How To Retard a Species

This to me is an upsetting image. People that know me know that I’m a nerd, but perhaps not many know that the common childhood dream of being an astronaut is one that has stayed with me far longer than it perhaps should have. Now I’m not naive – I know I’ve got bugger all in the way of skills to offer NASA and the like, so I know full well I’m not ever going to realise this particular dream. Even if I DID have anything to offer, the chances are still getting smaller every day because no-one seems to want to pay for space exploration any more.

The picture at the top there is of the Russian space shuttle “Buran” which appears to have been left out in the open at Baikonur (the Russian version of the Kennedy Space Centre) since… well, since the end of the cold war. I find it both fascinating and depressing that the end of that admittedly horrific period in history where we were expecting nuclear armageddon at any moment also seemed to herald the end of any attempts to go further into the cosmos.

Yeah, ok, Apollo was the big one and that was way back in the 1960s, but up until 1989 or so there was stil the impression we’d try and get to Mars, if only to stop those awful Commie bastards from getting there first. Now… well, if we’re not launching communication satellites we seem to have given up. Thousands of years of intellectual endeavour have given us Sky Arts.

It’s 2009, damn it. We should be out there. All it’s going to take at the moment is one big rock and, as a species, we’re done. And that’s just on a practical level. We’ve just got no idea what’s out there. I’m not expecting aliens and monsters but doesn’t it BOTHER anyone that we haven’t got our shit together enough to get off this mudball.  I mean look at this:

Mars. We’ve got robots trundling around over there (when we’re not cocking up our maths and ploughing them into the landscape, anyway) but we’re all the way over here. There are people arguing that we don’t need manned spaceflight, we can do it all with robots and computers. Balls to that; we should be on Mars. We should be all over the inner solar system by now – we should (as described in Transmetropolitan which I endlessly refer to) have covered Mercury in solar panels and be beaming the power back here. We should be acting like the species we’ve evolved to be instead of sitting around gawping at “Britain’s Got Talent” and “America’s Next Top Cretin” or whatever it’s called.

We’ve been great – just because we’re no longer fighting the Red Terror doesn’t mean we have to stop being great.

Shut the hell up

Right.

All this is going to be is me spraying some vitriol – if you find that kind of thing tedious then do by all means skip away.

Listening to Radio 4 on the way home today I found they had pasted in a segment from Radio 1s “Newsbeat” in which they asked “young people” (which apparently once you’re past the age of about 24 you’re not one of any more and no-one gives a toss about your opinion) their thoughts on the credit crunch. After roughly twenty seconds of this I was ready to rip my radio from it’s housing and hurl it at the nearest youth and then, while they were stunned, run them down. And then back over them.

It consisted in it’s entirity of clearly ignorant and misinformed cretins saying variations on “Why should I have to pay for the banks going wrong when I had nothing to do with it?” though inexplicably their protest is based entirely on the fact that because they are young they didn’t make the decisions that led to the situation we’re now all in.

I’m sorry, what? Because you are young you feel it is unfair that you have to deal with stuff that older people caused? Grow the fuck up. Welcome to every single person’s life for the past several thousand years. Yes, you have to deal with consequences that you did not cause. No, it’s not fair. Find me something in life that IS fair if you would, please. My dad’s from the baby boom generation – did he want to have chunks of his wages go to deal with the country’s collossal war debt? No, but he did anyway.

One particularly self obsessed little shit was protesting that her desire to go and study law would be hampered by the new tax rate for higher earners. I hate to break it to you dear, but what you actually had was a desire to go and make lots of money. Oh, and incidentally, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that a Labour government is doing some redistribution of wealth, especially in times of dire financial straits. Oh, you’re a lawyer earning £200,000 a year and you think it’s a shame that some of your money goes towards keeping those who are less fortunate off the streets and back into work? Fuck off and find a country that doesn’t operate a welfare state then. Then you can keep all your money to yourself and use it to pay for your hospital treatment – oh, and make sure you save some for when you’re out of work because you’re getting fuck all jobseeker’s allowance kiddo.

You know how we’ve survived as a race? How we’ve managed to become top dogs on the planet despite the fact that practically everything is bigger, tougher or more poisonous than us? Because we actually co-operate and work together on things. We’re practically the only species on the planet that isn’t genetically programmed to stab and maim anything that stands between us and our goals; we’re capable of realising that sometimes we have to put aside what we particularly desire in order that as a group we can move forward. The sort of selfishness I heard from these young people is the antithesis of that, and if it becomes all pervading then we’re all fucked. We might as well hand over the keys of civilisation to the apes, burn everything we own and stand outside in the snow waiting to be eaten by wolves.

Big fucking wolves.

Stuff

You know what makes me really happy? The fact that, since I was a kid, it’s become socially acceptable to be a geek. I think there’s two reasons for this – first of all, i think there’s a hell of a lot more of us in the world these days. Secondly, we make everything work. Being technophobic is really now on a par with being illiterate, but there’s still plenty of people that can’t work their phone, their video recorder of choice, or anything on a pc; this, of course, leads people of my age to the utter hilarity of the sort of people that used to make my life a living hell at school now being forced to rely on my assistance for even very simple things on a computer. Ha ha ha, bullies – that time you spent mocking me for having a pc could have been better spent learning so you didn’t have to ask me how to change a data type on excel. Not that i’m bitter.

Miss Tine Has Bloody Shown Me Up Is What She’s Done

Well.

Lofty goal of a post a day well and truly knackered now, I have been thoroughly shamed by my friend over here who has already made about as many posts as me in half the time. Thanks, person-who-appears-to-wish-to-remain-anonymous, thanks a bloody bunch.

I’ve been on this internet for bloody years, you know. I’ve had blogs aplenty – I’ve even written over on www.tatp.org some as well, but now you come along, with your ginger face and your “actually writing something regularly” and show me up in front of the internet. Have you MET the internet? They’re a right malicious bunch of bastards.

You want to talk about easter? I’ll talk about easter – do you know how many eggs I got? One (thanks Em!). One flipping egg. I know I’m a grown up but still – I talked to someone that I used to work with yesterday and they had five. FIVE. I don’t want to go down to the supermarket and buy myself a whole bunch of eggs, but you’re driving me to it, internet! DRIVING. ME. TO. IT.

What else has she talked about that I can steal? Oh, spending money. You want spending money? I got all kinds of spending money. I bought a goddamned HOUSE (Note for pedants: not a DVD box set or, indeed, Hugh Laurie). How’s THAT for spending money, internet? Huh? How you like that? I now have four walls and all the mortar I can eat and if I want to drill a hole in the wall? I can drill it wherever I want. No permission needed. How do you like THEM apples, internet? I bet you’re still in rented accomodation and have to ask permission before you even get cable installed (I have cable installed – no permission needed). I also spent money on various house moving type things like:

• A van (rented)

Ok, that’s all I really paid for, but shut up – it’s spending money. She wrote about spending money and you liked THAT didn’t you, internet?

What else, what else… oh, she went on a date. Well I… um… moving on….

You know what? I don’t have to prove myself to you, internet. If you like that girl better, you just go ahead and keep reading her goddamned blog. I’m going back to playing Resident Evil 5 and swearing at it.

Screw you, internet. I’m going home.

Moving Day

Not quite going to plan so far. Assistant was out last night and so is running a bit late. Sure it will all be fine. Oh god.

Big Day

So the whole “post a day” thing went by the wayside then. Well done me and my work ethic. It’s been busy anyway. We should get the keys for the new house today, so the last week has been packing, packing and more packing. Then there’s all the other things – hiring a van, cleaning the old house, getting all the nails out of the wall… I’m sorry, the telly has just thrown an advert for Coop Funerals at me. What the hell, television? It’s bad enough you’ve got Cilla Black warning me of death every few minutes and insisting I buy insurance, never mind showing me actual funerals on advertr. This is why we have a license fee, so we have at least a few channels with no adverts on. What was I talking about? Oh, that’s right, nothing.

More Filler

I’m sat here with one arm around my son as he stares transfixed at Thomas the Tank Engine. The same episodes that were on when i was a kid, in fact. Life’s pretty good, when you look at it, isn’t it?

Arse

Really fallen a bit behind there. I have something a bit more long form sitting back here, but i’m not happy with the formatting and stuff yet. Frankly i’m a little embarrassed to put some creative writing up rather than the stuff from my own life that’s gone up so far, but i’m sure i’ll get over it. I wonder if it’s normal to look at everything you write and think it’s all a godawful egocentric mess that no one could ever be bothered reading. I hope so. I’d like to think that every great author has sat there looking at their magnum opus and gone “My god, this is shit!”

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

How did I get here? It’s a pertinent question, I think, and one that I think about lot. Does anyone PLAN to be a manager in a call centre? I hope not, it displays a depressing lack of imagination.

So why am I doing it then? What lead me to this point. It’s not an obvious route I’ve travelled, that’s for sure. 17 or so years of education for a start – how much of that did I need? I mean, I know i studied calculus and passed exams on it, but i’m damned if i can remember how to do it or even what it’s FOR now. I think I’ve taught myself more than any teacher has; if something interests me i suck up information like a sponge,often to the exclusion of stuff I should actually be doing.

I read voraciously, though it’s the internet rather than print these days, and just go and find stuff out. No, school rarely taught me things i was interested in, but it laid down a few foundations. University taught me how to talk to people – well, mostly. I was a gawky, awkward wreck to be honest, but I still made some friends.

My first real job taught me more about people than anything else. I was great at the technical side of things, but I couldn’t deal with my staff. I was dreadful and useless and blamed THEM for not liking me, rather than me for giving them no reason to respect me. By the end of my time there, I hated the company for not training me, the staff for not talking to me and myself for failing.

So then to my latest job; I’m older, and that makes a difference. I’ve stopped feeling like the world owes me something and I’ve stopped caring much what people think of me (with a few exceptions). I mean i’d obviously rather people liked me than not, i’m not a masochist, but I don’t lose much sleep at the thought of someone thinking I’m a miserable sod. I’m me now, moreso than I think I have been before. Gibberish? Possibly, but I know what I mean.

What was the question again?

Bested By The Technolobast

I’ve got a couple of posts ready to go but i can’t get to them through the mobile version of WordPress to post them. Today’s post is therefore going to consist of me telling you this. Smallbedroom; you get what you pay for.