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January 29 2012
January 27 2012
Charlie Brooker swims with the fishes in Australia
'When you tell people you're going swimming with tuna, they laugh in your face'
Swimming with dolphins. Everyone yaps on about wanting to do that before they die. But swimming with tuna? For some reason, when you tell people you're going swimming with tuna, they laugh in your face. It sounds inherently absurd, and I'm not entirely sure why. I think it's because we often encounter tuna in tins. Also – and I know this is a stupid thing to think, but it's hard not to think it – there's that smell. You expect tuna to smell like, well, to smell like tuna, even though they're still alive, still in one piece and, most importantly, they're underwater where you can't smell anything.
My lack of knowledge was, in retrospect, stunning. I figured the tuna was a fairly docile fish, probably about the size of a shoe. I was to be disabused of this and several other notions during my visit to Australia. But it wasn't "regular" Australia I was heading for. Most overseas tourists visit Sydney or the Gold Coast. I was bound for South Australia, an area that's often overlooked. Would this be the equivalent of visiting Britain and staying only in Croydon?
Adelaide quickly struck me as a superb place to live. It's clean, it's pretty and despite being the largest city in South Australia, it's easy to walk around. We stayed in a variety of eccentric and inviting heritage homes run by the equally eccentric and inviting Rodney and Regina Twiss. Staying in a house in a residential area would be frustrating in many cities; given the compact nature of the city, it's a great idea in Adelaide. After 24 hours, you feel like a local, even though you absolutely aren't.
Adelaide makes an ideal base for touring the region. For sun worshippers, there are beaches a short tram ride away; for alcoholics, the Barossa Valley lies just to the north-east; and for people who want to swim with tuna – or sharks – a short plane journey will take you to Port Lincoln. Australians seem to catch small planes like we catch buses. It takes less time to fly from Adelaide to Port Lincoln than to take the 159 bus from Streatham Hill to Oxford Circus. Unlike the 159, they serve snacks on the plane and nobody tries to stab you.
There's not much to see in Port Lincoln itself: its appeal lies in the water, in the scenery of Boston Bay and the fishing and diving opportunities there. Our tuna-swimming expedition was going to be part of a two-day "ocean safari" with Adventure Bay Charters, run by the affable Matt Waller. Once on board, we sailed to Matt's tuna farm (he's a fisherman, see) which essentially consists of a huge floating bowl made of netting – picture a giant sieve wafting in the ocean and you're not far off. At this point we had to don wetsuits. There may be photographs of me in a wetsuit accompanying this article. I urge you not to look at them. They will be images of overpowering sexuality.
Anyway, fact file: contrary to earlier statements, a tuna is not about the size of a shoe. It's massive. Bloody massive. It has cold, unknowable eyes and is covered in sharp scales. And it swims very quickly indeed, especially when you hold out a smaller, dead fish for it to eat. It leaps and snatches the damned thing out of your hand so fast, you can't even see it: it's like being mugged. Mugged by a fish. And the giant underwater tuna bowl teems with them. In summary: although "swimming with tuna" sounds inherently comic in theory, in practice it's bizarre, exhilarating and faintly scary.
From the tuna farm, we made our way to a nearby island, where we jumped off the boat to swim with sea lions. Sea lions are so outrageously cute, even I had to concede they were charming, and I usually vomit at the sight of rainbows. They were friendly, too, and swam alongside us, diving, rolling and generally behaving like something from a Disney film: almost like Care Bears of the sea, except, unlike Care Bears, you don't want to kill them with hammers.
Then it was on to a prime spot for great white sharks. The viewing cage went in the water, and I went in after it. I'll admit to being nervous at this point: having been shocked by the size of tuna, I was trying mentally to prepare myself for a moment of life-altering terror. Most tours toss buckets of bait into the water, whereas Matt has a more eco-friendly method of attracting sharks. He lowers speakers into the water and pumps out rock music. He claims great whites are particularly attracted to AC/DC.
Floating in a cage underwater, keeping watch for sharks like Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws, while simultaneously listening to loud, driving rock, is a uniquely surreal experience. It could have been bettered only by the appearance of an actual shark. Sadly, on the day, none was forthcoming. This didn't seem to be down to the music, incidentally: neighbouring boats, hurling berley into the water by the bucketload, were having no luck either. Sharks aren't predictable. If they were, no one would ever get eaten by them.
It's a measure of how much fun the rest of the ocean safari was that the nonappearance of the most fearsome creature on the planet wasn't much of a downer. The following day we visited another island to peer at a larger sea lion colony, caught fish, stuffed our faces and ate fresh oysters (once I managed to overcome my inherent fear of eating anything with a 1% chance of making me puke). Then it was back to Port Lincoln, the airport and Adelaide.
The next day, we caught another shuttle flight, this time to Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island sounds like a sarcastic nickname for Australia itself: fitting, in a sense, because it's almost like a compressed version of how Australia looks in your head as a child. It's known as Australia's Galapagos because of its abundance of wildlife. There are creatures everywhere. Kangaroos hop along the roadside, koalas laze in trees, echidnas shuffle through the undergrowth: it's like a huge safari park with no fencing.
We stayed at the Southern Ocean Lodge, a place so confidently swish and friendly, I instantly felt like a burglar. It's easily the most upmarket place I've ever stayed: I was almost ashamed to go to the toilet. The architecture is straight out of Grand Designs: all floor-to-ceiling windows and understated modernity, not to mention stunning views across the ocean – the lodge is perched atop a cliff, overlooking a beach, situated in between two national parks. If it housed a death ray (which I'm fairly sure it doesn't), this would be precisely the sort of place a taste-conscious Bond villain might construct.
Not that you're there to laze around indoors. A tour of Kangaroo Island is essential, particularly if your time is tight, as ours was. We were shown round the island by Rob Ellson, a former local newspaper editor turned tour guide. The nature here truly is bizarre and fascinating: not only the kangaroos, which, if you're quiet, you can sneak hilariously close to, but the plant life, and I say that as someone who yawns himself half to death at the mere mention of a stamen. Kangaroo Island has a species of tree that thrives following a fire: the Xanthorrhoea (or "Grass Tree", for those who prefer words you can actually pronounce) flowers and sheds seeds when burnt. It even flowers when exposed to smoke. Just as well: in 2007, a series of bushfires destroyed 95,000 hectares of woodland. Today, the casual visitor would be hard-pressed to tell where the flames had been.
It's hard to describe how relaxing a place Kangaroo Island is. There are so few people, so few cables and billboards and cars and buildings and things, that your mind soon starts to stretch out and lie down. It was almost like being deprogrammed. Accommodation isn't cheap, and it's easy to see why. Leaving the place was a wrench, like knowing you have to get out of bed on a cold morning and turning back beneath the duvet in a bid to get a few more moments of comfort.
Having never visited the other bits of Australia, I had nothing to directly compare South Australia with, but if the rest of the country gets any better than this, it's quite frankly taking the piss as a nation.
• Black Tomato can arrange an exclusive 12-night, three-centre trip to South Australia, taking in Port Lincoln, Kangaroo Island and Adelaide, from £4,199pp (based on two sharing). For more information on South Australia, go to southaustralia.com. For more information on Adventure Bay Charters, go to adventurebaycharters.com.au. For more information on Southern Ocean Lodge, go to southernoceanlodge.com.au. For more information on the North Adelaide Heritage Group, go to adelaideheritage.com.
• WIN: Surfing lessons in France. For full details of the holiday on offer, plus how to enter the competition and full terms and conditions, go to weekend-travel-competition
January 25 2012
Swans Are Such Jerks
This strip was inspired by Mr.Asbo, who is a poster boy for jerk swans. I have never personally been attacked by a swan, but I’ve been chased by them and they can be pretty scary. I was also chased by a flock of turkey vultures once, but that’s a story for another day…
CONTEST NEWS: If you entered the Colouring Contest from a few weeks back (or even if you didn’t) you can now check out all of the entries on the Abominable Facebook page. We’ll be picking a winner* this week and that person will get a free book with a character sketch of their choice. Tune in next week for the results!
*by ‘We’ I mean ‘my 10-month old son’.
January 22 2012
Charlie Brooker: Green Kit Kats, toilets that lift the seat themselves, helpful strangers – Japan feels like another planet
For westerners it's an experience akin to recovering from a serious head injury
I'm currently on another planet, namely Japan, which for the average westerner is an experience tantamount to recovering from a serious head injury, in that while the world around you is largely recognisable, it somehow makes little sense. Incredibly minor example: they sell green Kit Kats here (not the wrapper – I'm not that easily impressed – I mean the chocolate itself is green).
Furthermore, just like someone struggling to reacquaint themselves with everyday life, you have to continually re-learn how to perform previously straightforward tasks such as going to the toilet. In Japan you either crap into a bluntly utilitarian hole in the ground (reverse squat-toilet style) or, increasingly, into one of their famous hi-tech Toto superbogs with a heated seat and a remote-controlled bum-washing jet.
The first toilet I encountered in Japan was so advanced it automatically lifted the seat itself the moment it sensed my approach, like it just couldn't wait for me to crap down its throat. It's disconcerting, defecating into a robot's mouth. In five years' time that toilet won't merely cock its lid when you enter the room, it'll be programmed to hum lullabies as it swallows your droppings. If the machines ever rise up and kill us, we'll only have our own smug sense of mastery to blame.
But I'm not in Japan to sit on toilets. I'm here to write some travel pieces for this newspaper, which will appear later in the year. As a result I've been zipping all over the place. But every now and then when, the sheer sensory overload gets too much, I retire to the hotel room to stare at the television.
Westerners have been confounded by Japanese TV for decades, ever since Clive James amused millions in the 80s with clips from a gameshow called Endurance, in which contestants had to undergo a series of increasingly painful and humiliating ordeals. For British viewers, much of the fun came from sheer outraged disbelief that watching people being physically tormented and degraded was considered entertainment.
But of course that was 100 years ago, before I'm a Celebrity transformed low-level torture into mainstream British fare. Nonetheless, you don't have to watch Japanese TV for long until you see something shocking. The other evening I watched a programme in which a man was shown spooning boiling molten metal into his mouth. This was followed by footage of a man being mauled by a tiger and a rib-tickling sequence in which a studio guest was deliberately poisoned by some kind of sea creature.
Generally though, the TV here is surprisingly dull. The vast majority of programmes consist of several seriously overexcited people sitting in an overlit studio decorated like a novelty grotto made from regurgitated Dolly Mixture, endlessly babbling about food.
Seriously, it's all food, food, food. People eating food, answering questions about food, sometimes even just pointing at food and laughing. It's as they've only just discovered food and are perpetually astonished by its very existence. Imagine watching an endless episode of The One Show with the colour and brightness turned up to 11, where all the guests have been given amphetamines, the screen is peppered with random subtitles, and every 10 seconds it cuts to a close-up shot of a bowl of noodles for no apparent reason. That's 90% of Japanese TV right there.
For a nation so preposterously hi-tech, it's a curiously old-fashioned approach to television. People talking in studios. Forever. Like it's the 50s. And yet it's insanely agitated: as though the participants are simply too wired to make a proper TV show, and have subsequently just switched the cameras on and started yelping.
The adverts continue this vaguely old-school theme. There are plenty of super-sophisticated ones starring giant CGI cats and the like, but there's also a rather charming emphasis on dancing: people unpretentiously dancing and singing about the product on offer (generally a foodstuff, which presumably explains their terrifying level of excitement). It makes the Go Compare tenor seem subtle. Sedate, even.
But while onscreen Japan offers up old-fashioned fodder with an unhinged, frantic glee bordering on malevolence, the moment you step outside, the population itself seems incredibly calm, as though faintly mesmerised by the screaming technology surrounding them. The cliche about the Japanese being unbelievably polite also holds true. At times they're so helpful it's almost a pain in the arse. Ask a passing stranger if they know where the nearest branch of Mos Burger is and if they don't immediately know the answer, they'll often start researching the subject on your behalf, whipping out their smartphones to locate it using Google maps or calling up their friends for advice. And if after several minutes of peering at maps, placing phone calls, and umming and ahhing and apologising, they still can't provide a detailed set of directions, they appear to take it as a personal blow. In London, you'd get a smile and a shrug. Here they almost run away in disgrace. You actually feel guilty having inflicted that level of shame on them.
Like I say: another planet.
January 18 2012
Left-Winger
This pretty much encapsulates all of my experiences playing organized sports. Or any team-based anything, really.
January 15 2012
Charlie Brooker: How to realise David Cameron's vision for Britain's film industry
Attention British film-makers: the prime minister requires you to make more commercial movies. Here's how
British film-makers! Put down those clapperboards and pay attention because David Cameron, who happens to be a huge fan of your work – assuming you're making The King's Speech II – wants you to focus on films likely to be a "commercial success". Which presumably is the last thing you want.
Cynics say Cameron knows squit about British films. When that photo of SamCam and Michelle Obama having a coffee morning in the Downing Street flat was released, there didn't seem to be many British films in the Cameron DVD collection. Not even Carry On Screaming. Mainly US TV boxsets. Oh, and he owns the film Armageddon on DVD. It's hard not to judge him for that.
To be fair, the photo was taken before The King's Speech had come out on DVD. Apparently he bought 26 copies of that. Not deliberately – he thought the disc was sticking so he kept buying it again and again, until he realised the lead character had a stutter.
Anyway, Cameron's advice for film-makers runs as follows: go mainstream. For years, you've held audiences in contempt, deliberately making your works obtuse. You even have to be cajoled into taking the lens cap off because you'd rather the repellent "viewers" sat there in pitch-blackness, trying to piece together the story from the soundtrack alone.
Not that there's a "story" anyway. The notion of a coherent plot offends your snooty arts-hole sensibilities. No one's saying you have to signpost everything, but for God's sake attach some clear labels. Look at The King's Speech. For one thing, you can look at it: no lens caps left on there. What's more, the story is simple. The world's most important man can't speak properly, so he gets taught to speak properly. But then disaster strikes! It looks like he might not be able to speak properly after all. Finally, in a triumphant climax, he speaks properly. It's a feelgood ending for everybody, apart from the 450,000 Britons killed in the war he just announced on the radio.
Feelgood endings are another mainstream necessity. Why go to the cinema to watch a film about desperate, blighted lives, when thanks to Cameron you're already living one – in cutting-edge 3D. Not that directors shouldn't make films about ordinary paupers, provided they're left smiling at the end. One of the main reasons David Cameron enjoyed The King's Speech is that it showed him how a man less privileged than himself overcame his lowly breeding and learned how to conquer a stammer. Compare that with a film such as Fish Tank. People said Fish Tank was brilliant but it didn't outperform Transformers: Dark of the Moon, because they neglected to put any 200ft robots in it, and no one victoriously punched the air at the end.
The British film industry needs to have the courage to think inside the box, sinking its money into guaranteed box-office hits such as Absolute Beginners and that Alien Autopsy comedy starring Ant and Dec. If you want commercial success, look at what's packing them in down the multiplex, and give them more of the same – only morer and samer. People hate variety. They don't want anything "new".
Superhero films are guaranteed box-office gold – so let's make a British one: a Dark Knight facsimile about a vigilante Beefeater in a rubberised outfit who lives in the Tower of London with an army of ravens. Also, how about Paddington Bear as a wisecracking CGI hero? The marmalade sandwiches he enjoys won't "read" overseas, so we'll replace those with peanut butter and jelly, but otherwise he's exactly the same loveable British Paddington Bear, minus the bit about him being an immigrant from darkest Peru. Also, he wears sunglasses and says "woah, THAT's godda hurt!" and is voiced by Ashton Kutcher.
Actually, Cameron isn't an utter philistine. He approvingly referenced the Lindsay Anderson film If … on the Today programme. Which is odd because If … is precisely the sort of film that would never, ever get made if his advice were heeded.
No one sets out to make a box-office flop. The problem with British films isn't a failure of ambition – it's the challenge of getting the damn things seen in a world filled with chain multiplexes programmed by monolithic distributors. Without distribution, no one sees your film. And without a huge marketing engine behind you, without a cookie-cutter similarity to the last big thing, the distributors often ain't interested.
The King's Speech was a superb film, but it's essentially Rocky for stammerers. Patriotic, yes: but we've made other, more forward-looking British films by ignoring the box office and taking risks. This Is England was a big British hit after years of low-budget risks from Shane Meadows. Kidulthood was a big British hit because Noel Clarke risked a film resembling nothing else in the multiplex. Four Lions, Shaun of the Dead and The Inbetweeners Movie were big British hits, the success of which can be traced back to risks taken on television: Chris Morris, Spaced, and the original Inbetweeners sitcom – niche comedies on minority channels. The mainstream came to them. Not the other way round.
If Cameron is serious about wanting our film industry to make more money, he should leave the ball-breaking yap about profits to Glengarry Glen Ross, and instead take the long view: nurture the creative talent of tomorrow – from film-makers to games designers. The upcoming generation is being squeezed harder and has fewer choices than ever. Unleashed, they could create things neither Cameron nor myself could possibly begin to imagine. Give them a playground, let them make mistakes, and give them time: they'll generate glorious failures and unprecedented moneyspinners. British ones. Which Cameron can proudly display on his shelf. If there's room between Armageddon and his 26 copies of The King's Speech.
January 12 2012
The Cedar Forest Players present Three Men and a Baby
Nothing like topical humour!
I want to assure you all that I re-watched ‘Three Men and a Baby‘ this morning in order to properly capture the feel of the film for this dramatization. So now you don’t have to.
It may also interest you to know that the movie was directed by Leonard Nimoy! I can’t be certain, but I think he might play the doorman outside of the Three Mens’ apartment building. Either that or he did voice-over for that bit. So there you have it.
I also totally saw the ghost boy behind the curtains.
I had to leave the studio early today so this strip is presented in the original black & white. I’ll add tones to it later.
See you next week!
-karl
January 08 2012
Charlie Brooker | Wondering what to give up for New Year? A few suggestions
Here are one or two things I think the rest of humankind should stop doing immediately
New Year's resolutions work like this: you think of something you enjoy doing, and then resolve to stop doing it. Smoking, for instance, or drinking, or shunting fistfuls of salted butter down your ravenous maw each morning. By denying yourself some of your few remaining pleasures, you hope to extend your lifespan, so you can spend extra decades forlornly wishing you were smoking or drinking or gorging on butter instead of slowly withering to death in a self-imposed prison of abstinence.
Stop being lazy, you tell yourself. And as you lace up your running shoes with the enthusiasm of a man condemned to eat damp cardboard for ever, you know you will fail, and you will dislike yourself for failing. Rather than setting yourself a New Year's resolution, why not simply pick a reason for hating yourself for the next 365 days? Takes less time, and it's easier to stick to.
Or you could do what I'm doing this year: setting New Year's resolutions for everyone in the world except me. These are the things I want humankind to stop doing immediately, on the grounds they've been doing them too long. They won't listen, but that's OK, because as I've already established, resolutions are doomed to fail. Oh, and I've chosen the really huge bugbears, obviously, not the little ones like global economic justice or racial intolerance. We won't change those till the Martians land and command us to sort that shit out. Anyway, the list:
1 Stop creating "Keep Calm and Carry On" variants
The original wartime Keep Calm and Carry On poster, rediscovered more than 10 years ago by the owner of Alnwick's Barter Books and digitally touched up by Chris Donald, erstwhile editor of Viz, is an amusing yet poignant instant design classic. It belongs on a poster, or a mug, or a tea towel sold by Barter Books. But not on a packet of condoms or a soft drink. Or a cushion. Or engraved on your baby's face. Every bastard's churning out "Keep Calm" merchandise these days. Check your attic. Someone's probably up there screen printing it on to a hammock right now. Moneygrabbers with no right to the "Keep Calm" phrase (and no connection to Barter Books) have attempted to trademark it. And at the time of writing, Britain's bestselling iPhone app is a widget that lets you create your own zany version of the poster, so it reads "Keep Calm and LOL Kittens!!!!" or something similarly anti-hilarious. It doesn't even use the right font. It's time we, as a species, ceased to be impressed by this sort of thing. We're better than that. We are.
2 Stop pretending cupcakes are brilliant
Of all the irritating "Keep Calm" bastardisations, the most irritating of all is the one that reads "Keep Calm and Eat a Cupcake". Cupcakes used to be known as fairy cakes, until something happened a few years ago. I don't know what the thing was, because I wasn't paying attention. All I know is that suddenly middle-class tosspoles everywhere were holding artisan cupcakes aloft and looking at them and pointing and making cooing sounds and going on and bloody on about how much they loved them. I wouldn't mind, but cupcakes are bullshit. And everyone knows it. A cupcake is just a muffin with clown puke topping. And once you've got through the clown puke there's nothing but a fistful of quotidian sponge nestling in a depressing, soggy "cup" that feels like a pair of paper knickers a fat man has been sitting in throughout a long, hot coach journey between two disappointing market towns. Actual slices of cake are infinitely superior, as are moist chocolate brownies, warm chocolate-chip cookies and virtually any other dessert you can think of. Cupcakes are for people who can't handle reality.
3 Stop pretending Lady Gaga and Beyoncé are endlessly fascinating
Look, it's not that I don't see their appeal. I just can't fathom the apparently infinite depth of it. I appreciate they're both polished entertainers with a neat line in music videos and some very catchy songs, but beyond that – what are you all seeing, precisely? I mean, it's nice that the openly kooky Lady Gaga inspires her fans not to give in to bullies and the suchlike, but she also inspires them to "put their paws up" and be a bit annoying, which kind of balances it out, really. They're not Mayan gods. And if their central message is one of personal empowerment and proud individuality you shouldn't be worshipping or emulating them anyway. Let them sing and leave it at that. Keep Calm and Carry On, if you like.
4 Stop making superhero movies
Kick-Ass, that was a good one. Iron Man, fair enough. But now we don't need any more superhero films. Especially not pretentious ones. There's a new Dark Knight film out this year. Calling Batman "the Dark Knight" is like calling Papa Smurf "the Blue Patriarch": you're not fooling anyone. It's a children's story about a billionaire who dresses up as a bat to punch criminals on the nose. No normal adult can possibly relate to that, which makes his story inherently boring, unless you're a child, in which case you can enjoy the bits where he rides his super-bike around with his cape flapping behind him like a tit. The scenes where some improbable clown-like supervillain delivers a quasi-philosophical speech are even worse, incidentally.
Tip: if you want to make your bad guy interesting and menacing and exotic, don't waste hours gluing prosthetic dice to his eyelids and giving him a name like "the Quizzlestick". Just show him masturbating into an oven glove while watching earthquake footage on CNN. Then you've got my attention. And automatically made a film worth watching.
January 04 2012
Year of the Dragon
I think this might be the first lizard in this comic. If so, I apologize to lizards everywhere for the oversight.
So it’s officially the Year of the Dragon, and I thought I’d ring it in by listing some things I like which contain dragons. Feel free to add your own!
In no particular order:
CONTEST NOTE: Thanks to everyone for the colouring contest submissions! I’m sorting them all and judging will begin soon!
January 01 2012
Look away, Simon Cowell and John Humphrys. 2012 won't be your year | David Mitchell
For certain people in the public eye, the coming 12 months will truly be an annus horribilis
As Her Majesty the Queen put it in this year's Christmas broadcast just a week ago: "Fuck me, some massive shit's gone down in 2012." But what will 2012 really be remembered for? A major shift in attitudes to swearing, certainly. Was it the fact that the Daily Mail's "No more expletives on TV" campaign coincided so precisely with the discoveries in Paul Dacre's cellar that explains how society so suddenly and collectively gained a sense of perspective about rude words? Most commentators believe so.
But it hasn't all been potty-mouthed monarchs, the irrevocable discrediting of the Mayans and the last-minute cancellation of the Olympics due to lack of interest. There have been highs – the John Lewis advert winning a record-breaking 14 Oscars – and lows, such as the unseemly fights that broke out on the deck of the new Anglo-French aircraft carrier. And the news has also had its lighter side. Let's look back at some of the highlights of the past year's silly seasons.
John Major in Oval shooting spree
Cricket scored what the chairman of the ICC unfelicitously described as "a series of own goals" this year as the allegations and prosecutions for match-fixing mounted up. At the end of an Oval Test which had involved the bowling of a suspicious and unprecedented 362 wides, it all got a bit much for the former prime minister and honorary life vice-president of Surrey, who ran out on to the pitch wildly firing his bodyguard's gun and shouting something about warm beer and betrayal. Fortunately, the incident resulted in no more than a few flesh wounds, although Fleet Street editors were subsequently besieged by calls from Edwina Currie offering to comment.
Murdochs launch new Miliband
The disgraced media dynasty, currently believed to be hiding out with the 47 surviving children of Colonel Gaddafi in a fortified compound in the Liberian desert, made an ambitious comeback bid in October by announcing that they'd genetically engineered a new Miliband. They claim to have used DNA harvested from Ed and David's hotel rooms during the 2002 Labour party conference. Six-month-old Rupert Miliband is being brought up in an oxygen tent to speed growth, is to be tutored by Glenn Beck and Niall Ferguson, and has also been fitted with laser cannons. He's expected to be launched on to the British political scene in 2020 at an event to be hosted by Tony Blair and a robotised reimagining of Baroness Thatcher.
China steals Radio 4
Britain was left reeling in March by the theft of the BBC's flagship speech radio station by communist China. "They came for us by night!" a stunned John Humphrys told news cameras as he stared into the abyss left by the ripping out of the ground of London's Broadcasting House. It was carried off by a fleet of Chinook helicopters and was last seen heading east over the North Sea. Everything is believed to have been taken apart from Humphrys and Nicholas Parsons, who was mysteriously abandoned on an oil rig. The BBC has dragged its feet over the issue of fetching him.
Sir Cliff Richard wins The X Factor
Throughout the competition, the nation had taken octogenarian Glaswegian country singer Tavish McAndover to its heart, despite the fact that his name sounded fictional. Scorning the cover versions that most acts rely on, McAndover wowed crowds with heartfelt ballads such as "It's Hard To Dance Sexy When You've Got A Metal Hip", "I Remember When Tennis Balls Were White But I'm Not Being Racist" and "I Know BBC3 Isn't Aimed At Me But That's What My Sky Box Is Stuck On". But the nation was astounded when, seconds after winning the public vote, McAndover appeared to rip away his face to reveal Sir Cliff cleaning off the remains of prosthetic makeup. The Peter Pan of pop duly walked away with his fourth Christmas No 1 and a furious Simon Cowell's £1m record contract. The Mirror TV critic captured the national mood: "It's difficult to know which of those annoying people to side with. It's like Israel and Palestine all over again."
Israel and Palestine all over again
An end was twice called to the Arab-Israeli conflict this year. The first agreement, signed in March, was abandoned on the advice of Tony Blair who was concerned that, without such tensions, the region would be "like Frasier after Niles and Daphne got together". It was six months before diplomats realised that this wasn't as good an analogy as it had initially seemed and a second peace was signed.
Peter Ebdon accidentally shot in Vladimir Putin assassination attempt
When a small bald man, famed for his insane drive and frightening monomania in pursuit of his goals, was found floating dead in the Baltic, Chechen separatists were quick to claim responsibility, not realising that, instead of Russia's latterday tsar, they'd taken the life of one of snooker's favourite sons. World snooker was thrown into chaos by the news, plans for a ranking tournament in Vladivostok were shelved and John Virgo broke down on The One Show muttering: "He was so beautiful, he was so beautiful" over and over again.
Afro crisis deepens
In the wake of the near collapse of the euro in 2011, many economists considered 2012 an unpropitious year to launch Africa's single currency. Others felt that giving the new note the same name as a hairstyle wouldn't inspire investor confidence. Such fears were allayed when the continent's finance ministers announced that the currency would be backed by blood diamonds. The afro's consequent rocketing value in relation to all other major currencies was what caused the crisis and led to a stockpiling of afros everywhere in the world except Africa. More were changing hands in Oxford Street this Christmas than in the whole of Nigeria.
Duchess of Cornwall rap leads to calls for charity to be stopped
The month of inexpensive programming surrounding the BBC's Children in Need night was marred this year by a segment in which the Duchess of Cornwall was forced tearfully to improvise a rap about declining literacy rates. "Why!? Why is this happening? How is this helping anybody?" the Duchess was repeatedly heard to ask as she inexpertly struggled for rhymes, robotically egged on by a glassy-eyed Tess Daly, who was later to take her own life. In a public apology for the broadcast, the director general said: "It becomes clear that the explanation or excuse 'it's for charity' has its limits. After seeing that, no one will ever want to help needy children ever again."
December 28 2011
Charlie Brooker: A guide to the buzzwords of 2011
Been duped by a 'sock puppet' is? Had a go at 'planking'? Living in a 'structured reality'? 2011 threw up some new words and concepts – and here they are explained
2011 was a hectic year – so hectic it required its own language. Phrases such as "Lulzsec", "phone hacking" and "Wendi Deng" suddenly became common currency. But why hasn't anyone printed a handy cut-out-and-keep handbook explaining what all this stuff means? Well, actually, they have. And you're already reading it. Shut up and keep going as we start our guide to the Buzzwords of 2011.
Sock puppet
Stop thinking about actual sock puppets with buttons for eyes and so on. We're talking about internet "sock puppets" here: in other words, people pretending to be someone else on the internet in order to win an argument – or, in the case of Amina Arraf, Syrian lesbian blogger, to further a cause. Amina's blog was held up as an inspiration – until "she" was revealed to be a 40-year-old student from the University of Edinburgh. Adding to the confusion, days later, one of the editors of a lesbian website that had promoted Amina's blog also turned out to be a man. It was a bit like the end of Some Like it Hot. Some began to suspect that lesbians, like leprechauns, might not actually exist at all. Fortunately, Channel 5 soon scotched these rumours with a docusoap set in a lesbian bar. Speaking of which …
Structured reality
Once upon a time we had docusoaps. Now we have The Only Way is Essex, Made in Chelsea and Desperate Scousewives … and what do they have in common? No, apart from that. That's right! They're all "structured reality" shows. "Structured reality" essentially means "not quite real": the people featured in the show are actual people, with actual thoughts and feelings and relationships and kidneys and anuses and so on, but the situations they find themselves in for the purposes of the show are slightly massaged into position by the producers. In other words, they're told to stand in a particular spot and toss a glass of wine over their boyfriend because he cheated on them in last week's episode.
Christ. Imagine if that was your life.
But it isn't your life. You're just watching it. And when you tune in to a structured-reality show you, the viewer, are actively choosing to spend 60 minutes watching a glossy-looking soap opera performed by non-actors half-improvising a non-script. It's precisely like a scene from an old-school porn film in which a plumber and a frustrated housewife trade clunky dialogue, but with better lighting and no onscreen sex. Speaking of which …
Merkozy
Throughout the latter part of the year, every economist was debating one issue: would the eurozone collapse? Or crumble? Or meltdown and dribble into an abyss? No one could decide which combination of words best described the inevitable impending disaster. Eventually they gave up and simply started screaming. In a bid to distract them, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy stood beside each other at press conferences and made reassuring cooing noises.
Ever since Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were rechristened "Bennifer" (100 years ago, in 1982), any two proximate individuals appearing in a newspaper must have their names combined by law. Sometimes it catches on ("Brangelina") and sometimes it sorta catches on (eg Big Brother twins "Samanda"; famous until toppled by "Jedward"), but it's rarely used in broadsheets (referring to "the killings of Frose West" is expressly forbidden by the Guardian's style guide).
"Merkozy", however, was a fun nickname even the driest business news section could print without blushing (although in the case of the FT it was hard to tell).
What did "Merkozy" actually mean? Nothing. But it provided light relief from all that depressing stuff about bond yields. Speaking of which …
Bond yields
Approximately 10,000 cryptic economic phrases suddenly popped up in news reports this year, nonchalantly bandied about as if the viewer knew what they meant. It was all "bond yield" this and "sovereign debt" that. Impenetrable. At one point, numbers were given "haircuts". That's like something out of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or a Spike Milligan poem. No wonder the economy's in such a mess.
If something can't be described in plain English, maybe you shouldn't base an entire society on it. Just saying. As it is, the whole thing's been a pointless endeavour. Speaking of which …
Planking
The widespread distribution of camera-studded smartphones has led humankind to experiment with things it had never bothered attempting before, "planking" being a prime example. This was a shortlived craze that involved posing for a photograph while lying facedown in a rigid plank-like position. A game of planking one-upmanship quickly swept the internet, with plankers planking in increasingly perilous locations (eg balanced on hotel balconies, atop mountains, within the hearts of collapsing stars, etc) until clumsiness took over and people started toppling off things and dying. Oh, how the laughter dried in our throats. We thought it was harmless fun. But God had other plans.
Recently killed plankers whose bodies hadn't been carted away yet could always save face by pretending to have invented "stiffing" – lying on the ground being authentically dead. Sadly stiffing failed to take off as a meme until Muammar Gaddafi did it in October, creating front-page news in the process. If only he'd found a way to monetise the craze, he'd have been loaded. But he didn't. Because he was dead. Speaking of which …
Arab spring
Toppling leaders was all the rage in 2011 as people across the Arab world collectively decided they'd had just about enough of this bullshit. To the casual TV viewer, the Arab spring was initially confusing: previously, whenever the news showed you footage of furious Arabs marching in the streets, they were chanting "Death to the west" or burning effigies of John Barrowman or something. Now suddenly they were the good guys, and their despised dictatorial leaders were the bad guys – but the news hadn't really bothered explaining who these bad guys were before. The Tunisian president is a ruthless tyrant, you say? Why didn't you tell me this earlier?
It was as if these Arab despots had only just landed on the planet, like the intergalactic megabaddies from Superman II, and the news was playing catchup. We didn't know their names or what they looked like, or have much of a clue as to why they were unpopular – unless, like megabaddie Colonel Gaddafi, they'd previously done something awful to us, in which case we'd not only cheer from the sidelines, but also lend air support.
Basically, in terms of narrative, things hadn't been set up clearly enough during the first act. Come on, news: you really must try harder to explain this stuff. Speaking of which …
Higgs Boson
This year scientists got one step closer to confirming the existence of the Higgs Boson, aka the "God Particle". Prior to the breakthrough, only scientists knew what the Higgs Boson was, whereas afterwards, once the news had patiently explained it to everyone on the planet, only scientists knew what the Higgs Boson was.
Like all complex scientific concepts, I find it hard to grasp for more than three minutes at a time. You can explain it to me, and I'll understand it, really I will, but the moment you walk away, the knowledge starts invisibly drifting out of my head. I call this mysterious phenomenon by which I shift from ignorance to enlightenment, and then back to ignorance – the Brooker Gap. When are scientists going to look into that phenomenon, hmm?
Tree Hugger
Happy Holidays, everyone! Hope you’re all spending time with loved ones and enjoying the season.
I guess this is the last Abominable strip of 2011. I want to thank you all for coming back here every week for the last four years and sharing these moments with me, and I want to thank all of the amazing people who contributed guest strips for the last few weeks!
Next year we’ll kick off the third chapter of the story, there’ll be a new hardcover book, and I’ll be doing more conventions, so hopefully I’ll get to meet some more of you in person. Until then, enjoy what’s left of 2011 and I’ll see you next year!
-karl
Before I go, I want to remind everyone that the colouring contest ends on December 31st, as does the sale at the Abominable Store! So if you want to win a free book with a sketch or get your hands on cheaper stuff, now’s the time!
December 26 2011
Holiday Sale!
In Canada we call it Boxing Day (or ‘Boxing Week’ in recent years) but whatever you call it, you can use it as an excuse to get discounts on everything at the Abominable Store! Books, shirts, prints, buttons, everything! It’s all 25% off for the remainder of the year, so head on over and check it out!
December 21 2011
Guest Strip by Tyson Hesse
This week’s guest strip answers some important questions about Charles’ genetic roots. Or does it? Is that face human? Some things are better left unanswered.
Tyson Hesse is a character designer, animator, cartoonist, colourist, writer and self-publisher of his own comics. That’s a lot of stuff. All of it is really good.
I first found him via his webcomic, Boxerhockey, and then proceeded to marvel at his portfolio and his prints. His sense of colour is amazing, and when I was asked to do a House of Night story for Dark Horse comics I requested his services as colourist so he’d make me look better than I am. He doesn’t know it yet, but I plan to come calling again soon.
Thanks for taking the time to do this, Tyson! And for giving me night terrors. Panel five is like something out of a Lynch movie.
December 18 2011
Barclays boss Bob Diamond might not be as bright as his name suggests
The Barclays bank boss has suggested that his executives are easily replaceable. If that's true, why do they get paid so much?
Sometimes it's down to the director-general of the British Retail Consortium to sum up the national mood. "Non-food is having a thoroughly miserable and difficult time," he said last week. He's so right – it really is. And, of all the non-foods, the humans are particularly depressed, with more than 2.64 million of us now out of work. But I like his note of optimism. We remain non-foods. We haven't started to eat one another. While we've not yet been reduced to carrion or prey, there are still grounds for hope.
We're in the grip of a historically significant slump, possibly as notable as the Great Depression. Our current trials will definitely be on the A-level history syllabuses of the decades to come. Any more disastrous developments and we may even make GCSE.
The question the kids of the future will be trying to answer is: "What caused all that suffering?" As a former lazy history student myself, I know that the trick here is to look for the point in the debate where someone says: "It's a bit more complicated than that" and then go back to the previous assertion. The things that historical events are a bit more complicated than are, in my experience, also the things that they basically are.
Proper controversy is when one historian says: "This is caused by Thing A" and another says: "Shut up, you! It was caused by Thing B." But when one is saying: "It was Thing A" and the other says: "It's more complicated than that", I reckon we pretty much have an answer. Some say it's Thing A, others say it's partly Thing A – that's as close to a consensus as naturally argumentative and contrarian people (which is a tautology, and you'll only prove me right if you disagree) are ever likely to come to.
In the case of our current troubles, the thing that it's a bit more complicated than, but it also basically is, is "all the bankers' fault". I know my saying that will annoy some people, but that's OK because they're the very people I take most pleasure in annoying. So if you're thinking about getting annoyed, you might want to consider not giving me the satisfaction and agree with me instead.
Last week, the Financial Services Authority finally offered its considered opinion that the collapse of RBS in 2008 was caused by "underlying deficiencies in RBS management, governance and culture, which made it prone to make poor decisions". It's easy to take the piss out of this because it's a bland statement of such a self-evident fact; but it's like when a mishit at Wimbledon flies off into the crowd – a linesman still has to call "Out!" when it finally hits the ground.
So it's clear that, while other factors must be borne in mind, such as feckless midwestern property developers, consumers spending beyond their means, Greek fiscal imprudence, George Osborne's point about the snow and George Osborne, we'd be in shallower shit now if more bankers had got theirs together. This is why I'm worried about Bob Diamond.
Barclays' new boss first came to my attention in January when he told MPs that the "period of remorse and apology for banks … needs to be over". I didn't like that, partly because I hadn't really noticed any period of remorse and apology, unless you count "I'm sorry our various scams didn't work" as an apology; and partly because it's not for him to say. If you're really sorry for something, you should just keep being sorry. It's for others to decide when you can be let off the hook. If you're the first to be asking whether you've apologised enough, then you haven't.
Now he's changing tack in a way that makes his judgment seem even more questionable. In an interview last weekend, he said he'd introduced a "no-jerk rule" that had led to his parting company with more than 30 senior executives. "If someone can't behave with their colleagues and can't be part of the culture, it doesn't matter how good they are at what they do, they have to be asked to leave," he said.
This doesn't make sense. Since well before the crisis began, investment bankers, and indeed all top City executives, have defended their stratospheric pay deals on the basis that, in the cold light of economic reality, they were worth it. They got the big bucks because they brought in the bigger bucks. They possessed rare profit-making skills. They had the magic touch, everyone was crying out to employ them, so being paid millions was nothing more sinister than the market functioning as it should.
But what Bob Diamond appears to be saying is that he's willing to sack the goose that lays the golden eggs for being rude to its PA. That can only mean one of two things: either Bob is an incredibly poor, albeit principled, businessman and, regrettably, Barclays probably needs to look for someone harder-nosed; or highly paid bankers aren't geese that lay golden eggs but are eminently replaceable. If so, why are they so highly paid? Is being a jerk specifically harmful to business acumen? I'm afraid I don't believe it is, even if I'm willing to accept it isn't necessarily helpful either (which I only am when I'm in a very good mood).
Diamond cites the example of six Barclays bankers who spent £44,000 on wine at a posh restaurant in 2001 saying: "to have acted that way in a public place is inexcusable". I don't understand this either. It was their money. If you want to make sure your employees don't spend tens of thousands on wine, don't pay them millions. Otherwise they'll spend it as they like, whatever the PR cost to the company. To do otherwise would imply that they were ashamed, that the money was ill-gotten, that they were bank robbers not its employees, and being careful not to attract suspicion.
Wayne Rooney doesn't seem like a model employee. I'm not sure he'd survive a "no-jerk rule". Conspicuous consumption is the least of his PR crimes. Yet he evades the sack because his talent is undeniably rare. What Diamond's remarks reveal is that the same cannot be said of bankers who enjoy equivalent remuneration.
If Diamond isn't bright enough to grasp that what he said, far from being canny or diplomatic, fundamentally undermines his profession's justification for existing in its current form, then it's clear that we're still in the era of overpaid mediocrities running banks.
December 14 2011
Guest Strip by Creaturebox
This is unbelievable. I asked Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin at Creaturebox if they’d be interested in doing an Abominable guest strip for me, assuming that they might have time for a small sketch or a couple of panels. And this is what they sent me. Practically every character (and some new ones!) rendered in full, lush colour.
I can’t stop looking at it.
Maybe you’re already familiar with their design work on the Ratchet & Clank series of video games and maybe you’re familiar with some of the comics they put up on the web, but you still owe it to yourself to go to their site and soak in the talent. From character design to illustration to sequential art to website design, everything there oozes professionalism and ingenuity. So, so much for me to learn.
I also love their twitter feed for the random doodles and inspirational sketches that show up.
Thank you so much, guys!
-karl
December 11 2011
Charlie Brooker: 2011 has been like an end-of-season finale. 2012 doesn't stand a chance
This year, so much has happened it's impossible to remember it all in one go
It's almost time to bid farewell to 2011, and as is my custom at this time of year, I'm working on a review-of-the-year type programme, and have thus spent the past few weeks reliving 2011 in the form of countless edited DVD highlight compilations of the year's news reports and TV shows. It's like your life flashing before your eyes, but slower and with sunnier locations.
After a while, everything is reduced to an impressionist smear in your head. The protracted battle for Libya becomes a blur of tarmac, sand and black smoke intercut with footage of people repeatedly firing into the air, as if they've declared war on the sky. The August riots resemble a cross between an apocalyptic zombie movie and an unusually depressing edition of Alex Zane's Rude Tube. The economy is just a series of satirically huge numbers scrolling across the screen while a voiceover recites the words "brink … precipice … abyss … void …" over and over again.
Certain trends leap out. Never before have I noticed quite so many people filming stuff on their smartphones during a war. You could see them walking around in the background of news reports on the Arab Spring, merrily gathering souvenir footage of burnt-out vehicles or recently-lynched despots. Still, at least that's history: today the smallest event automatically prompts onlookers to whip out their pocket-size techno-slabs and start filming. A few weeks ago I was flipping through the channels when I caught part of an Ed Sheeran gig on Channel 4. It looked like roughly 50% of the audience was just standing there, pointing little black rectangles in his direction throughout. Play that back and you'd only get a hazy shot of a singing blob. So why bother? It seems especially fruitless since there was a TV crew present, filming the concert in high definition with stereo sound in order to broadcast it later for free. And if it's not about recording the music, but simply about keeping personal mementos, why watch the screen on your phone while filming it? It's like you're not even there, somehow. I can understand wanting to distance yourself slightly during a violent uprising, but during a gig? We're a curious species, when it comes down to it.
Overall though, the most startling thing about the year as a whole is just how densely packed with incident it's been. Last year, a woman dropping a cat in a wheelie bin was notable enough to make headlines across the globe. This year, so much has happened it's impossible to remember it all in one go. Massively significant events just drop out of your memory, only to surprise you again when you stumble across them later. Osama Bin Laden was killed! You'd forgotten that, hadn't you? Don't worry, even the guy who shot him probably keeps forgetting about it too. If only he'd filmed it with his iPhone.
2011 has been like one big end-of-season finale; a climactic episode in which multiple story arcs come to a head. It's used up far too much news for one year. How can 2012 possibly compete? Surely the event cupboard is bare. Unless planet Earth gets attacked by a 200ft Bruno Tonioli robot that screams machine code while copulating with global landmarks – which at the time of writing seems unlikely – it's going to feel like a damp squib by comparison.
But then, maybe if the global timeline's less cluttered we'll start to focus more on what's happening in front of our noses. If it's relatively quiet, David Cameron is likely to start getting it in the neck. If anyone has benefited from an action-packed year, it's him. Every time the shit was about to hit the fan for Cameron in 2011, something spectacular happened somewhere else on the map and he somehow managed to slip away unscathed during the commotion. It's as though no-one genuinely believes he's responsible for anything, in much the same way as no-one seems to blame Ant and Dec for shoving cockroaches up Fatima Whitbread's nose because they're merely the frontmen: similarly the news is a wacky gameshow compendium and Cameron's just one of many presenters. He pops up now and then to complain that some heinous new development is unacceptable and wrong, then slinks away shrugging.
For a short while it looked like he was in trouble during the summer. In July he was in the spotlight over his links with Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks. In August half the country burned down while he posed for photographs with a Tuscan waitress. But by September the economy had knocked him off the front page, and by October it was all about the corpse of Muammar Gaddafi.
I wouldn't be surprised to discover Cameron has been making all this news up: he's paying the media to run entirely fictional stories to distract us whenever he cocks up – just like the fictional military campaign in Wag the Dog but with a bit more variety. If that's the case, then I have a newfound respect for the prime minister: he has a vivid imagination. That nuclear reactor thing in Japan was a bold move. But by using such grand storylines, he has painted himself into a corner. The only way is up. The only way is weirder. If his recent up-yours to Europe backfires in grand fashion, expect the news to announce that the Cern supercollider has accidentally knocked a hole through time and a swarm of pterodactyls has just flown out. Or for a camera crew to discover Santa's toyshop. Or both.
I want to talk to you about the NHS. And its IT system. Wait, come back…
We must try to contain our boredom, because the creation of a fully networked health service is an important matter that deserves our full attention
This column is going to be about the NHS computer system – you know, that attempt to computerise everyone's medical records, which has cost such a lot of money and doesn't work. That is the subject I am determined to write about, even if it kills me.
It really feels like it might kill me. Reading even one article about it is like trying to stare directly at the sun. I desperately want to turn away, dazzled by the tedium. I'd rather gaze at anything else. An advert for a handbag on the opposite page, a dried drip on the outside of my tea mug, the fascinating patina of flaking plaster under the windowsill. This is bad. The economic climate is far too harsh for me suddenly to lose my powers of concentration, the synapses I honed as a vocab-learning swot.
I'm getting the impression from the glimpses of the paper that I'm able to endure that the scheme is going to cost another £2bn even though it's being wound up – that we have to spend that or we'll get sued by the people who won the contract to, as it turns out, not actually do the job; that the massive oil tanker of government spending can't turn round in less than a couple of billions of distance.
Is £2bn a lot still? Or is it one of those sums which, considering the scale of the enterprise, "isn't that much when you think about it"? In order to check, I'd have to think about it and I really don't want to. It's so frustrating and depressing but, much more than that, it's terribly, witheringly, heartbreakingly boring.
I keep pacing round and round my flat as if I'm trying to walk off a back twinge. If I were a different sort of person, trying to focus on this would probably have provoked a frenzy of DIY. Instead I absently help myself to slices of cheese whenever I pass the fridge.
By calling it boring, I don't mean to imply that it's not important. Boring and important are not mutually exclusive terms. And I really want to talk about it. I get annoyed by how dismissively the project is often referred to. Some people seem to think not just that the Blair government's scheme has been unnecessarily expensive and disappointing in its results, but that the whole notion of trying to computerise patient records, of a single joined-up NHS computer system, is frivolous and flawed. To them it's not vital infrastructure but something on which bureaucrats have been frittering away money that should have been spent on medicine and incubators, which we could proudly stack up in a car park, safe in the knowledge that they're there when they're needed, if only we had any way of telling who needed them and where.
I think this attitude undermines their criticisms. I'm convinced that, in the long run, fully computerising the NHS is vital. And the attempt was bound to be fraught with difficulty and expense. So I start to wonder how much worse than par the achievements of those charged with it actually are. Are people who are luddite enough completely to deny the necessity of such a scheme really qualified to judge? Are we binning out on it at exactly the wrong time, at the darkest part of the night?
I rather approve of what Richard Granger, who ran the programme until he resigned in the face of its manifest failure in 2007, said of it three years earlier: "I would draw comparisons with the great public works activities in the Victorian era – Joseph Bazalgette building the London sewage system, Brunel and the Great Western Railway." Maybe giving up now is like Brunel saying: "Sod this, there's a hill in the way! Why waste money digging a tunnel when I could just go round it in my horse and cart?"
How's everyone finding this subject, by the way? Yeah, I know what it's like – you'll be fewer in number as every word goes by. The mention of the NHS in the headline will, like the first wave of machine-gun fire at the Somme, have mown down the majority; then a whiff of IT will have worked like mustard gas on the rest; and now a straggling remnant are being sniped at by other activities, by chores, by whatever's on the opposite page, by the TV: Andrew Marr might be talking about something funny in parliament or that comfy new planet astronomers have found or the weird witch's house that just got dug up in Lancashire.
But stick with me, you unhappy few. I believe in the redemptive power of boredom. That's why I took Latin GCSE. Nothing sharpens the brain like a whetstone of tedium, so I'm sure thinking about computers will do you good. "Coding is the new Latin," as Alex Hope, MD of Double Negative, an Oscar-winning visual effects company, puts it. He has co-written a report calling for computer science, a grounding in actual coding rather than just teaching people how to open slightly outdated versions of Microsoft Excel, to be taught in schools.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Like Latin, it would require concentration and an application of logic; it would teach the vital skills of pushing through the boredom barrier in order to solve problems. And, while Latin gives an insight into the structure and history of our own language, a grounding in coding would help people understand how these maddening machines we all now completely rely on actually work. And if it meant that more young Britons became obsessive coders in later life, that can only help the economy. The creation of software is one of the few manufacturing industries in which Britain still has a chance of competing globally.
Computers are not a fad. Intellectually, most of us accept that but, to all but the very youngest who are reading this, that's not how it feels. To us, these machines are an imposition, a distraction, something stultifying that dominates our lives but we somehow feel shouldn't. That misapprehension is the curse of our generation. I pity us, staring at screens, bored out of our minds, uncomprehending slaves to this new multipurpose spinning jenny. But we may as well be railing against the written word itself. At some point, the NHS, like everything else, has to be fully networked, whatever it costs. It's virtually as important as oxygenating the blood of its patients.
Still, soon be Christmas.
December 07 2011
Guest Strip by Kenji
Kenji is 8 months old, so it’s time he started pulling his own weight. For this week’s strip I drew a colouring page for him and asked him to finish the image with some paints. “Just be yourself”, I told him. “Let it all happen on the page. Push the envelope. Explore the space.”
If you can’t see the genius in the above image, you have no taste whatsoever.
BONUS: You can check out the behind-the-scenes video of the making of this masterpiece, or even download the blank line art and colour your own! I’ll post some of the results and let Kenji choose his favourite. The winner will get a free book with a sketch*.
All submissions should be mailed to mail@abominable.cc by December 31st with the subject line: “Colouring Contest”.
* The sketch is by me, not Kenji.
December 04 2011
Nick Clegg's new health regime means he's clearly not fit for office | David Mitchell
Wouldn't it be nice if just for once a political leader wasn't trying to look like Tony Blair?
Nick Clegg gets a lot of stick these days. I've certainly slagged him off several times and I feel guilty. It says a lot more about me than it does about him – I'm just cross with myself that I voted for his party. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't mind him at all. But when you vote Lib Dem, the last thing you expect is to end up complicit in what a government is doing. You expect to be merrily carping on the sidelines at the thoughtlessness of those corrupted by power. It's an almost monastic act, a renunciation of worldly power in the name of self-righteousness.
When you're trying to wash your hands of politics, it's disconcerting to discover you've just rinsed them in the blood of your countrymen, to have to explain yourself to Labour-voting friends: "I'm sorry, I got over-excited about electoral reform"; "I became intimidated by the size of Gordon Brown's head"; "It was annoying not to be able to feel smug about Iraq." You can't say: "Well, I never expected them to get into office – that was the key to their appeal." At worst, they were supposed to mitigate New Labour, not connive with the Tories.
If it's been a nasty shock for me, how much worse must it have been for Clegg? A member of the Lib Dems said to me in early 2010 that a hung parliament would be a disastrous election result for them. I didn't really understand. To me, it seemed like their best realistic outcome. Recently, I realised that we were both right. Clegg must have had a horrible time under a barrage of abuse and, earlier this year, it started to show. He began to look jowly and sad. One thought of him sitting through cabinet meetings, shaking his head and glumly eating crisps.
Well, there's only so much criticism a man can take before he's forced to react and it seems Clegg has finally snapped. But instead of resigning and returning to his manifesto pledges, he's just got himself a rowing machine. Obviously he didn't mind people calling him a hypocrite nearly as much as them saying he had a paunch. To be fair, he's only going along with our whole society's priorities there.
Apparently the machine, which was acquired a few months ago, allows Clegg to work out between, and sometimes even during, meetings. Presumably this way he can intimidate advisers with his physicality – panting and dripping with perspiration, he can draw them into his circle of trust, closer to the heart of power, like the noblemen privileged to witness Louis XIV's levee. Or indeed like Winston Churchill, who often conducted business from his bed or the bath, a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. I can't really imagine Churchill heaving away at an exercise machine, though – getting out of breath while Halifax burbled on about appeasement. The blood, toil, tears and sweat he offered members of his government were largely metaphorical.
There'll be no victory cigar for Clegg because he's given up smoking. This is a shame as it was one of the few things I still liked about him. I'm not saying it's good to smoke, but it was an engaging reminder of his humanity, his frailty – it helped me believe that he was acting more out of weakness than malice. But an aide said last week that Clegg "hasn't needed gum or hypnosis or anything like that. Willpower alone has done the trick". A fine time suddenly to find some of that.
The main reason I'm disappointed by Clegg's health drive is that it means he'll stay looking exactly like all our other neat, slightly boyish politicians: Cameron, Osborne, several Milibands, Andy Burnham. Brown hair, black suit, white face, plausible smile – that's what you've got to look like, conventional wisdom tells us, if you aspire to the front rank of power. Forgettable, identical, cast in the image of Blair. Clegg's ageing and broadening features had begun to make him look like a recognisably different person – not quite as noticeable as Eric Pickles, but it was something. But now, with exercise and a diet, he's squeezing himself back into the mould.
Well, I think it's about time someone broke it. People are always claiming that a bald man can never be prime minister in the television age. But what about John Major? I know, technically, he had a full head of hair but, if they're saying that baldness makes you seem ineffectual, then Major was metaphorically worthy of a coot simile. He exuded the air of the loser, the underdog, the submissive, and yet no prime minister's government, in all of British history, has polled more votes than Major's did in 1992. Maybe it was because the country, after a decade's cruelty at the hands of a savage dominatrix, wanted to get fucked normally for a bit. But still it's a sign that our leaders don't necessarily all have to look the same.
Not many of our top politicians from any of the main parties would declare themselves fans of Blair, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It would have been difficult to believe postwar Germany's rejection of fascism if its leaders had taken to growing little moustaches. It's depressing that Blair's rise to power is the only sort our politicians have the imagination to believe possible. Surely the electorate must be sick of that style of politics?
In television, for all that people talk of creativity, the percentage game is in being deftly derivative. Don't have the big, risky, original idea, be the first to copy it. The steady money is in remakes, reworkings, shows you can signal to an audience as being similar to something they've enjoyed before. These programmes don't change the world, but they pay the rent.
It seems that politics is the same; everyone's still aping Blair. But the world is changing fast (just because people always say that doesn't mean it isn't currently true). Our next important leader is unlikely to obey the same rules as the last. Maybe the time has come for someone bald, or old, or obese, or disabled – or just less slick. It never looked likely that it would be Nick Clegg. Now he's dutifully pumping iron to make sure.
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I'm all for sharing, but why the online obsession with revealing every detail of your life? | Charlie Brooker
Facebook and Spotify automatically want to share my every waking action, so that I'm like a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll
Sharing. Now there's a basic social concept that has somehow got all out of whack. The idea behind sharing is simple. Let's say I'm a caveman. I hunt and slaughter a bison, but I can't eat it all myself, so I share the carcass with others, many of whom really appreciate it, such as my infirm 86-year-old neighbour who hasn't had a proper meal in weeks because he is incapable of killing anything larger than a woodlouse. Have you tried grilling a woodlouse? It's scarcely worth the effort.
But it's not all bison meat. Let's say I am still a caveman. The other thing I share is information: the thoughts inside my head or stirring tales of the things I have done. I grunt a hilarious anecdote about the time I dropped a huge rock on a duck and an egg popped out, and mime scandalous gossip about well-known tribesmen. I'm the life and soul of the cave-party.
All this sharing served a purpose. It kept the community fed, as well as entertained and informed. Now zip forward to the present day and, like I say, sharing has somehow got all out of whack. A small percentage of the population hoards more bison meat than it could eat in 2,000 lifetimes, awarding itself huge bison meat bonuses on top of its base-rate bison meat "salary". I say "bison meat". In case you hadn't noticed, I'm using it as a clever metaphor for money.
The huge salaries and bonuses, we are told, are essential if we are to prevent this tiny percentage of selfish, hoarding arseholes from moving overseas. Imagine if they flew to Singapore and started selfishly hoarding things over there instead. Drained of their expertise and reassuring presence, how would Britain cope? Within days we'd be walking on all fours and devouring our offspring for food.
I don't want to panic you, but that's the reality. Never mind weeping over the size of their bonuses: we should be dropping to our knees and giving them blowjobs, tearfully imploring them to remain seated each time we come up for air. Treble their wages. Form a human ring around Britain's airports to prevent them from leaving. And for God's sake don't ask them to share anything. That kind of talk merely angers them.
Sharing is for the rest of us. Not sharing money or bison meat, but personal information. Where we are. What we're doing. Share it! Make it public! Go on! It's fun!
Increasingly, I stumble across apps and services that expect me to automatically share my every waking action on Facebook and Twitter. The key word here is "automatically". Take Spotify, the streaming music service. I have written before about my admiration for Spotify, about what a technical marvel it is. A world of music at your fingertips! Incredible!
The love affair was doomed. Spotify recently reinvented itself as a kind of adjunct to Facebook and has subsequently adopted some truly hideous "social features". For instance: it will tell other people what you're listening to, live. Yes, you can switch this feature off. That's not the point. The point is that it does it by default. By default. IT DOES IT BY DEFAULT.
When Sony launched the Walkman back in the late 70s, its main appeal was that for the first time in history you could stroll down the high street listening to Neil Diamond belting out Sweet Caroline and no one could judge you for it. It made you the master of a private world of music. If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sharing thoughts, no matter how banal (as every column I have ever written rather sadly proves). Humans will always babble. If someone wants to tweet that they can't decide whether to wear blue socks or brown socks, then fair enough. But when sharing becomes automated, I get the heebie-jeebies. People already create exaggerated versions of themselves for online consumption: snarkier tweets, more outraged reactions. Online, you play at being yourself. Apply that pressure of public performance to private, inconsequential actions – such as listening to songs in the comfort of your own room – and what happens, exactly?
It'll only get worse. Here's what I am listening to on Spotify. This is the page of the book I am reading. I am currently watching the 43rd minute of a Will Ferrell movie. And I'm not telling you this stuff. The software is. I am a character in The Sims. Hover the cursor over my head and watch that stat feed scroll.
You know how annoying it is when you're sitting on the train with a magazine and the person sitting beside you starts reading over your shoulder? Welcome to every single moment of your future. Might as well get used to it. It's an experience we'll all be sharing.
Yes, sharing. A basic social concept that's somehow got all out of whack.