Colonisation and consequences

I see today that the Daily Mail has found space amongst it's usual litany of racist shrieking about immigration and sycophantic fawning over C list celebrities and their pets, to report that NASA is now actively investigating sending people on a one way mission to Mars to set up a colony, something which is being referred to as the 'Hundred Year Starship'. The vague plan is to send off a few happy individuals to one of Mars' moons by 2030 and then onwards to Mars, where they could carry out extensive explorations and tests, and presumably start looking for mineral deposits because, lets face it, resources are one the main reasons we'll be out there. The mission is one way because some bright spark realised it was cheaper to not have to bring them back again. Hell, it would be even cheaper if we never sent them. Why not just shoot them in the head and dump the bodies in the sea? The end result will probably be the same.



That is the cynic in me talking though, i do want the mission to go ahead. I believe space exploration, though in times of financial constraint is probably seen as frivolous, is vital for humanities development and advancement. I think for humanity to evolve and advance, for us to progress and not stagnate, we need a great unknown for us to stare into, a mirror for our collective souls, the last and unconquerable wilderness. This enthusiasm i have for are outward exploration is not without it's qualms. Considering the undue restraint and rationality we've shown on Earth when it's come to natural resources i'm fairly sure we'll lurch about from planet to planet, blowing huge chunks out of them and scooping out the yummy innards, all the time shouting 'Yee Ha!' and 'Get some'.

Whilst space exploration is currently more or less monopolised by NASA i expect most of the missions will have a fairly high minded and scientifically sound objective. To learn and discover rather than to vanquish and exploit. But as soon as Space travel becomes safe enough and financially viable the private sector will come in and their sole purpose will be profit. Is this necessarily a bad thing? There is no doubt that earth is in dire need of more resources to fire the furnaces of our never ending technological development and rather vulgar population growth, and if we don't find some sustainable alternatives or new sources we're going to have a bit of an Easter Island situation going on, just so that in some distant future aliens can scratch their multiple heads and wonder why we consumed our resources and left nothing but skyscrapers and Starbucks.


Of course the resource problem can be solved quite simply, with less people. The huge and incessant population boom that has gone on for the last hundred years has created a problem that no governments will dare touch. We need more food, more fuel, more houses and more jobs. People are living longer so we now have more elderly we need to support. Poverty and disease (which used to be pretty effective at keeping us in check) have been reduced so less people are dying young. The developing world has huge population growth and a burgeoning middle class who want all the things that we've smugly enjoyed for the past 50 years. As their wealth increases they want to drive cars, eat more meat, live in better houses and have electric lighting and central heating, and why not? They're in their ascendency and probably think it's pretty rich of the West to start harping on about carbon emissions just as they're about to get their fancy hover boards and silver foil jumpsuits like we did in the 80's.Also a special mention to the comments section on the Daily Mail website. 'Can I claim asylum there?, There has to be some place in the Solar System not infested with Socialists?'says Alex of Co Durham. Well done
Alex, you're an idiot.

 

                                                          Ahhh, the 80's                  

Of course no democratic government will ever sanction a population limit. It's a sure fire way to get voted out by having a 'less babies, more taxes' stance at an election and the problem with the democratic system really is that politicians aren't looking much further ahead than the next election. It's been pointed out that in the West our population should level out and even drop by about 2030 as we're a bunch of selfish hedonists and would rather spend our money on our own, beautiful selves than a shit ridden baby, but this will only be a temporary drop. The ideal way to solve the population problem would be for a future Totalitarian World government to simply make us stop having babies, and concentrate on what matters, servile, emotionless worship of the State, but we'll probably find reasons to bitch and moan about that. Which is a shame, as the uniforms are cool

                                                            Cool but Cruel     


Anyway, after the usual diversions around the back alleys of my brain we return to the initial article, and those intrepid few who might be chosen for this mission to boldly die where no man has died before. You'll remember that this mission was a one way mission, and i feel that we should at least hold out the possibility of safe return for them, as most people, unless of exceptionable soundness of mind and possessing tremendous moral fibre, tend to go a bit funny when left isolated and abandoned far from civilisation.

In 1629 a Dutch ship called the Batavia hit a reef off the coast of Western Australia (my handy metaphor for Mars) and about 280 survivors managed to scramble onto nearby islands for safety. There had been attempts at staging a mutiny before the shipwreck so relations weren't quite cordial, but with their lives in such imminent danger you'd expect them to all band together right? The Captain, senior officers and some passengers, after searching in vain for drinking water set off for Dutch controlled Jakarta (a bloody long way) and returned 2 months later to find a happy and prosperous Utopia an island ravaged by rape and murder and over 100 of the survivors butchered.

                                                       Utopia!       
 
You see they'd left a man called Jeronimus Cornelisz in charge of the survivors and owing to bad luck or very poor judgement or character no one had realised he was a raving psychopath and deluded fanatic, who believed God himself inspired his deeds. Why it is people like this always seem to think God is giving the old wink and nod to murder and rape escapes me, but perhaps he was just a victim of his time. No one would have noticed if he'd been in the Crusades.

Anyway, you can read about the party ship Batavia here


And the super fun space mission of certain death herehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1324192/Nasa-plan-Hundred-Year-Starship--mission-astronauts-Mars-leave-forever.html

You're never too old for a childish whinge

I realised recently to my ongoing surprise that my relationship with my family had, without my knowing or consent, changed. It had always been a hotbed of hostility and aggression which though probably unhealthy had been consistant, and there's nothing like a bit of consistancy in life. I'd a series of simmering resentments and grudges i'd proudly managed to collect and hold onto for over a quarter of a century and for their part they tended to view me as a mixture of a moronic village idiot and a hedonism chasing fiend with no moral compass which isn't a totally unfair assumption based on first impressions, as i tend to look like one of Charles I's cavaliers on a heavy diet of crack.

                                                              This dude is mad for the crack           

And so life had continued in this respect until i eventually decided i had the required number of hairs on my chest (at least 12, 6 on each side) and decided to move out.
The problem of moving out of home apart from all the tedious day to day stuff you suddenly have to contend with is your relationship with your family suddenly changes. You no longer live with them, enjoying the type of healthy relationship that a small parasite shares with it's host, where you can happily leach off them, sucking them dry of their delicious nutrients and leaving a desicated husk as a hideous monument to your insatiable appetites.


You see when that was the situation everything was very simple. You got everything done for you, and if you didn't then screaming fits, slamming doors, crude graffiti on the walls and dirty underage sex on their bed was an appropriate response to their unparalled cruelty, whether it being refusing to buy you and your 13 year old mates booze for a party or dragging you to see your piss smelling Grandparents on a Saturday and enduring their gnarled, artheritic hands tugging at your cheeks like toothless zombies who have lost their enthusiasm for the flesh. The point is like every healthy teenager you hated your parents, hated them with the irrational loathing only a hormore pumped teenager can possess. This can be sustained through various stages from the foot stamping, high pitched temper tantrums of your early years through to the 'emotional' years of your early teens where you wear only black, spend hours trying to rhyme 'razor blade' for your apparantly deep and perplexing poetry and smoking low quality hash whilst pretending to read the works of Byron and Shelly. And finally and gloriously the last stage of your rebellion is spent with a 'give a fuck' attitude, staying out as late as long as you can (or dare) and trying to find the one drug dealer who will give you pills, rather than walking away with your money and an insincere promise to be back in '10 minutes'.


This level of hostilty is pretty much the only level of relationship you've had with your parents, apart from a handful of years as a toddler which your parents will recall fondly as a golden time but you know really that it's just because you hadn't yet gained the ability to say 'fuck you' and besides, you made up for that by shitting your baby pants with your weird baby poos as often as you could.

                                                                   Sweet vengeance!


But as soon as you move out this is supposed to end (not the pant shitting part, there's years of fun left in that). You're supposed to now have mature and adult conversations with your parents about tracker mortgages, track and field atheletes and Tracker bars.
 

                                                              The cornerstone of all small talk

They'll enquire about your savings and investments and make horrified noises when they decipher your vague, non-commital grunts and realise that you have none. All of a sudden the ground rules have changed and no one bothered to tell you. If you respond to their eager question about how your job is going with the standard, 'it's shit' they'll decry you as immature and tell you to gain some goddamn responsibilities. Suddenly the job you do isn't just a means to an end so you can party it up at the weekend. No, now it's your career and one you have to take seriously, which to a parent means sucking up to your boss and making eager beaver bullshit suggestions in the twice weekly meetings which your boss carries out so he can pretend he has friends. The rules of engagment have changed and for several years they will despair at how immature you are and irresponsible you are and you will burn with a new type of hate as irrational and unfair as ever which will slowly poison you.


But eventually over the years the anger dulls. You start visting them on occasion at the weekend, ostensibly to just pick up your post and get some free food but you find yourself, horrifyingly, gaining a low level pleasure from it. The beasts of your youth are now softened with age and they start to resemble a perpetually smiling and stoned muppet whose clumsy yet well meaning fumbling enquiries about your life can hardly be met with a blitzkrieg of hate and bile as in your glory days, when you were firm of buttock and greasy of skin. I recently returned home for a family birthday and we talked very pleasantly about holidays, drank buckets of tea, did some garden work and parted on pleasant terms. It was boring sure, but also pleasant in a way like antiques shows and sponge cake.
As your life changes around you and you feel the sands shifting beneath your feet the cosy familiarity of family becomes the one constant which you can hold onto in a world where situations and circumstances change with a breathtaking pace. The old issues may remain. They may still patronise and intefer with your life in a way you find infuriating and disrespectful. The scars of childhood will still ache on occasion and the memories of youth may rear up it's ugly head and flashes of the old anger will resurface, but increasingly these are gently swatted away like an irksome fly. The cost is too much to pay, you no longer want these enemies so close to you when life has given you more than you would ever require. You do not want to rage against them, for them to burn in the heat of your fire, such anger and energies can be put to better use and targeted at more deserving foes. No, they will become the anchor of your life, the port in a storm. Family finally becomes what you imagined it was supposed to be. A place of close, familiar belonging.

Attention span…not good

The best part of my day is now over. It's that first golden hour where I can avoid even the pretence of work by pretending I'm going through emails, organising my desk and shuffling important looking piles of papers, when really I'm reading about UFO sightings, thinking of a suitably witty and droll facebook status and warming up my bowels for my 9 o'clock poo. My boss has yet to arrive, the office is half empty and if I'm lucky I can go on a trip to the kitchen and find it, with luck and tactical timing, empty. This is vital, for there is nothing that makes the bile bubble up inside my stomach more than the utterly pointless routine of 'kitchen banter'. I'm sure for some people this is a socially agreeable and light-hearted event which they probably look forward to and enjoy. Well good for them, even Ted Bundy had social skills and look how he turned out with all his sexy crimes.

I'm not good at the kitchen banter, or indeed small talk in general. In fact my social skills are generally appalling and my first impressions are even worse and this, coupled with an accent which makes me sound like plums are being shovelled into my mouth with a silver spoon, create a powerful and lasting impression of a dickhead. I'm not denying that I am a dickhead, I just wish people could find it out over time in a more rewarding manner. Anyhow most of kitchen conversations tend to go thusly...

Them: Morning!

Me: Grawkssh!

Them: ….

The reason behind this guttural and inhuman exclamation of mine is that unless I'm anticipating talking to someone my throat inexplicably fills with phlegm and I end up sounding like a cum gargling Wookie with a bad cold. Now that might have it's place in a tastefully filmed Star Wars porn parody (probably set on Hoth due to the Wookie's cold), but not in the high flying world of whatever it is I do for a living.

Wait…I just realised something. Why would a Wookie which is from the tropical planet Kashyyyk, evolve such thick fur for what is obviously a warm and humid climate? They'd be well suited to a planet like Hoth, perhaps with the addition of some vascularised fat for heat retention, but seem poorly suited for a planet like Kashyyk. Oh Lucas, you just can't stop fucking it up can you?

Now I've lost my thread and my mind is full of Star Wars and Sc-Fi. I can't finish my initial point now without constantly making sci-fi references, which is actually kind of agreeable to me. Whilst we're on the subject (I'm saying we to make you feel included, but really I'm on the subject) I should mention that I recently bought the Dune Trilogy. All three books within one giant tome, my thousand pages of sci-fi mark me out as the most powerful geek on the commute. Oh how the balding man with his well thumbed Harry Potter cowered in front of my magnificent book. Many trees died a virtuous death for such literature, not like the millions who were slaughtered to make those Vampiric abortions of the Twilight novels so sexless women in their 40's and naive teens can live out fantasies of a love that doesn't exist.
Isn't Edward Cullen supposed to be several hundred years old? So essentially he's a jailbait hunting super paedophile. A more literal interpretation of the story would probably make a hell of a graphic novel. You might have guessed that no, I haven't read the books or seen the films, but then again I haven't read Mein Kampf but I know that it contains a load of shit. Will the Twilight series be as harmful to humanity as Mein Kampf? Well, only time will tell (though it's definitely a yes)

- Things I learnt writing this aimless piece of crap. Spellcheck doesn't include a single Star Wars related word. No Hoth, no Kashyyyk, not even a Wookie. Sort it out Microsoft, remember your target audience.

A light piece of Career advice

If any of you have taken a cab recently and engaged in a bit of salt of the earth banter with the squinty eyed specimen of Mother England that drives the cab, he would undoubtedly have replied to whatever subject you were discussing with the following profound statement, 'It's the recession innit'. This catch all response is frequently used by people of all classes and creeds as a conversation filler for those brief bursts of small talk which you must habitually engage in out of societal need and politeness. From what you did during your weekend to where you went on holiday the looming spectre of the recession can be blamed or referenced for almost everything. Mentioning of the recession will also result in a standard stock response, a sudden hushing of the voice (lest the recession hears you!), and a nervous glance around will be followed by a mumbling agreement, 'yeah it's terrible, mumble mumble, bankers, mumble, gambling bastards' and so onwards.

We do this because we don't understand it, we know it's bad because of it's undoubtedly bad effects, jobs going, business failing, banks somehow not having any money despite this being their primary function, but we don't know why it happens. It's the boogyman of our generation, the invisible horror that lurks in the night and the netherworld.

I'm not here to offer much of a comment on the recession. I don't understand it and any attempts I've made to understand it have failed because it's also boring. Any information regarding it is dense and filled with arcane terminology and endless graphs with arrows pointing up and down, and why would I waste my time reading that when thanks to the glory of the internet i'm only one click away from a guy shoving a pint glass up his anus?

Here's a handy tip for trying to beat the recession though, a small personal victory you can gain against the invisible terror. Try and give off the impression that you're exactly the type of person who would take a handgun into the office and walk slowly from floor to floor, coldly pumping rounds into the twitching bodies of your colleagues whilst laughing manically and smearing your faeces on the wall (for fun and also for that all important insanity plea). To gain this impression post pictures of yourself polishing your weapon collection on social networking sites, make vague references to 'The Reckoning' during light hearted coffee making banter and during high end board meetings shape your hand as a gun and slowly and deliberately take aim and fire at the attendees whilst scrawling 'RedRuM' all over your notepad.

                                                                Todays a promotion day!      

This should gain the attention of Human Resources (if not a brief email to them saying about how you feel humans Are resources that should be harvested should help) and they will undoubtedly realise that lightening your work load and giving you a small payrise is a small price to pay to avert the pipe bomb oblivion you'd subtly hinted at.

Remember it's vital not to actually shoot up the office because then you'll lose your job, rendering the entire thing pointless.

Fridays...

So here we are at another friday, a day which no matter how many times it inevitably comes round is still met with the same sense of relief and optimism as the innumerable ones that have come before. The reasons are obvious, after a long week of self-sacrificing work we are ready to throw off the shackles of our servitude and indulge in a non stop bender of unprotected sex and intravenous drug use. Fuck you work, we say, look at all the crazy shit we do when you're not watching. You can't slay the beast within me, i'm a bohemian with a heart of liquid gold and a brain shining with the ghost light of stars.

Wooo! The Weekend!

But of course that's a fantasy we've created. Sure we turn up to work and do our 40 hours a week and most of us probably hate our jobs, which is proper and right. In fact if most of us don't hate our jobs then there is reason for concern. We're not all Lion tamers, Rock stars and Space cadets. No, we're spreadsheet scanners and data enterers. Even those further up the ivory tower just do an advanced version of the same thing, just with more shouting and better cut suits.
Returning to the point...eventually...we've created this fantasy of our terrible work conditions of no lunch breaks, never ending deadlines and ogre-ish bosses, out of a necessity to feel persecuted, to feel like we have something to rail against. Most of us in the Western world should be on our knees with pathetic gratitude for the unimaginably comfortable lives we live compared to the developing world or even our own countries 50 years ago. We have it easy, which is why we're so pampered and plump and have ridiculous, impractical haircuts.

                                                          Pictured: A dickhead


Do we work like slaves? Well no, obviously not. We take numerous coffee breaks, long lunches and spend hours on the internet talking to our friends and playing stupid farming games on Facebook, insulting 12 year old American kids on forums and writing self indulgent blogs like this. We want to feel hard done by, we want to imagine we endure a level of suffering which would make the Israelites quail, so that we can all be a martyr to something and through our suffering gain a feeling of superiority over our fellow toilers. It helps assuage the guilt we carry for our life of relative ease. It's like a competition which is being played out in every pub and every street corner where a few huddled smokers gather.

                                             Nothing compared to an Excel spreadsheet
 We'll bitch and moan and try and outdo eachother with our misery and then collapse at the weekend claiming we're 'burnt out' from the working week. You work in an office, you're not doing 10 hours shifts in a coal mine. The next time someone induces you to bitch about your day think about it first, and say proudly, 'i've done fuck all'. Because lets face it, you have. And the fact that you can and still be paid a wage which by world levels is obscene, and live a life of comfort and security, is the best endorsement of the system that you've all bought in to.

The obligatory Autumn post

This morning despite the predictably grey and damp weather I was feeling rather content as I walked down the familiar leafy roads and alleys of South London, enjoying the unmistakably autumnal smell of rotting vegetation which is the constant companion at this time of year.

It would take a hard heart indeed not to enjoy this wonderful season. The smell of bonfires in the air and the crunch of leaves underfoot, the constant rainfall of conkers and the brief few weeks of golden radiance amongst the boughs of the trees, this is a season that easily ignites a childhood nostalgia, a memory, hazily recollected of simpler times. It is one of the quirks of nature that it makes death a scene of beauty, a final burst of colour before the long sleep of the winter, as if it wishes us all a fond farewell and begs us not to forget it so easily.

The best way I find to enjoy it is to feel it, to sit down on the damp earth, to feel the cool ground soak and muddy your trousers, to pick up a handful of leaves, that miniaturised world of earth and insects, and put your face in it and smell it. The scent of the season, it rivals anything the first days of spring can offer. It's intoxicating in it's aromas, you can feel the tendrils of it's scent exploring your body and enriching your brain. It's a real rush and one I get excited just thinking about.
Children understand what autumn is about, they have a natural instinct for pleasure and happiness which hasn't yet been tainted by the lessons of life or weighed down by the adulthood responsibilities that none of us really want but resignedly carry, the burden we assume because that's what we're supposed to do. They run in the parks and dive headlong into piles of carefully raked leaves, exulting in the mess, revelling in the filth and giggling at the sheer fun of it all. They always seem to have a stick in their hands, cutting at the nettles in a swashbuckling manner or poking at the mud and making appreciative sounds at it's consistency. They see the season for what it is, and celebrate the death that surrounds them with their own youth and life. As a child I always enjoyed walks in the woods with the family Dog, when days of rain had made the wood sodden and the ground a thick, viscous ooze, and the scent of autumn seemed to be holding you closely and tightly to it's bosom. I'd always return to the house feeling exhilarated, as if I'd been amongst something special, had experienced something unique and personal. It is natures ability to bring out these feelings, to make you feel like you have experienced something beyond explanation, as if you have connected with something bigger and more profound then yourself, which inspires my love of it.

In an ever more increasingly technological age, where we are cut off from each other and the outside world by the walls we have built up around us of digital devices, and computerized distractions. Where we cannot have a conversation with each other without turning to our phones and bathing in the cold, soulless glow of the LCD screen which dispassionately monitors our button presses and files us away in trends and demographics. Where we are consumers instead of creators, a human resource instead of simply and majestically a human. I feel we ever more so need to truly connect with the natural world around us as an anchor for the soul, lest we drift and float away into the cloud, where we all have a voice but no one is heard, and where everything is to be seen but none has a meaning.

Technology will give us everything we want and from that point onwards we will inevitably decline and fall, our autumn years too will be accompanied by the stink of death, but unlike the trees, we will have no spring.

                                                                               
                                                                                      At a wood near you...

Probably not worth the end result...

Like most people I tend to be a creature of habit. There are certain daily rituals I engage in which give me a low level feeling of contentment and security which keeps me humming and bumbling along to the tedious conclusion of another 24 hours in my life. I have the same breakfast of marmite on toast and strong black coffee at roughly the same time every day, as I watch BBC breakfast lurch uncomfortably from light hearted human interest stories (man attempts to fly using a plane designed according to Da Vinci's plans, Woman in Somerset grows large vegetable chortle, chortle ), to the latest horror drenched update on the never ending 'War on Terror' (Rapist Muslims want to blow up the Queen!). As they duck and dive from one story to another their voices and facial expressions will also make the necessary changes, resulting in a horrible montage of rictus grins and fear strewn eyes that leaves you feeling quite disorientated and not a little stressed afterwards, often resulting in me leaving the front door with a thousand paranoid theories swirling around my caffeine frenzied brain about suicide bomber prize winning Dogs and cancer causing potato guns. Anyway i digress.

The Field of Victory!

So there I am with my familiar breakfast of marmite on toast and strong black coffee, which I should point out is black, not because I'm some slick haired go getting Uber man with a Bluetooth dickhead ear piece and by fuck gets results no matter who granny he's got to violate, but because I can't be bothered to go shopping often enough to have fresh milk in the house. I don't care what people say, coffee without milk is like swallowing tar mixed with cocaine. It doesn't taste better, it's like licking a shoe, and I for the record hate milk.

Anyway…what was this about again…a creature of habit? Yes, we are all creatures of habits, trapped in our cages of familiarity for whatever reason I was going to say. I'll be honest with you, this whole creature of habit thing was simply a flimsy set up so I could write a few hundred words about the whys and the what's of…creature of habitry…yeah…so I could stick on an anecdote at the end which was vaguely relevant. However rather than bore myself (and possibly you, but that comes a distant second in my priorities) and lead us all on this miserable charade I'll just tell you the anecdote, skip the crap I was going to say about my favourite seat on the train etc, and we can all go home early and do something more productive. You see, I've given you the gift of time, probably making me better than your Aunt, who gave you a gift of a jumper.

So I have a favourite toilet at work which I, without fail, will also poo in. It's my sanctuary, my Helms Deep. If I can't poo in it I won't poo at all for I am a creature of habit (see, what a lousy fucking set up. I feel like a con man). Anyway, for a period a few weeks ago everytime I went in there someone had shat all over my toilet. It would be smeared around the inside of the bowl like the trail of a faecal slug, or there would be a floater left there, silently mocking me, a sausage shaped calling card from this cowardly phantom shitter. But it wasn't this that drove me to action, this I could take. I could grit my teeth and take it and then release my anger by kitten stomping on the way home. No, what drove me to take affirmative action was the day I went in and found the shit smeared all over the seat of the toilet. I couldn't have been more pissed off if I'd gone to visit my Grandmothers grave and caught Nick Griffin skullfucking her corpse whilst making derisory comments about my collection of Prog rock. So now everytime I leave my favourite toilet I save a little bit and piss all over the seat, watering the seeds of victory. It seems to have worked, I haven't seen an alien skid-mark since, and the taste of victory is worth the rash I have on my arse. The rash of victory.