in quite a few years and the various pieces of blu-tack, cellotape, paper clips and electrical tape are starting to wear down. Photographs are curling from the walls, posters have gone dusty and paintings are slipping.

I may have noticed this more acutely because, like these works of art I too shall be leaving soon. Being surrounded by a canvas that you have created yourself allows you to project your personality into a medium that all can view. So is it better to repair the wear on these areas for the next person to view and remember or should I take the art with me and create another shelter in another place?

In either case, gravity is relentless and eventually my canvas will be permanently empty.

-The English Student

Bleeping Capitalism

This week I experienced a very practical and pure form of capitalism.

In this temporary job that I shall soon be leaving we had to do a stock take. I have experienced some forms of stocktaking in the past. These were mostly small time and did not involve a massive amount of organisation. In fact, the entire stock-taking system seemed fairly unintuitive and quite inaccurate based on my past experience. When a stock-take is done poorly, a retail outlet is run poorly and the poor management skills of the company are highlighted. My stock-taking experience this week was completely different and seemed to shed light on two aspects of capitalism.

The level of organisation this week was quite phenomenal. In a big company like this one it is very difficult to get every member working towards the same goal. By planning this stock-take weeks in advance the company was able to focus the entire workforce. This was most obvious during the actual count. Experienced workers from across the company were brought in bringing highly expensive and specialised equipment with them. Dozens of people filled a large room and in complete silence counted every piece of stock in the building. As a corporate machine we worked completely in tandem.

Secondly, the method of stock-taking shows basic elements of capitalism. Every piece of stock, every cultural element in the building and all the work that went into creating, producing, marketing and distributing them was summarised in a single "bleep" sound from the stock-taking machines. Everything was given a single value and this made it possible to count and compare them. More than this, us people counting became valuable based on how quickly and effectively we could count.

These patterns of unity are neither good or evil, just elements of the bleeping capitalism that we live in.

-The English Student

Schrödinger's Camera

A recent blockbuster has lead me to think about the power of film.

Many friends and colleagues know my poor knowledge of film and how I find it difficult to sacrifice large swathes of time to actually sit down and watch a film. I was however, convinced to make a rare trip to the cinema a few weeks ago to see the highly acclaimed and highly brilliant Inception. Without actually dwelling on the plot, giving a review or ruining the film for those that have not seen it, I would like to talk about a major question that the film poses about its own medium.

The major question at the end of the film relates to a "did it or did it not" ending that is open to interpretation. A person's own interpretation of this ending place the film in wildly different contexts. While the debate rages between "yes" and "no" amongst many people, my own take of the ending was slightly different. The film does not actually pose a definitive answer to the problem and is clearly deliberately ambiguous. With that in mind, I have to believe that drawing a conclusion either way would be incorrect.

A power of film that I have only just realised is that it can tell a story without any kind of conclusion. If we take the film as a self-enclosed world that has no narrative beginning or end (which is backed up by the cyclical nature of the film) then all endings are possible. In effect, "yes" and "no" to the mystery at the close (the end of our foray into the world of the film) are both true at the same time.

This was the first time that a film allowed me to hold two completely contradicting ideas in my mind at the same time.

-The English Student

Surrogate Death

"To reach inside a vault, whatever be the cost."

It was a hazy surrounding and a certain part of me knew that it was a dream. I made my way across the pavement near my house and saw, hobbling in front of me a mannequin that had begun to move. It had only one leg and was suspended on the other side by a crutch. Spinning in circles it drew closer and then moved away from me, before confronting me head on. It told me that it had great interest in biting me and this naturally disturbed me enough to wake me up.

The story of Cerpin Taxt has had similar effects one me. This album tracks the story of a man that intentionally poisons himself, falls into a coma and while unconscious travels through the depths of his own psyche. When he finally awakens, he is so distraught with the nature of reality that he finally resolves to kill himself. This second attempt is a successful one.

As I get closer to the inevitable ending that I face in a few weeks and the life change that I have been planning for months, I have began to wonder if this too is a surrogate form of death. It is the end of a life, it is an end that I have anticipated and yet it is an end that I have not yet fully understood. I may not be dying, but surely these thoughts of parallels to the thoughts of a dying person. We experiment with these death substitutes so that we can attempt an understanding of the ultimate mystery without actually sacrificing our conscious investigative tendencies.

Surrogate death is not real death and this may be the whole appeal of it.

-The English Student

Poisonous Debating Societies

The chances are that if you rose to prominence in a college debating society then you will become a politician.

I was a passive member of some of these societies and went along to view a debate or two on subjects that interested me. As anyone that has every gone to a college debate knows, it is a frankly bizarre situation. Practically everyone in the room will know each other and will already have rivalries and strategies for derailing an opponent. Added to the air of self-importance and complete lack of humour, this all equates to an unusual and fairly depressing environment.

The most bizarre thing for me however, is the format of the debates. A debating team will be given a position on a subject and have to argue it, regardless of their personal opinions. Why on earth should anyone want to argue a perspective that they do not believe? What sense of accomplishment can be achieved when you have successfully convinced someone of a point of view that you do not share?

The advantage of debating societies for potential politicians is obvious. They get a chance to network, form opinions and place themselves in the political mentality. However, it also conditions them for putting across opinions that they do not believe. This naturally creates a huge amount of insincerity in the budding politician. This is obvious in countless countries, where politicians hold a contrary view, not because of their believes, but because of their career.

If we want sincere politicians, we should train them in a sincere way.

-The English Student

Cheap Respect

There is a huge amount of respect flowing between myself, my co-workers and my bosses these days.

However, it has become very obvious, very quickly that this respect is cheap and hollow. It is all well and good to shower praise on someone in an effort to make them feel wanted and respected. Converting this into something tangible seems to be nigh on impossible for a capitalist corporation like the one that I am temporarily working for. When it comes down to it, how much do they respect us if they do not back it up with something real.

Perhaps I am doing a gross disservice to head office. After all, what kind of person or worker would I be if I was only looking for tangible rewards for my efforts? For that to be acceptable, we would need to live in an economic society that has put a tangible value on all products and services, forcing people to gain this value by sacrificing their time. So capitalism then.

But even putting aside my anti-capitalism angst there is a very simple equation going on here. If someone or a group of people put value on something (e.g. money, time, words) then it seems only right that they show their appreciation using the same 'currency'. Otherwise it is just hollow pandering that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

Until our economy runs on words, they can keep their hypocritical nonsense.

-The English Student

Album Review: Dark Night of the Soul

At last, the Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse collaboration has been released.

The album was plagued by constant delays and legal challenges. The main obstruction to the release seemed to be a dispute over plans to include a blank CD with the album, encouraging people to copy and pass around the work to other people. While this encouragement was not put into words, it clearly bothered EMI, who blocked the release for an entire year. The controversy over the album was only heightened by the suicide of Sparklehorse lead Mark Linkous a few months ago.

I was naturally wondering how this album would compare or contrast to the controversy swirling around it. The work itself is littered with big names like Julian Cassablancas, Gruff Rhys and Iggy Pop. These musicians create a wonderful sound scape within the Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse production. The album is dark, foreboding and yet full of somewhat jaunty melodies, creating contrasting songs and tones. On paper, this could have been a classic album.

However, it does seem to fall short of these expectations. The final few songs (possibly excluding the eerie title track) tail off into more wayward music and that is when the whole problem of the album is underlined. All of these high-profile guests have not just joined in as an influence, they have controlled their respective songs. This has made it difficult to listen to the whole album has one piece. In the end it is more a collection of songs and loses a certain coherency that would have elevated the album further.

With all that however, it is still a fascinating chapter in the evolution of alternative music.

-The English Student

Anti Social Behaviour

I had two contrasting bus journeys yesterday.

The first trip of note was on my daily commute home from work. It was just after rush hour and the bus was relatively full, warm and wet from the downpour outside. As I was listening to music and reading a great roar emerged from the back of the bus. It did not take long to figure out that the noise was coming from a large group of young teenagers that had taken to shouting ridiculous quotes, singing clichéd songs (re: Journey on a bus journey) and bellowing obscenities.

On the other hand I was on a bus very late last night coming in from an evening of revelry. I, like many of my friends was quite drunk and likely to look for a bit of fun to take away the draining agony of such a journey. We had jokingly thrown out a few clichéd phrases to some other people that we were acquainted with on the bus and it very quickly snow-balled into a loud and hilarious shouting match. I had a vague thought for the few people on the bus that did not seem to be enjoying themselves. I justified it by thinking that this behaviour is obvious and even appropriate on this particular bus.

I suppose the difference between these bus journeys is that in one case I felt there was a huge level of anti-social behaviour as ordinary commuters were disrupted by unemployed teenagers. In the second case the revelry seemed like a case of bus-wide pro social behaviour. Perhaps there is a case to be made for myself here and some guilt could be assuaged. At the same time, it cannot be denied that my behaviour was in fact, disruptive and I should not have two standards for similar circumstances.

I still however, maintain that we were much funnier!

-The English Student

Our Chancery Lane

I do enjoy my daily trip through the legal area of our capital city.

I only get glimpses of the area as I pass on my way into the city centre yet each glimpse seems to tell a story. Recently, the legal system has been split into separate areas in the city rather than the centralised system that was previously in place. As a result of this, I pass two areas of the legal system on my commute. Each of these areas seems to show the same two traits.

I meet the new court first on my commute. The building is a massive investment for the city, with huge glass façades and polished stonework. Upon its completion, the foot traffic around this area has grown exponentially. As an English Student I should not be so inclined to judge a book by its cover, however there does seem to be mainly two types of people surrounding the court. Many professional looking people with high class suits and robes frequent the area, most likely profitable lawyers and judges. The other group wears less expensive clothes, eat their breakfast on the street and are sometimes assaulted by photographers. So lawyers and criminals then, making each other more obvious by contrast and being forced to meet each other on the steps of the new court.

After passing this new area I go through the old court area. It is much quieter these days and is no longer assaulted by photographers. In fact, the only people really seen around these courts are people wearing long robes and ridiculous wigs. I began to wonder if the legal system had simply exported people that they did not enjoy dealing with to another area of the city. To grossly simplify the issue from the perspective of a bus, they tried to separate the lower class from their upper interests. This attempt seems to be a glorious failure however, as a small and secretive public house next door opens earlier than most laws allow, offering a place for the 'working class' to relax at almost any hour in the day.

Despite attempts to change the dynamic, the legal areas remain a self-perpetuating patchwork of rich, poor, law and disorder. While this institution may change area, fundamentally it will not change at all.

-The English Student

Masters of Disguise

Dressing up is a lot of fun.

Every country in the world should take an active part in fancy dress occasions like Hallowe'en. Our capital city is a glorious menagerie of bizarre, sublime, ridiculous and sometimes wrong costumes. At the same time the reputation of Hallowe'en has taken a severe downturn in this and countless other countries. In the eyes of many, the event has become an excuse for people to wear as little clothes as possible and engage in anonymous sexual activity under the cover of masquerade.

This masquerade warrants further discussion as it is surely not as simple as donning unusual attire as a protective mechanism. We all engage in disguise on various levels. The idea of self deception and creating alternative personalities and narratives for ourselves has been discussed more than enough and stands as an example of our need to pretend and project. The bottom line however, is that while we are disguised we feel more free to explore our natures. This can range from a simple flailing of the arms on a dance floor, to an arguably dangerous encounter with a stranger.

It is very easy to deride such events as an excuse for debauchery. It becomes a focal point for a certain fear. The fear that we all have about our own naturally created 'disguises'. Underneath these masquerades perhaps we are just the animals that we ethically and spiritually hold ourselves above.

...or perhaps it's just a lot of fun to dress up and pretend to be a super hero!

-The English Student

In Defence of the Vuvuzela

This year's World Cup seems to be bringing a record number of headaches to spectators.

The Vuvuzela, a traditional South African horn, has been wreaking havoc with the broadcasting of the soccer World Cup. Broadcasters like BBC and other national stations have been inundated with complaints about the constant droning of the horns. While I am not personally a fan of the sport, many of my friends have brought up the issue, with some being unable to watch a match in its entirety due to the noise.

For myself, I find the sport of soccer monotonous enough and as such avoid watching it whenever the choice is my own. This of course puts me on the outside of conversations and discussions quite frequently as the sport is obviously hugely popular. Yet for me that is not such a major issue as popularity is not a convincing indicator of quality. Indeed, there are countless examples of where the exact opposite is true.

I do not care how people feel about my indifference to soccer and the fans in South Africa do not care how the rest of the world feels about their Vuvuzelas. It is their own instrument, their own method of celebration. The South African supporters have stamped their own identity on the World Cup and this legacy will not be broken for the people that cannot understand the underlying basis for the Vuvuzela.

If people find the unique horn so offensive they should just go ahead and force the sport further towards homogeneity.

-The English Student

The Grand Tour

Places and personalities can become synonymous.

The idea of The Grand Tour is one that persisted for many centuries, especially in the United Kingdom. On paper the idea seems simple. A rich young noble takes a trip around continental Europe and beyond for an extended amount of time. This gives the 'tourist' an opportunity to sample different cultures, thereby completing their education and acceptance as an adult in the upper class. Of course, in practice, this largely equated to destructive young men roaring through countries experimenting with drugs and sexuality.

I do think that there is some worthwhile merit in this Grand Tour. At the same time I do not condone the subjugation of cultures by rich and reckless children - there is a very good reason that social constructions prevent us from engaging in all of our primal desires. So removing the lascivious elements of the Grand Tour leaves us with an extended trip abroad. Yet I still believe that the Tour has more worth than a simple holiday.

British lords considered the Grand Tour as a completion to sexual education, yet I believe a different type of education is at the core. Living in one country or place for many years gives many obvious benefits like relationship networks, income and security. Yet too much time spent in one place inevitably leads to an over-reliance on the area. A home town becomes a part of a personality and enforces behavioural patterns. These patterns are cemented into a person and become a part of them. In effect, the environment becomes a defining aspect of personality. Perhaps the Grand Tour still has worth as an idea because it forces us to break outside of this environment. We can become closer to understanding the person that we truly are if we remove one external factor.

If we sacrifice the outdated practical use of the Grand Tour a valuable seed remains: fulfilment of our personal education.

-The English Student

Narrative Over-Stimulation

We are a culture that thrives on narrative.

When you look at all forms of art, literature and music some kind of narrative is evident. It could be a narrative within the piece that allows us to follow, like the plot of a novel. Of course, some narratives can be obscure and so the overall process of an author or artist becomes the narrative that we cling to. Even post-modern and contemporary work that attempts to defy this tendency ultimately results in us delving further into our imaginations to create a narrative.

Beyond cultural work, this pattern of creating narratives is constantly in effect. Our relationships with friends, co-workers and family are formed with narrative structures. You may meet someone, begin to like them, become friends, have a fight and repair your friendship or any number of possibilities. We even create plots for ourselves. When starting a new job, it is like a new chapter or section of your narrative, another small segment that makes up the narrative of your life. Projecting these narratives is never a straight forward affair as we often show an ideal narrative of ourselves, rather than one based on fact.

It is very easy to become completely engulfed in these 'fictional' narratives. People constantly idealise their own narratives or spend their entire lives engulfed in other narratives. This creation is a major part of our humanity and seems to be a unique process for our species. It follows that our species is unique in that it constantly reinvents itself beyond the truth in order to feel more comfortable with itself.

It all amounts to a narrative over-stimulation.

The English Student

A Truly Great Barber

I finally relented this week and took my hair self in for a haircut.

Despite appearances, I would actually go to my barber fairly frequently. My inability to spend money with any kind of free abandon makes me tentative to book dentist or doctor appointments. The fair prices that I have worked out with my barber (without discussing it!) are based on whether I am working or not. This gives an early insight into the kind of barbershop this man runs. The next insight comes from the standard by which any barbershop can be judged.

I generally look forward to our haircut chat. This is usually primed by a quick perusal of the newspapers lying around the shop. It is pretty much the only opportunity I get to read the papers that are inclined to use red ink in their title headlines. Our usual chat moves from here to sporting issues, the weather, the state of the country and other general areas. Even if you consider these areas 'mundane', the level of discourse is always very high. The man is highly intelligent and experienced and leaves me chasing him through a myriad of debates.

We even had a frank and illuminating discussion on death this time around. It was a fairly abrupt change of conversation and yet it was not out of place in the barbershop. We did not say a huge amount on the subject, despite the fact that we were actually discussing it for a large amount of time. We came to the conclusion that there really is not anything that can be said to encompass death and so we did not feel the need to bandy words about. It was appropriate and enthralling.

He also did an excellent job on my hair throughout it all: the mark of a truly great barber!

-The English Student

A-Adventurous

I really do seem incapable of having any kind of adventure.

In the last week some of my friends spontaneously took off for a little adventure. It may not have been fully on the spur of the moment, but within a few hours of discussing a plan they were out of the country fulfilling it. Some people seemed to be a touch angry at them, others shocked, while plenty thought the whole situation was hilarious. I have felt a huge amount of envy.

In a previous post I discussed my ridiculous frugal tendencies and in some respects, this explains my inability to feel free to go off and have such an adventure. My brain would constantly be worrying about spending money when something this spontaneous can only be done without this restraint. But this is incidental to the foundation of my problem. Time is the real resource that I would not be able to give in. If I am not in work, then I am studying. If I am not studying, then I am trying to recuperate energy for work and study. While I still spend a lot of time doing nothing, this nothing is a part of my solid schedule that leaves no room for adventure.

If this keeps up I will truly lose my ability to have wild experiences. It seems that it is an issue of control and reassurance. If someone cannot release some of the control they exert over their internal and external lives then they will never be open to alternative experience. Yet I type all this knowing that I am very unlikely to release this intense control that I hold over myself.

If I continue to wait for an epiphany that will shock me out of this control I may very well miss my opportunity to explore. I may very well become a-adventurous.

-Then English Student

Breaking Down in the City

Everything seems on the precipice of collapsing in our capital city.

Two separate stories show how close we are to this collapse. While going to work over the week I was confronted by an unusual sight. It was quite early in the morning and in the new day sun a lady sat down on one of the main thorough fares of the city. She was dressed in typical business attire and was likely on her way to work. Instead she was sitting by the road, with her head in her hands as an apparent stranger attempted to comfort her. An ambulance arrived as I passed to tend to the woman.

The second story has a similar tone. This was related to me by a friend many months ago. While on a bus, my friend saw a man, again apparently heading to work have a similar breakdown. The man was hysterically crying as he sat alone on the bus. This must have been very awkward in such a public place for both the man and the other passengers on the bus.

The identification of 'awkwardness' as the main overriding pattern in these stories may seem callous. But that is the nature of our city and our society. The city is apparently created to make our lives easier. Perhaps this is a fallacy and the convenience of the city is really just a contrived method of allowing us to survive just enough. Going to work and engaging in numbing monotony is somewhat alleviated by how easily the city facilitates these patterns. Public transport allows us to turn our brains off and ignore our natural instinct to rebel against a grey existence.

These people that broke down in the city under this strain and they will certainly not be the last to do so.

-The English Student

Pedestals

Another bizarre night in the city has lead to some bizarre conclusions.

Due to ridiculous, self-imposed factors I ended up sitting around in our capital city the other night, with nothing to do except watch people passing by for an hour and a half. I saw many things, some heart warming, some disgusting. As a woman hobbled by me, wearing one high-heel, I began to notice more people doing the same and plenty that had abandoned heels altogether in favour of walking around in their bare feet.

This would not surprise someone that wore heels and had to put up with the lack of comfort on a regular basis. It made me question why these types of shoes are actually a normality on nights out when in reality, women do not take comfort in wearing them. In a way a physical argument could be made. In the same way that women have breasts, they have support. In parallel, the average height of a woman would be slightly less than a man and so heels go towards addressing this imbalance. While this seems rational, I do think that there is a very important difference. Where brassieres create comfort, heels do not. Where brassieres were reclaimed in the 60s as an empowering symbol of femininity, heels are a subtle inequality that women feel obliged to wear.

As I sat there in the city, watching heeled women passing by I was reminded of statuesque forms standing on pedestals. They are raised up by the demands of men and placed on pedestals to be adorned or scorned. It is also worth noting the etymology of this word "pedestals" as containing the Latin "foot", further highlighting how important foot-wear actually is in our perceptions. As usual with these posts, I am certainly simplifying things and making a small observation rather than analysing an entire social issue. I do however think that this subtle form of inequality is not due to the natural differences between men and women.

They seem to be a socially imposed one that are, from this perspective, fundamentally unfair.

-The English Student

Vanilla

My taste buds seemed to have become dulled.

Food just has not tasted as vibrant as it once did. Two very obvious sources of this are my new tooth paste and mouthwash. They just seem to overpower the taste of food to some kind of extent for the whole day. I actually believe that it is directly affecting my happiness. I get less pleasure from food now. In a way, some would call this state (pardoning the pun) vanilla.

But I actually quite like the flavour of vanilla. Far from being boring, vanilla is absolutely fascinating. The plant is a strange blacky green stick that is quite sticky. The seeds inside contain the real flavour of the plant and can be mixed into just about any liquid to give it a vanilla flavour. It would also be one of my favourite types of ice-cream, up there with the top notch raspberry ripple.

So why does vanilla get a bad reputation? A colour, flavour and plant that is so bizarre that it is seen as completely normal is quite amazing. I really do find myself adding vanilla to different foods these days in an attempt to get back a bit of the flavour of food that I have missed. Maybe I am trying to restart my entire taste system by regaining a standard plateau.

But in the end, maybe normal life, normal sensations can be vivid in and of themselves.

-The English Student

Personal Isolation

Two patterns of personal, self-imposed isolation are quite obvious.

The result of both patterns is largely the same, the differences are evident in the initial feelings that create them. Arrogance is seen as a major source of such isolation. People seem to believe that they are above the opinions and help of others. They keep their own counsel as they do not value the advice of others. Even when they do deem to converse with people, they do not truly listen. They would rather wait for an opportunity to speak rather than an opportunity to listen.

A second emotion that brings out these patterns is one that is seen as a less common one. I would maintain that fear is the main source of personal isolation. Low self-esteem can easily lead to a person closeting themselves away. Whether it is out of fear of rejection or in an attempt to hide what they believe are their own flaws. In this sense low self-esteem is circular, as it festers in a person that has chosen to isolate themselves.

In either case, a lack of understanding or empathy is evident in these people. We all seek solitude at times and long for tranquil time away from others. The problem arises when this solitude becomes a substitute for human contact, rather than a break from it. To understand that you are no worse or better than other people is a fundamental need for personal development.

Unfortunately it is not so easy to understand this need and as a result, many will suffer alone.

-The English Student

International Isolation

There seems to be two main schools of thought when it comes to policies of international isolation.

With various elections closing in around the world, the topic of immigration and isolation is once again up for debate. This is a major issue in the upcoming British election with the debate bringing into question the position of the United Kingdom within Europe and the wider world. The fear of immigration in this country seems to stem from a theory that the people of these islands are a 'pure' race of some sort that is losing their birth right of land to outside forces. Indeed, many people that are seemingly tolerant of immigration believe that they are doing a favour to people that arrive from other countries and that they owe a debt.

The United States of America highlights another perspective on isolation. A major turning point in the history of the United States of America undoubtedly came at the point that Roosevelt forced the country to enter the wider world. Ever since this time, citizens of the country and citizens of other countries have debated the actual effects that these policies have created. Indeed, to be elected president of the USA, a by-line relating to how the country will lead the world in some respect always plays well. But as this policies continued they seemed to have become far more self-interested. That is not to say that they are any more or less selfish than the initial decision to enter World War 2. The most prevalent world view is now that this country gets involved for their own benefit and no others. In this sense the USA is just as isolated as any anti-immigration leaning government.

In both of these cases, very rigid lines are drawn up in relation to isolation. It must be stressed that countless people in these countries do not follow these extremely simplified patterns. The important point is that their governments are frequently perceived to behave in this way. Unfortunately this has the effect of painting all citizens of the country with the same brush. This dehumanises countless people as I believe the main effect of isolationist policies is to undermine the common connection we all have.

To block people from entering a country or to offer help only when it helps a certain country is to emphasise man-made borders and to undermine real, border-less connections.

-The English Student

Funny Musicians

It really is a shame when a band or musicians tries to do something that is simply beyond them.

Comedy is generally the areas where these people tragically fall down. How many truly awful music videos have we seen? The type where a band will film some kind of 'mockumentary' about their lives on the road. Or the videos that have poorly placed celebrities interacting and poking fun at the band. Or, worst of all, when a musician will dress up as another and parody them. Surely all real musicians should strive to move away from Weird Al Yankovic's 'music' videos. That said, I can understand the reasoning behind many of these videos. Frequently a band's message is very heavy and morbid and so to lighten the tension and make fun of themselves they wil ladd some comedy to their videos.

While this is rarely successful, it is at least more understandable than when a band tries to be funny live. I was forced to listen to a band recently that really believed they were the funniest comedians on the planet. A group of people that thought their music was so amazing that they should do the audience yet another service and bestow their whimsical humour upon them. It is a real shame, however, that every word out of their mouth was utter tripe. How many times does a joke have to land flat before a band will get the message that either they are not funny or that people do not want to hear their 'humour'.

In music videos these bands have a small chance at making fun at themselves. In this live situation I felt that the band was making fun of the audience. In actuality they were not trying to impress the audience with their humour or how cutting their wit was. They were trying to disguise their poor performance and lacklustre song writing. While comedy is a wonderful thing when done well it is absolutely disastrous when an artist dives into it instead of focusing on improving their craft.

Do not get me wrong though, people can be brilliant musicians and brilliant comedians at the same time. The problem is, that most are awful at both.

-The English Student

Virtual Blood on my Hands

Finding some time to play video games has been therapeutic lately, though I do feel that there is a bit too much virtual blood on my hands.

The last three games that I have submerged myself into have certainly been on the violent side. Assassins Creed II in particular has highlighted the prevalence of such violence. The name gives it away, but for people unaware of the volume of violence a quick summary will suffice. You play an assassin that is free to kill countless people using various types of sharp or bludgeoning weapons. Particularly vicious scenes are slowed down and emphasised by the game mechanics, glorifying in the violence. Of course, I play these games for fun.

But at times it seems like this fun could be negatively affecting me in other ways. The desensitization argument has been frequently trod in recent history and video game legislation. The fact of the matter is that video games frequently encourage us to escape into a fantasy world by encouraging us to take the part of a character. In many cases, these characters commit heinous acts.By proxy we are encouraged to imagine us committing these acts. How can this not have some sort of effect on us?

This violent side is attractive because it is taboo in ordinary life and yet acceptable in games and indeed films. So while we do imagine acts of depravity in these games perhaps it is best that some sort of outlet is used for these human desires. The danger only really comes when a person is unable to distinguish between the rules of a game and the rules of reality. This is exactly the reason that games have certified age ratings. An adult should have a better concept of reality (or at least a better concept of the rules of society) than a child and as such, should be more capable of using this outlet.

While there may be virtual blood on my hands, that realisation allows me to keep my real hands clean.

-The English Student

Earth Hour?

The cynic that I am was quite reluctant to embrace the so-called 'Earth Hour'.

For those of you not currently sitting in darkness, allow me to explain the concept. For one hour in the evening, all lights across the globe are supposed to be switched off in some kind of bid to save energy. Apparently many major landmarks across the globe are taking part, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge and The National Aquatic Centre in Beijing.

But honestly, what use is this? How much energy will really be saved with this minor gesture towards positive environmental attitudes. It is probably a safe bet that the energy used to spread information about this 'Earth Hour' outweighs the actual energy saved. Perhaps I am setting up a straw man to defeat here and actually avoiding the main point of this gesture. The main issue here must be to create awareness and a sense of solidarity across the world. We can surely address climate change together with such positive actions.

I do not, however, buy into this. Surely a more efficient 'Earth Hour' would include turning off all electricity for one hour, rather than just lights. Surely if we truly understood the massive ramifications of our grotesque use of energy we would dedicate more than an hour to this cause. Surely such an 'Earth Hour' would be less of a novelty and more of a foreboding anticipation of the future. 'Earth Hour' seems to be highly appropriate in that it shows the half measures that we take to solve problems that are not overtly threatening us. While these gestures may assuage some of our collective guilt, they do almost nothing to actually address the problem.

Until climate change becomes a more obvious problem or until we grow as a species to gain some real foresight we will remain the generation that failed the planet.

-The English Student

Frugality

I have never been able to spend money with the reckless abandon of some of my peers.

There always seems to be some reason to save money rather than spend it. Over the many jobs that I have had, I have compulsively saved. In my current job (lucky that I am to have one) I am saving approximately 90% of what I am earning. This has gotten to the point that it feels like I am working for no actual reward. A bank balance becomes a meaningless number that rises and has no real consequence.

Why do I constantly avoid spending money? While the cliché of saving for a rainy day may ring true for me, I think it is a more complex process. Abstract rainy days are easily ignorable. What is not so easy to shrug off is predictable events in ones life that will require money. There is always something on the horizon that may need funds. This is even beyond recessionary scaremongering. We always find a reason to save.

Sometimes this frugality seems like an excellent idea. It is a practical application of forward planning and thinking. Yet at the same time, working and using up precious time for no real reward, or an imaginary one in the future is more than problematic. Money controls us in this way and we cannot escape its grasp while we allow it to dictate our lives. Money is simply a medium. When we earn it we should spend it and make those imaginary numbers mean something.

I am not saying that we should all drive ourselves into poverty with excess, simply that we should enjoy ourselves more while retaining our forward thinking.

-The English Student

Changing Game Genres

With the release of Bioshock 2 recently, I have begun to play the original game that I had missed upon release.

In some respects the game is a formulaic, on the rails first person shooter. For the purpose of this discussion I should really clarify what I mean by these terms. An 'on the rails' game is one that funnels the player through scripted events and challenges. This is the original type of game going back to the advent of gaming. The development company will set up certain atmospheres, knowing that the player has to access them to progress in the game. This is the contrary to the increasingly popular 'sandbox' game that allow people to roam around an open world making decisions about how the game will progress.

These games have been frequently identified as stale in this gaming generation. The question can certainly be asked, what can a on the rails game actually do to become fresh? On a basic level, Bioshock is brilliant at setting up tension and excitement through these scripted events. This however, is nothing knew. However, about half-way through the story the entire foundation of this dynamic changes. Without spoiling some of the story, the game becomes a question of why your character has, without any hesitation, done exactly what he has been told by the various authorities in the game.

This brings the whole question of scripting into account. Why indeed has your character done what he has been told and why do we as gamers follow the same pattern? For a second the game seems to collapse on itself, revealing its nature as a simple "start at point A, go to point B via route C" pattern. Yet for all that, it is highly enjoyable. These questions show the strength of scripted games. The developer is still creating a highly enjoyable experience without having to give the player a (obviously false) sense of freedom. We know this is a crafted form of entertainment and yet we still enjoy it.

So maybe we should just drop these pretences of freedom and let these artists manipulate us and entertain us.

-The English Student

A Thaw

Finally, we have some relatively good weather.

It seems like the winter would never end and with the horrendous weather we were enduring I had actually forgotten what it felt like to be warm. It seems that as a nation we had collectively forgotten the hope of spring and the warm embrace of summer. It seems that this week it has suddenly pounced upon us.

The 'recession' and economic hardship over the past few months has been compounded by depressing weather. While people may diminish the effect that weather has on national feeling I really do believe that it is quite important. In practical terms, the cold snap forced us to stay inside and avoid spending money. We were also less inclined to invest emotionally or place trust in each other as the cold moved in.

With the thaw in the weather I do hope that these patterns will reverse and they do seem to be. People seem happier and economies are to an extent, picking up with the better weather. However, thaws and freezes are cyclical. While we may not have saw an end to this last freeze it was certainly coming and while we may think this thaw will last forever that is not the truth either.

We should make hay in this weather, as the cold will come again.

-The English Student

Naive Politics

Many politicians inside and outside of the government have retired in the past month and they left office due to an unexpected failing.

It really does seem that politicians suffer from two major instances of naivety. On the one hand, these people seem to completely misunderstand why a career in politics is a good idea. Coming through college these people become empowered by the open environment and energised by an apparent will to create change. The assumption is that these patterns extend to a wider social level and that a politician can enter government and reform the entire system.

The other example of naivety comes from politicians that are already well acclimatised to the system. These people have been in the politics game for a long time and realise that new blood coming in is foolish to think that they can affect great change. However, the show naivety in other ways. These politicians believe that they are above the laws that they have sought to uphold. The system has obstructed all attempts to change so the rules are circumvented. While this may be done with good intentions it circumvents the entire basis of our democratic system,

Perhaps there is an even great example of naive politics in these areas. The belief going in to every election that we the people can actually affect life and policy is time and again proven to be false. It really does seem that it does not matter who is driving us forward, as the route has already been defined. It really is a case where the blind are leading the blind and we have given a mandate to be lead in this way.

While politicians may be naive, perhaps we are far more naive for actually believing in them.

-The English Student

Dubai Controvesy

An international crisis is looming as a murder plot in Dubai is unravelled.

Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service has been identified as the perpetrator of a murder in Dubai earlier this year. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander was assassinated in his hotel by a group of professional killers. These people held false European documents that they used to gain access to the country and perpetrate the murder. These revelations have lead to widespread condemnation of Mossad's tactics and its strategy of making citizens of others countries suspects.

What does not seem to be condemned is the actual assassination itself. On the contrary, this act has been identified as highly professional. Various news sites have interviewed ordinary Israelis that believe the assassination to be a point of pride for the country, while Arabs have been quoted as have grudging respect for high level of skill and organisation displayed by Mossad. By all accounts, the main international point of contention is Mossad's use of foreign passports.

My point of contention has to be the heinous lack of justice that is displayed on all levels of this act. al-Mabhouh was a criminal and wanted internationally for weapons smuggling. He should have been imprisoned for his crimes and at the very least faced a trial. Mossad acted with legally and yet with just as much disregard for life as any weapons smuggler. They committed a disgusting act, regardless of legality. The international community seems quite inept at taking action against Israel or Hamas for their mutually horrendous acts and so the cycle will continue.

Expect vengeful killings and attacks in response to this assassination and expect real justice to remain perpetually distant.

-The English Student

A Retail Rant

There are certain complete lies in the world of retail.

This 'customer is always right' stuff has to be our first port of call. How can this possibly be a truism? Not even me, the great and modest English Student gets everything right one hundred percent of the time. In fact, this statement is almost never true and often equates to downright disgusting behaviour. If the customer is always right, then they have no need whatsoever to show respect to others. Anyone working in retail becomes an obstacle to what a customer wants and as such, can be treated like the scum that floats up from the river of our capital city.

So what's the solution? Companies try to emphasise this basic tenet of retail and customers are determined to believe it. Perhaps if they understood that people working in retail are no different from themselves they may be more inclined to give respect. So I propose that everyone that would like to buy something from a retail outlet must work in a retail outlet also. Each member of the public would earn points based on the hours they do in retail and this can be exchanged for hours they spend as a customer. Not only would this force people to see the other side of the coin that they so readily ignore, it would result in truly idiotic shopping focused psychopaths like Paris Hilton working eighty hour shifts in the local newsagents!

Ok, perhaps it is best to take a few steps back from the precipice I have charged at here. I do not hate my job (temporary that it is) and I do not hate the public. In fact at times I absolutely adore my job. It is quite amazing when you can really make someone's day by helping them and the people that I work with are absolutely brilliant. So for all the abuse and hatred that get's hurled my way at various times in the day I certainly consider myself very lucky to have a job and miraculously lucky to have a job that I can mostly enjoy.

But at any rate, I will certainly be more inclined to respect others that work in retail.

-The English Student

City Conspiracy

In my spare moments in the city I have found myself becoming a bit of an amateur detective.

Two separate people have drawn my attention. Throughout the masses of the capital city, the bustle of every day life and the fast pace of the metropolis two people are recurring characters in my daily routine. The first is a somewhat elderly woman. My curiosity about her was aroused when I saw her trendy runners that were completely at odds with the rest of her austere clothes. She wears a dark coat and trousers and is invariably at my bus stop at 20:54, every day. I actually stumbled into her in a café at about 20:00 earlier in the week and subtly observed her from the other side of the room. An elderly man that she knew by name visited her and gave her newspapers, to which she said "I don't rely on anybody".

The second person I have seen less frequently. He is fairly heavy set and wears a dark jacket and jeans. His untamed hair and somewhat vacant stare draws the eye. He gets on my bus at various times in the evening and sits on the top floor of the bus in the second row from the front. One stop before his, he bows his head forward in a crouch while sitting and all of a sudden springs upright and marches straight off the bus. If I had to guess his mantra, it would be "I don't perceive anybody".

What has made me to make these bizarre observations? Am I simply deranged? Do I get some kind of sick pleasure from observing people? I would naturally be inclined to defend myself on these fronts and in any case I feel that there is something more systemic going on. The Panopticon society that we live in truly has begun to infect us all. We're Baudelaire's detective, as we walk the city streets not making any personal connection with people and thus, inventing one.

We observe all and are observed by all.

-The English Student

The Death of J.D. Salinger

As we all know, over the week the great American author, J.D. Salinger died at the age of ninety-one.

Being able to identify him as 'great' could seem problematic when the volume of his work is taken into consideration. We all know him as the writer that penned Catcher in the Rye. Many of us read this book while growing up and identified with the troubled, conflicting emotions of the main character Holden Caufield. But this was not simply a teen angst novel. Salinger perfectly caught the glimmer of teenage rebellion and placed it within the overall scheme of a life. While the struggle of Caufield was one of a hormonal teenager, it was treated as an important stage in his life. Salinger made the trivial important and in doing so, added importance to our own trivial lives.

Along with Catcher in the Rye, Salinger wrote a relatively small number of short stories. This is the total sum of his published works and has been a talking point for many critics over the past few decades. Salinger essentially disappeared off the literary map and went into hiding for decades. Some saw this as a confirmation of their opinion that Salinger had a limited vision for his literature, while others felt that he was doing a disservice to the literary community by isolating his talent.

Without really knowing the man I would still like to posit an alternative theory. Some critics have made the claim that Salinger felt that remaining in the public eye would compromise his work. While I do believe that he could have published many more fantastic works regardless of this pressure, this defense of artistic vision does ring true in relation to Catcher in the Rye. Holden constantly berates the 'phonies' that do not follow up on their promises and are only out to please themselves. This novel made every reader as important as the next and also as important as the writer. By becoming a recluse in this way, Salinger confirmed his own artistic vision in Catcher and made the book a more meaningful identification of ordinary heroics.

J.D. Salinger sacrificed his potential fame and fortune to imbue his work with more poignancy and this certainly allows us to call him 'great'.

-The English Student

Haitian Leverage

The first question countless people ask when observing external disaster: how can this benefit me?

While politicians may not admit to such callous emotions it almost certainly will cross their minds at some point. The Haitian disaster that has claimed the lives of at least 200,000 has inevitable been hi-jacked by such self-serving people. For governments and politicians there seems to be two main strategies of self-interest.

For smaller nations the strategy is one of self-promotion. For many reasons it is in the best interest of these governments to give generously to the people of Haiti. Doing so highlights the humanitarian spirit of the country and raises their international profile. If a country can boast a high ratio of donated money per citizen they will garden acclaim from all over the world. Larger 'world powers' face a different sort of playing field. Countries like the U.S. and the U.K. have frequently made claims to lead the world through decency and compassion. If they fail to live up to these expectations in this crisis then their entire ethos will be undermined. These powers need to act in order to preserve themselves. Obama does not want another Katrina.

So should we decry this hollow form of 'charity'? Indeed, does it even count as charity if the giver gains from it? I am tempted to take the line that our idealogical basis of charity is flawed and as such should be addressed, This would negatively affect the short term aid policy while hopefully creating a more generous and compassionate world in the long term. But the state of events in Haiti simply does not allow me to comfortably make this claim.

These people need aid and for once, the end might actually justify the means.

-The English Student

Inglourious Basterds: Film Review

Resistance is an interesting film theme and an interesting element in all film reviews.

This choice of a film review may seem quite strange at first. For one thing, the film has been out of cinemas for a long time and has recently gone to DVD. All actual film critics have long gotten their praise and detractions in before mine. When you couple this with the insulting spelling of the title, an English Student like myself would naturally be resistant to choosing to write about Inglourious Basterds.

This resistance is quite a good summary of my overall impression of the film. On one hand, Tarantino's latest film seems to care very little about how it is received. The film is an incredibly unusual combination of old west, 60s and ultra modern styles. Any film fan would find the performances of Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz both chilling and brilliant at the same time. However, purists of any of the many styles and war film fanatics would balk at the many ridiculous plot lines and situations that this film presents. When watching you're not sure if you should be laughing at the bizarre situation or disgusted at the brutality that it overlays. Gaining a footing with the film is almost impossible.

That is exactly why resistance is the theme of this review. If you simply must place labels on a work of art in order to understand and appreciate it then you often miss the point of the whole exercise. This is Tarantino's war film and if a viewer is expecting anything else then they will certainly be disappointed. But when the natural resistance to this Frankenstein's monster of a film is overcome it becomes a wonderful, heartfelt, harrowing and hilarious piece of art. If Inglourious Basterds teaches us anything (and it will not be morals that it teaches!) it is that we must let artists do what they will and praise them for it.

The world of the film critic should release a bit of tension and enjoy masterpieces like Inglourious Basterds.

-The English Student

Forging Out a Pre-Forged Path

Once again a bus journey has lead me to some introverted thinking.

Rain was streaming down the window in front of me. Pellets of moisture ran from the top right corner to the bottom left as the bus careered through the seasonal storm. As a new droplet hit the window it invariably coursed through a path made by a previous droplet. As I was making my way to work while considering the options of my future, this scene took on a very different meaning for me.

The window pane became a metaphor for life choices. As the rain courses down the window and is funnelled into certain paths, so to are the courses of our own lives. There are specific routes that we will all take that are pre-determined before we even begin life. While at times we can arc off and take a slightly different path, we will end up back at a travelled road before long. It was long in the making that I would take this bus journey and see this pattern on the window.

This post is not intended to rant against the lack of control many of us feel in our life's and rather to point out how ill-equipped we are to deal with it. Many of my friends have really began to struggle with these patterns. When we start in school we are on the first path of life. We go through the motions and follow on to secondary school. We do not make any real life decisions until we consider what to do next. Even then the main life decisions can be deferred if desired. We always desire to defer this decision. So when we face the real world we are lost and do not even have the equipment or practice to make decisions. I do not rant against a lack of control, I rant against a lack of ability to make the most of the limited control we are offered.

So we course down the window, not knowing where we are going and yet knowing that it has already been determined.

-The English Student

Meta-Retrospectivity

The two main things that we have been exposed to in the last week are as follows; decade long retrospectives and snow.

Just about every single point of publication, whether online or off has been devoted to summing up the last ten years. Analysis of events deemed to be world shifting is coupled with offbeat references to our supposed past naivety. We now know better about the economic fragility of the world, what clothes look good and what politics is defunct. However, I reject the idea that we have actually changed as a species. While the form of our existence may have changed, at the core we are the same.

While we are being bombarded with these retrospectives we are also beset by the previously mentioned snow. When we see this pure and untouched frozen canvas we are compelled to leave some kind of mark. It does not matter what form it takes; a footprint, a message, a drawing. We just have to make an impression and are scornful to those that have made one before us. Inevitably, the snow will melt and along with it, our mark fades away. That is, until the next snow fall comes and we find ourselves faced with another clean, white slate.

Our species understands the transience of life and existence. We know that any mark that we make individually or as a group will be carried away with the passing of our lives. This pointlessness of what we deem 'achievement' is almost impossible to face and so we fight hard to resist it. For a moment, we celebrate and commiserate a decade so that we can move on to the next. These retrospectives allow us to feel a sense of control over time while allowing us to become subjects to its power over us. Even if these sensations are illusory, they are necessary.

So let us take full advantage of this current reflective period, for it will melt away very shortly.

-Then English Student