There was something fishy in the Formula 1 race yesterday. One team needed their driver to win, but he hasn't won once this season because his team mate is so good. They both share the best car on the grid. So what to do about that? Give the guy who's so good a technical fault so their number two driver can win. That's all well and good, but a fault that means you lose the lead surely means you then fall further back into the field right?
Well, no. He 'somehow' managed to keep going as fast as his team mate. Not really a technical fault then was there?
Of course, it might all be above board but it was a little too prefect for me. Something didn't sit right.
This, combined with a few comments on the social networking site Facebook got me thinking about that glorious chestnut, conspiracy theories.
I don't know how anyone can fail to find them interesting. They merge fact and fiction in such an attractive way. The problem is, people fail to rule out the notion of co-incidence with regard to some of them, like the cult of 23. Try it with another number. 22 if you want, and you'll find ways in which the number 22 seems to be cropping up everywhere. But to see how co-incidence can rule, its 19:35 now, on the 28/11/11. So 28+11+11 = 50. 1+9+3+5 = 18. 50 - 18 = 32. Switch them around and YIKES! Its 23. Spooooky. Or not.
There are the rather tasteless conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11. Not least that it was all propagated by the Bush Administration. Now, I'm not sure how the Bush Administration could fuck everything else up so brilliantly and yet pull off 9/11 the way they did. That doesn't add up to me. If you've ever seen the movie Loose Change, you'll know there are some pretty unexplainable things around that event, and the 'people' want answers.
I want answers too. But I won't jump to the conclusion that it was planned and performed by the government of the United States. I'll wait for all possible explanations to come in, then I'll decide.
For me, its the people that buy into these things that are way more interesting than the theory itself. Which part of the truth isn't weird enough for these people? Why, in the words of Douglas Adams, isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it? Sometimes it iz wot it iz, and no amount of co-inky dinks are going to change that.
I propose that the hardened theorists are simply scared. Scared of the world and the people in it. They then give themselves a license to withdraw from society. They'll say its because they know who's really running it and why, because they know what's going on and we don't, but really its because they haven't the balls to participate in society and make something of it. Its much easier to run away to a cabin and await the apocalypse than to try and build a life for yourself full of meaning.
Furthermore, their stance that they know something you don't, that they're somehow clued in to the 'truth' appears to elevate them to a lofty status. One in which us sheep are the ignorant, and they the enlightened. Sadly, I do talk to someone who believes in a lot of this guff, and he drinks in the same pub as me. So this knowledge has gotten him.....where exactly? Nowhere. He is in the same position as I, having a drink in a pub. He knows something he considers important but doesn't act on it, save for trying to appear like a smart arse in front of everyone. And of course, if you challenge the belief, its like arguing with an environmentalist....you are always wrong, because they are always right. And if you provide evidence to the contrary, its because you're part of the system....man.
I'm all for an entertaining life, but the line between fact, fiction, and pure confirmation bias must be drawn. A mind is a parachute, and works best when its open, but it must also be a finely tuned bullshit detector. Believing a conspiracy theory over anything factual doesn't make you more intelligent. In fact I'd argue it makes you the gullible one.
Do I believe Red Bull fixed the race? To be honest I couldn't care less. I hate the fuckers anyway. The point is I won't let it dictate my life or my attitudes towards other people.
I am as guilty of this as the next man. Or at least, I used to be. When I was 16 all my friends decided they were going to bugger off and go to University, leaving me with literally no-one to play with. Of course the ego kicks in defensive, and I declared that University be a waste of time. There was no jobs anyway, I reasoned, so why go and get a degree to end up jobless when you could just be jobless anyway.
A friend of mine at the time, Din, asked if I could understand the notion of simply learning because its good to learn, and one may have a love of the subject. Being young, and stupid, I told him I had no idea what he was on about.
So today, a full half my life on, I find myself at University having to defend myself against exactly the kind of thing I was saying all those years ago. Many people on the social networking site Facebook list as their education 'School of Life'.
This is intended to represent many things. Firstly, that they've seen it and done it. Whatever it is, they've experienced it and have the scars to show. Secondly, it illustrates that they don't need no education, they've learnt enough. GCSE's were a waste of time, they just left school and got on with the business of making money.
The third thing I believe it implies, is that those who have got an education can't possibly know or have experienced as much as they. Let's be clear, there are two schools of skill. There's the practical, and the academic. Sure, some boffin with his face in a book all day would be ill-prepared to fix your plumbing. But I wouldn't trust a plumber to do brain surgery either. Is one better than the other? I'd say not. I'd say each one has its merits and each practitioner should be equally proud of their work.
The other day I posted a humorous Facebook update, and to cut a long story short, I was met with a comment by one of my friends that, as a student, I don't live in the 'real world'. Now I'm not sure which world I live in then, because I assure you if there's a nuclear war I will be affected. If there's a drought or food shortage, I will find myself hungry or thirsty. I pay my bills. I pay my rent. I pay to keep an automobile on the road, no small task these days. When I need food, I have to pay for it. Which part of all this is not living in the real world?
One suspects living in the 'real world' entails getting your hands dirty for a living. But we can't all do that, it just wouldn't work.
Happily, we can attribute this attitude to a wonderful thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognise their errors. They therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own skills as above average.
Basically then, idiots refuse to believe they're wrong about anything because they're incapable of seeing that they're wrong about anything. A vicious circle, and a dangerous one too.
This now has the danger of sounding like snobbery, and claiming that anyone who hasn't been to University is an idiot. Not so. I know many smart people who hold few to no qualifications. They can however, see that self-improvement is a good thing, and following a chosen path is an admirable thing, and supporting your friends with their choices is the best thing.
Its odd isn't it, the way people can justify their actions.
Perhaps its simply the way things are now, and things really were better in 'the good old days', or perhaps its always been this way, and as we grow older we just begin to tire of certain things.
I speak to many people who think everything is more fucked up now than its ever been. I'd question whether their perception is merely selective and not accurate, and influenced by what they want to see rather than what they really see.
External and internal attributions are common. We take credit for the good things that happen to us, and palm off the bad as things out of our control. Often we refer to 'luck' as well, just to back up our claims. We also make the fundamental attribution error, which is to blame other people for their actions when it was external factors that were more likely to motivate or dictate their behaviour.
Somebody may hate men (they're allowed to) because they've been hurt by one or two in the past. In a world of seven billion people, with just over half of them being men, I'd consider it a trifle unfair to judge every member of a gender on the actions of one or two of them. Yet this seems quite plausible to some.
What's gotten stuck in my craw though, is this notion of "Its just the way I am", and then any excuse that follows it. There's those that expect you to excuse their actions because that's just them.
Well...no. Actually. No I won't.
I used to work with a girl who claimed no-one should talk to her before 10 AM, as she hadn't woken up by then. If you did, it was like she had a license to bite your head off with her piss poor attitude. Her excuse was always the same, she'd say "You know I'm tired and cranky before 10".
Immediately, she'd turned the blame on to me for having the audacity to attempt communication before the sun reaches a certain point in the sky. She could get to bed earlier and give her body the required amount of rest. She could attempt to swallow her fatigue and just deal with a brief exchange of information through gritted teeth, since the workplace contains many examples of doing things you just would rather not do. Instead, she chose to just say its the way she is, and everyone else has to work around her and deal with it.
The arrogance of "Its just the way I am" is lost on many.
You may well be that way, but any reluctance to try and improve that part of yourself others find disagreeable, is simply ignorance and ego on your part. Why bother trying to be a better person, when really the whole world should just learn to accept you and your faults, right? Know me, know my ways? If the rest of seven billion idiots could just realise the way you are, the world would be a better place then?
Its common that those who believe the world to suck are often guilty of this kind of social ineptitude. Which again makes me believe its a perceptual problem rather than any real one grounded in reality.
We do have our own little ways, and they're what make each one of us each one of us. Admitting however, that perhaps everything isn't perfect with us is a step we should all take. If we then wish to attempt change for the better that's admirable. If we don't, perhaps it would be wise to not just expect everyone else to fall in line with our moods, attitudes and beliefs.
The recent death of Amy Winehouse has brought about a division between those people who really don't give a shit, believed it was a matter of time, and that she was a fool for squandering chances others would love to have...and those that thought her a genius, a tragic artist and delicate flower, an immense talent, crushed by the weight of celebrity and cursed with an addictive personality.
Some visual clues might help to clear this up.
This is talented:
This is a moron:
It gets no simpler. The gig she was fucking up for 20,000 people was her 'comeback' show and I think she displayed her ability to come back all too well. If you can't get it together for that, then you can't get it together. If you don't respect your fans that have stumped up their hard-earned money for a ticket, transport, food and drink and possibly a place to stay, and if you disregard the way they've looked forward to your gig for months, then you don't deserve to have those fans.
Addiction may be a chemical thing, it may be learned behaviour. It may be attention-seeking or response-seeking behaviour. The thing that needs to be forgotten, is that she was an addict.
For many though, this is the point. She was an addict and as such, couldn't help it.
She was an addict, clearly, but the help was there if she wanted it. If she didn't want it, then she's a moron. And why, with all the things she had going for her would she not want it?
Many other addicts may not even know where to go for help. Amy could have checked into the finest establishments, best equipped to deal with her demons. Many other addicts have nothing to look forward to when clean, indeed it was probably the lack of things to look forward to that put them there. Amy was a pop star, loved by millions, earning millions. She had plenty to live for and look forward to. If she couldn't see the good in those things she was...yep, a moron.
If she decided those things weren't enough or that she didn't like the pressures of fame and being in the public eye, then she could have stepped away from it. Given time, people would stop wondering when the new album was coming out, she could have negotiated her way out of her contract, and got a 9 -5 in McDonald's and lived happily ever after.
My point is she had choices, and she chose the one that led her to the 27 club. All the grievers out there who are feeling sorry for her, need to recognise that she made that choice. With all the other variables, she made the dumbest choice she could have. This makes her something beginning with 'm'.
Russell Brand has had the gaul to label Winehouse a genius. What a remarkably daft thing to do. Fleming was a genius. Feynman was a genius. Darwin was a genius. If we're talking music, Mozart was a genius, Bach and Beethoven the same. Modern day musicians that fit the term genius are Tim Smith, Frank Zappa, and Johan Johannson. Though I'd probably argue that writing songs isn't the behaviour of a genius anyway. You can be very, very good at it but genius? Doesn't fit well with me.
Thanks to our obsession with celebrity in the West, and the 27 club, Winehouse will become a legend in the music industry, and revered more and more as time goes by. Never has grief and attention been so misplaced.
Vasili Arkhipov. Stanislav Petrov. Are you familiar with these names? Perhaps so, but probably not. Without these two people, you would not be here today. I would not be here today. In fact its fair to say most things wouldn't be. In the early 60's, Arkhipov was part of a Russian submarine crew, patrolling waters near Cuba. They found themselves surrounded by American subs dropping depth charges in order to force the Russian sub to surface. The Russian captain forgot about this tactic and assumed they were under attack. Since they were underwater and unable to contact Moscow, the captain believed war had broken out. He moved to fire nuclear torpedoes. The only way he could do so was if the three highest ranking sailors agreed. Two did, Arkhipov didn't. Arkhipov saved the world.
Stanislav Petrov was in charge of a monitoring station in Russia in the early 80's. The station detected an incoming missile, then four more. Petrov decided it was a glitch in the machine and not a thermo-nuclear attack. He was right, and once again the launch of nuclear weapons was avoided. Petrov saved the world.
These two remain ignored or forgotten by many people. Yet we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. Arkhipov died in 1999. Where was the coverage? Is he labelled as genius? Did they call it a waste? Chances are, you didn't even hear about it. We hold the moronic in high regard, and ignore the people that have enabled us to even be here.
Martin Amis once wrote a very good short story that was kind of a dig at our culture's recent obsession with putting the dire forward as divine. He switched the literary world on its head, by putting poets earning millions and flying around the world on private jets, and having Hollywood script writers struggling for work and being disrespected by the poets. His point is a good one. Poetry is far more beautiful than the latest Michael Bay film, but the poets usually write part-time and hold down a day job, while the idiots churning out the popcorn munching bilge get paid a fortune for clunky, predictable dialogue and rehashed story lines. We value the mindless over the mesmeric.
Though the cause of her death remains - as I write at least - unclear, the fact remains that she was spotted buying drugs in Camden at 10:30pm the night before her body was found. No-one was there forcing her hand. She chose to do it. She could have as easily selected a different choice, and that is of going to the very rehab she sang about. I struggle to see then, how I can possibly place any sympathy her way. I struggle to see how anybody can. Making records should not place her above any other person that dies from drug or alcohol abuse. In fact with her options and reasons to live, she should probably be placed well below them.
A Tale of Dread is perhaps better known as poetic justice. Or, for the desperately hip amongst you, karma.
In tales of dread, a protagonist - usually not a very nice person - experiences retribution for their despicable behaviour, and this retribution is usually very fitting. So, for example, if they manufactured cars they knew were unsafe but ignored these dangers in pursuit of a fast buck, a tale of dread would no doubt end with them getting knocked down by a car. The very model that they refused to enforce safety features on. Its like a cruel irony, then. Or not so cruel, depending on the character and your idea of an eye for an eye.
Tales of dread are common in fiction, and sure, why not. Its good to read about people getting their comeuppance. It gives us hope and a sense of justice being dished up.
In life however, we seek the same thing.
Christians would turn to God for this cosmic sense of fair play. The Bible is riddled with stories of characters getting their rewards or punishments for doing or betraying God's work. Look to Adam and Eve for starters. Of all the fruit, on all the trees, they have to eat from that one. So God kicked their ass. And, if you buy into that stuff, we're all still paying the price for it.
The true notion of Karma, is that of a sort of cosmic bank account, where your actions throughout life are logged and at the end of it, if you've been good you'll be reincarnated into a good life, and if you've been bad you'll be reincarnated into third world poverty. If someone tells you they believe in Karma but not reincarnation, you are allowed to tell them they're full of shit. You can't have one without the other.
Actually, if someone says they believe in Karma you're also allowed to tell them they're full of shit. Think about it. Who's logging this information? Who's keeping track of you? Who's so damn interested in what you're doing? Who says what's good and bad? Sometimes acts that have good intentions turn out horribly, so where does that fit in?
The need to believe that bad people get punished and good people get rewarded can be linked into something that's ingrained in us from a very early age. That is, the sense of what's fair.
We're taught to share, either through parenting or schooling, and we're taught to be concerned for each other...to some degree at least. We have a need to see the good rewarded and the bad punished, it helps us to believe the world is all right, and that if we keep ticking along trying our best to avoid being evil then the universe / God / Karma will see us right.
To this end, and despite me labelling them as bullshit, there is a need for adults to believe in some fairy tale sense of justice. Though we may be tempted to do evil things every day, to steal or lie to get ahead, we turn to tales of dread to make us think. Think that if we carry out these thoughts, we may well end up drenched in an ironical revenge. We wish to believe that it is in the nature of things that wrongs will be righted. Whichever method of cosmic police force you wish to believe in, the very fact that you do believe in it, prohibits you from doing a great number of things for fear of the consequences.
For me, living on this planet in the milky way, in a universe billions of light years across, I really don't believe there's anyone, or anything, that's keeping an eye on us. There's talk of asking the universe for things (Mr. Noel Edmonds, take a bow you plank), but that means giving the universe a conscious mind. A thing that has an idea of justice (remarkably similar to yours and no doubt completely different to someone on the other side of the world), and the means to carry out that justice as a lesson to others. The universe is a vacuum. It consists of...quite literally...nothing. Or at least, things we can't explain such as Dark Matter. To give the universe cognition is to behave like someone who is insane. Look at any random object and attribute an identity to it, and you run the risk of being carted off by men with big butterfly nets.
A sense of justice could be seen as completely subjective, and for every man a hippy might consider to be evil (polluting the planet, not being aware of a carbon footprint, slaughtering baby ducks to build a bridge), others might praise his tenacity and vision, and not least his business sense, for he may well provide jobs and a wage for people previously unemployed.
So it would be up to you to decide, and not some diabolical agency enforcing cosmic justice. Reading tales of dread to kids when they are impressionable is a fantastic idea, as it gives them a moral foothold as they grow into adults. But, once there, they need to discover that the right thing to do should be done for its own sake, and not the need to please the karmic boogeyman.
My friend Lucy convinced me to watch the Fox show 'Lie To Me', starring the ever fabulous Tim Roth. Whilst the show is Hollywoodised - which is a word I've just made up - its main character, Cal Lightman, is based on a real person. That person is called Paul Ekman, and he discovered something called Micro Expressions.
Ekman maintains that Micro Expressions give away real feelings that are being hidden, and that...with the proper training...you can spot these expressions and discover what people are really thinking. Ekman has produced many fine examples of such behaviour, and I'm certainly not about to argue with the man. He is a professor of psychology after all. And, in order to prove his whole theory about micro expressions wasn't cultural, he went and spent some time with tribal people in the ass-end of nowhere to prove that these expressions are universal and somehow inherent within all of us regardless of our geographical upbringing.
So far, so scientific. In Lie To Me, Tim Roth's team are experts on body language and other forms of unconscious communication. Once upon a time, I was obsessed with such a thing. I read and believed the bullshit notion that communication is only 10% verbal and 90% body language. Its the same bullshit statistic as you only use 10% of your brain. Absolute garbage.
If I made an open body language gesture to you, if I smiled using both my zygomaticus major AND my orbicularis occuli, yet I said something antagonistic, chances are you'd still be as pissed as if I hadn't bothered with all that facial muscle movement.
Sure, body language is important, but its not as important as some would like to make out.
Now then, in the context of lying, body language really comes into its own. I have read many a pop-psychology book on lie detection and 'Tells'. Tells are any piece of body language that portrays what you're really feeling, despite what you might be saying. I can now share some of this information with you, which means you don't have to spend the money or the time on it...like I did.
We'll begin with the NLP'ers. NLP, or Neuro- Linguistic Programming, is a 'hot topic' in psychology. Some believe it to be bullshit, others believe it to be a very important step in mental health. I won't go into the whole movement now, just the lie detector bits. Take a look at this:
These are what's known as 'Eye Accessing Cues', and in the field of NLP, they can assist with therapy. They can also be used to catch out those pesky liars. The idea is, you establish a base line, so you ask a normal question that someone has to think about, for instance "What colour is the front door of your house?" Sure you know it, but its not information at the front of your mind at the moment. So, you go into your brain to access it. You'll therefore, according to the chart above, move your eyes up and to my right. You're visually remembering your front door. Now I know that you concur with the chart, I can say "What did you get up to last night?". If you spin me a story about just going to the pub, you can probably just reel that off, so I'd ask "Who was with you?". Now you'll need to make up some names if you're lying, or remember them if you're telling the truth. If you look up and to the right, I'll know you're searching for factual information, up and to the left, and you're making it up. Left to lie.
Good innit? If only it was reliable. It isn't, and its dangerous to think it is. Accusing someone of lying on the strength of this chart is a daft thing to do. Use the chart as a guide, but employ other techniques too. For instance, a good one - and you have to be deep into accusatory mode here - is to ask the person what they did, and then ask you to tell them the same thing again, but backwards. So they start with the last thing they did and work back to the first. For a liar who has constructed his story, it will be extremely difficult. For someone telling the truth, it will be hard, but entirely possible. And I got that little doozy from a book called 'What Every Body Is Saying' which was written by an FBI Counter-Intelligence Agent. He didn't scare me with his words.
Despite all these 'tricks', if I can call them that, in my experience the best way to spot a lie is to find a pattern break. An example of this would be....let's take that thing that everyone seems to believe in but is more bullshit: that people never look you in the eye when they're lying. If anything, because this rumour has gotten so out of hand, people are more likely to begin and maintain eye contact with you because they want to convince you that they're telling the truth.
If however, they've spent the rest of the conversation looking away from you whilst explaining other things and then give you eye contact on something important, they've broken their pattern. This should immediately get your lie detector going.
It could be that they really want you to believe them, but a pattern break is important. Derren Brown uses pattern breaks to induce hypnosis, albeit a form of waking hypnosis. Watch some of his early specials and you'll see him shake hands with people, then grab their wrist with his other hand. At the same time, he'll give his hypnotic speech. This works because a hand shake is a common thing with unwritten rules. You know how to do it, and you know what to expect. When something unexpected happens (the wrist grab), your brain panics and struggles for an answer. It opens up for direction, and the direction you get is Derren's instructions. Its like he's hacked his way into your brain, and for a split second he gets to control you. Powerful stuff.
Anyway, for me the thing with the pattern break indicates the best way of detecting a lie. That is, to let your unconscious do it for you. You know when someone's lying. You can feel it. You feel uneasy about what they're saying but don't know why. Its because your unconscious has detected a pattern break, an obvious one, and its nagging at you asking for an answer. If you're actively seeking a pattern break, you'll find one, and again you could end up wrongfully accusing someone.
Being lied to is never very pleasant, but I'd argue that its important for human beings to learn to lie, and to put that into practice. Life would be so much more complicated if we all told the truth about everything. Imagine it, if your partner asked you if they looked alright before you went out for the night, and you had to sit there and explain all the ways in which - in your opinion - they didn't look alright. Not only would they be upset, but you'd have to justify everything you're saying, you'd never get out the fucking door. So, you employ heuristics, you go for the path of least resistance.
- Do I look alright?
- Yeah you look great.
Open, step, gone. I suppose this is what's known as a 'white lie', and these are good things to save people's feelings and your time. The white lie's older brother is a bastard, and he can hurt when he's around. I don't believe in fate, destiny, or karma, but I believe that the truth always comes out. Given a long enough time line, and the fallibility of humans, the truth will always make an appearance. I find comfort in that. The ability to detect a lie can be good for you, but you'll only ever keep it to yourself, because people will deny things until they're blue in the face. Your accusations will only ever be met with more and more denial. Is it worth it?
You'll know when someone is lying to you, you then have to decide whether or not to accept that information or to just keep going and hope that things will get better. Here, you could well be lying to yourself. Spot that one if you can. They could be lying for a good reason, a reason its best you're not aware of. It was kind of disheartening to invest time and energy into this lie detection malarkey, only to then come to the conclusion that we're all good lie detectors, we just have to make ourselves aware of it. To then conclude that even if we spot a lie perhaps we shouldn't say anything makes things even worse. Its good to have these skills though. They work alright for Cal Lightman.
My friend Dave once challenged me to write an optimistic blog. I suppose this is it.
The funny thing - to me anyway - is that I've been turned into an optimist on some things simply because everyone else seems hell-bent on being a pessimist about them. Its part of my contrarian make-up I suppose.
Still, I believe I'm right on this, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time blogging it.
Inspired (or pissed off by) a person who will remain nameless yet is linked to me on Facebook, I feel the need to address the notion that, as a species, we're heading for calamity / oblivion / certain doom.
Whether it be our dependence on something finite - namely oil, or global warming, over-population, freak weather occurrences, nuclear war, or even an asteroid striking the earth, certain people feel compelled to ruin everyone's good mood by pointing out that the good times have been and gone, and we must knuckle down and prepare for the worst.
The worst is subjective of course, and such thoughts come only from a white idiot living in a western culture. And I say this because to me, such thoughts can only be entertained because a person's life is so good. To a starving individual living in third world conditions, whether or not we're prepared for the financial meltdown that will come from lack of oil is slightly lower on the priorities list - and certainly not 'the worst' in their eyes compared to where the fuck is the next meal coming from TODAY.
Its almost like people look round in a panic when they realise they're okay. That life is okay, and thanks to the systems put in place and the love of those around them, it will pretty much always be okay. Its common for pessimists to look for the bad when everything is good.
So let's start with an amazing quote by a chap called Thomas Babington Macaulay. He said, "On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?".
Brilliant. Think about his point. There are many things that could upset the boat and throw us all overboard, but coulds are all around us. You could get knocked down tomorrow, or you could live until you're 100. Which 'could' do you prepare for? You probably, like me, indeed like all of us, prepare for a little of both. So bad things could happen, but if history is our guide, we'll only ever improve our lot. And not just our lot either, the lives of those less fortunate than us here in the west. Its not that things can only get better, its that things are great and getting better all the time for us lucky ones here.
The species known as human beings are fucking incredible. They are ingenious. They've developed all sorts, from the Wunderbra to space travel. Whatever comes our way, we will invent our way out of it. Its what we do. Its why we've got this far and, even though this view makes me remarkably unpopular, its what separates us from the animals. They've evolved to suit their surroundings, we create our surroundings. We also cheat evolution. Every time you have sex using a prophylactic, you're cheating an evolutionary drive. Every time you fly on holiday, you're saying "Evolution, we can't wait around for you to develop humans with wings, we'll do it ourselves". We're smart enough to do this.
We've also fucked up. Developing nuclear weapons, giving ourselves the ability to blow ourselves to oblivion may not be seen as a smart move. I think it is. I think we have become the very Gods we used to worship. The problem is not with the design and development of the weapons, but rather with the people who control them. That's for another blog though.
There's also people who think we're damaging this world beyond repair. Any alarmist news story will tell you that there's a number of species being wiped out. We are making species extinct with our lust for destroying the planet. Factually, only 1% of ALL species are alive right now. The other 99% are already extinct. We didn't wipe them out, because we couldn't have, because we weren't around. Mother Nature did it instead. But how many environmentalists want to have a go at Mother Nature? None of them, because she knows what she's doing. Let her do it then.
A catastrophic incident, such as an asteroid striking the earth or the volcano in Yellowstone Park erupting (its past due for an eruption, which would spew enough ash into the atmosphere to block out the sun and...well, in a nut shell, kill us all. And they're worried about you driving a 2 litre car because it 'pollutes the atmosphere'?), is something that you really cannot do much about. But maybe, one day and hopefully pretty soon, some smart arse will invent a preventative measure to things such as this. We can do it. We have the technology.
At the start of the 20th Century, some idiot claimed that everything that could be invented, has been invented. We were supreme, there was nowhere else to go. How wrong can one person be? Things have come along since then that have blown minds, made living easier, and saved countless lives. We're at the start of the 21st Century now, and you can bet your life savings (not much of a gamble for me) that the same thing will happen again. A citizen of England in 1901 could not have conceived the idea of the iPod. Not a chance. It would be Martian technology to them. Here we are and its commonplace. Think of what's in store for us, and our grandchildren.
It will be amazing. And the best thing of all, your grandchildren will be around to see it, experience it, and love it, regardless of what the doom-mongerers say.
During the mid 90's, I was extremely interested in film. Whilst I'd watch pretty much anything, I preferred films of a violent nature. Not gratuitous violence and especially not horror, but films such as Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and Lost Highway were favourites. I loved the idea of being a film maker, I thought the combination of story, visuals and music were a great form of expression.
One film I got particularly excited about was Natural Born Killers. Not only did I greatly admire its director, Oliver Stone, but the word in the film magazines was that it was like nothing else you'd seen visually, combining 35mm film, animation, Super 8 and black and white. Sounded like a trip. Sadly, the BBFC declared it unsafe for the general public, and promptly banned its release. I went into a teenage piss about it at the time. I loathed the idea of censorship and wondered what the hell was so bad about a movie. Did it have subliminal messages telling you to kill? That would surely be the only reason to ban it.
Eventually, and with a few more edits, the BBFC said we could see it. My friends and I bought tickets to a very early screening and queued up with a mob of other people, we were all convinced it would one day be banned again and we wanted to see it before that happened. When they opened the doors for us, people ran down the corridor towards the screening room to ensure they got a good seat, it was like a riot of our own.
As it happens, NBK is an enjoyable film, but its violence remains comic-book. Its ludicrous, over-the-top gumpf really. I love the guerilla way it was shot and cut, and I like its comment on the media because in giving the movie the attention they did, they practically proved its point.
Today then, I read that the BBFC had banned The Human Centipede 2. Now, I haven't seen the first Human Centipede. I'm not a horror fan. About the only horror film I bothered to watch lately was the first Saw movie, which I really enjoyed. I do however, know what The Human Centipede is about. Its pretty sick , I'm not sure how you'd think it up and then convince a studio to give you a million bucks to go make it. It was apparently based on the actions of the Nazis, specifically people like the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. Either way, I knew I wouldn't enjoy it so I didn't watch it. That's kind of an important point.
Reacting to the ban, the film's director, Tom Six, has said "Apparently I made an horrific horror film, but shouldn't a good horror film be horrific? It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can't handle or don't like my movies they
just don't watch them,"
Now, I might agree with Tom on that one. I might say he has a point...film making is an art form and it's expression. However, his defence kind of falls down when you watch this:
This clearly shows that Mr. Six revels in his quest to make something outrageously sick for no other reason than to make something outrageously sick. He didn't expect his movie to get banned when he made the trailer, so he made no apologies for it and even went to the egotistical length of casting himself in his own trailer. If Scorsese doesn't do that, I don't see why this guy thinks he has a license to.
So in my youth, I'd consider the idea of censorship an appalling one. My chief argument, was that if the members of the BBFC can watch the film and not turn into axe-wielding, homicidal maniacs, then so can I. And that may be true. But I was making the mistake that everyone is as switched on as I. I know the line betwixt fiction and fact, and maybe you do too. But there are some that don't, that will use something like NBK or Reservoir Dogs as a trigger for an act of violence.
Now, in film it works something like this: Man pisses other man off, so hits other man. Other man acts hurt, holds his injury and says something clever.
In real life, it works like this: Man pisses other man off, so hits other man. Other man isn't expecting this, so is floored by the blow, he hits his head on the pavement and suffers bleeding on the brain. He now requires 24 hour care and can't speak.
Its an extreme example, but it can happen. The reason for the difference is that its no good for the script if one of its protagonists becomes a vegetable. Life has no such problems though, its anything goes. Film tries its best to show the consequences of actions, but many times it fails miserably.
You'd have to consider the idea that if film influences others to carry out violent acts though, then the most deranged people are the censors themselves. Since they are not, you might think that the censors are like our parents, deciding what is okay for us to see. Insulted? You'd have good reason to be. You'd also be guilty of not thinking about the fucking muppets out there, who see Goodfellas not as a ground-breaking movie, but a handbook on how to be a cunt.
There has been a great deal of research on a concept called 'Priming'. Here an individual is provided - unknowingly - with a stimulus. It can be a variety of things - words, images, even temperature. One such experiment gave a group of people words to read such as Florida, Retirement, Pension. Another group were given random words to read. As they left the experiment, the participants' walk back down the corridor to the exit was timed. The group that read the words such as retirement and pension walked a great deal slower than they did when they came in. The control group walked at the same speed. The experimental group had been 'primed' to think about old age, therefore they walked slower. And for those wondering, Florida is a popular state to retire to in America.
Another experiment used temperature to prime people's opinion. One group were given a cold beverage to hold before they met someone, and another group a hot beverage. The group that held the hot drink thought more highly of the person they met than the cold, even though the questions the person asked were the same. One group 'warmed' to him, the other didn't. This is scientific, and it proves that your decisions are not as free as you might like to think.
To this end then, surely its probable that movies can prime you for actions. When Wimbledon is on the TV, more kids take up tennis. When kids of my age watched Rocky, they wanted to take up Boxing. When my brother and I used to watch the A-Team as kids, we'd spend the next few days re-enacting it. When I've just watched a Formula 1 race, I drive faster. If I watch a sad movie, it makes me sad. If it can illicit that response, that emotion, surely it can illicit others too. Yes I might be able to keep an eye on the line between carrying out an act and just thinking about it, but I am one of billions. Unless the probability for an event is zero, it will happen one day, given a long enough time line. And there's very few events that have a probability of zero. It makes sense then, that some unhinged individual will attempt to recreate things they have seen on celluloid.
Films have endings, either happy ones or otherwise. Life doesn't. It has consequences that reverberate for a considerable time. Even if YOU die, everyone else carries on, and the things you've left behind, be it art, kids, or just a bloody mess, will remain for a time after you've gone.
It could be said that the only people pissed off about the ban on The Human Centipede 2, are those that wanted to see it. If you want to see films of this nature, then I'd be quite happy to book you an appointment once I complete my Psychology degree.
So stepping down from my global warming soap box was no hardship whatsoever. I'd looked into it, with more vigour and attention than I originally planned, I'd drawn my own conclusions (critical thinking - get a load of me) and moved on. I used to get annoyed or to a lesser degree - bothered, by people subscribing to every alarmist news story they heard / read. Now, I just do my very best to ignore it.
However one thing I do like to do when I have some free time (ha!), is to peruse the news pages of The Independent's web site. Every single time they do a story about global warming there's a number of people on there arguing about it. A couple of usual suspects, namely someone called Scooby2 and someone else called Icarus-somenumbersorother.
These two are part of a fascinating breed of apparently intelligent people, who point blankly refuse to acknowledge any evidence, point, or opinion to the contrary of their own. For my money, intelligent people don't do this. Blinkered idiots do this. Ignorami if you will. Intelligent people aren't supposed to. They can counter your argument effectively if they so wish, and then you can counter back and maybe you'll both learn something along the way and MAYBE, one of you may change your opinion.
I'm being idealist.
Still, for me it remains a viable course of events. These people however, resort instead to chest-beating and childish name calling. If you dare question what they're saying, they'll belittle you, ridicule you, chastise you and tell you in no uncertain terms that you're a moron. The irony is tangible.
Its fortunate for me that I stepped off the soap box before I happened upon this interesting little world, for I can imagine myself getting quite wrapped up in it. I drop the odd comment in here and there, usually just to wind people up for tis fun, but I don't get into the statistic quoting rants of many.
Global warming has become the new religion, and scooby and icarus are just two of the many high-priests of it. Just as you couldn't say anything nasty about God a couple hundred years ago without being burnt at the stake, so too must you keep your questioning mouth shut about all matters pertaining to the reliability of global warming stats.
Of course if you're reading this you have exceptional taste, and you know as well as I do that the point of science is to question...well, everything. And not just once either. Again and again. Despite what Barack says, the science is never settled. Look at the way atomic theory has changed, look at the way the theory of gravity has changed. Google phlogiston if you want to see how times change and how scientists get it wrong. In fact the 'climate change' phenomenon started in the 70's when scientists claimed the earth was heading towards an ice age, and we need to act now to stop it. Incidentally these same scientists are now advocates of global warming. Do they go where the funding is? You decide.
As a species, we are ever learning, and nothing is certain. Its to be embraced, not backed away from.
To take the piss out of someone who disagrees with you is the action of someone terrified that there is a hole in what they're saying, and any further enquiry and it runs the risk of being exposed. So they shoot you down with attacks on your character or your opinions. The comparisons between religious nut jobs and global warming activists are many, and they're eerily similar. Their behaviour fascinates me, as it should being a Psychology student, but sadly unlike many behaviours its not kept to the individual. This behaviour is affecting the budgets and actions of the world's biggest economies (except China), ergo its affecting the lives of everybody, its also breeding a lot of paranoia and bullying.
Making the human race feel guilty for its progress is an odd thing to do. There's people on the Independent site talking about there only needing to be 1 billion people on the planet. That's all well and good, but what do they want to do with the other 5 and a half billion? Genocide? Who decides who lives and who dies? What criteria will they use? Its ridiculous to the point of absurdity, and what used to be funny to me is taking on a darker hume, as radical opinions are leading on to threats of death for 'non-believers'. Talk about a step back in time.
Imagine we were talking about race, and someone threatened death for anyone who agreed with multi-culturalism. They'd be extremely unpopular and considered some manner of right-wing extremist with dangerous opinions. We may only be talking about the weather, but the sentiment remains. Their behaviour would be deemed unacceptable, yet I can quite happily say we should hang 'deniers' and I'd be applauded for it.
I've pointed out in the past how many of these advocates of the new religion are anti-human. An appalling thing to be. How odd then, that their actions set out to save the very humans they purport to hate. It is odd, but many religions are full of contradictions.
I have returned from Finland. A country that constantly amuses itself at other peoples inability to deal with a little bit of snow. Of course Finnish cars are equipped with special tyres so they can drive on surfaces we can't but still...doesn't explain why their airports are always open and ours can't handle a few flakes.
As we descended through the candy-floss clouds and into Helsinki, it was a joy to see the sun was blazing. Combined with the fresh, very fresh in fact, air of Finland it makes for an ideal environment for me. I loves it.
Our promoter met us at the airport which is customary, then led us to his van where he'd bought us each a welcome bag of various CD's and some confectionery. That is most definitely not customary, but it was very sweet of him. His name was Big Daddy. He was kinda big but not as big as Big Dave from Newquay. He's big that lad. Besides, most psychobillies are huge. To earn the nick-name prefix of 'Big', you'd have to be mahoosive.
Another joyous feature of Finland is that a lot of gigs tend to be in hotels over there. The same hotel you're staying in. So you can play rock star and sit in your room being moody until show time. That's if you want to be a twat of course, I'd rather hang about back stage drinking and being a rock star there.
Big Daddy treated us to a rather fine dinner. We all sampled reindeer soup, which tasted a lot like bacon. I then had Steak a la Maison, which is Finnish for A Nice Piece Of Steak.
The gig itself was nothing to write home about attendance wise. The town was rather isolated, even for Finland, and its rather confusing as to why the gig wasn't put on in Helsinki, rather than driving two hours away to play in a small town. We had fun though, and even though we hadn't played for over a month, there were some moments there when we were really "'avin it".
After the gig, we decided to sample the sauna. I'd never been in one before. I loved it. We were all in there enjoying it when the door opens and the sound man asks us if there were any more towels and could he join us. We said yes to both so he closes the door. A minute or so later he opens the door again and enters. Stark bollock naked. You know those times when you don't know where to put your eyes? That was one of those times. Conversations seem a struggle too. Blame the language barrier. Really its the fact that a strangers penis may be comparable in size to your own, but when you know you shouldn't be looking at it, it becomes the biggest thing in the room.
Showered and feeling like a million Euros, we decided we were hungry. At four in the morning there wasn't many places to eat but we ventured out anyway. As luck would have it, there was a burger joint round the corner from the hotel and the splendid lady within cooked us up some cheeseburgers and chips. Chuffed to fucking bits with our haul, we headed back to the hotel, commenting on how freezing it was and looking forward to our meal with many more beers. As we got to the hotel we pushed the door...it was locked. We knocked. Nothing. We banged on it. Nothing. We pressed the buzzer. Nothing. We looked to each other, and I can't speak for the others but I was wondering who would die from the cold first. Miles was the skinniest, so I was putting money on him. Steve W was the largest so he might have made it to the morning.
Thankfully after a good few minutes of panic, someone addressed our cries and let us in. The relief should be bottled and sold, it was that good. After a couple of hours sleep, we were on the road again. Sans breakfast.
We're back in Finland in April. It should be a better gig people wise. One thing about that damn country though; I always get shocks. Static shocks from everything metal I touch. Not sure why I seem to be the only one afflicted either.
We're off on tour this week. 9 days round Germany and the Netherlands. Should be interesting, I'm really looking forward to it.
So I've left Facebook for a bit. No biggie, I'll be back. No-one's been crying about it, least of all me.
I have been questioned though, as to why I left a social networking site. Firstly, it was a tool of procrastination. Deadly when you're trying to get stuff done. Self-discipline is a good thing. I took my own toy away from myself, so I would stop playing with it.
Secondly, I grew tired of the anti-human stance that was being paraded around by some of my 'friends'. Those same friends won't be there when I go back on Facebook, I shall be culling the hell out of them. Sadly, their anti-human agenda is all too prevalent today.
The problem with the world today it seems, is people. The world is over crowded. We're using up all our resources. The whole damn party is getting out of control. So, logically the solution would be to put a stop to people giving birth. That's the first job. Secondly, to 'prune' humanity down here on earth right now.
Who to get rid of? How about the people moaning about how many people there are, and about how evil the human race is. The people that see humans as a cancer on the planet, purging it of its beautiful waters, destroying its eco systems. They clearly don't like this place, so they should go. Then who? What about that third world lot? They're clearly not contributing so give them the chop. Should free up some space.
I jest of course. Its an insane idea but seriously....what else is the solution then? There isn't one and...there shouldn't be a solution anyway because there isn't a problem. You're a human being, you have a right to be here, and you have a right to reproduce. Its how we perpetuate the species after all.
Environmentalists will tell you you're no good. You're no good for not caring. Fossil fuels you see. Evil things. Oil? Wouldn't go near it. Its the devil's semen.
Let's be stupid for a minute...
Plastics are made using oil. Examples of which include: Mobile phones, laptops, plugs, computer keyboards, pens, cooking utensils, many, many things.
Rubber is made using oil. Examples of which include: tyres. Roughly 10 per cent of a tyre is made from oil (synthetic, not crude). Your trainers too. Oh, and those little fings on the end of pencils.
Petrol and diesel are made from oil. Bless 'em.
So with all that in mind, how can anyone be angry at oil? How does the average environmentalist presume their food got to the shops? (diesel, made from oil, powers lorries and trucks that run on rubber, which is made from oil, and have cockpits made from plastic, which is also made from oil) How can an environmentalist use power at home? Not only would it require a plug (plastic), but also the power they use reliably comes from the burning of fossil fuels.
Oil is all around us. There is no way you can avoid it. Its a good thing.
I grew tired on Facebook, of people going on about the environment. WE are a part of the environment. As sure as fish, monkeys and elephants are, and I grew tired of feeling like I had to apologise for that.
The problem I had was, there was no arguing with them. There was no discussion. The climate change brigade have faith. Faith in science, until the science goes against their faith, then the science is wrong. You can't compete with faith. AGW is the new religion, and its followers are just as brain dead as a scientologists'.
Coupled with the blinkers, is a tremendous amount of aggression. Argue with one, you'll see what I mean. You can put 'There's probably no God' on a bus these days. A bunch of atheists did just that. It riled up a few grannies, that was it. But if you say 'Global warming is a myth' you'd better run, because they'll shout you down, bully you, call you a flat-earther, and get everyone to point and laugh at you.
I had the animals thing too. The notion that animals aren't aggressive like humans is crazy. Just crazy. Instinctual aggression is arguably more vicious than human aggression. We are aware of consequence, animals are not. My plan? Ban Walt Disney. His anthropomorphising has turned everyone soft. There is violence in the animal kingdom, and its the cute and fluffy ones you have to watch the most. One girl I was friends with on Facebook...she'd make you puke blood if you read her posts. Anti-human, pro-animal, complete bullshit. She won't be there when I return. She's first for the chop. At one point, she posted something inflammatory and pleaded with people to argue with her about it. Some tried, and she went mental at them for not caring.
This, this just won't do. The bleeding heart, 'look at me I give a shit' bollocks designed to make the bleeder feel good about themselves is what pisses me off the most. Their life is so empty, they struggle to fill it with purpose. I'd urge them to go and be a parent. It would be the biggest shift in their world they'd ever experience. But why would they want to know how special it feels to be a parent? Humans are bad, and this world is over-crowded anyway.
This is a hot topic right now, but it alarmed me today when my Psychology lecturer sided with the idiots and said it was right that Gray was fired and Richard Keys resigned.
If you don't know the story - presumably because you've been living under a rock on Mars - I am not about to relate it here. I could simplify it, although the PC among you may accuse me of missing the point through simplification.
Instead, lets look at 'sexism' in Britain today. I direct you firstly, to the most horrific, horrible, sickening bunch of bitches ever to grace our screens...the Loose Women.
Click on this clip, and watch just the first 32 seconds of it.
You'll see Jackie Brambles pull a sad face as if men are pathetic for making an issue of this, and you'll hear and see Coleen Nolan ask what the problem is with men being branded 'stupid and lazy'. They don't have a problem with that. Its okay to brand a gender stupid and lazy on national television. Now, get someone to go on TV and brand all women similar adjectives. You won't last five minutes.
Okay now STOP. If you're a woman...you may be smiling, you may be thinking this blog pointless or pathetic or just another 'man' not being a 'man' about things. You probably refuse to accept that there is a point here. Get on with it, right?
This is a huge part of the problem. The 'ladies' (yeah, right) on Loose Women can say what they please about men. The reason for this, is that there is a tremendous amount of pressure on men to cut down on sexism. They must be seen to be treating both genders equally. Women however, have no such pressure. Their behaviour - however sexist - is permissible. 'Man-bashing' comments are accepted and even encouraged.
This is not equality. Equality would be reserving the same scandalous face for Andy Gray as you did for Coleen Nolan. And that just did not - and will not - happen.
The hypocrisy is very real, and it shows no sign of stopping. The TV advert discussed by the sexist bastards on Loose Women was not banned, despite its derogatory portrayal of men. It was meant as a 'joke' Jackie Brambles tells us. Interesting how when its a joke about men its funny, and when its a joke about women, its sexist. Thankfully Lynda Bellingham tries to talk sense into the proceedings but is met with a rather weak excuse from former Mrs Chris Evans, Carol McGiffin, namely that women have been patronised for years in TV adverts.
So in the interest of equality and moving on...men should now get the piss ripped out of them? Progress.
As the discussion moves on, they almost come to their senses until Nolan steps up again with another sexist remark about men, and not women, doing DIY, "Why keep a dog and bark yourself?" is her opinion on it. Brilliant. Just imagine if that were a man talking about a woman doing cleaning on national TV. He'd be torn limb from sexist limb.
Following on from this, McGiffin makes reference to the size of her boyfriend's penis, saying "He's aVERY grown up man" and holding her hands some distance apart.
How is this any different from the exchange Richard Keys found himself in? If a male presenter talked about the size of his girlfriend's tits, what do you think would happen?
And the thing is, Keys was off air. The cunts on Loose Women are very much ON air, they know what they're saying and...here's the thing that really winds me up:
THEY GET AWAY WITH IT.
Feminism isn't about being more powerful than men, its about having the same rights as them. You need to tell more women this, they seem to have forgotten. I'm all for them having the same rights as us. I don't believe in glass ceilings, I think a woman should be on the same pay as a man if she's doing the same job as him. This is obvious stuff that sadly isn't happening. More does need to be done in those areas but you can see the gaps closing. Slowly but surely, women are catching up and its a splendid thing.
If you're a man out there reading this ask yourself: Would you press charges if a woman hit you?
I'm guessing the majority of you would say no. Why? A blow to your ego? Possibly. Its just not the done thing is it? But, in the name of all that's equal, it damn well should be. I don't agree with hitting women so by definition, I don't agree with hitting anybody. We're equal, and violence sucks.
Now check this out, there's no real need to watch all of it:
This was to be a meeting to discuss the possibility of giving male victims of domestic violence the same social services that are currently only available to women. See what happened? 'Feminists' - I use quotations because they're not feminist, they're sexist - charge in and start coming out with several different flavours of bullshit. What's wrong with giving men the same care if they've been abused? Equal, remember? I think, given the pressure on men to be tough, it was damn brave of those gentlemen to even attend and what happens when they do? A bunch of ignorant bastards storm in, too blinkered to realise that yes, you can commit a violent act against a man and yes, its still wrong.
I believe this hypocrisy should be addressed. Andy Gray has unwittingly stirred this up, and I hope people are paying attention and I hope they're smart enough to realise it stinks. Some women will dismiss it as 'whining' but you should ask yourself why they're doing that. Are they scared? Of what....equality? But that's what they're after isn't it?
Some may take this as preachy. Others may wonder what the hell I know. I care not, this is my space and I'll post what I choose.
I have spent the last 15 years playing in bands. I'd played in bands for a while before that but we rarely gigged and were very crap. Once I formed Far-Cue with Badger, we started gigging heavily. Once I joined Frenzy, I gigged even more. Both bands provided many lessons, many experiences that I wish to put forth now, so for anyone thinking of starting a band read on and learn from my errors. I see a lot of local bands doing their first or second gig and I feel that if they were armed with this guide from the start, the world would be a better place for them...and me.
1) You are not more important than the person standing next to you.
And I don't just mean your band mates, I mean the audience too. So you can play an instrument, so you can sing. How do you know what they can do? The ability to do something does not elevate you above those that can't do it. This rule should apply to everyone from Bono to Bad News Bob. You are not special. You are there to entertain, not so that people can kiss your ass.
2) Your gear does not define your talent.
So often I go and watch local bands who spend hundreds - sometimes thousands - of pounds (usually paid for by the parents) on gear and they're shit. "All the gear no idea" as someone once said. Learn to play well, both in private and in public first, then worry about spending money on gear. Let me tell you this: when you start gigging often enough you won't want to spend money on gear. Your instrument becomes worn and damaged, covered in beer and sweat, and it can break your heart.
3) Once you have set your gear up. LEAVE IT ALONE.
Guitarists are the worst for this, followed very closely by drummers. They set their gear up, dial in a sound and volume, then proceed to wank themselves silly playing their latest riff or fill, thinking that the whole venue is interested in just how well they can play. Once you've established that your gear works, why carry on playing? What are you achieving? If you have a problem, by all means sort it out but if you want to warm up your fingers you can do it unplugged. Drummers too, set your kit how you like it then leave it. Its not going anywhere.
4) Be a set-list Jedi.
If you're going to be brave enough to play your own songs in a new venue, consider throwing in a crowd-pleaser every now and then. Its a drain on your audience's patience to constantly throw your own material at them. Reward them for this patience with something they know. They'll thank you for it. Also, if you're unsure of how a song may go down, park it next to one you know will be well received. It's like giving it support.
5) Watch the other guy.
I've seen many new bands commit this crime. You're not the only one on stage. Just because a song has gone a certain way in rehearsal, it doesn't mean it will go that way live. Watch everyone else before a song starts and definitely as it ends. They may do something, they may not do something. There could a problem - a dropped stick, a broken string, someone tuning up. Someone could be wiping the sweat from their face and as such will be unable to come in. You'll never know if you don't use your eyes.
6) Don't expect your friends to support you every time.
Your first few gigs will no doubt contain a great many of your friends and family. They won't be there every time. They won't experience the same giddy thrill as you do when you perform. They're proud of you, they just have lives of their own. Besides, it's good to escape from that safety zone, it gives you confidence.
7) Respect the landlord.*
Or whoever owns the place or is putting the gig on. You are one of many bands they get to play and if you don't want the gig or think you're above it, they'll find someone else. Refer to point 1. You are not special.
8) Don't do it for the money.
Do it because you love it. When you stop loving it, quit. There will be very little money playing the toilet circuit, so you need to find another source of motivation.
9) Plug up.
I don't do this, and I don't know anyone else who does either but, take it from someone with perpetually ringing ears: wear ear plugs. Medical science has not yet found a cure for tinnitus.
10) Just because you've packed down, it doesn't mean everyone else has.
Drummers go through hell with their stuff. If you're the lead singer and only had to pack a mic away, don't be a cunt. Help people with their gear. You'd appreciate it, so will they. Refer to point 1.
11) Only ten per cent of your time in a band is spent on stage.
The other ninety is spent doing boring things like writing, rehearsing, web site-ing, networking, negotiating, fixing vans, stealing microphones. Its one of the reasons you should really enjoy the time you get to play because the rest of it is hell. If you don't do the boring stuff however, you won't get the good stuff.
* Some landlords are impossible to respect because they're idiots. Do not play their venues.
Furthermore, though you should be appreciative of the gig, don't be ripped off either. If YOU accept a low fee for playing, then the landlord will use this as a ball park or example for other bands and you'll drag everyone down to your idea of pay. Go too high however, and you won't get to play. Use your common, and your self-respect. People rarely see what goes on behind the scenes and as such they don't know how hard you've worked for that hour and a half on stage. Make sure your audience rewards you with appreciation and the landlord rewards you with beer and money.
