Bartholomew, you must listen to me!
You would stand in the way of science Jeremiah?
I would stand in your way if you truly wish to bring that creature here. To allow that thing within a hundred miles of civilisation? You must see reason! It is a vicious monster that-
-Will open up our understanding of biology, evolution, folklore and our own history! We finally have the basis, the catalyst, of a thousand myths and legends!
Then study it in Romania! Keep it there, in the countryside where it can’t bring woe to anyone!
We both know that it simply isn’t possible Jeremiah. It has to come here. This is where I can study it and later dissect it. I have made preparations. All of my equipment is here. The wine cellar has been converted and the cage I’ve had installed could hold in a lion.
That thing is not a lion, Bartholomew. I’ve hunted lions. That thing is not some simple beast. I saw its intelligence. Even once it was sedated it was still fighting. Did you not see what happened to our guide?
That was unfortunate… but he is not the first to be lost in the pursuit of great things…
…And surely won’t be the last!
At least lions EAT what they kill… Ripped into pieces. It was playing with him… You can’t bring that thing to London!
AS I SAID it will be contained. There is no risk and it has to be done! The things we can learn! Only God knows how long they have lived in those hidden caves in the mountains. It’s obvious from their large eyes and pale skin they have lived down there for millions of years. Perfectly adapted to the dark. The one you captured is a simply beautiful specimen.
It’s an un-godly abomination!
Well its appearance perhaps aided it’s descent into legend. Would we have that great horror novel Dracula by Stoker if these beasts had looked like kittens? Most probably not. It’s easy to see how the uneducated peasants would view it as a demon rather than a fascinating scientific opportunity when they wandered from their mountain homes.
“Wandered from their homes” yes, and then they wandered into the homes of those villagers. You don’t have to be uneducated Bartholomew to see that that creature is from the depths of Hell! I spoke to the locals and they told me tales to chill your bones. Livestock torn up such that they were spread over three fields. People taken in the night. Children, Bartholomew! They told me it PREFERS children…
Ridiculous nonsense! Myths and legends! Yes it does possess very powerful forelimbs and so can… tear flesh with ease but from what I have learnt it has such powerful limbs so that it can climb around its subterranean home. Its diet consists of bats, rats and insects that it hunts in its caves. It may also catch the albino fish that live in the underground lakes. I must try to construct some form of tank to test its fishing abilities…
You’re mad Bartholomew. Totally mad. Test it? It’s far too clever for that. One slip up and it will paint the walls with your guts.
I’m growing tired of your opposition Jeremiah! It is coming here and it will reside in the wine cellar! It is decided and you can’t stop me!
---------------------------
You don’t have to be here Jeremiah and the gun is totally unnecessary.
I can’t, in all good conscience, allow you to interact with that… thing and not take steps to protect the people of this city. One wrong move from that monster and I’m going to fill its brain with lead.
Fine. You sit there. Now don’t interrupt me. If you don’t mind, I shall now take my notes describing its general appearance. Facial features not unlike those of Pteropus vampyrus though perhaps with a shorter snout. Larger eyes than Pteropus vampyrus most probably due to cave dwelling. Large, pointed ears. Pale skin. Very little colouration. Little body hair. Male. Approximately seven feet tall though walks and stands with a bent gait at approximately five feet tall. Uses front forelimbs for locomotion not unlike the gorilla. As observed in its natural habitat, very adept at climbing…
Hung upside down on the cave ceiling tearing strips out of that poor man…
Quiet please! Arms thin but muscular, five feet long ending in five fingered hands. Fingers around six inches long with long claws…
I’ve seen what those claws can do…
Jeremiah be quiet! Shorter legs with five toes… also long claws.
Look at it… It’s watching us. Smelling us. It’s waiting for us to let our guard down.
I will not ask again. Quiet! Now we shall offer it some different foods and see what interests it. We have vegetables, fruit, fish, an assortment of different insects and then some raw beef. If my hypothesis is correct it should be most interested in the fish, the fish being the most common protein source in its cave environment. Ok and in through the slot… ah… well… that is unexpected. I suppose it is an opportunistic hunter and the greatest source of protein here is the beef…
It’s a blood thirsty killer. We already knew that.
Yes, it did attack us, but as you said yourself Jeremiah it didn’t actually EAT the guide. I still believe it was merely frightened and acted in self-defence.
What it did to him was not self-defence Bartholomew. Self-defence doesn’t last half an hour while your attacker screams the entire time. The screams echoing around in that cave… Look! It’s watching us. It’s listening.
Jeremiah, enough! It is an animal. It is not some malevolent hell spawn it’s a new undiscovered species.
It’s a demon!
Demon…
Oh my God…
Bartholomew… It can talk…
This is incredible! It can talk! I wonder… Is this just unintelligent mimicry or is it actually capable of speech? Does it have its own language? What sort of social interactions is it capable of? If only we had captured two we would have been able to see its interactions first hand…
Dear God Bartholomew! This monstrous creature shows it’s capable of speech, of some intelligence, and you wish you had another one! This thing is unholy! It is blasphemous and has even recognised itself as a demon from the pit! I beg of you, we must destroy it and leave them well enough alone. Leave them to rot in their caves!
Caves... Home...
…Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…
Shut up Jeremiah! Pathetic! I am a man of science! I see a whole new vista of knowledge opening up before us, of untapped knowledge, and you are content to run and hide behind your Lord?! Fool! My name will echo through the ages. My work will be exulted. I will bring this creature from the darkness of ignorance and… and… What is it doing? What are you doing?
It’s trying to break out! Oh Christ!
Home….
It can’t get out.
It’s trying to get out! I have to kill it!
No! Don’t! That cage is steel! It can’t possibly get out!
Kill…
It’s too strong! It’s going to get out! It’s going to kill us all! *Bang*
You buffoon Jeremiah! You’ve shot out the lights! It’s pitch black now! It can’t possibly escape anyway. Like I said, the cage is steel! I have some matches and candles somewhere in here. Hold on I’ll find them.
I’m sorry, Bartholomew. I must of panicked and the gun fired.
Look. It’s ok. I understand. It is rather monstrous to behold it’s true but, you know, nature is red in tooth and claw. I imagine that when man first saw the tiger it was much the same. You’ve filled your mind with the stories and legends attached to this thing. Vampires, demons, monsters… It’s all simple folk tales to explain what they couldn’t explain. Now we can study it for what it is. Where are those blasted candles?
Yes… Vampires, demons, monsters… I prefer this dark. The light is always so bright. It hurts my eyes.
Really? I was under the impression that the experience in the caves had somewhat… affected you. I have no business prying but I have noticed that you always return home from the club before the sun has set… I’m… I’m sorry about what happened. It was horrible to witness. I’m not as cold as you think I am. I am a man of science. I do not put stock in emotional outbursts but… I am also human. I… I was also affected. I have had nightmares. I see it over again. The dark… Those caves… Where are those candles!?
The caves… yes. Home…
I’m sorry...? What did you say?
I said… Home….
Oh… Oh no… Jeremiah…?
Kill…
Sunday, 30 October 2016
Friday, 22 July 2016
Test Number 41
The man woke with a start. As he shook the haze of sleep
from his head, he dimly became aware of his surroundings. He looked around the
spotless apartment. Everything was neat, modern and ordered. He had a weird
metallic taste in his mouth. “It might be blood” he thought out loud though he
had no idea why he would be bleeding and it seemed to be slightly off from the
taste of blood. He swung his legs over the side and rolled out of bed. He
stumbled the short distance to the pristine white bathroom and stared into the
mirror above the basin. Pulling at his lips, he checked round his mouth and
along his gums but there was no blood. He brushed his teeth, checking his spit
for red which he didn’t see, but even with sparkling teeth and fresh breath the
metallic taste wouldn’t leave him. Anyway, the man had no time to ponder
unexplained tastes, he had to get to work. The bus would be arriving at the end
of the road in 20 minutes and he wasn’t changed yet. He threw on his clothes,
tossing the shirt he slept in onto the smooth, dust-free floor. Quickly
collecting together everything he needed for work (apple for lunch, wallet, watch,
keys, phone), the man fell out of the door and ambled down the street. He could
see someone already waiting at the stop. A blonde haired woman holding a
shopping bag was staring around the left hand corner of the street looking out for
the coming bus. The road was empty and the surrounding houses were quiet and
bland. The man reached the stop and stood waiting for the bus exchanging no
words with the blonde haired woman.
Some minutes past and the bus finally crawled its way around the corner. The man watched the bus come to a standstill and the door slid open but the blonde woman hadn’t moved. She continued to stare down the road and seemed oblivious to the bus that had just arrived. The man hesitated then slipped past her and onto the bus, fishing some change out of his pocket as he stepped up. The bus driver turned and fixed the man with a stare that wasn’t particularly warm but wasn’t really all that cold either. “Two fifty.” The bus driver’s voice was clipped and nasal. His stare never faltered. The man plonked his change down on the little tray (which came to exactly 2.50) and tried to avoid the bus driver’s eyes as he waited for the machine to spit out his ticket. He took it and hurried to a seat near the back of the bus. There was only one other person on the bus and he appeared to be talking to himself. He was a well-dressed businessman in a suit and tie and he seemed to be having a conversation with an invisible person. Trying to ignore the businessman, the man looked down at his watch but it seemed to be broken. The little LCD screen simply read 00:00. He thought this was strange but was soon distracted by the businessman who was still happily chatting away with the empty air. The businessman was sat 4 rows in front in an aisle seat, the seat next to him, by the window, was completely unoccupied which didn’t seem to have any effect on the flow of the conversation. “Really? For that long? That is unbelievable. He was never like that around me... Yeah I suppose you are right. So did you ever hear back from that place up in the North? Where was it again?... Oh yeah that was it…” and so it continued.
The man watched in fascination as this half conversation played out. He could still taste metal on his tongue and it seemed to be getting stronger. At this point something quite unexpected happened. The talking businessman changed seats. That is, he didn’t get up and walk to a new seat he simply… ‘jumped’. Moved. Phased. One moment he was 4 rows in front and suddenly he was only 3 rows ahead. The half-conversation continued with no interruption. The man’s jaw had dropped and his hands were clasping the seat in front of him. How was this possible? How had the businessman teleported like that? It was at this point the man realised the bus still hadn’t set off from the stop, the door was still open and the blonde woman was still looking out for the bus that had already arrived. The metallic taste stung his throat. Everything felt wrong. He looked out the window at the bland, identical houses. The man’s breathing came quick and shallow. Where was it that he worked again? The lights on the bus were too bright. The seat in front of him that he had been clutching felt like play-doh. His hands sunk into the material as the incessantly droning businessman jumped back another row of seats. The man tried to scream as the walls, floor and ceiling of the bus, including the houses and street outside began to distend, melt and distort but the metallic taste filled his mouth to choking. Everything was melting into blackness, into a void now except for the seats of the bus and the businessman. He jumped back another row. He was now only one row in front of the man. One more jump and he would be right next to him. The man was now gagging on the stinging burning metallic taste that refused to dissipate and instead was getting stronger and stronger. The seats of the bus melted away to nothingness and the man, eyes bulging, mouth frothing, felt a chill run up his spine as the businessman that wouldn’t stop talking despite the collapse of reality around him, appeared next to the man and said in pure, soft tones
“End of Test. Catastrophic Immersion Failure. End of Test.”
The man woke up in a blinding white room. He was strapped into an upright pod and was facing a large mirror that almost covered an entire wall. He had a large metal pipe in his mouth and down his throat which he could see was attached to the bottom of the pod. He tried to reach and pull it out or move his head away but he was strapped down tight. His throat burned. A man and woman wearing lab coats strolled into the room through double doors behind the pod. They were deep in conversation as the man tried desperately to call out to them.
Lab coat man: Well at least we got the mirror perfect. Remember that time the subject woke up screaming because his face was all mangled?
Lab coat woman: Oh yeah that was test 15 right?
The woman in the lab coat delicately pulled the metal tube out of the man’s mouth and took a small torch out of her top pocket and shone it down the end.
Lab coat woman: No blockages. Looks like the antiemetic is working finally. Did you hear what happened in Copenhagen by the way?
Lab coat man: Oh yeah the cock-up with the cat. I told them they were crazy trying to put animals in but they never listen. I dread to think how much time they wasted on that code. Anyway I’ll check the report.
The man blearily watched the guy in the lab coat walk over to a small panel on the wall and press a few buttons. A screen appeared in the wall and various numbers and statistics flickered up.
Lab coat man: Yeah it was definitely Talking Man 2 that set him off with his jumping again. Talking Man 1 failed to render completely! Still can’t get rid of that metallic taste. Ok, well, we really need to sort out the bugs with the Talking Men and… maybe add a few animations to Blonde Woman just so she doesn’t look so creepy? I mean we can if we have time.
The lab coat woman popped her torch into her top pocket, pressed a few buttons on the side of the pod and then turned to leave.
Lab coat woman: Sounds good to me. Do you know where Jerry’s been all week?
Lab coat man: Flu I heard…
The pair continued talking as they left the room, completely oblivious to the wheezing, choking man in the pod struggling to call for help. He heard the click of the door, locking as it closed and, after a few seconds of silence, a soft whirring sound started up. He felt something slither against his leg which turned his blood cold. He saw in the mirror that the metal pipe was working its way up to his head. It hovered in front of him like a striking cobra. The man was still disorientated and confused but he guessed what was coming next and shut his mouth tight. A sudden strike to the back of his ribs, a short pipe firing out, jabbing him and then retracting back into the pod, made the man cry out. The serpent-like pipe had been waiting for this and shot forwards into the man’s mouth and down his throat with surgical precision. The same soft, pure voice of the talking businessman that had informed him of the catastrophic immersion failure now echoed around the room.
“Run Memory Wipe. Begin Test Forty-Two”
The man woke up with a start. He looked around the spotless apartment. He had a weird metallic taste in his mouth.
------------------------------------------------------------------
More creative writing! I wrote this ages ago but then forgot about it then remembered it and thought I had posted it on a social media site already. Turns out I wrote it the old fashioned way with paper and one of those things with the grey stick in it? One of those things. Anyway I finally typed it up and here it is!
I really like the way this turned out and I do hope you found it as creepy as I did while I was writing it. I hope that creepiness came across. With the rise of VR (virtual reality) games and the way modern media is designed to suck people in and hold them there for as long as possible I thought it would be interesting to revisit the old philosophical question of how you really know you are experiencing true reality? Are you in the Matrix right now? Would you notice mistakes like our protagonist and what would be the consequences of knowing the world was fake?
Some minutes past and the bus finally crawled its way around the corner. The man watched the bus come to a standstill and the door slid open but the blonde woman hadn’t moved. She continued to stare down the road and seemed oblivious to the bus that had just arrived. The man hesitated then slipped past her and onto the bus, fishing some change out of his pocket as he stepped up. The bus driver turned and fixed the man with a stare that wasn’t particularly warm but wasn’t really all that cold either. “Two fifty.” The bus driver’s voice was clipped and nasal. His stare never faltered. The man plonked his change down on the little tray (which came to exactly 2.50) and tried to avoid the bus driver’s eyes as he waited for the machine to spit out his ticket. He took it and hurried to a seat near the back of the bus. There was only one other person on the bus and he appeared to be talking to himself. He was a well-dressed businessman in a suit and tie and he seemed to be having a conversation with an invisible person. Trying to ignore the businessman, the man looked down at his watch but it seemed to be broken. The little LCD screen simply read 00:00. He thought this was strange but was soon distracted by the businessman who was still happily chatting away with the empty air. The businessman was sat 4 rows in front in an aisle seat, the seat next to him, by the window, was completely unoccupied which didn’t seem to have any effect on the flow of the conversation. “Really? For that long? That is unbelievable. He was never like that around me... Yeah I suppose you are right. So did you ever hear back from that place up in the North? Where was it again?... Oh yeah that was it…” and so it continued.
The man watched in fascination as this half conversation played out. He could still taste metal on his tongue and it seemed to be getting stronger. At this point something quite unexpected happened. The talking businessman changed seats. That is, he didn’t get up and walk to a new seat he simply… ‘jumped’. Moved. Phased. One moment he was 4 rows in front and suddenly he was only 3 rows ahead. The half-conversation continued with no interruption. The man’s jaw had dropped and his hands were clasping the seat in front of him. How was this possible? How had the businessman teleported like that? It was at this point the man realised the bus still hadn’t set off from the stop, the door was still open and the blonde woman was still looking out for the bus that had already arrived. The metallic taste stung his throat. Everything felt wrong. He looked out the window at the bland, identical houses. The man’s breathing came quick and shallow. Where was it that he worked again? The lights on the bus were too bright. The seat in front of him that he had been clutching felt like play-doh. His hands sunk into the material as the incessantly droning businessman jumped back another row of seats. The man tried to scream as the walls, floor and ceiling of the bus, including the houses and street outside began to distend, melt and distort but the metallic taste filled his mouth to choking. Everything was melting into blackness, into a void now except for the seats of the bus and the businessman. He jumped back another row. He was now only one row in front of the man. One more jump and he would be right next to him. The man was now gagging on the stinging burning metallic taste that refused to dissipate and instead was getting stronger and stronger. The seats of the bus melted away to nothingness and the man, eyes bulging, mouth frothing, felt a chill run up his spine as the businessman that wouldn’t stop talking despite the collapse of reality around him, appeared next to the man and said in pure, soft tones
“End of Test. Catastrophic Immersion Failure. End of Test.”
The man woke up in a blinding white room. He was strapped into an upright pod and was facing a large mirror that almost covered an entire wall. He had a large metal pipe in his mouth and down his throat which he could see was attached to the bottom of the pod. He tried to reach and pull it out or move his head away but he was strapped down tight. His throat burned. A man and woman wearing lab coats strolled into the room through double doors behind the pod. They were deep in conversation as the man tried desperately to call out to them.
Lab coat man: Well at least we got the mirror perfect. Remember that time the subject woke up screaming because his face was all mangled?
Lab coat woman: Oh yeah that was test 15 right?
The woman in the lab coat delicately pulled the metal tube out of the man’s mouth and took a small torch out of her top pocket and shone it down the end.
Lab coat woman: No blockages. Looks like the antiemetic is working finally. Did you hear what happened in Copenhagen by the way?
Lab coat man: Oh yeah the cock-up with the cat. I told them they were crazy trying to put animals in but they never listen. I dread to think how much time they wasted on that code. Anyway I’ll check the report.
The man blearily watched the guy in the lab coat walk over to a small panel on the wall and press a few buttons. A screen appeared in the wall and various numbers and statistics flickered up.
Lab coat man: Yeah it was definitely Talking Man 2 that set him off with his jumping again. Talking Man 1 failed to render completely! Still can’t get rid of that metallic taste. Ok, well, we really need to sort out the bugs with the Talking Men and… maybe add a few animations to Blonde Woman just so she doesn’t look so creepy? I mean we can if we have time.
The lab coat woman popped her torch into her top pocket, pressed a few buttons on the side of the pod and then turned to leave.
Lab coat woman: Sounds good to me. Do you know where Jerry’s been all week?
Lab coat man: Flu I heard…
The pair continued talking as they left the room, completely oblivious to the wheezing, choking man in the pod struggling to call for help. He heard the click of the door, locking as it closed and, after a few seconds of silence, a soft whirring sound started up. He felt something slither against his leg which turned his blood cold. He saw in the mirror that the metal pipe was working its way up to his head. It hovered in front of him like a striking cobra. The man was still disorientated and confused but he guessed what was coming next and shut his mouth tight. A sudden strike to the back of his ribs, a short pipe firing out, jabbing him and then retracting back into the pod, made the man cry out. The serpent-like pipe had been waiting for this and shot forwards into the man’s mouth and down his throat with surgical precision. The same soft, pure voice of the talking businessman that had informed him of the catastrophic immersion failure now echoed around the room.
“Run Memory Wipe. Begin Test Forty-Two”
The man woke up with a start. He looked around the spotless apartment. He had a weird metallic taste in his mouth.
------------------------------------------------------------------
More creative writing! I wrote this ages ago but then forgot about it then remembered it and thought I had posted it on a social media site already. Turns out I wrote it the old fashioned way with paper and one of those things with the grey stick in it? One of those things. Anyway I finally typed it up and here it is!
I really like the way this turned out and I do hope you found it as creepy as I did while I was writing it. I hope that creepiness came across. With the rise of VR (virtual reality) games and the way modern media is designed to suck people in and hold them there for as long as possible I thought it would be interesting to revisit the old philosophical question of how you really know you are experiencing true reality? Are you in the Matrix right now? Would you notice mistakes like our protagonist and what would be the consequences of knowing the world was fake?
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Waste Not, Want Not
Come on everybody! Those trees aren't going to hug themselves! No but seriously today's subject is important I feel and it's going to be waste. Not in the "Your a waste of space and I hate you" way more the "Why are you throwing out perfectly good stuff?" way. Please do enjoy!
"Got a disposable income for disposable goods,
Got a hold of my paycheck don't know if I should,
A disposable partner I suppose it's alright,
I'll just just go get a new one every time we fight,
I got a disposable model, I ain't chosen no wife,
I'll dispose of these women if they don't swipe right,
Got disposable friends, they drive disposable cars,
Cause we ain't built to last, nah nah, we built to go fast!"
The King Blues - Opposable Thumbshttps://thekingblues2016.bandcamp.com/track/opposable-thumbs
Now I could write multiple posts about this song. I could write one about how good this song is and how good the album it comes from is. I could write one about it's critique of the way people treat women as disposable and how our culture builds this idea of women as playthings to be thrown away once they are "used up" or don't abide by society's rules and how it directly impacts and influences violence against women. I could write a post about how it confronts you with the notion of "disposable friends", how friendship has been influenced by modern technologies and the idea of friendship being watered down to a simple number on a Facebook page. I could write a post at just how nice it is to hear some proper political punk music in a time when we really need it. But I'm not going to write about those subjects. Well not today at any rate... I'm going to talk about the main subject the song deals with: waste. As the chorus so succinctly puts it:
"(We throw it all away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!"
Two weeks ago, we went to take the bins out. Just your general biowaste, cardboard, glass and landfill stuff. I went and opened the landfill bin and it was almost completely empty except that at the bottom were a load of old textbooks and various DVDs. The text books were in pretty decent condition and the DVDs were also fine if slightly dusty. The textbooks were all business and computer ones so not really worth anything and probably not all that useful to anyone. The DVDs though: Fight Club Special Edition, the Michael Caine classsic Zulu, a documentary about The Doors and the star-studded Lucky Number Slevin. What the Hell? Why would someone throw out perfectly fine DVDs? Not only that but perfectly fine DVD's of some really pretty damn good films? What gives? Fishing them out of the bottom of the bin, we've given them a new home, saving them from the landfill and saving the environment from them, at least for a little while.
Last week we went to take the bins again and AGAIN perfectly usable, perfectly good condition stuff that had no reason to be in a bin! Right next to the glass bin, a number of glasses and mugs, all unchipped and clean. In the landfill bin, cloth shopping bags (perfectly usable and some STILL WITH TAGS ON) full of plastic shopping bags. We use all of our plastic shopping bags as bin bags which meant this collection we found in the bin is around 6 months worth of bin bags I would say at a guess. It's insane! Why weren't the DVDs from before and the glasses from this time given to a charity shop? Why weren't the plastic bags used for bin bags? Why weren't the cloth bags just used?
This idea that things we don't need or want should just be thrown away is toxic, quite literally. Throwaway culture is destroying our planet, poisoning our seas, poisoning the very air we breathe. It really doesn't have to be this way. For my entire childhood my parents hoarded plastic bags, bits of string, plastic cable ties and even just straight up rubbish. The bags for bin bags, the string for a million different jobs, the plastic ties to hold effectively entire bikes together and the rubbish could be used for a myriad of different creations from junk monsters to spaceships to masks. These ideas of using as much as we can and wasting as little as possible are not new at all. When finding evidence of prehistoric people living in an area do you know what is usually found? Shards of bone, bits of burnt material and maybe a few flakes of flint. People used the entire animal, the whole plant, the whole tree. Very little was wasted because you couldn't afford to waste a single potential resource. Now, with our industrial processes and easy access to resources, this has gone out the window. I say bring it back.
So what can you do? Give old stuff to charities. Put an advert on Facebook. Ask your friends and family. Rethink the objects purpose. Search for things to use stuff for on the internet. Dig through the bins! Well ok so maybe don't do that but if you do see something in the bin and it isn't all nasty and it's safe to take it I say take it. People throw out a hell of a lot of stuff and sometimes it is worth checking out exactly what they consider trash. It could well be treasure.
"Got a disposable income for disposable goods,
Got a hold of my paycheck don't know if I should,
A disposable partner I suppose it's alright,
I'll just just go get a new one every time we fight,
I got a disposable model, I ain't chosen no wife,
I'll dispose of these women if they don't swipe right,
Got disposable friends, they drive disposable cars,
Cause we ain't built to last, nah nah, we built to go fast!"
The King Blues - Opposable Thumbshttps://thekingblues2016.bandcamp.com/track/opposable-thumbs
Now I could write multiple posts about this song. I could write one about how good this song is and how good the album it comes from is. I could write one about it's critique of the way people treat women as disposable and how our culture builds this idea of women as playthings to be thrown away once they are "used up" or don't abide by society's rules and how it directly impacts and influences violence against women. I could write a post about how it confronts you with the notion of "disposable friends", how friendship has been influenced by modern technologies and the idea of friendship being watered down to a simple number on a Facebook page. I could write a post at just how nice it is to hear some proper political punk music in a time when we really need it. But I'm not going to write about those subjects. Well not today at any rate... I'm going to talk about the main subject the song deals with: waste. As the chorus so succinctly puts it:
"(We throw it all away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!"
Two weeks ago, we went to take the bins out. Just your general biowaste, cardboard, glass and landfill stuff. I went and opened the landfill bin and it was almost completely empty except that at the bottom were a load of old textbooks and various DVDs. The text books were in pretty decent condition and the DVDs were also fine if slightly dusty. The textbooks were all business and computer ones so not really worth anything and probably not all that useful to anyone. The DVDs though: Fight Club Special Edition, the Michael Caine classsic Zulu, a documentary about The Doors and the star-studded Lucky Number Slevin. What the Hell? Why would someone throw out perfectly fine DVDs? Not only that but perfectly fine DVD's of some really pretty damn good films? What gives? Fishing them out of the bottom of the bin, we've given them a new home, saving them from the landfill and saving the environment from them, at least for a little while.
Last week we went to take the bins again and AGAIN perfectly usable, perfectly good condition stuff that had no reason to be in a bin! Right next to the glass bin, a number of glasses and mugs, all unchipped and clean. In the landfill bin, cloth shopping bags (perfectly usable and some STILL WITH TAGS ON) full of plastic shopping bags. We use all of our plastic shopping bags as bin bags which meant this collection we found in the bin is around 6 months worth of bin bags I would say at a guess. It's insane! Why weren't the DVDs from before and the glasses from this time given to a charity shop? Why weren't the plastic bags used for bin bags? Why weren't the cloth bags just used?
This idea that things we don't need or want should just be thrown away is toxic, quite literally. Throwaway culture is destroying our planet, poisoning our seas, poisoning the very air we breathe. It really doesn't have to be this way. For my entire childhood my parents hoarded plastic bags, bits of string, plastic cable ties and even just straight up rubbish. The bags for bin bags, the string for a million different jobs, the plastic ties to hold effectively entire bikes together and the rubbish could be used for a myriad of different creations from junk monsters to spaceships to masks. These ideas of using as much as we can and wasting as little as possible are not new at all. When finding evidence of prehistoric people living in an area do you know what is usually found? Shards of bone, bits of burnt material and maybe a few flakes of flint. People used the entire animal, the whole plant, the whole tree. Very little was wasted because you couldn't afford to waste a single potential resource. Now, with our industrial processes and easy access to resources, this has gone out the window. I say bring it back.
So what can you do? Give old stuff to charities. Put an advert on Facebook. Ask your friends and family. Rethink the objects purpose. Search for things to use stuff for on the internet. Dig through the bins! Well ok so maybe don't do that but if you do see something in the bin and it isn't all nasty and it's safe to take it I say take it. People throw out a hell of a lot of stuff and sometimes it is worth checking out exactly what they consider trash. It could well be treasure.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
It's Perfectly Natural
NOVEMBER 2015!? Jeez, I knew it had been a long time but crikey. I'd like to say I've been busy since my last post but truly I've been lacking subjects and I'm a very lazy person. Now luckily (depends on your opinion of my writing but anyway) I'm back and have an all new topic to shout at the internet!
Recently I've been partaking in a Sexology course (ooh err missus!) and I can say with much confidence that it's been fascinating, eye-opening and really very informative. One of the most interesting things about the course has been fellow student's reactions to certain topics. The class is made up of people from all over the globe, mostly Swedish and Swedish-speaking Finns but also Finnish-speaking Finns, Russians, Eastern Europeans and people from almost every corner of Africa. This diverse mix of people and backgrounds has led to quite the clash of cultures on occasion (although it's remained really quite civil which I have to say came as a surprise, I was expecting full on World War III, especially considering how strongly people believe in certain aspects of sexuality and gender) and it's been fascinating to hear other people's experiences and get to hear about cultural beliefs first hand.
I could well do an entire post (Hell, multiple posts spanning several years) on the discussions and debates we've had already (keep in mind we have currently had two lectures...) but I'm actually going to focus on one very, very specific argument and actually open up this argument past sexology and look at it generally as an argument. And then I'm going to explain why I think it's stupid. Let's get into it! (I feel I haven't put enough sex jokes in this but I've written the sexology bit now and don't want to go back and add stuff.)
More conservative thinking members of the class when confronted with the phenomenon of transgender, non-binary and gender fluid individuals (sorry I'm not explaining all of those terms I simply don't have the time to go into it right now so Google it or something) as well as other subjects that fall under the banner of sexology such as homosexuality and certain sex acts put forward the question of whether these things are actually natural, implying that they believed them to be unnatural and therefore wrong and/or immoral and/or sinful implying that people who identify as those things or do those things are wrong and/or immoral and/or sinful and/or mentally ill. In this post I am not going to go into whether those things above such as being transgender or homosexual are natural or not (THOUGH THEY BLATANTLY ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN) what I am going to focus on is that specific part of the argument where it's implied that things that are natural trump those things that are unnatural.
To quote myself (Wow the ego on this one...), as I stated in the class in response to someone suggesting that being transgender was something unnatural:
"This pen is unnatural (Note: I was holding a pen of at the time just in case you didn't guess), this table isn't natural (I was sat at a... do you know what just go with it), my clothes are not natural, the food I eat isn't natural, this building isn't natural, planes aren't natural, my laptop isn't natural. Cancer. That's natural. Volcanoes are natural. Famine is natural."
Everyone in the class quickly got my point and I hope you have too.
It seems so pervasive in society this idea that "natural=best" and "natural=healthy" and frankly it's just not true in any way shape or form. Also half the time the label "natural" isn't even accurate. Take health foods. I still find the irony of "natural" foods being sold in cardboard and plastic hilarious and that's not even taking into consideration the fact that the vast majority of foods are made out of ingredients that have been selectively bred over thousands of years and that's just to get them even halfway to tasting nice. Bananas are not "meant" to be yellow and sweet and large, their natural counterpart is green, bitter and a third the size. Also carrots. Carrots are only orange because particularly patriotic Dutch farmers bred them to be orange and it caught on elsewhere. Carrots weren't even originally grown for their roots, so dinky and insubstantial they originally were. What you are eating is not natural. At all.
Before you start protesting outside your local supermarket, please take to heart my argument that just because something is not natural does not in any way mean it's bad for you. Thanks to very artificial plants that have been developed in labs, crops that can survive arid conditions have been created and brought food to millions that would have starved. Thanks to all those artificial things I mentioned in class, we live and thrive in a modern society that gives us the opportunity to write, to have something to write on, to keep warm and covered, to keep sheltered, to allow us to travel the world at speeds deemed unthinkable by our ancestors, to access information of all types from any and every corner of the globe and communicate with people we've never even met face to face instantaneously.
In short, natural is great but it's not by definition the best. Plenty has been achieved by creating and using unnatural things. Of course there is also the argument that as humans beings are "natural", we have grown and evolved just like every other living thing, then whatever we create is also natural. Think on this: we never say ant hills or beaver dams are unnatural.
If this long (not even that long compared to a lot of my rambling posts...) blog post has failed to convince you of the flawed logic of the "natural is best" argument then all I ask is for you to be consistent in your logic. Leave all of your earthly possessions behind, undress yourself, remove your glasses if you have them, take off your shoes, throw your phone and computer and electronic devices away, go and live in the depths of nature (good luck finding a forest or natural environment that hasn't been influenced by humanity by the way) and then see how you fare. No cheating and making wood or stone tools either! That would be hideously unnatural...
Recently I've been partaking in a Sexology course (ooh err missus!) and I can say with much confidence that it's been fascinating, eye-opening and really very informative. One of the most interesting things about the course has been fellow student's reactions to certain topics. The class is made up of people from all over the globe, mostly Swedish and Swedish-speaking Finns but also Finnish-speaking Finns, Russians, Eastern Europeans and people from almost every corner of Africa. This diverse mix of people and backgrounds has led to quite the clash of cultures on occasion (although it's remained really quite civil which I have to say came as a surprise, I was expecting full on World War III, especially considering how strongly people believe in certain aspects of sexuality and gender) and it's been fascinating to hear other people's experiences and get to hear about cultural beliefs first hand.
I could well do an entire post (Hell, multiple posts spanning several years) on the discussions and debates we've had already (keep in mind we have currently had two lectures...) but I'm actually going to focus on one very, very specific argument and actually open up this argument past sexology and look at it generally as an argument. And then I'm going to explain why I think it's stupid. Let's get into it! (I feel I haven't put enough sex jokes in this but I've written the sexology bit now and don't want to go back and add stuff.)
More conservative thinking members of the class when confronted with the phenomenon of transgender, non-binary and gender fluid individuals (sorry I'm not explaining all of those terms I simply don't have the time to go into it right now so Google it or something) as well as other subjects that fall under the banner of sexology such as homosexuality and certain sex acts put forward the question of whether these things are actually natural, implying that they believed them to be unnatural and therefore wrong and/or immoral and/or sinful implying that people who identify as those things or do those things are wrong and/or immoral and/or sinful and/or mentally ill. In this post I am not going to go into whether those things above such as being transgender or homosexual are natural or not (THOUGH THEY BLATANTLY ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN) what I am going to focus on is that specific part of the argument where it's implied that things that are natural trump those things that are unnatural.
To quote myself (Wow the ego on this one...), as I stated in the class in response to someone suggesting that being transgender was something unnatural:
"This pen is unnatural (Note: I was holding a pen of at the time just in case you didn't guess), this table isn't natural (I was sat at a... do you know what just go with it), my clothes are not natural, the food I eat isn't natural, this building isn't natural, planes aren't natural, my laptop isn't natural. Cancer. That's natural. Volcanoes are natural. Famine is natural."
Everyone in the class quickly got my point and I hope you have too.
It seems so pervasive in society this idea that "natural=best" and "natural=healthy" and frankly it's just not true in any way shape or form. Also half the time the label "natural" isn't even accurate. Take health foods. I still find the irony of "natural" foods being sold in cardboard and plastic hilarious and that's not even taking into consideration the fact that the vast majority of foods are made out of ingredients that have been selectively bred over thousands of years and that's just to get them even halfway to tasting nice. Bananas are not "meant" to be yellow and sweet and large, their natural counterpart is green, bitter and a third the size. Also carrots. Carrots are only orange because particularly patriotic Dutch farmers bred them to be orange and it caught on elsewhere. Carrots weren't even originally grown for their roots, so dinky and insubstantial they originally were. What you are eating is not natural. At all.
Before you start protesting outside your local supermarket, please take to heart my argument that just because something is not natural does not in any way mean it's bad for you. Thanks to very artificial plants that have been developed in labs, crops that can survive arid conditions have been created and brought food to millions that would have starved. Thanks to all those artificial things I mentioned in class, we live and thrive in a modern society that gives us the opportunity to write, to have something to write on, to keep warm and covered, to keep sheltered, to allow us to travel the world at speeds deemed unthinkable by our ancestors, to access information of all types from any and every corner of the globe and communicate with people we've never even met face to face instantaneously.
In short, natural is great but it's not by definition the best. Plenty has been achieved by creating and using unnatural things. Of course there is also the argument that as humans beings are "natural", we have grown and evolved just like every other living thing, then whatever we create is also natural. Think on this: we never say ant hills or beaver dams are unnatural.
If this long (not even that long compared to a lot of my rambling posts...) blog post has failed to convince you of the flawed logic of the "natural is best" argument then all I ask is for you to be consistent in your logic. Leave all of your earthly possessions behind, undress yourself, remove your glasses if you have them, take off your shoes, throw your phone and computer and electronic devices away, go and live in the depths of nature (good luck finding a forest or natural environment that hasn't been influenced by humanity by the way) and then see how you fare. No cheating and making wood or stone tools either! That would be hideously unnatural...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)