TFT 29th July 2005 - The More Terror, Vicar Issue
R.I.P. WAR ON TURR=
When Marathon became Snickers, it didn't get any more peanutty.
When Prince became Hilariously Pretentious Squiggle, he didn't
ascend to new heights of filthy falsetto-pop glory. When the Post
Office decided that 'Post Office' was way too self-explanatory
and morphed into Consignia, Britain roared with laughter in all
its four quarters. And then it stopped laughing and said 'Oi,
twat with the sack, why are all my bank statements still going to
number 19?'
Rebranding often changes nothing, but it can be the kiss of life
for an ailing company, product or pop star - just that nudge of
realignment with a demographic, a little aesthetic boost
suggestive of a fresh approach, can turn fortunes around. People
are sensitive to the connotations of names and images in ways
they are barely even aware of, and millions are splurged trying
to press their elusive consumer-buttons. Every day you're
prodded, tugged and inappropriately fondled by fledgling brands
jostling for primacy in your fickle head. Such is the nature of
modern business; and, such is the Bush administration's closeness
to corporate America, that they've taken a leaf from its book and
opted to give the War on Terror a little lick of ideological
paint.
Yes - after around 25,000 Iraqi civilian casualties, almost two
thousand American fatalities, almost a hundred Brits, all that
Bali and Madrid and London unpleasantness *and* poor young Jean
Charles de Menezes - the latest casualty of The War On Terror is
The War On Terror itself. Long derided for its dangerous vacuity,
TWOT has finally keeled over under the weight of its own massive
malapropositude. OK, so they needed a slogan - 'the thing we're
doing where we exploit the fears of our own nation in order to
gain their support in shafting other nations but not really doing
anything to improve the safety of our own citizens because, let's
face it, what's in it for us to do that' may have been more
accurate, but just didn't have that high-street-profit zing. It
is still appalling, though, to realise that the GOP themselves
are thinking in terms of business and advertising while people
live and die in fear - it's colder, even, than that bluntly
military phrase we all reflexively spit at the mention of.
So now the world is to be coaxed into supporting not a War on
Terror, but a 'global struggle against violent extremism'. This
is, actually, a bit more fucking like it. You cannot invade
terror, it seems to finally admit. You can't put on fatigues and
accidentally shoot your own comrades while aiming at it with all
the measured expertise of a 19-year-old doofus who signed up
because he thought it would be 'awesome to bag a few A-rabs,
dude'. What you do with terror, that noxious elemental wafting
cloud of uncertain threat, is struggle with it - struggle to
understand it, struggle to assimilate the reasons behind it,
struggle to undo it from the roots up. Grapple with the daily
reality of extreme anxiety, with the pressing moral dilemmas.
Wrestle with the way it tries to impose itself. That sort of
thing. Nothing magnificent to have holidays for or build statues
commemorating or print t-shirts in support of. But something
grounded in reality.
The question is how much of this kind of understanding, this
sober stepping-back and cool-headed contemplation is actually
behind the rebrand. Experts will tell you there are two types of
rebranding - the kind that indicates change has occurred, and the
kind that fools people into thinking change has occurred. It's a
little too much to hope that the Bush administration will
suddenly grow a brain and a heart, stop hacking away at civil
liberties and human rights, and start pondering what can
realistically be achieved, although this little rethink does
suggest that perhaps Britain's non-hysterical response to being
attacked has had some subtle influence.
However, US citizens may not much care for the linguistic
downgrade. Certainly deranged ego-on-stilts Conservative blogger
La Shawn Barber won't be too chuffed. Following the London
attacks, she bleated:
'Islamofascists have declared war on the *world*, and they've
decided to bomb London at will, which is proving stunningly easy
to do since the government won't racially profile. No commuter
will ever feel safe again, and that's the idea. Britain's
response? They've adopted a localized cops-and-robbers approach.'
She backed this up with a quote from another commentator, who
sniffed over the 'unwillingness of the majority of the British
people to recognize that they are indeed in a war. The flak-
jacketed, heavily armed men and women lining my road to Heathrow
last week were cops, not troops. America is at war, Britain is
playing cops and criminals.'
Funny that - it seems from here that, by *branding* the attacks
as crimes and not acts of war, to be dealt with by police rather
than by soldiers (whose anachronistic, pointless presence on the
streets would frighten more than it would reassure), people are
that bit less in thrall to the idea of terror. This mental
achievement, if this really were a war and not a series of
criminal acts, would be called a small victory.
Hence, we can tentatively - oh so tentatively - applaud the
Consigniafication of The Struggle Formerly Known As The War On
Terror. And as we progress towards enlightenment, breathe deeply
and ask yourself - what is the sound of one hand slapping La
Shawn Barber?
* * *
RIGHT NOT TO NOT DIE
=
It's not unsimple. Most people expect the right to live. Some
people desire the right to die. Others want the right to not die
if there's a hint of a ghost of a whisper of a chance that a few
brain cells can be kept gasping on the treadmill for a few more
precious moments. This week, a 45-year-old man with a
degenerative brain condition unwon his right to not die. That
sound you don't hear is Diane Pretty, who fought for legal
release from the body that had become worse than useless to her,
not spinning in her grave.
Most of us would prefer not to imagine the living hell of a
terminal condition such as Pretty's - motor neurone disease,
which Professor Stephen Hawking has defied to the point of
sending himself up on The Simpsons. Faced with being unable to
eat, move, speak or fuck, most of us would rather be dead. Only
it's an option we still don't have - however sick we get, however
insupportable our lives become to us, it's a party we are forced
to stay at until, near as dammit, its natural end. Till there's
nothing left but Blue Bols to drink, even if you could drink it.
But people's definitions of dignity do vary - some feel strongly
that as soon as you need assistance wiping your self, it's time
to go; others believe that every squeezed droplet of life,
whatever the circumstances, however relentless and unbearable the
agony, is sacred. Lancaster's Leslie Burke is one of those who is
not big on the idea of going gentle into that good night, thanks,
and last year won a high court ruling which would stop doctors
withdrawing sustenance from him during the final stages of his
illness. The ruling was celebrated as a landmark for the
terminally ill - some of whom were undoubtedly pleased, while
others were incensed and outraged. The two factions will now be
swapping places, along with their respective supporters, because
the General Medical Council has won its appeal against the
hearing.
It's a nasty one, this, with no winners - reminiscent of the
Terri Schiavo debacle, during which debate raged as to which
superlatively awful thing was worse. Burke is afraid that, as his
health declines, he will be seen as dispensable, as little more
than pre-dead, and that medics will gently nudge and shunt him
towards the grave by denying him food in his final days when he
is too weak to protest. A reasonable fear, and not one any of us
can presume to dismiss - but it is his fear. It is not the fear
of many terminally-ill people, for whom death isn't quite as
conventionally horror-flick scary as for those who aren't so
intimate with it, and who fear the continuation of their painful
existences a great deal more.
It seems excruciatingly obvious - with doctors insisting that
this appeal win isn't giving them licence to whip out feeding
tubes willy-nilly, and pro-lifers and pro-choicers locking horns
all over again about death sentences and life sentences - that
what Burke's case illustrates is that all cases are different.
The law as it stands condemns far too many people to a miserable
life that they do not want, a life they should have the right not
to live. The simplistic fear is that a euthanasia law will usher
in some horrific new era wherein you can wheel Gran down to the
local clinic and have her put down by some gurning butcher in a
Harold Shipman mask. But there's no sensible or moral choice
other than to deal with each individual, like, individually.
Hawking's astonishing mind appears to have somehow sustained the
rest of him several decades beyond the point at which he was
expected to shuffle off, but he is very much the exception - for
most people in his place, the novelty of the robot voice would
wear off pretty swiftly. It's absurd to prevent people who want
out from getting out, to force them to stay. That way Schiavo
lies.
Personally, as soon as we find ourselves unable to communicate,
and at the mercy of whoever's got the TV remote, we're off to
Switzerland. Maybe via Amsterdam. For old times' sake.
shippingout@thefridaything.co.uk* * *
GREENISH GOLD
=
These are tough, rough times for the world, and anyone timidly
suggesting there will soon be some kind of let-up will be beaten
to death in yet another example of the toughness, and the
roughness, of said times. Although, it must be tiresomely
reiterated, this is how the world has always worked. War. Famine.
Pestilence. Ringtones. Human beings have been a good deal less
than excellent to each other since they evolved from apes, and
even before that they liked nothing better than to sit around
hitting each with bits of tree and snorting in a primitive
precursor to actual bestial cackling.
However, even in these lousy times we all must brace ourselves
for worse. This week it emerged that due to a drought in Spain,
the price of yummy, versatile and healthful olive oil is set to
rocket. (They could always make it out of something other than
olives, no one would know. It never smells like olives. It smells
like something inedible you could use to clean gently some part
of your car.) Never was there such a conspicuous candidate for
nudging us toward global flashpoint. In the belief it is better
not to beat about the parched and barren bush at such times, TFT
gives it to you straight - the implications of this are terrible.
Terrible.
1) Celebrity chefs, aghast at the extortionate price of the basic
ingredient, go on strike. Gaps open up in the TV schedules, to be
hastily filled with old episodes of 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'.
Suicide rate soars.
2) Ailing couples on the brink of last-ditched slippery
experimentation find that they cannot afford a bottle of the good
stuff. Screaming rows in supermarkets ensue. Divorce rate soars.
3) Everyone's pasta starts to stick together in the pan.
Indigestion rate soars.
4) Fire officers can no longer afford to use olive oil to free
small children who have got their little arms wedged in fences.
Small-children-wedged-in-fence-for-longer-than-strictly-necessary
rate soars.
5) With olive branches at a premium, world peace is dealt a body-
blow. Oh bugger.
oliveoliveo@thefridaything.co.uk* * *
MOUSEACRE=
This week, as the world's attention focused on the ongoing
Situation, another violent and sustained campaign was raging on a
tiny island in the Atlantic.
Gough Island is home to huge colonies of seabirds including
shearwaters, petrels and albatross. It is also home to some
really fucking big mice, which are thriving due to their taste
for the flesh of the enormous fluffy white chicks of the birds.
The unusual thing is that they don't kill them first. They just
tuck in, while the chick blinks and wriggles about in pitiful
bewilderment. Ah, nature red in tooth and tiny little mouse
claws, you'd think; only this time it's the fault of people
parking their ships by the island for a quick cuppa, allowing
non-native mice to scuttle off to make a start on the plentiful
hot buffet.
This story has been all over the place this week, and despite its
quite awe-inspiring gruesomeness it's been a veritable relief
from the rolling terror updates. You can hear the gratitude in
presenters' voices - it perks them up no end. A bit like a
snippet of the last half-hour of 'Straw Dogs' in between back-to-
back showings of the Star Wars trilogy - in these topsy-turvy
terror-riddled times, you grab your morsels of respite where you
can. Slow-fluffy-chick-death-by-mouse-gang beats all the other
kinds of death available.
More to the point, though, for a silly-season story (or even a
sombre-season story), there is something worthy in it, something
that gives you pause. It's after the feathers stop flying and the
mice scuttle away licking the beads of bird blood from their
whiskers, and there's a nice aerial shot of the spectacular rocky
island, and then the voiceover says something about how the RSPB
has been awarded £62,000 to conduct further research (roughly
half the amount spent researching whether there is some universal
pattern to the holes in cheese), but any concerted effort to stop
the rampaging mice 'would cost millions'. Said in sad voice,
implying that said millions are not available. Not many millions.
One or two. Tiger Woods' toilet roll. But millions that no one is
likely to be prepared to spend on some birds that have been
endangered for ages anyway and are probably overdue a visit from
the Darwinator.
And you start to think, boggle-eyed and boggle-brained with
endless shots of cordoned-off streets, and images of the most
mundane things like cars and rucksacks and New York sweatshirts
now infused with malevolence - well, hey, wouldn't it be nice if
someone spent a million or two saving some lovely vulnerable
immortalised-in-poetry birds, instead of just spending it on
tanks or stupid advertising or rubbish gadgets or ID cards or an
abstinence programme that tells frightened teenagers they can get
HIV from tears. Someone could easily chuck what is really a very,
very few quid at something that is actually fixable, something
that people clumsily broke in the first instance. Just do this
one tiny thing, and then you can watch for it maybe popping up in
the 'and finallys' - it'll be about as dramatic as the bits in
Big Brother where they're all fast asleep, but some presenter
will grudgingly say 'oh, and some big white birds are no longer
being eaten to death and have lived as a species to fly another
day, God why didn't I just become a doctor like Dad wanted'. And
then it's back into the giant rumbling washing-machine of bad
news, the kind where you come out dirtier than you went in, but
this time you'll have one small, fluffy, beaky, happy thought in
your poor overloaded head.
And then you think, since the stupid overgrown fowl are too fat
to move off their nests and too dumb to peck their assailants to
death with their huge beaks, fuck them. Spend the money on beer.
miceworkifyoucangetit@thefridaything.co.uk* * *
HAW DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH=
One of the most basic rights enjoyed by people in a free society
is the right to protest - and it is enjoyed, if you can call a
fervent plea for change enjoyable. Over a million people took to
the streets of London in February 2003 to protest the imminent
invasion of Iraq. Alas, they were poo-poohed out of existence via
the brief waltz of logic of a shiny-shoed Prime Minister. 'Look...
British people have the right to protest. It's a basic right. And
it is their right. Iraqis... do not have that right. So we are
going to put them out of their mis - um, liberate them. Then they
will have the right to protest our ongoing occupation which
endangers them all, thank you, no questions'.
Protests make governments uneasy, but they're a handy tool for
the same governments to use whenever they want to point out how
magnaminous they are and how great it is to live in this country;
so they let their citizens have their little mew and wave their
little banners, and take little notice. But our government seems
to have had an attack of protest-fatigue, a lapse in tolerance
for the frenetic exercising of this particular basic right, what
with some individuals still refusing to move on from the war. Or
indeed from Parliament Square. 56-year-old Brian Haw has been
keeping vigil there - noisy vigil, admittedly, berating MPs at a
most indiscreet volume for hours on end - for four years, making
him almost as well-known a London 'character' as that Sinners and
Winners arse at Oxford Circus. Except that Haw has a point. And,
like his inane Scouse counterpart, he has a right. For now.
In two days' time, the police will have powers to boot Brian from
the spot where he has been quietly protesting all these many
months. This is because new laws decree that anyone wishing to
protest within half a mile of Parliament must ask nicely first.
There can be no spontaneous expression of disgust about Iraq, or
anything else for that matter. The fact that Haw has been camped,
festooned with banners and badges, on the House's doorstep for
some time, making his protest rather less than spontaneous, won't
protect him. MPs are blustering about being unable to work with
the constant ballyhoo, and about the 'security risk' posed by
Haw's display - presumably, they're worried the anti-war flags
and placards will inflame disaffected young Muslim males,
resulting in immediate radicalisation and a headlong rush into
the Commons with whatever weapon is to hand. But they're
confident he'll soon be out of their hair. Only he may not,
because this week the veteran protester won the right to - yes -
protest the new laws being applied retroactively. Cheers!
He'll lose, of course, to a chorus of snotty hoots from MPs
intent on nothing more than furthering their own careers and
maintaining their standing, who profess the utmost respect for
their constituents in the most unctuous tones whenever it is in
their best interests, but who secretly - and sometimes not so
secretly, as in the case of an embarrassing bug-in-the-Merlot
like Haw - hold them in utter contempt. If Blair could carelessly
discount a million ordinary people of all ages, social strata and
levels of hygiene as silly, then it's a breeze for the rest of
the bunch to laugh a solitary buffoon with a megaphone off the
political map. No one cares what he's saying. He's a mad jobless
arse who lives in a tent. Pfft.
But when said mad jobless arse is dragged kicking and
sloganeering from Parliament Square, they may find the peace and
quiet resonates somewhat with the massed grumbles and scowls of
quite a few other people who know that the war hasn't gone away.
Those MPs who supported it will have to live with it every day of
their lives, as the body count racks up, and with the doubts in
their own heads making such a racket, they might even miss the
hollering bloke who used to distract them. Then the protester -
who will surely be lurking not too far away - will have the last
laugh.
Haw. Haw.
loiteringwithinatent@thefridaything.co.uk
The Friday Thing 22nd July 2005 - The Laughing In The Face Of Terror Issue
TERRIBLY UNIMPRESSIVE EVENTS=
In what seemed to be a desperate cry for help, four seemingly non-suicide bombers failed either to bomb or to suicide in London yesterday. Armed police chased one man, seeking merely to console him, but he ran off sobbing into a ruined rucksack. Several fundamentalist groups posted messages on their websites claiming no responsibility for the attack whatsoever. 'These men are an embarrassment to our cause', said one, 'and we wish to point out we have never been affiliated with any of them. Except the one who at least broke the bus window. He's alright.'
Thankfully, and on a more serious note, no-one was seriously hurt, and two people were arrested, which is a definite improvement on last time. The fact that the shambolic - if successfully co-ordinated- effort was a mirror of the previous operation shook people up, but was also oddly reassuring: there was no imagination in it, nor commitment, nor expertise, and it suggested perhaps that the 7th really was the best they could muster. Sad-sack terrorists. We suggest that to maintain their deadliest weapon of surprise (surprise and fear, fear and surprise -
two main weapons), any future cod-terrorist chancers should think a little smarter, perhaps taking note of TFT's terror tips.
1) Rucksacks are far too obvious, and give the Daily Star the opportunity to use the side-splitting headline 'RUCKSACK OF DOOM', which isn't really very terrifying. Use a large lady's handbag instead. In order to avoid suspicion, dress in women's clothing to match (there's a specialist place for it on Eversholt Street, you can get the big shoes and everything). London is a tolerant place and no one should look twice at you.
2) That 'bomb dogs' idea that was in that BBC 2 thing a few years ago . . . hey, don't dismiss it outright.
3) The detonators caused no casualties, but did create panic and a large-scale shut-down of the tube. Try the less-is-more approach to create maximum effect with minimum resources - eat popping candy on crowded buses, inflate bags of crisps and pop them against your hand, walk up behind people and shout 'boo'.
4) The tube system is riddled with mice. Mice carry some nasty germs. Surreptitiously scatter cheese about the platforms.
5) Remember, aim for total unpredictability. Instead of committing your simultaneous suicide bombing attack on the tube in rush hour or at lunchtime, commit suicide quietly in your own home in the middle of the night by taking dodgy acid in a room full of sharp things. They'll never expect that.
shockandbore@thefridayproject.co.uk* * *
YOU'RE A LOSER, BABY=
Advertisers seem to be taking the hint from Dove's daring and only slightly dubious 'Campaign for Real Beauty' angle and starting to tow the fatty line. Women are openly sobbing in the streets with gratitude that their natural, unsculpted shapes are now Officially OK according to a bunch of loud-mouthed bleeders in suits. Still, much as it's all driven by market forces and economic targets and oh-so-icky things of that ilk, it's a step towards that mythic Truth in Advertising and the day we can all eat a pie without wanting to turn ourselves in. Nothing to get your Dworkins in a twist over.
However, the new Special K ad leaves a bit of a dry, cardboardy, tasteless taste in the mouth, by virtue of its massive daftness. It's not unfamiliar territory - deliciously vague 'scientific research' suggests that you can lose weight by having Special K for breakfast, replacing 'indulgent snacks' with sickly-sweet Kellogg bars and er . . . well, no mention of lunch or dinner. It's the kind of nutritional non-advice that queen of all quacks 'Dr' Gillian McKeith would blow incredulous chunks over (if the spindly crone has actually got any chunks to blow). Familiar too is the fresh-faced woman who falls somewhere within the parameters of 'normal' - the most amorphous of classifications, whose meaning with regard to the bigness of women has been dithering about like an amnesiac shopping trolley for years. She's wearing an ill-fitting Butlins-esque red coat, suggesting that while we should applaud her fight against the flab, we don't really need to see too clearly the casualties of battle.
So Normal 12-14 Woman eats her breakfast beside her adoring little 6-year-old imp-child, who is drawing her picture. Then it starts to get distinctly disquieting. 'Mummy,' the creature grins, 'you're such a
loser.' Mummy smiles. Then she goes to get her nails done. 'Dahling', sneers the manicurist through her nose, 'you're
such a loser.' And so on until N12-14W passes a not-too-threatening manual worker type, who admiringly yet chastely leers 'loo-hoo-
zerrrr!' as she strolls by. Of course no one who's within shouting distance of their right mind expects advertising to show realistic situations, but this is like David Lynch Does Diet. 'Loser' is rather a borrowed insult, more common in the US than the UK, so it's not quite so emotive as, say,'ugly stunted minger-beast'. But it's still, y'know, Not Very Nice, not positive, not the best way to march your target demographic down the aisle of Tesco. Then there's that clever new meaning - losing weight is good, therefore being a 'loser' is actually a Good Thing. See? 'You could lose up to an inch,' babbles the voiceover, 'from bust, waist and hips'. Yes! But er, an inch of what? Fat? Skin? Muscle? Sanity? What if you've only got three-quarters of an inch of stuff on your bust, waist and hips to start with? Can you carry over the rest to your thighs? Exchange it for Nectar points? What? No matter. It's another dodgy attempt to cash in on the desperation of people who will risk their health to be thinner. All you have to accept is that it's good to be a loser, and it's good to disregard such half-arsed advice and go and eat some fucking fruit instead.
Such a bizarre campaign makes some sense when you discover Kellogg's roots in grinding negative grit into the nourishing wholegrain of meaning, and of poking unwelcome fingers into the crevices of people's private lives, happiness and health. The inventor of the healthy, boring cereal was Dr John Harvey Kellogg, and when he wasn't preaching the undeniable benefits of good food, he was raging against the sins of masturbation, which he considered a 'disease'. He also put his money where his tight-lipped mouth was and performed circumcisions (starting a late 19th century trend which continues to this day), foreskin-wiring operations and cliterodectomies, the latter being the last resort to 'allay abnormal excitement'. That would only be after he'd advised the application of mild, soothing carbolic acid. A gentle, compassionate soul, then. His brother Will took over the corn-flake-making, bunged sugar on the horrid things and made the company a great success, to the extent that the mad doctor never spoke to him again. Although that may have been because Will was saying hi to his monster on a daily basis, just to piss him off.
The dippy, results-fixated advertisers behind the 'Loser' campaign doubtless have little awareness of their place in the line of cereal-related sanctioners of human misery and negaters of sexy sugary Fun. But some other enterprising agency is bound to notice that a long-skewed balance needs redressing, and start making risque ads giggling that 'research has proven' that ten minutes of vigorous masturbation after breakfast burns more calories than an hour of guilt-ridden flesh-pinching. With the slogan, blaring from buses and billboards, 'Kellogg's - the only cereal with cock.'
bowloffuck@thefridayproject.co.uk* * *
REPUTATION, REPUTATION=
Roman Polanski is one of film's more, as some smirking sources would euphemistically put it, 'colourful characters'. He was married to Charles Manson's famous victim Sharon Tate. He is famous for directing Rosemary's Baby (giving a cameo to fine upstanding Satanist Anton LaVey), thereby making thousands of women wonder if their partners had been craftily shagging them in their sleep. But he is possibly even more famous for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Hey, it was the 70s.
Polanski and the girl partook of champagne, Quaaludes and hot-tub hanky-panky at Jack Nicholson's house. (Jack was elsewhere wondering if his sister was actually his mother.) The director was later arrested and charged with rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug, and four other counts of young-druggy-sex badness. Then he nipped off to Europe before the sentencing hearing, and hasn't been back to the USA since. These things are not in dispute. What is in dispute, hotly and in a court of law, is that a grieving Polanski did on the night of his wife's funeral in 1969 touch the thigh of a Scandinavian woman in a restaurant. Such was the terrible allegation of a 2002 article in Vanity Fair. The TFT team are united in condemnation of the smearing of such a morally unimpeachable figure in this disgusting, prurient, thigh-touchy way. We hope that Polanski's unintentionally hilarious, um, brave effort to clear his name and unmucky his reputation will set an example to other wronged and distressed individuals.
1) Osama bin Laden sues all international television networks for showing him in 'an unflattering light' when broadcasting his videos. 'My beard was airbrushed, and my eyes made to look cold and psychotic,' he is reported to complain. 'You will all die like dogs.'
2) Robert Downey Jr sues E!Online for suggesting that he once took some Night Nurse when he was feeling a bit crock.
3) The families of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold sue USA Today over allegations that the boys used to pick their noses and eat it.
4) Family of Jeffrey Dahmer outraged at same paper's suggestion that the predatory cannibal used neither a fork nor a napkin.
5) A distraught Paris Hilton tells court: 'I did not show my ankle.'
* * *
FEAR OF FAILING: AN ENGLISH TEACHER WRITES=
Retired primary school teacher Liz Beattie has suggested that the word 'fail' should be removed from schools, like so much contaminated fish pie. 'If children at an early age decide, "I can't do school, I can't learn to read or do this maths stuff", they are losing an enormous part of their lives,' said Beattie. 'Some children who have a problem are being turned off the whole education process almost before they have embarked on it simply because failure is a thing they see quite a lot of.' The motion itself, the wording of which Beattie has said she doesn't necessarily agree with, booms: 'Conference believes it is time to delete the word 'fail' from the educational vocabulary to be replaced with the concept of "deferred success".' Cue seismic outbreak of giggling at the back, and some of those fake farty-noises you make with your armpit.
Beattie does have a good point about the power of words, how quickly and permanently labels can stick, and how important it is not to plonk figurative dunce caps on our future hopes. Self-esteem is anyone's most valuable resource, because most of the others you can acquire are useless without it. You suck up most of your ration before you're ten, and start to really need it at twelve when your body starts to turn on you. Being dismissed as a failure too early or too often can create miserable little sods who grow up into bigger sods who make other people miserable. But failure, as a word and a concept, has been tossed around less and less lightly in recent years - there are all kinds of ways to sugar that particular bitter pill. N for Near-miss, U forUnclassified - in fact, one student I know was tickled pink that an erratic two years yielded A-Level results spelling 'BUN'.
Of course you should discuss when someone hasn't made the grade, come up to scratch, achieved the minimum standard. You can - and should - point out that failure doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't make you useless or worthless or hopeless. But failure is not an indication that success will follow, that you'll catch your break next time - failure means you messed up now, though that doesn't preclude you being successful in the future. Blurring the distinction between those two is as dodgy and potentially calamitous as that unidentified leak coming from the boys' toilets.
The worst of it is that it opens the door for a bit of favourable grade-massage, giving those who persistently flunk a little more slack, and a little more, just to help them on their way. But coddling the foot-draggers at the bottom of the class can be to the detriment of the bright, well-behaved, eager students bouncing up and down going 'mememememe' whenever some horrid difficult question is asked. In theory there's enough success to go round, but it doesn't quite work like that. Start lowering the bar for everyone to step over, and somewhere at the top the brains start to sense their value - to the world and themselves -start to plummet. The idea is that they'll take care of themselves, being so bright and all. But if more attention is paid to the sad-sack underachievers and pen-cap-pingers, the smarties start to feel a bit like it's not really worth being clever and good if you're more or less ignored. And what's the use of working hard for your achievements if, relatively, the deferredly-successful get more props for being less good? Then they start to think 'fuck it', get a bit disillusioned, end up at third-rate ex-polytechnics, take dreary unfulfilling jobs, and die unloved in comfortable yet soulless semis with only their canaries to mourn them. I exaggerate, but the point remains. While I'm about it, those ex-polytechnics - rebranded as universities, so that people attending them could feel less like failures. Students still look down at almost everyone, so it's not such a big deal, but it does indicate that the idea of 'deferred success', if not the phrase, isn't much newer than that creaky library computer.
All else aside, it may be vital to put a big red pen grimace next to the concept of deferred success, because once assimilated into the language and the culture, it could spread like wildfire. Imagine: producers and commissioners being able to justify their crappy ratings by saying 'it's deferred success, wait until the spectacular season finale, folks'; councils letting rubbish pile up in the streets but not, technically speaking, 'failing' to remove it; and politicians being able to declare with impunity that the missed targets weren't really missed at all, and the figures will add up the next time we calculate them, and the occupation isn't actually a disaster, it's just never going to be declared a failure.
Oh wait.
muchfailingandgnashingofteeth@thefridayproject.co.uk
The Friday Thing 18th July 2005 - The Hope Springs Eternal Issue
PRIME SUSPECTS=
By Wednesday the country was 'aghast' at the probability that the bombers were not, as Mail readers had been hoping, illegal immigrants, but likely as not four 'ordinary lads' from West Yorkshire. As a result, alert yet small-minded citizens hoping to avert any fresh tragedy are now having to put aside their long-held prejudices with a sigh, and reprogramme their inner radar according to new stereotypical profiles. Glaring openly at meek olive-skinned men with beards and rucksacks will no longer be de rigeur - instead, prepare to get quietly hostile and reach for the nearest alarm when you come face to face with a whole new round of potential perps'n'traitors.
1) The bombers were apparently from the suburbs of Leeds. Listen out for flattened vowels, look out for flattened caps, and beware of unusually pristine-looking hand-raised pigeons. Such pigeons may blend in almost unnoticeably with the London natives, but may be stuffed full of Alka-Seltzer and ready to explode at any minute.
2) One suspect was said to be a 22-year-old sports science graduate. Look out for pissed-off ex-students upon whom the realisation is slowly dawning that although they know more than most people about tendons, they've just got themselves into huge debt for no actual advantage over other job-seekers, resulting in motivation enough to blow themselves, and as many non-graduates with good jobs as possible, to smithereens.
3) This same suspect was said to 'love football and cricket'. We always suspected it - people who like sport are mad and dangerous. If you see a large gathering of people in a sports ground, pub or park, chanting eerie incomprehensible calls to arms, phone the police. Look out for men with the distinctive physical attributes of beer bellies, slack jaws and rampant sunburn (their religion dictates that protective sun lotion is for poofs). If you hear anyone discussing England's form in therun up to the Ashes, punch them unconscious. It is your civic duty.
4) Another suspect, 19 years old, was described as being 'off the rails', but 'suddenly changed and became devoutly religious'. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that being a teenage lout, breaking people's windows and screaming at old people like in the Aphex Twin video for 'Come To Daddy' is in fact beneficial to society. If horrid children behave in an anti-social manner, spitting at you and kicking your shins, do not chastise them. Rather, smile indulgently and give them some sherbet. They may not know it, but they're doing their bit for a safer Britain.
5) Remember - the only way to be sure that you do not miss anyone suspicious is to be suspicious of everyone. Even yourself. The next time someone asks you if you packed your bag yourself, reply: 'Well, yes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bomb in it, does it? I might have packed the bomb myself and could still answer truthfully that yes, I packed the bag myself. Just my say-so doesn't prove anything. Nor does my passport - terrorists still have identities, you know, and most of them don't even have any prior convictions before they embark on their final mission. I might not even know I've packed a bomb, I might have been under hypnosis at the time. I demand that you detain me just in case.'
* * *
LOSING THE WAR ON ABSTRACT NOUNS=
The scary thing about terror in the modern sense, as is generally accepted, is that it's not actually there. You can't get at it. It's an abstraction, an idea - it uses people's reactions and emotions as weapons against themselves. This is why you can't attack it in the conventional sense - it's like Stan hitting Olly in the head with a two-by-four to get a fly. It is warfare by mindfuck. Thus it's only logical to deploy our own mindfuck, but rather a pleasant, peaceful, masturbatory, orgiastic sort of mindfuck.
So you get the pride thing. Pride means 'to take pleasure or satisfaction in an association', it says here. (The brewers of London Pride are doubtless bracing themselves for a spike in sales and a shiny new tear-jerking ad campaign, the swine.) Pride is also something that isn't really there, and if you're a fairly ordinary self-aware London-dweller then you probably feel a bit funny about it sticking its puffed-out chest in your face. You're not supposed to have pride, really. It makes you insufferable and cocky. You're supposed to blush and say 'crikey' and explain away all your achievements as 'oh nothing really'. And then publicly flay yourself for such immodesty.
It's an amorphous, dubious notion, and wherever it does pop up its lantern-jawed head in this country it isn't especially welcome. Pride means gushing first-time parents going on about first garbled exclamations of 'mmmrurflebuuu' and first instances of holding up giant wobbly heads, as if this were the first time an immature homo sapiens ever dared to try. Corpulent execs bragging about obliterating their targets, shopping at Snots of Savile Row, buying yet another brand-new gas-guzzler. Barely-sentient footie louts justifying their pointless existences and even more pointless arse-slapping rampages, mooing and mooning like twats. Tony Parsons. Scousers. And of course those hand-rubbing pronouncements on terrorist websites, gloating and crowing that 'Britain is burning with fear' and that the brave and mighty have done glorious things. Pride has many faces, most of them as alluring as the Home Secretary modelling for Agent Provocateur.
But just as there's no reason not to wear cowboy boots just because Posh has made them look a bit rubbish, there's no exclusivity where pride is concerned. It doesn't have to be dumb or misplaced or arrogant or a shield to hide your miserable worthlessness. It's a valid, human response to the sight and sense of lots of people pretty much shrugging off what was calculated to reduce them to quivering, sobbing wrecks. It's also very odd, because the most banal and inconsequential things will suddenly start to speak of dignity and stoicism. People getting on and off public transport, striding about wrapped up in their own concerns, shouldn't be anything to feel proud of. People being nervous and frightened isn't anything to be ashamed of, of course, and there isn't a hope of getting rid of that right away. But somehow, people just acting like ordinary people is something to salute. Which is why, although the timing of the London attack was great for silencing the Olympic hurrah, it was bollocks given that the WWII commemorations were days away. Londoners massed in recollection of their place in a noble line of tough leathery fender-offers, drank an ocean of tea, and said dry sarcastic things to each other about what a feeble effort the attack really was.
So in order to squeeze the juice from the bulging rotten grapefruit of terror, and maybe even boot the preposterous, oppressive, counter-productive Biblical notion of 'evil' from the modern lexicon, it's good to bump up the pride quotient. In the absence of physical defence, which you can't have, you've just got to use words and meanings, resolving outer threats in your own head. So it's also important to elevate the very normality of London travel. Embrace your obstreperous, petty inner grumbler. Roll eyes at delays. Mutter and swear when your Oyster card fucks up. Sigh when the pleasure of grabbing a comfy tube end-seat is tempered by the view of a tourist's peach polyester arse squashed up against the glass partition. Because each kilojoule of energy you expend on being peevish about the little things, just like you always did, is one that you're not using to worry and fear. It undermines the hell out of terrorism. 'Suspicious packages? Whatever. I just sat on some chewing gum in my new linen-mix trousers, you fucker.'
Given the choice between a lonely death - the thing most of us claim to fear the most - or an exit preceded by the communal experience of mass panic, we'd probably still choose neither. Death is nasty. Suicide bombers almost seem nastier. Language grants them far higher status than it should - the deaths of their victims are described as 'pointless', while by implication the deaths of their higher-purpose-filled killers are anything but. But they don't have a monopoly on death, as they seem to desire and we almost seem to bestow. Death comes in the form of too-big chunks of tofu, ironic allergies and sexual over-enthusiasm. Suicide bombers on transport aren't much more than just another modern hazard, like trains and traffic themselves. So you should worry about your weight. Fret about money. Chew your nails at the thought of having to tell your boring partner that it's not them, it's you. Go back to being preoccupied with the little stupid concerns of life and you suck all the energy and anger from the meticulous planning and ranting and attacking and manipulating of those silly, silly men. Not 'evil' men. Not even men. Silly boys.
And then what you can do, as Bush revs up the presses for another big batch of glossy WAR ON TURR posters and all this just rots down into political mulch, is eat an ice-cream, sniff a lily or fuck a Portuguese barrista. Do stuff. Just try not to think about Charles Clarke in a lace thong.
whateveryoudo@thefridayproject.co.uk* * *
BAD MEDICINE=
Mental illness, like Internet dating and saying 'fuck' in front of your parents, is almost acceptable nowadays. Pop stars and actors speak openly of their experience of going a bit funny - even the Wrath of Cruise fails to deter them. Visit your GP during one of your long dark weeks of the soul and you should expect to be treated with sympathy, respect and Good Drugs. But not so very long ago if you presented with a case of the low blues, you were liable to be hauled away, an ice pick stuck in your skull and thereafter shut in a loony bin until you passed away in a pool of your own drool. Indeed, lobotomisation was all the rage from the mid-30s right through into the 60s, and if you didn't like the idea at first, by jiminy, you'd be happy enough afterwards.
This week relatives of lobotomy patients argued for the Nobel Prize given to the inventor of this primitive procedure to be revoked, despite a couple of new books suggesting that at least, ooh, three people were helped by effectively having their heads sliced open and their brains buggered about with by bastards. The executive director of the Nobel Foundation called the bid a 'non-starter', whereupon a rangy Native American came in and put a pillow over his face. The debate as to the medical validity of the operation has raised important issues, not least whether or not the quip 'I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy' is actually funny, and whether George W. Bush would benefit from one. Or has already done so.
However, progress in medicine remains erratic, and seemingly life-saving drugs can have the funniest side effects (see the clip show of the same name on American TV). A study published on Monday describes the apparent links between Mirapex, a drug which alleviates the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, and compulsive gambling. The trouble is that the drug tickles the brain's dopamine receptors, which are right next to the receptors for pleasure and reward-seeking behaviour, so you might find yourself grappling not only with the debilitating disease but with a sex or shopping addiction. Several patients who lost thousands after suddenly developing a lust for feeding slot machines are suing the makers of the drug. They're probably only after the money, though.
The Friday Thing 1st July 2005 - The Onwards And Upwards Issue
TFT GOES TO GLASTONBURY=
When you go to a festival, you expect to be entertained. When you go to a festival and a fortnight's rain dumps on it in six hours, you
become the entertainment. Sodden front-page fodder. As the stories from outside the Glastonbury site bounce back to you in the form of panicked phone-calls asking if you've been struck by lightning or drowned, you start to be grimly amused by the extent of the media's gleeful hyperbole.
Not that there isn't horror. The tectonic-plate-shifting storm at 6am on Friday is genuinely frightening, fat fingers of rain pummelling our tent while God flashes his floodlights and angrily crumples his Doritos bag. Then there's a genuine sense of human tragedy and devastation as thousands emerge to tramp about in hopelessly inadequate footwear. Of course we felt a bit bad about this later, given that we were essentially making the same noises about a few damp sleeping bags as we made about the Asian tsumani; but the visceral reaction upon seeing tents half-submerged in filthy water, odd shoes floating by, was a deep and heartfelt ‘ahhhhh, look... How terrible. Those
poor people'.
Such jolly souls as Billy Bragg will have you believe that ‘if you haven't done Glastonbury in the mud, you haven't done it at all'. It's a chance to really let it all out, be a child again and demonstrate how gloriously uninhibited you are.
Nuts. The mud clogs the festival's arteries, spoils your mood, knackers your legs and makes you so desperate for a bath that you'd climb into one already occupied by Nicholas Soames. Still, as in life, you only get as messed-up as you want to above the house minimum (28% caked-on, 14% light spatter). Also, there's something nature-programme-fascinating about its evolution and widely-varying consistency. Sometimes it's like liquidy Ready Brek, some places over-whisked Angel Delight, and in other areas it is like melted souvenir fudge or just really powerful animate squidgy glop, mouths of it sucking hard at your sad ankles like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. This last was most virulent in the most populous areas, and best navigated by adopting a sort of baby-rhino galumph. It was like leaping to the promised land as hell tried to claim us in its filthy maw.
Weather aside - and by Sunday, it was possible to put it there - Glastonbury remains a wonderful thing. People are often heard to gripe that it's not what it used to be - they even complain that it's lost something vital since the erection of the super-fence. Given that the something lost is mostly bunches of marauding purse-snatchers armed with crowbars, we'd rather consider with joy the extent to which the unique spirit of the place has prevailed. The atmosphere is powerfully pleasant, rampant march of capitalism or not. Although there is a certain MTV-generation zing about it, in that you find your attention span shrinks to minus two minutes. There are literally 66,740 things going on at any one time, one for every two attendees, and it's easy to be distracted from a band by a hat that looks like catshit or a hapless bloke, hands over face, having glass removed from his bare foot by medics. That one drew one of the weekend's biggest crowds.
It's perpetually stimulating, wherever you are. Lost Vagueness, a sort of festival-within-a-festival tucked away in a corner, is especially bewitching, what with its ballroom, casino, wedding chapel and population of evening-dressed fops. Bands of every stripe play all night amongst cabaret and burlesque acts, which last consist mostly of women taking their clothes off in imaginative ways; one dressed in feathers performing ‘live plucking', and another doing a trapeze-tease from the ballroom's chandelier culminating in the removal and triumphant dangling of a string of diamante from her... herself. The caravans, beach huts, proper loos and showers which made up the Paradise Lost hotel created a definite them-and-us tension, alleviated somewhat by a convenient fence-gap enabling us to sneak a couple of blissful visits to the sweet, sweet low-cisterns.
Since the Green Fields remained more or less greenish we hid there for some of the time, marvelling at the tranquillity, the good food and terrible tie-dye. George Galloway with a hip hop style entourage we espied, striding through the Healing Field in classic green folded-down wellies. We duly saluted his indefatigability. The commitment to environmental and humanitarian ideals amongst the Green Fields contingent is unwavering, as the accoutrements unaltered since 1973 mirror. This immutability has its downside - sticking blindly to your ideology without having the flexibility to consider what's actually workable in the world can make you very easy to dismiss as a hippy idiot. But a little hippy idiocy is good for the soul. And let he who is making any less of a cock of things cast the first gobbit of toxic waste.
Inbetween being slowly seduced by the idea of living in a tipi and yomping for miles without aim, we did manage to stand and observe well-known musicians doing songs. A curmudgeonly New Order plodded with the occasional star-jump of nostalgic excellence, then butted out without playing ‘Blue Monday'. This was festival cuntery in excelsis, even without the ugly mug of Keith Allen making an appearance. Coldplay are now the kind of massive that people just wave their beer in the air to and far too commonplace to be moving, but we wept sober, and anyone not watching with upturned face rapt with wonder, we slew. On Sunday the sun came out, and so did The Bravery, and so did their bassist's cock. There's something about public nudity in a rock context that delights the soul, just as the throwing of guitars and trashing of drumkits does. Truly it is beyond cliché. Imagine the cheers then when Dirt - for it was he - combined all of these in one glorious routine. And the set was brilliant too. The fully-clothed Killers were seen backstage asking for a spoon with which to eat from their bowl of fuck.
Basement Jaxx polished off the weekend with one big rumpshake, and we left sated. None of that caper is occurring next year, so we can all revert to our usual state of joyless sneering cynicism and wearing fashionable clothes. Thank fuck.
* * *
WAYS TO MAKE MONEY AT GLASTONBURY
=
1) Offer your services as a porter or piggy-backer. Helps if you are an ex-professional wrestler.
2) Be a peripatetic drugs counsellor. Gently assure the acid-fried that the ground is not actually swallowing them from the feet up. Even if it is.
3) Be a welly-shine boy, or walking-sandal-breaker-inner.
4) Persuade the gullible that the perimeter fence has fallen in amoment of stickin-it-to-da-man rebellion on the part of the scally chancers massing outside, then sell them a bit of corrugated iron as 'a piece of history'. See also: locks of Michael Eavis's beard, anti-histamines masquerading as ecstasy.
5) Build a prototype Mudmaster exercise machine and flog it to a big gym. Works the upper legs, abs and patience.
6) Loot submerged tents, you despicable prick.
* * *
MAKING WRISTBANDS HISTORY=
Glastonbury has always been where hedonism meets moral consciousness, and with the G8 summit just around the corner, the festival was the ideal platform for the Make Poverty History campaign. Everyone passing through the turnstiles was handed a special ‘Glastonbury 2005 - Helping Make Poverty History' band. At 4pm on Saturday Sir Bob Geldof Himself took to the Pyramid Stage with festival organiser Michael Eavis to exhort the thousands present to raise their arms (if not their middle fingers) in defiance of nasty old poverty and the rotten old G8, and in support of the good old cause.
'On 6th July we will face down those eight men that can do this thing', Sir Bob said. ‘This is not a question of money. I want you to individually believe you can change the condition of the most put-upon and beaten-down people on this planet. To die of want is an intellectual absurdity and it is morally repulsive. I would ask the people watching this on television to imagine half of this field dying now, and half tomorrow. And between them, those men at the G8 could have resolved it in seconds.'
TFT was walking past the Jazz World stage at the time, and the gang of earnest bongo-fondlers thereon paused in their set to say something a little less stirring but equally heartfelt, and ask us to raise our arms. This happened all over the 30-acre site, and well over 100,000 people all lifted limbs in a show of unity. As we put ours in the air we felt a warm glow, buoyed further bythe cheers of the crowd, and we thought for a moment about the power of Ideas and of Simple Gestures and Conviction and Hope. Then we wended our way to that nice recycled jewellery stall we'd found via the ice cream van and forgot all about it, our wristband yellowing in the weak sun.
The trouble with the Make Poverty History campaign is that it's too easy for people, especially pear-cider-sozzled festival-goers, to join in a big display of something for the helicopters and whoop and think that they've done their bit, that they have contributed something. As though wearing a bit of rubbery stuff around one wrist directly puts food in some Kenyan urchin's mouth. The wristbands were designed as a simple statement of the wearer's alignment with an ideal, but have quickly become perverted to the extent that they might as well say ‘Make Sickening Public Displays Of Altruism History'. Thinking about the complacency and dumb herd mentality of people who wear a rainbow of bands up and down their arms, around their necks and through their nipple piercings, you fear that that's all
you are, and the wrist-jerk reaction is to look around for a burning lake to cast yours into.
The organisers may have had people's shallower impulses in mind all along, possibly appealing to individuals' desire to
look like they care, in order to access via this their better nature and make them consider the grave implications beyond the fad. Only there's a wider chasm between vanity and selflessness than they'd hoped. Similarly, the wristbands themselves are aimed at garnering media coverage, which the campaign needs to use as a tool to vicariously bop the G8's heads with. A great idea but again, this may not work in a country whose government blithely soundbit into oblivion the presence of a million of its citizens on the streets.
None of this, however, is a reason to discard your wristband. It is made of good intentions, and isn't likely to grout the road to hell. Snubbing it because you are afraid of hypocrisy, or of looking like a fashionable wonk, suggests that you really only do care about your own appearance, and not about people living on a quid a week. Subverted by trendy Barleyite idiots it may have been, but you can't let them get in the way of something that may give you or someone else pause for long enough to start a ripple. So really, you
are doing your bit just by wearing it and sticking it in the air for the cameras. Even if you are a contemptible, vacuous, cause-happy, iPod-shuffling prannock.
More TFT
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