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