A Distorted Reality.

I’m getting neurotic about potential choices which I may have to make next year. In 346 days, to be more exact; and it’s a decision which will affect the rest of my life, and a decision which I cannot undo if it turns out to be the incorrect one.

I’m talking, of course, about university choice.

Assuming that I’m offered a place at Edinburgh (which, with my grades being as they are currently, isn’t at all infeasible), my heart will definitely be pulling towards there: a city of art and culture unparalleled in Britain. Assuming that, by some miracle of an interview, I am offered a place at Cambridge and get the grades required to have the offer be worth anything, my head will definitely find favour with this choice: snob value and headhunting opportunities for the future; guaranteed (more or less) social mobility. Plus, I could be, like, a spy.

It’s really a hard decision: it’s the age old short-term happiness vs. future prospects debate. In all probability, I would love Edinburgh as a city and find favour with the people there. With Cambridge, however, I fear that the smarm and arrogance which I have witnessed there myself would rub off on me, and make me even worse than I am now. Currently, my arrogance is of the cute, cocky kind: it would probably become the tragically overbearing kind with the Cambridge atmosphere. The supposed intelligentsia amongst the supposed intelligentsia will inevitably form a them vs. us attitude with the populace at large, and this scares me.

My Chemistry teacher said, after I’d said that I didn’t want to become an ‘Oxbridge tosser’ and so wouldn’t be applying:

People like you need to go. It’s the only way that this will ever change, it’s the only way that the poor/rich education gap will be balanced.

And it has to be said that I thought that he really had a point: I owe it to my upbringing, in a way, to better myself. Climb out of the pit in which we live: break the dependency upon state handouts. I’m not saying that Edinburgh would not be good enough for this, but Cambridge would open so many more doors to me, I feel: as much as anyone will try to deny it, a Cambridge degree would have a certain cache to it which may be found to be irresistible to employers. It’s a helping hand from the mythology surrounding the university.

I’ll choose a better future with 3 years of misery over 3 years of misery and a slightly poorer future any day.

Somebody just compared me to Edward Cullen again. This depresses me.

When I see you, I’m on fire.

I finally see my main problem in life at the moment: I completely lack any semblance of the quality of passion. People are unable to move me. Music fails to motivate me. Even the newborn kittens next door can’t raise even a smile.

My writing has been reduced to this: this tragic semi-rambling, devoid of any real content and lacking intention.

It’s times like this when I can usually listen to Envy’s Insomniac Doze and just forget whatever (no doubt stereotypically teenage) problems I’m facing, and just focus my mind upon one thing: this one thing usually being writing something or fixing a 1960s, 1970s or 1980s film SLR and selling it on for a profit, as is my main income stream these days. Now, this album is the one of Envy’s works which is practically universally criticised by fans and non-fans alike for being rather samey all of the way through: but this is why it works for me; it can be put to play and pretty much ignored by the end of Further Ahead of Warp for the feeling of having heard it all before - it’s like my white noise, I suppose. In spite of the repetitious nature of the songs, each one is beautiful and capable of putting me in somewhat of a trance individually. Read the translations of the lyrics and you’ll see just from that how moving these songs are. Or you could just download the album here, for free.

But, of late, it’s not doing it any more. I can’t focus; I can’t get involved in my work; I can’t get wrapped up in something and ignore all else. As stated earlier, nothing is affecting me. I’m passive almost to a stoic extent, and I really don’t want this right now. I want the side of me that can see beauty in everything; no matter how perverse the object of beautification or my methods of beautifying it. I want the side of me willing to justify pederasty as love little more than misinterpreted by our incorrect cultural viewpoints; ‘age is but a number’, and all that. No, I have to be stuck with this all-consuming, omnipresent cynicism and paranoia at a time when it is not useful to me: I don’t need the defence mechanisms right now; I just want a little misguided happiness.

I’m not living: I’m just alive.

That which has lain dormant for a month and a half has finally reawoken.

Scheming, plotting, manipulating: I am an artist.

I was going to write a post about the Conservatives’ Breakthrough Britain policy suggestions this evening, but I then realised that the report is 861 pages long. So, tonight I shall take the easy way out, and just comment upon the delightful fifteen page report commissioned upon only problems in Birmingham (entitled Breakthrough Birmingham); which is apparently the hotbed of ‘worklessness’ of all of the UK’s main cities.

The report starts as would be expected really: a short introduction from Iain Duncan Smith followed by some initial ’state of the city’ declarations: as of May 2007, 21% of Birmingham adults were claiming key benefits being the main point standing out to me. Key failures in Birmingham’s educational system are pointed out reasonably objectively and rationally. Then, as would be expected of a report commissioned by the Conservative Party, the inevitable descent into description of the moral decay intrinsic of non-conventional family structures is hit upon:

Family breakdown

• At the time of the 2001 census, there were 37,696 lone parent households in Birmingham – almost 30 per cent of all households. This figure is 34 percent higher than the national rate of 21.8 per cent.
• In Birmingham, more than one in 20 girls between the ages of 15-17 will become pregnant – this is above the national rate of one in 24.
• In Birmingham 78 children per 10,000 are looked after by the Local Authority – this compares to 55 per 10,000 nationally.

Having a working role model at home increases the chances of a child being in work in adulthood. The worklessness rate for lone parents nationally is 42 percent, compared to 5 per cent for couple households with dependent children. Strengthening the family would have considerable impact on the number of children living in a household with a working role model and would therefore improve their future prospects.
This would also have much broader implications. Children from families that have experienced family breakdown are also much more likely to become teenage mothers or get involved in crime. The family environment is instrumental in the physical, emotional and psychological development of a child and the pressures of economic dependency put considerable strain on its stability.

The shorter version: Birmingham is pretty fucked up, basically. Teenage whores and single mothers abound, producing children bound to be nought but a burden. I must admit: I am biased here, being the product of a single-mother family myself; but their points are made moot by reality. Worklessness is higher amongst single parents in order that they are able to look after their children more readily in many cases: would they rather have the children lack even this supposedly ‘unbritish’ stability? The children’s ‘future prospects’ are not bound by the origins of their parents, but rather the capabilities and support of parents: and that is the true issue, not this structure snobbishness so popular with all three of our centrist parties.

The two areas of Birmingham chosen as case studies are known within the city as being amongst the worst: Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath. Most inhabitants of the Birmingham/Greater Birmingham area would also be aware that these areas being chosen would be indicative of the Conservatives’ slight xenophobic bent, having the highest Asian and Black populations in the city. Educational failure in these areas is put down mostly to English being a second language for many students: surely this is more of an immigration issue than a social one.

People living in deprivation and experiencing multiple pathways to poverty are more likely to be involved in crime, or addicted to drugs and alcohol. Marginalised in society, self belief and aspirations are significantly reduced. People therefore turn to negative sources of affirmation and inclusion.

I call bullshit: I doubt there to be any marginalisation other than that caused by the proliferation of the tertiary sector: if not for the strong desire for supposed ‘professionals’, even the uneducated would be able to find work as, for lack of a better term, factory-fodder. They’d still be living in deprivation, but they’d have work: something which is genuinely lacking in Birmingham.

The supposed solutions also leave a little to be desired; it’s all just advice bordering on ‘throw money at the problem’. Welfare-to-work schemes are hardly a new idea, with the entired organisation of the Job Centre being (admittedly haplessly) in existence solely for this task. An idea (and nothing more) of reinventing the welfare system is suggested, with only the core tenet of ‘incentivising work’ - it’s nothing concrete. Of course, the suggestion is made that the institution (archiac as it may be) of marriage should be recognised and rewarded; and that a two parent foundation should be blessed: I see this as nothing short of a veiled promotion of traditionally Christian values.

They still want nothing but to help those who ‘help themselves’.

My Mr. Dialysis and Astro Reality articles on Starve in Heaven caused somewhat of a shitstorm. This, in all honesty, was kind of the intention; but some of the responses really made my days. The fanboy/fangirl-ism that these two convey is really something special. I’ll take you through some of the amazing arguments on display here, left in their original format:

• Dude you spend far too long saying “i dont like them”. People like you should die young. Prick. - I hate the word ‘dude’, as a starter. It’s just somewhat… disgusting. I suppose the sort of people who would post this are fans of monosyllabicisms - as demonstrated by the universally understood insult of ‘prick’. Besides, being able to express opinions at length is a wonderful skill.
• Mate you sound like a nob - I like how wonderfully fluently my flaws were pointed out.
• Al Young do you have lots of people who adore your music? Al Young do you have better things to do ? - First question: no, but my art > your art. Besides, I wouldn’t want your kind of scene-whoring skanks adoring my work; it would be unsettling, if nothing else. And no, I do not have better things to do: I enjoy doing this.
• al young should be shot in the head for being such a prick. Lots of people like astro and all the other bands he’s critisised. Maybe he’s just trying to male a name for himself but I think he’s just a twat. Who probably writes reviews whilst were all having sex. - This was the best thing that I had read in months, and it only came in yesterday. This has all of the hallmarks of Internet Tough Guy Syndrome: threats of violence, woeful spelling and the almost omnipresent insinuation of sexual inadequacy. It’s almost quaint, really. As for a lot of people liking it making it good, a lot of people liked the execution of Jews in extermination camps. Think about that one. I do not care that I went for the most extreme example possible there.
• I hope you do something good in you life, go traveling or something do something to broaden your narrow little minds. - here, we have the argument of superiority through implied intellectual enlightenment above mine. The use of ‘little’ really undermined my self-esteem.
• So why ruin your argument by putting in something as petty as this? - petty is fun; as well as being a humorous rhetorical device.
• go suck on cream eggs - seriously, the only time ever that I have not had a response to a point in argument. It really threw me off.
• if you’re chicken enough to post a blog about someone you hardly know, who knows if you’re man enough to post a blog including your real name. - conspiracy nut, perchance?
• Anyway, i’ll leave you to post more blogs insulting people and knit-picking their faults, it seems to be what gets you off when most kids tend to prefer to go out and get laid, but whatever floats your boat man. - again, my sexual inadequacy is played upon. I actually measured my penis after reading this to make sure that it was still of an average size. It was, thank god.
• i bet ‘al’ is a full on nerd - this is an undeniable truism. He totally got me.
• Your argument has no direction, meaning, and you probably have no mental stability. - but my argument got in the Alexa top 100,000 for the UK for a couple of weeks, so I don’t really care. And the lithium levels me out.
• You must have spent over 5 hours in this sqwibble writing your “hilarious” responses. - actually, probably more like 10 minutes, but I think on my feet.
• And mate, i have seen a picture of you, i strongly advise you sort yourself out, you cant take the piss out of anyone, the way you are… - the poster of this had skunk hair. His opinions mean nothing to me.
• so go back naw and run to your momy and daddy in your nice well mannered english house hold, and stop being the big rebel on the internet, talking shite about people, see if you do it to peoples faces - this galled me: I’m working-class, through and through. And anyone who knows me would tell him that I do it to people’s faces.
• i bet you havent even got laid yet - another measuring moment. I really don’t get the obsession.
• can the publisher of this stupid article even express themselves in the way ben ryan does…… nocan the publisher of this stupid article even express themselves in the way ben ryan does…… no - I do not wish to express myself through the medium of rap.

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

Unfathomable clarity: such that diamonds could not even compete; a purity unbounded: the whitest of white light.

The night sky shone as only it could: ostentatiously and without inhibition. Arrogantly. Despite the astronomical distance between the stars and ourselves, their nightly communiqués were all that kept me sane. In spite of all that stood between us: from ozone to the infinite vacuum of space, we talked. I talked, they listened; they replied, I heard. Our relationship was ethereal, but more real than any other I had had: this was a true unconditional. Every night, without any possibility of failure, I would have my time with my celestial lovers: and each time it would be the same magic of their light being poured upon me with no judgement of my past. No pretence whatsoever. This action was universal, but it was also mine and mine alone. I felt… I felt cleansed. I felt like my emptiness was being reversed by the filling of heavenly light into every pore and every orifice of my body. I was pure. I was connected with the world. I was everything.

Every year, this holiday kills me.

The six weeks (or thereabout) lacking structure; lacking definition: it gets to me. I read, I write, I go out: but it’s never enough. There’s always something nagging at me; a general feeling that I could be doing more worthwhile, more enriching things. I should be reading The Brothers Karamazov rather than Generation X. What can I say though? I’m a sucker for pop-culture.

I obsess as well: God, how I obsess. My weight (as if there is anything else to me) is all that I can think about: even though I haven’t even tipped 9st 9lbs again. Vanity is divine.

I can’t wait to go back and see fat people who will make me feel better about myself. That is my sole hope for the next few weeks.

Why can’t people care about things that matter, or even take a direct action for those causes that they supposedly stand for? We have Facebook petitions and groups as a main line in political activities, and it really is tragic. Yes, collecting 1 MILLION PEOPLE AGAINST ROBERT MUGABE (case left as its group’s owners intended it to be) will really pressure a tyrant into submission. He loves the insignificant ‘voice’ of the digital generation’s pleas so much.

Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary), 2 Million people against Female Circumcision and One Million Faces Against Malaria are just as redundant: the collections of lists of names is not going to change any one of these things. Voting, not having your female children mutilated and vaccination are the respective answers to these huge dilemmas. Doing something oneself would actually serve to combat these issues, rather than just acknowledge them in passing with your name on a fictional dotted line. If you’re going to campaign about something, get the fuck up and actively do something. Peaceful protests, polite letters to government officials, civil disobedience, violence: I do not care; just make your support for a cause count, no matter how trivial this cause is.

Then we have the practically omnipresent ‘ohmygod I lost my phone and need to tell everyone my new number’ groups: what is the point in this? As you obviously have the people to be invited to the group on your Friends list, you may as well just contact them individually. Expediency is not even a valid excuse: you can send messages to multiple recipients these days. It’s like people don’t care for their privacy: yes, just put your number in the name of the group so that friends of friends can easily obtain your contact details, should you wish them to or not.

The abundance of almost meta Facebook-groups-about-Facebook also irks me somewhat: nobody is ever going to shut down Facebook, so stop trying to get people to join your little group in your vain effort to gather a large group in your name, Anonymous God Complex Sufferer. Then there’s ‘I’m a Facebook Addict’ groups - a sad indictment of the weak will of the common man. Of late, we’re seeing ‘boo-hoo, I want the old layout back groups’, much as happened with Last.fm: it truly is a shame that people do not realise that websites (espeically websites owned by media conglomerates like CBS, in the case of Last.fm) are not democracies. And as a true exercise in redundancy, there are also several thousand (perhaps exaggerated, but a large number nonetheless) ‘Get x on Facebook!’ groups: as x is not currently on Facebook, it is unlikely that they’re going to see the group to respond to the pleas of others.

…but this still kills me.

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