The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living - Part 10: Apocalypse Sooner or Later

'I do not know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.'

- Albert Einstein.

It's a grim thought, but a fitting way, I feel, for The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living to hang up its cape after several months of fighting back against those little irritations and niggles which are, undeniable, the most pressing matter concerning a modern-day human being. So, with no further ado, I shall bring this most terrible of elephants in the room (or, rather, the blog) into the forefront. Let us never forget the fact that:

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

Now that that is well and truly out of the way, the time has come to tackle the real reasons behind the fact that

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

and decide how exactly we could avoid this fate. You know, the one which means that

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

So, let us proceed.

It's a dark story which begins over sixty-five years ago when a German-Jewish scientist, one Albert Einstein, discovered that E does indeed equal M timed by C doubled. I mean, God only knows how he worked that out, but I assure you, thats exactly what my reliable sources have told me it equals, and they're all as believable as Orson Welles' blackface portrayal of Othello. Anyhoo, this formula managed to create a giant mushroom of smoke, dust and flame, which swept through the Japanese locales of Hiroshima and, later, Nagasaki, destroying everything in its wake. Thus was born what is perhaps the most significant invention of the modern age - the nuclear bomb. It says a lot about the excitement this invention generated - here was something to finally put an end to the carnage of the present conflict, but the excitement was not to last. Already, a certain darkness, over-confidence and - dare I say it? - frivolity came into being. Yes: frivolity. Naming the most deadly weapons in the history of time 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' is, at least to my mind, particularly sinister, as if denying the seriousness of what these relatively small objects were capable of doing. Regardless, World War II, having already raged for six years, was drawn to a close with the final surrender of the Japanese, and peace reigned across the globe.

Or did it?

My inate pacifism could produce an entire series of essays musing upon the nature of warfare and destruction. In fact, almost all fiction I write has something to do with conflict or devastation. For as long as I can remember, my creative writing has been undeniably against organised carnage, totalitarianism and civilian murder and for democratic socialism, peace and human-wide unity. I could go on for a million words discussing the righteousness of these nuclear attacks, but I am well aware my questions would generate some rather fierce debate: how can I suggest the mass murder of civilians with a weapon against which it is impossible to fight back could be unjustified, when if the War had continued more soldiers would eventually have succumbed to the might of the Japanese army? I sometimes wonder myself, but I cannot shake the feeling that we're constantly missing the key argument in this decade-old debate. J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised it when he infamously declared 'now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' The dropping of these bombs may have been a speedy resolution to the carnage of the trenches, but it cannot be denied that the device which ended the destruction of 1939 to 1945 will forever be a shadow hanging over God's green Earth, having bought us extra time before destroying us all. Even the frequently recited moniker of 'World War III' is unlikely, because how will there possibly be a war when there won't even be a chance to have a fight? It's a pretty disturbing thought, isn't it?

After the War, terror and alarm spread like wildfire. Tensions between US/USSR relations began to tighten, eventually reaching a point where we all almost died (or, in the case of most of our readers, were prevented from being born) - the Cold War, which 'raged' from 1947 to 1991, brought the world to the brink of destruction. We had seen what nuclear weaponry could do, so, naturally, utter disbelief was all that could be expressed at the fact that these terrible things actually began to be widely manufactured. What commenced was a long drawn-out period of political and military anxiety with the USA and its NATO allies sitting down frowning fiercely at the Soviet Union and the communist world, each leader with his finger poised unwaveringly over the big red button which would launch a swarm of devastation which would undoubtedly engulf the world and bring us all back to a world something like the one out of Terminator. Neither side had the guts the press the button, but neither side, likewise, had the common sense to kiss and make up.

It was a period of great cultural significance, of course. The political climate influenced Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), telling of a totalitarian world following a cataclysmic Third World War very different to Huxley's earlier Brave New World (1932), and from then on the theme has been rammed down our throats incessantly. You can see just how bad the situation was when you realise that of Ian Fleming's twelve James Bond novels, Casino Royale (1953), Moonraker (1955), From Russia with Love (1957), Goldfinger (1959), Thunderball (1961) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1965) each deal with nuclear or Cold War-related themes, as do the films Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), The Living Daylights (1987) and Goldeneye (1995). Likewise, thinly-veiled anti-nuclear propaganda has taken the form through the ages of Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), James Cameron's Terminator series (1984 - 2009), Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) - adapted by Ridley Scott into Blade Runner (1982) - Stanley Kubrick's comedy satire film Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and many more.

The War ran constantly, alternating moments of relative calm with significant near-apocalyptic moments, such as the Korean War (1950-1953), the Suez Crisis (1956), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and the Yom Kippur War (1973); yet, of course, the bomb was never dropped again, and we're all still here; but the conflict remains, hidden from public view but undeniably still there. Political leaders simply haven't learned. Man will not destroy the Earth, despite what we are told about 'mankind being base and evil' and 'humanity being responsible for its own destruction'. It has to be remembered, whenever these arguments are made, how few people actually had a hand in making these bombs and how many throughout the decades (and even at the time they were first produced) have opposed them. We can all rest assured that, should be be alive when the bomb goes off, that we as a species had nothing to do with it. Who created our mutually-assured destruction? The political leaders, of course. As is always the case with them, conflict breaks out through their disagreements, but as always it is the common people who suffer. Nuclear bunkers were built across the country in response to the nuclear threat, but they were of course primarily for the safety of politicians and royalty. The rest of us would have to make do with hiding inside our houses and hoping everything goes okay. That's just the way of the world, it seems. Even the people who worked at the bunkers were disposable, placed there to measure radioactivity in the atmosphere but only given enough provisions to last for a months or so, after which time they would have been forced to step out into the world. 1980s pop group Frankie Goes to Hollywood probably said it best when they released their infamous anti-nuclear hit single 'Two Tribes', from their debut album Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (1984 - my, isn't that a date which just keeps following us around?).

If our leaders could just get into a ring and fight it out, wouldn't it all be a lot better for the rest of us? I'm not an anarchist or someone who truly believes we could necessarily do without our leaders, but I firmly believe all authority figures the world over need to look at their reflections in the mirror and ask themselves just why they keep hovering their fingers over the dreaded buttons because, really, what's the point of it all?

Every year, new wars break out; political reports keep getting worse and worse; and terrorism is increasingly coming to the forefront of society's consciousness. If you listen to the news enough, the all-powerful scaremongers that are the media would have you believe destruction is imminent, but in reality we simply can't tell either way.

I don't actually think it will happen for a long while yet, though. In fact, I feel particularly inclined to side with George Orwell, in fact, who, in 1945 published an essay entitled 'You and the Atomic Bomb', which aptly concludes with the most accurate description of what the bomb really means.

'Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a "peace that is no peace".'

It is not therefore, a case of

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

But, I feel, rather that

MAYBE IT WILL HAPPEN, MAYBE IT WON'T. WE JUST CAN'T TELL, BUT THERE'S NO SENSE WANDERING AROUND PANICKING ABOUT IT FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES. WE'VE SURVIVED SO FAR, SO WHY NOT FOR A BIT LONGER. MAYBE THERE WILL BE A GLOBAL ARMISTICE. WHO CAN TELL? NOT I. OH WELL, SUCH IS LIFE. LET'S GET THROUGH 2012 FIRST, SHALL WE?

And if it did happen, it wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the world; the world would most certainly still be there, but after thermonuclear energy had done its work, would it really be a world worth keeping?

William D. Green

The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living - Part 9: The Era the Music Died

And I was like

Baby baby baby oh,

Like baby baby baby no,

Like baby baby baby oh.

Thought you'd always be mine.

Mine.

Thus go some of the worst lyrics in the history of music, I feel it would be agreed universally; yet, inexplicably, the single in which these lyrics serve as a chorus successfully reached #3 on the UK Singles Chart and, even more surprisingly, #2 on the UK R&B Chart. I'm not sure which of these little slices of knowledge angers me most: the fact that something so poorly written, with such repetitive 'beats' laid down by a synthesiser in the background, actually managed to succeed commercially and brought in a boatload of money for this whiney little talentless nobody, or the fact that it has been classed as R&B music, a genre with which I have often been much enamoured in the past.

R&B (or, as it should correctly be styled, R 'n' B, because its so cool it doesn't even need a full-length connective), of course stands for 'rhythm and blues'. It is a popular genre of African-American music which rose to fame in the 1940s, featuring a beautiful blend of blues, jazz and soul. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, it was one of the most well-respected and widely followed genres of music available, and is still one of the primary associations with the period writer F. Scott Fitzgerald terms 'the Jazz Age'. But what is perhaps most beautiful about it was the way it broke down barriers of race and nationality. During a period of history rife with hatred and discrimination, R'n'B can easily be described as the first example of a genre shared between black and white alike. Synonymous with such legends as Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles, the genre was soon picked up by several contemportary white acts such as Free, and was even heavily-featured on the early Led Zeppelin records.

Of course, it is a tragic fact that whenever someone mentioned R'n'B nowadays, it is a rare thing that anyone will think of this kind of music, and the few who do believe it stands for rhythm and blues are sadly thinking of a completely different genre; for, what was once rhythm and blues, is now, tragically, yet another abomination of the terrible decade that was the 1980s: so-called 'Contemporary R&B', the 'contemporary' being there, of course, because that 'other' style is just too old and shocking for modern audiences to understand.

Yet the use of the phrase 'R&B' is completely erroneous in this case: where the term used to mean an African-American jazz/soul/blues fusion genre, it now refers to a style (I can't even bring myself to say 'of music') not just laced with pop, funk, disco and hip hop, but positively dripping with its influence.

And it is with that terrible change of style that songwriting like that outlined at the beginning of this article comes into being.

I have often had it said to me that I just don't understand modern music; or, if I do, I'm just an old person trapped inside a young person's body who can't accept that musical styles change. I have even had my personal tastes in music called 'boring', 'old' (which, I assume, is somehow naturally synonymous with 'boring') and just plain old 'bad'.

So I suppose this edition of The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living comes principally as a retaliation to those few who throughout the last few years have expressed a widespread rigidity and fixedness regarding what is 'good' and what is 'bad' - and yet, along the way, a few very good points will undoubtedly be raised.

As a longstanding believer that there is no such thing as 'good' and 'bad' and that everything realating to the arts is a matter of opinion, I usually find people agreeing with me as to this sentiment; and yet, when it comes to music, all these individuals choose to forsake these beliefs. In fact, I have even had one girl say to me 'I know its onl a matter of opinion, but old music is just so... bad.'

Remember that word: 'bad'. Remember, also, that this relates to old music in particular.

With that sentiment fresh in your minds, I shall rapidly move on to my heavy criticism of the quality of modern music, through a few short comparisons, beginning, of course, with what is arguably the most important part of all music - songwriting. The quote which opened this article is, of course, from the notorious hit single (oh, how my fingers burned when I typed that phrase) 'Baby' by Justin Bieber, which is featured on his hit album (oh, the pain) My World 2.0 (2010). Much criticism has already been targeted at young Master J. Bieber regarding the repetitiveness of the song, the annoying 'oh my God I'm such a deep person because I can sing a song about love at such a young age' nature of the music video and the general tiresome fuzzyness of it all (or, rather, the attempted fuzzyness, because let's face it, even a jumper stops being fuzzy if you vomit all over it). It would, therefore, be very easy for me to criticise Bieber entirely, but that has been done so many times before, it has become an approach about as sickening as Bieber managed to make the very mention of the word 'baby'.

Congratulations, Mr. Birkmyre, you now have a beautiful baby boy.

A... 'baby', you say?

AAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!

But it would be unfair of me to attack Bieber alone. After all, it takes two to tango and, in the same way, it takes sometimes two to write a song (or, in the case of the talentless young Bieber, five. That's right: he needed four people to help him write that. For the shared blame, therefore, I have to direct my angst primarily to the larger franction of the workforce: so, Christopher Stewart, Terius Nash, Christopher Bridges and Christina Milian... what were you playing at? Don't you remember the days when songwriting actually took some time? It's hard to imagine what these five demons felt after so many hours of work only being able to come up with a chorus which effectively re-uses the word 'baby' every second syllable and uses up their entire 'like' quota for the fiscal year in one go. Pride? Sadness? I hope fear.

I despair, as I'm sure you must too, when you compare the greatest hit singles of the past century with this drivel. For example, Queen's 'Who Wants to Live Forever', from their 1986 album A Kind of Magic (and written solely by Brian May, it should be noted) begins with the following beautiful, philosophical lines:

There's no time for us.

There's no place for us.

What is this thing that builds our dreams,

Yet slips away from us?

And when music is filled up with lines like that, who needs the repetitive hits of today? Yes, it should be admitted, this song's chorus is very simplistic, but at least its short - we're not confronted with these lines being repeated over and over again for anything longer than fifteen seconds or so.

And that isn't all that's great about the past. It would take me forever to list all the amazing lyrics of yesteryear and all the faecal matter of today, but there are still a few examples which should be attented to, such as:

Guess who just got back today?

Them wild-eyed boys that had been away.

Haven't changed, haven't much to say,

But man, I still think them cats are crazy.

They were asking if you were around,

How you was, where you could be found.

Told them you were living downtown,

Driving all the old men crazy.

Not as philosophical as the previous example, its true; but the point here is that the lyrics are supposed to be fun, and despite the bad grammer in Phil Lynott's language use, it works, and is still one of the most popular rock anthems in the history of music. The song is of course 'The Boys Are Back in Town' by Thin Lizzy (from the 1976 album Jailbreak).

Or how about this?:

I've been alone with you inside my mind,

And in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times.

I sometimes see you pass outside my door.

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

I can see it in your eyes,

I can see it in your smile.

You're all I've ever wanted,

And my arms are open wide.

'Cause you know just what to say,

And you know just what to do,

And I want to tell you so much,

I love you.

Oh, Lionel, we can feel your pain coming through in these amazing lyrics (which you wrote, alone, for your 1984 album Can't Slow Down and which were so popular you even re-recorded it for your 2012 album Tuskegee). The lyric make you feel; but the same cannot be said for, say, this:

I don't mean to be pushy, pushy.

I'm just in it for the pussy, pussy.

Who wants to come and get a pie of the piece?

Got time for everyone, I ain't on no leash.

(N-Dubz, 'Sex', Uncle B, 2008)

Erm... 'a pie of the piece'? Surely you mean 'a piece of the pie'.

Idiots. Proof-reading, people!

Another bugbear of mine is the rapidly-increasing obsession with the synthesiser and, worse still, the dreaded autotuner. Instruments themselves seem to be becoming a thing of the past, and it is for this reason I despise Calvin Harris so much - pressing a few buttons on a contraption which is essentially a computer does not constitute musicianship. As for the autotuner, the sad fact is that where singers could in the past be picked for their vocal ability, they are now signed up if they have the right tone which can be edited by, again, a computer. The result is, sadly, that what we hear on the record is in reality not the actual singer, and whenever they perform live, the results are inevitably tragic.

Compare:

The sad fact is, of course, that no-one sounds this good live anymore; and all because of the comfort the autotuner gives. I could cry from despair.

I believe it is for this reason artists now just have no longevity. Whereas Bryan Adams released his first album in 1980 and has something new coming out later this year (and this isn't even a comeback, having previous released albums of new material in 2008, 2004, 1998 and so on) and Bon Jovi have released new stuff on average every two years since their debut in 1984, modern artists just seem to stop after a couple of years. For example, the two great hit-making machines of the 90s, Steps and S Club 7, only managed 3 albums in 3 years and 4 in 4 years respectively, whereas one of the most popular pop acts of the present era, Take That, only managed three albums before splitting, and again after reuniting only managed a further three before announcing their 'hiatus' (and despite their plans for another album to be released in 2013, I suspect the hiatus is the start of the inevitable second disbandment).

I think I need say no more. But that isn't to say that all music has gone downhill; there are still some very talented artists out there. Yes, its true that Birdie may have managed to achive fame by making an album out of the same song repeated ten times, but that isn't the case with all up-and-coming artists. Folk music, for example, is holding out pretty well, and I would argue that whether its the fun-filled wackiness of Bellowhead's traditional folk tunes or the enchanting self-composed lyrics of the wonderful Laura Marling, there's hope for us yet. As for the more obscure acts, Vintage Trouble have worked wonders with their rock-infused soul tracks, and the French singer Ben l'Oncle Soul looks set to be working his way across the globe with his Motown revival. My list of good music, in fact, is pretty large. Whether it be The Shins, Josh Groban, Seasick Steve, etc, music seems to have hope yet.

Just as God sent Joan of Arc to lead the French to victory, so he also sent Laura Marling.
Not to lead the French to victory. That would be silly. To save music. Honestly, Laura fighting.
Look at her. Couldn't hurt a fly. Although I bet that guitar can do some damage.

But what I truly despair of is the mainstream. I would encourage all my readers not to be bogged down by the 'now' or even in the charts; there's a wealth of entertainment out there, just waiting to be grabbed by the balls.

William D. Green

The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living - Part 8: Sporting Annoyances and How to Survive Them

Football! Football!! Foootballlll!!! Inguhlannnd! Inguhlannnd!

Translation: 'Oh my, the football is on the television once again. I do hope England manages to succeed in its endeavours this time around.'

Then again, if you're me, you couldn't give two flying monkeys, and if you ever did attempt to utter the aforementioned two sentences, you would of course be speaking ironically.

Nevertheless, summer has arrived; and what does summer mean? The chance to finally settle once and for all the argument as to which nation is undoubtedly the best at arranging a group of eleven men, seeing if they can run around a field kicking a ball, and paying them far too much money for doing relatively nothing.

Ah well, we can't really complain, can we? If any of us don't like the so-called 'Beautiful Game' we can always lie low and wait for it to blow over, can't we? Wait. What? The Olympics are coming immediately afterwards? Hmmm... Excuse me for a moment.

Fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu-

Better.

Yes, that's exactly what this time of year means to us. Sport, sport and more bloody sport. On that note, therefore, I feel it would be appropriate to abandon my previous idea for the current instalment of The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living (holidays) into something a large number of us do, amazing, wish to avoid; and so, it is with slight pleasure and great annoyance that I bring you...

The Pessimist's Guide to Surviving Sport.

Firstly, it is important to be able to recognise when the media is oversaturating our lives with sport coverage. Summer is a time for relaxation, seeing those you have not seen for a while, holidays, barbecues and, if you're a student, looking at your steadily accumulating reading lists and thinking dark, depressing thoughts. Fortunately, you can always escape with a bit of television.

Or can you?

No. No, you can't.

Sorry.

If annoying adverts get on your tits, then unless you're a die-hard fan of the sporting world you're going to feel very left out indeed. You know the situation is indeed dire when you start to realise slowly that all your favourite shows are being cancelled and replaced with the EFFING UEFA (WHICH, INCIDENTALLY, IS NOT EVEN A WORD) CUP THINGY or, if not altogether replaced, put back further and further due to what I believe is referred to as 'extra time'. All I can assume is that the network executives assume everyone would rather watch football. Well, in fact, some of us don't. If I want to see a group of men running around on some grass chasing something for my entertainment, I would put a pretzel on the back of a remote-controlled car, sit back, point the pretzel out to Simon Birkmyre, Shaun Beale and Alex White individually, and then start driving the car around and watch them chase it. Yes, it could become an all-out death match, but it would be far more entertaining and take far less time than football coverage - and far more amusing, I need not add.

Instead of this new social activity I have just invented in my mind (and which has already provided me with much amusement, I have to say), I am forced to watch the shows of yesteryear. I have currently taken to watching something I actually missed from the nineties - Joss Whedon's cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I first encountered when we were forced to watch it for the American Gothic module at university, and I will always remember watching my first Buffy episode, 'Hush', with Kat Darlington, Alex White, Adam Carter and Sarah Butcher, and the way we laughed over how the episode's villains, the Gentlemen, somewhat strangely resemble Simon Birkmyre and Shaun Beale:

See the resemblance? You will. And what has been seen cannot be unseen...

Trust me, Alex: it's a GOOD thing you are erroneous to my purposes in this photo

Now, this show I have just got into is, I must point out, is far, far more entertaining than sport. Each episode is different, its not nearly as camp as my prejudices told me it would be, is well-written and features something different each episode. Unfortunately, football, tennis, whatever it may be, is just not the same as good old-fashioned epic TV fiction. Each game is the same, no matter what ball sport it seems to be: each 'episode', as I shall call them, features a ball moving back and forth, back and forth, like a strange, twisted, overpaid Newton's Cradle. But, whatever you enjoy watching, rest assured it will be removed for sport, which is just downright irritating - there's a reason Sky Sports was invented, after all. I for one can't understand where the assumption that we all love sport comes from, and I shall endeavour to highlight this point with three clear points. For example, would you rather see this:

One's a witch;
One's... the best friend of a witch;
One's a slayer;
One's a watcher;
One's a bitch you can't help but like.

 Or this?:

They're all the same. They can kick a ball. Actually the middle guy can regrow his lost hair. Magic.

The big yellow flash behind them doesn't remove the fact they look like schoolboys who have just seen an ice cream van.

Now one for the hormonal, pre-pubescent boys: would you rather see this:

Wahhhheyyyyyyy!!!

Or this?:

Wahhh - hang on. Is that a kiss or not? It's like a half-kiss.
We need more commitment from these guys.

And, finally, would you rather see something where the boss man looks like this:

Me in the future? Quite possibly.

Or like an owl?:

Anyway, whichever way you swing in your sports mentality, I think my argument works pretty well.

Secondly, we should always be able to mock those who are 'foorball or insert other appropriate sport here fans'. Yes, I mean these guys:

This is slightly sexist. I know girls like him too.

Or, appropriately, this guy:

Don't look at the dog. He, like Alex White, is erroneous to my purposes here.

Still, you can't help but think where you've seen these images before...

Homer Simpson. Look in the mirror, you. Yes, you.
It's you.
Ha Ha!

The fact is, if you make a big thing about watching every match on TV, you're one of two kinds of people: either, you can't afford to actually GO to a match, so you have to sit in your own home so close to the TV that you are able to pretend you're out; or, you have no friends.

Sorry, I know that's not true. But this is primarily an 'insult everybody' site.

To me, sport fanatics are like Jehovah's Witnesses. Your life choice is fine. Just don't talk to me or come within a mile of my home.

Thirdly and, indeed, I feel, most importantly, you must be able to mock those who partake in the act of being paid by the shiteload for playing a game. And so, I feel obliged to ask if you've SEEN WAYNE ROONEY'S HAIR SINCE THE TRANSPLANT?!

IT LOOKS LIKE HIS FACE IS BEING STRETCHED UPWARDS!

Annnnnd rest.

But, of course, it would be unfair of me to make this whole article entirely about football. I loathe the olympics even more.

Of course, there has been a law passed against improper use of the olympic logo. I'm not sure what 'improper' means, but I assume it has something to do with saying it looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob to the numbers 2 and 1. Which it does.

Poor Lisa. Bad parenting will take you to some dark places.

But, whether its logo is dodgy and slightly paedophilic, it cannot be avoided that sport in all forms is here to stay. But, just so you know there are alternative's if you're at a loss for what to do, here is a list of things that are better than sport:

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Angel
3. Doctor Who
4. Would I Lie to You?
5. Have I Got News for You
6. QI
7. Mock the Week
8. Stephen Fry's voice
9. All William Shakespeare's work (except the drivel that is Antony and Cleopatra - the scholars may think Titus Andronicus is crap, but there's nothing good in this 'great' play at all)
10. P. G. Wodehouse
11. Geoffrey Chaucer's beard
12. Family Guy
13. Urinating
14. Being urinated on
15. Staples
16. Staples (as in the shop)
17. Paperclips
18. Greggs
19. Tuna
20. Simon Birkmyre's ever-evolving hairstyle
21. Simon Cowell's trousers
22. Kat Darlington's hair
23. Harriet Baker's voice
24. Shaun Beale's poetry
25. Alex White's ears
26. Celebrating a little internal win after accurately translating Middle English
27. Winchester
28. Solihull
29. Andover (or so I hear)
30. Sailing
31. Swimming
32. Drowning
33. The Simpsons
34. Yoshi
35. George Orwell
36. Brave New World
37. Christopher Marlowe's fingernails
38. Japanese tourists
39. The casual racism of the elderly
40. Receiving an enema from a guy you met in an alley called Barry who claims to require money to feed his starving family but who later reveals he just likes sticking tubes in people's orifices
41. Prawn cocktail flavoured crisps
42. Kids who point out the word 'cock' in 'prawn cocktail', clearly believing you hadn't noticed it
43. People who pretend not to notice the word 'cock' in 'prawn cocktail'
44. Jesus Christ
45. Judas Iscariot
46. David Cameron's parenting skills
47. The Daily Mail
48. Piers Morgan's nose
49. Chris Evans' hyperactivity
50. Garden peas

So, whether you hate sport as much as me or whether you like it, its important to remember that it will never go away, and that we will never finally settle which nation is the best at it... so we might as well not bother. If we could go outside and do anything that doesn't involve a ball, let's do it, regardless of how cloudy it is! It has to be better than staying in all summer long with the TV and the morons shouting their irritating chants down the microphones of poor, unsuspecting reporters.

And a word to the wise: don't tickle her bum with a lumb of celery. It doesn't work. If 'she don't come', you're doing it wrong, lad. And where do you have to go to get a 'lump of celery', anyway? I mean, really, you normally get celery in sticks (which... and I don't mean to be inappropriate... would do the job far better than a lump of the stuff...)

ANNNNYWAYYY...

Peace out. I'm going to go and do a spot of t'ai chi.

William D. Green

William D. Green would like to apologise to any sport lover he has offended during the course of this article. He isn't sincere in his apology, but he'd like to say sorry anyway.

The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living - Part 7: Sit on My Facebook

Living in the so-called 'digital age' it is rather a bothersome task to even attempt to avoid the barrage of technology and futuristic methods of interaction with which we are constantly and unrelentingly attacked daily. As my more faithful readers may have gathered from my previous musings upon the various topics which affect our every day lives in this new, modern era, I am not a man who is particularly tolerant of all the newly thought up aspects of present day survival. I do not, for example, see the use of self-service checkouts, understand entirely why companies believe we will be convinced to purchase their products if they confront us with the most grating adverts in history, and am somewhat baffled by the concept of three dimensional images flashing before me when I pop down to the pictures.

But now it is especially relevant, I feel, to dip into the 'global phenomenon' which 'none can do without'. It can mean only one thing - The Pessimist Chronicles, free from exams and assignments, is back from its mid-season break and is supplement Harriet Baker's earlier article with the return of The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living. And if there's one thing which really pees me right off, its the modern-day dependence (or, rather, for the rest of humanity, the perceived modern-day dependence) upon the social networking site.

As I sit down to write this article, I am forced to acknowledge that Facebook has been in the forefront of the news somewhat perennially recently. I can't complain about the success of the product. A student named Mark Zuckerberg essentially created a website, and then sat back and let a wealth of a thousand cajillion dollars manifest overnight.

Yes, I'm positive it was that simple; and as someone (hopefully) only one year away from earning the right to print my name on documents as 'William D. Green, BA (Hons)', I pride myself on being a pretty reliable source. In any case, I'm a more reliable source than Greg down the Co-Op who told me how Zuckerberg made his millions (or, rather, cajillions, as we have already established) in the first place.

The success of Facebook, in fact, has finally reached the point where the world's most prominent fat cats finally decided to inject a million bazillion karanillion dollars apiece into this one hundred per cent free-to-use service... and then lost out. So they're a bit angry. And who can blame them?

Where my anger lies, however, is in the obsession the common people appear to have nowadays with these kinds of 'services'. It all started, of course, back in the day, with MySpace (remember MySpace? No, me neither), and it soon moved on to Bebo (who?), some other stuff, and then Facebook, the only one people use anymore.

We are constantly told that we cannot live without logging into Facebook and seeing what's going on with our 'friends' (I use the term in the loose sense Facebook uses it - out of my 282 friends, I can honestly say I only give a damn about a handful, and I would probably cross the street to avoid the rest). Everywhere we go, people naturally assume that everyone in the world has a Facebook account.

Television: 'Enter our competition to win £1000. All you have to do is tell us in which short story Sherlock Holmes tricks the villain into confessing by pretending to be at death's door with a tropical disease.'

Mr. Luddite: ''The Adventure of the Dying Detective'! Yes! I can win!'

Television: 'Simply enter on our Facebook page, because everyone in the world has one.'

Mr. Luddite: 'Poo off.'

These kind of situations, believe it or not, must exist. I know several people, in fact, who have never so much as logged on to Facebook (or any other social networking site for that matter). It is for this reason, naturally, that I got so annoyed with my college during my first year at the University of Winchester:

As would be expected, the collection of one's certificates following the completion and passing of your final exams its quite an important thing for a student. We finally get something which confirms to us, in concrete terms, that our time was in no way wasted and that we have made yet another set of achievements in our academic careers. However, this particular college, no doubt in an effort the save paper (and, in this capitalist world, no doubt money, too) came up with a rather idiotic plan for how to go about distributing these. If it wasn't bad enough that they selfishly took away from us the carnival that was Results Day (an integral part of any student's career), instead replacing it with a system where we merely stayed at home and received our results online with no human contact whatsoever (I could go into the fact that, due to the high level of traffic on the college's site, it was often impossible for many people to see their results until sometimes the late evening, causing a whole day's worrying, panic and anguish, but that would be a different topic altogether, so maybe for a future article), they also decided to announce the procedure for obtaining one's certificates exclusively on Facebook. Now, to an intellectual mind - no, actually, from any kind of common sensical mind, rather - this shows many flaws immediately:

1) Not every student had 'liked' the college's Facebook page.

2) Not every student was aware that the college HAD a Facebook page.

3) Not every student would see the message on the one occasion it was posted online.

4) Most students wouldn't bother to check the college's Facebook page - we were told to check our e-mails often, but no-one said anything about Facebook.

5) Some students didn't even have Facebook.

Unfortunately, the assumption here was that everyone WOULD do all the things listed above, despite this clearly all being a rather unlikely eventuality. For myself, I only saw the certificates were available for collection two or three days before the deadline for collection was. And to top it all off, I was in Winchester with no possibility of returning to Solihull in time to collect them. Luckily, I managed to arrange for my parents to collect them, but it was through sheer luck that I saw the message and then told a couple of my friends who hadn't seen it about it. Furthermore, I know of several people who never got to collect them on time, and to this day don't have them. The reason I go on about thi experience is to emphasise the stupidity of my college in this case - they, like all else in this world, it appears - assumed everyone was a clued up on the Facebook phenomenon as everyone else and, believe it or not, this isn't the case. Some people who have Facebook (prepare for some shock and awe) aren't controlled by it to the extent everyone believes we young people are. In fact, I think it would be very easy for us to go for, say, oh, I don't know, a whole week (or, indeed, possibily more) without being able to access the old Book of Face.

But we'll get to that later.

For now, some more on the world's dependency on Facebook. I believe (and I am sure I am not alone in this) that this has reached the stage where this great capitalist world can benefit from using it as a sort of brainwashing device within which to enslave humanity for its own nefarious purposes. On many occasions have I 'liked' crtain pages because their titles particularly related to me or I found them funny, only to find that, in fact, every one of them was just a outlet for some company/website/thing etc to advertise an litter the homepages of myself and others with the most annoying adverts known to man, the majority of which were quite clearly scams which could be picked up by the naked eye of anyone with half a brain, such as the frequent messages suggesting that you can download a game that hasn't been released yet, get a film that hasn't been made yet or even see a shocking video of Justing Bieber eating a meal with his knife and fork in the wrong hands... simply by completing a survey first! Well, newsflash - Facebook won't know if you've done a survey about penis enlargement therapy or not, so you'll never see these 'amazing' things... sorry.

But, just so you know, here's my top five Facebook groups to avoid if you don't want to get really irritated:

5) On a scale of one to Nigel Thornberry, how smashing are you? - nothing to do with the popular childrens' television character, but instead simply an outlet for spammy advert after spammy advert...

4) Stewe - a Spanish/Puerto Rican/Portugese (I'm not very good at identifying languages I can't speak) page which can't even spell the name of the popular Family Guy character it masquerades as a fan page for correctly. Made even more annoying by the fact that all of the adverts you'll get spammed with are written in a language I can't even speak.

3) We should have listened to the Kaiser Chiefs... they've been predicting this for years! - a somewhat titillating title referencing both the 2011 summer riots in London, Birmingham and elsewhere and the popular Kaiser Chiefs song 'I Predict a Riot' in one clever joke, but that's as far as it goes. The rest is just a constant bombardment of drivel.

2) Feeling lazier than the guy who painted this road - hilarious image, yes. The first time you see it. After that, after about twenty-eight different spammy messages since the early hours of the day, one has to wonder why the person in charge of this page has no friends or other activities to occupy their time...

But the worst of all is...

*drumroll*

1) Nobody Likes a Tory - okay, we don't like the Conservative Party, I get it. Join this group and share you views, however, and you'll just get message after message about how awful this party is. After a while, it makes you almost contemplate supporting censorship laws...

It seems we are well and truly screwed when it comes to the future of interaction, then. We can't even show our agreement with certain statements and causes without opening up for ourselves a whole can of worms/spam. But, remember, we are not all as chained to Facebook as the media makes us believe. Some of us do accept that when a celebrity boats about the millions of friends he or she has on Facebook, there is in fact very little behind her or his statement. How many have they ever met? How many names can they recite. If all I had on Facbeook were my housemates and fellow Pessimist Chroniclers, wouldn't I have more real friends on Facebook than the 'friends' will.i.am has?

Most probably.

After all, who would befriend somebody who uses grammar in such a poor way and can't even pronounce his own first name. It's 'William', love. Trust me, I know.

So, that's where the world has left us with regards social networking. I wouldn't say it is too much of a stretch of the imagination to image this situation arising.

Judge: 'William Dangermouse Green, the court has decided to find out not guilty of the crimes of which you have been accused. Simply 'like' us on Facebook, and we'll let you go.'

Me: 'I can't - Alex White still has my Facebook password.'

Judge: 'Oh... too bad.'

Unpleasent, eh?

Which brings me nicely onto my next point...

A few weeks ago, me and Alex White both partook in a weeklong challenge to completely avoid Facebook. I changed his password and he changed mine. There was no chance of escaping our real lives and entering the virtual world; and, not being at university at the time, we were completely disconnecting from the social world.

At first, for me, things seemed rather difficult. I kept trying to access by Blackberry app, before realising, with a sinking heart, that I couldn't get in. Several thoughts crossed my mind - just think of all the breakups and otherwise that I was completely out of the loop regarding. Alex confided in me early on in the challenge that he did indeed feel left out of the comings and goings of everyday society. Alex, for one, had nothing to stalk (and I pray to God that, whatever he did to displace this desire onto the real world, he remained firmly within the confines of the law). I, on the other hand, was unable to chuckle at Kat Darlington's meme- and internerd-related jokeys, and this made me feel rather saddened. And yet, as the challenge wore on, we felt much better. Alex found it all rather relaxing, he informed me, and saw the whole thing as a nice break. And after the first few days, I even ceased to notice my lack of social networking and, in fact, since I came back online, I haven't been on nearly as much. Additionally, we didn't miss anything at all in the friend world, really. Everything was just as it was when we left (although I did find that Alex had posed as me and asked Simon if he would let me suck on his teat, a vagrant misuse of the non-fraping terms of our agreement and, as such, I am still cooking up a sweet revenge). So, all-in-all, I think that jointly we proved that the modern dependence upon social networking is a fabrication, and a downright psychological one at that: just like we are told we must all love self-service checkouts simply because they are there, people assume that the popularity of Facebook calls for widespread addiction across the globe.

Well, you heard it here first: it doesn't.

In fact, we could all live happily ever after without it. It's a nice addition, and does make contact very easy, but it is by no means a necessity for humanity. Furthermore, with the incredibly unpopular advent of 'timeline' (which, on my birthday, actually made reading all of my message quite a chore - that's right: I had to FIND half of them) and the new idea Facebook have of embedding adverts even within our own profile pages (a truly disgusting thing the Marxist within me cannot abide), I feel the service shall, one day, go the same way as Windows Live Messenger and Bebo, purely through the novelty slowly wearing off naturally over time.

That is, if the lawsuit against Zuckerberg doesn't finish it off first.

Now if only we can convince people to get off Twitter...

William D. Green, in collaboration with Alex White, my partner in the Facebook Challenge.

Regarding the Result

Click Here.

That is all.

Kat Darlington

The Result

Well, we've had a lot of fun over the last few days trying to finally decide who is the best person to trust with a Facebook password. We've had arguments posted on here, we've hda a poll on our Facebook fan page in which several members voted for themselves and thus made their arguments void (perhaps, I'm not entirely sure of the rules) and we've also had ultimate death-matches in the streets of Winchester, all in order to ultimately decide who is most trustworthy out of everyone writing for The Pessimist Chronicles.

And now the vote is in (voting closed at midday today so if you vote now, your vote will not be counted and you may still be charged):

4) Harriet Baker and Simon Birkmyre: Both made exceptionally good arguments in my opinion. Their ways of wording things (and Harriet's subliminal-messaging-saturated piece of artwork) both made me consider their position very seriously but, unfortunately, they do not seem to have won over the public. Technically, Harriet, you finished last because your vote was from yourself. Tut tut.

3) Alex White: The argument which gave me a lot of confidence and a lot of security - if he frapes me, I frape him: simples! Yet, strangely, this argument did not win over the voting public.

2) Shaun Beale: Well... this argument relied on the 'I'm being honest with you, therefore you must trust me'. But when that honesty comes down to a confession that my account will not be safe in Shaun's hands, then I was obviously never going to accept the argument. As such, despite the popularity of your argument with the voting public, I can only say that your intentions are not honourable and, therefore, you should get well and truly on your bike.

1) Kat Darlington: By far the winner, Kat has won over the hearts of our readers with her image-based argument but, unfortunately, it was a bit too... sinister... for my liking. Therefore, Kat, despite your win, I worry that you have strange intentions with my account which make me uneasy and make me dread the day when I return to Facebook and find I have made several enemies by proclaiming that nobody knows how to properly use memes. Therefore, I'm sorry, Kat, but I have chosen to ignore your argument.

Therefore, based upon what I have said herein, the outright winner with the most votes who didn't make me fear irrationally for the safety of my identity is... Alex White.

We will now be logging off from Facebook for seven days, dear readers.

Ciao!

And as for the other Chroniclers who didn't win, still know how much I love you all.

William D. Green.

VOTE NOW!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen! Join our Facebook group now and cast your vote on who should stea.. borrow, I mean borrow young William's password!

So hurry! Join us now on http://www.facebook.com/winchesterpessimistchronicles and make your voice heard!

Who knows... by voting you may even overthrow an abhorrent world leader. Well, maybe not! But still, VOTE NOW!

Better the Devil You Know!

As part of his regular publication, The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living, William D. Green is preparing to undergo a week-long challenge to stay away from Facebook entirely in order to dispel (or otherwise) the myth that people living in the digital age cannot avoid logging into their favoured social networking site for any long period of time. He believes he could do this challenge for longer if he didn't need it after a week to advertise the publication of the seventh Pessimist's Guide.

In the course of this challenge, in order to make sure he has absolutely no chance at all of even glancing at his Facebook account, each member of The Pessimist Chronicles will be posting their arguments as to why they should be the one to recieve William's password, and then to change it so that he is well and truly locked out. These arguments are being posted, one by one, as articles herein. Here is the argument from the... well... the unique Shauny B.

Dear William,

Herein lies my argument as to why I should be chosen to guard your Facebook password.

I promise I will 'frape' you. I will change your personal details and add you to numerous groups. By the end of the week you will be friends with my mum and a fan of all things shiny. I shall enact my most surreal and abnormal fantasies upon your profile. Who knows what I'll do? All I shall say is that by the time you log back on your sense of self shall be as scued as Roger Daltrey's.

Who are you?
Who who who who
Who are you?

So... I can see you're wondering just why you should choose me? Well you see, with me you know exactly what to expect. I'm being honest with my intentions and thus feel you should remember those wise words,

better the devil you know!

At least this way you know what's coming!

Shaun Beale

I absolutely love the way you've put your argument - you clearly intend to do everything I fered you would do! Then again, you didn't really expect this to make me want to choose you, did you?!

William D. Green, Can I Have Your Attention Please. I Have Just Been Handed an Urgent and Horrifying News Story. I Need You to Stop What You're Doing and Listen

As part of his regular publication, The Pessimist's Guide to Modern Living, William D. Green is preparing to undergo a week-long challenge to stay away from Facebook entirely in order to dispel (or otherwise) the myth that people living in the digital age cannot avoid logging into their favoured social networking site for any long period of time. He believes he could do this challenge for longer if he didn't need it after a week to advertise the publication of the seventh Pessimist's Guide.

In the course of this challenge, in order to make sure he has absolutely no chance at all of even glancing at his Facebook account, each member of The Pessimist Chronicles will be posting their arguments as to why they should be the one to recieve William's password, and then to change it so that he is well and truly locked out. These arguments are being posted, one by one, as articles herein. Here is the argument from the immensely talented internerd and meme expert that is Kat Darlington.

Yo Will,

That is all.

Kitty D

William D. Green is not entirely sure how to respond to this... but, for some odd reason, he likes your argument!

The Pessimist’s Guide to Modern Living – Part 6: Now Made with Real Pessimism (And Can I Have A Side Order of Cancer with That, Please?)

Sorry to sound (or, rather, read) like a broken record, but if there is one thing which really irritates me today, it is the terrible subject of cooking (and, of course, by association, eating). That is not to say that I am intending to boycott food – that would simply be absurd. Instead, I intend to pose an argument as to why eating has, today, become an unnecessary exhibition/drama.

This is why.

Fast food: this is merely one of the irritating aspects of modern dining, and is probably, in the minds of some, the lowest form of eating. Yet we travel in our droves to our closest McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, etc, etc. I even went myself today with my dear friend Adam back home in Solihull.

But why, I hear you ask, did I go, if I despise fast food joints so greatly?

Well, dear readers, this is exactly what annoys me about them. They are unhealthy, their food is pretty much of the lowest quality known to man (except, perhaps, for Burger King – there’s a reason why they charge so much, after all) and the people who work there are the most miserable group of people to ever crawl out of the primordial soup that spawned mankind. So they beam warmly every time somebody walks under the giant ‘M’ and orders one of their early morning breakfast meals... in the advertisement. Why, then, can’t they just crack a smile once in a while? I know it’s probably a pretty grim existence, dealing with hundreds upon hundreds and people every day, existing from opening time until closing time in a hot back room filled with the mouth-wateringly good smell of cooking meat, chips, and onion rings, while having simultaneously to collect an immense amount of money during the course of their day with the full knowledge that they will only ever see the most mediocre amount of it in their own wallets, and also having to put together some of the best=tasting meals they have ever seen and always have to give them away to moody-looking customers who clearly have too much money and too little sense, but if they were to force a smile or two they would probably feel a whole lot better: after all, it has been scientifically proven that laughter is indeed the best medicine.

Apart from the rudeness of the employees, however, the most annoying thing about the fast food is that it tastes so damn good! Why would I be complaining about this?’ I hear you ask. Well, simply that the reason Britain is beginning to rival America as a country of heavyweights is because the worst food is made so addictive – stick a few thumb tacks in there, perhaps, and we certainly wouldn’t come back and, thus, lose so many calories we’d probably begin to prosper as a nation once again!

Of course, not all fast food is bad – Subway, for example, is bloody banging, and not too bad for you either. But, speaking in general terms, this modern way of acquiring our meals could be a whole lot better. Agreed?

But there is another problem with the over-commercialisation of food: No, it isn’t the risk of human rights violations – it is that, if major corporations frequently trick and diddle us, then fast food companies must surely do the same.

And now for the real moan.

About a year ago I acquired what is commonly known, I believe, as a ‘subcard’ – each time you buy a meal from Subway, you earn points, and if you earn enough you get a free sub. Pretty straightforward, yes?  As time progressed and my points slowly but surely built up, I came very close to earning this free meal. However, disaster befell me, and due to a system error, my card was cancelled when I only had to buy one more sandwich to get a free one.

Well, accidents happen. I got a new card and started the climb once again.

Exactly the same thing occurred.

Suspicious much?

On to McDonald’s: while walking through Winchester, I was handed a voucher for a reduced-price meal. ‘Fantastic’, I thought, ‘I’ll use that!’

When I got home, however, I noticed the use-by date on the voucher: 31/12/11. This was, incidentally, mid-February.

Being a pleasant sort of chap, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt: accidents do happen, of course – perhaps they had just picked up the wrong bunch of vouchers before they came out.

However, yesterday, me and dear Adam went t McDonald’s and were given some more vouchers with our meals.

Awesome.

Until we checked the use-by dates again, of course. I invite you to look at the picture below, and then to check the date this article was posted – do they seem a bit far apart to you?

Deciding that poor people are being diddled by this global corporation, I decided I would not longer stand for it and, in true British style, wrote a strongly-worded letter to head office: the response, if I ever receive one, will be posted on here for all to see as soon as possible. It will be a bit of fun for us all, if nothing else.

Now to move on to the world of culinary hierarchy: I don’t know about you, but when I eat, I want to eat rather than make a huge ceremony out of it. This is seemingly not the case, however, for ‘proper foodies’. These people will go into a restaurant, fork out a huge sum of money for their most expensive, medium-rare gammon et œuf à la coque avec des puces (get over to Google Translator, everyone) and be presented with the smallest meal you have ever seen, framed on a spotless square plate.

Why????

This kind of strange elitist eating ceremony has even extended to the humble world of cake – on taking a trip into Starbucks the other day with a couple of dear friends of mine, one of them bought two miniscule square cakes. When first I noticed, of course, that there were no prices displayed for them, alarm bells began to ring: ‘if you need to ask how much this is, you can’t afford it’.

So he bought them. It cost him about £3 – I’m not sure if it was each or collectively, as I was too appalled to say much.

Was it worth it?

Well, take a look and decide for yourselves:

Sorry about the brightness from the windows, Josh... but the cakes are visible and that's what's most important for the article, after all.

As for my friend Josh, after consuming them, he gave me this exclusive interview.

‘They were quite nice actually. Softer than I expected – like a really nice soft brownie covered in chocolate. And the strawberry one’s kind of like a cakey cheesecake.’

So, in other words, no, they were pathetically-overpriced excuses for nouvelle cuisine.

In the end, of course, it doesn’t really matter where we eat – it will all kill us some day by giving us cancer. Did you know, for example, that eating more than three slices of ham per day gives you bowel cancer? Were you aware that sausages and burgers do the same? As does soup, apparently. And wine. And chips. And Pringles, Hula Hoops, Prince Charles’ Organic Crisps, red meat, chocolate, all bagged snacks, as well as a whole host of other non-food-related items I can’t mention here because they don’t fit in with the topic (check this if you want to see the rest: http://www.thedailydust.co.uk/2009/02/19/20-strange-things-the-daily-mail-say-will-cause-cancer/).

But, it’s not all doom and gloom: in good news, it looks like carrots and potatoes stop you getting cancer!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1373786/Could-carrots-sweet-potatoes-help-fight-breast-cancer.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Despite what I was taught at school about potatoes, of course.

So, my message is, you might as well just eat like a normal human being and not some sort of pseudo-aristocratic Eton-educated French-wannabe modern day Bertie Wooster.

Tuck in.

Anyway, that's me done for tonight. I'm off to prepare for the Facebook challenge. Yikes!

William D. Green

Just in case all that talk of cancer scared you, by the way, I will leave you with this delightful song from everyone’s favourite comedian, Russell Howard (taken from BBC Three’s Russell Howard’s Good News, of course).