Showing posts with label 100 Things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 100 Things. Show all posts
100 Things About Kapitano, Part 8: Things Which Irritate Me
Some people think I'm angry and passionate. In fact I just spend most of my life being mildly irritated. So here's some things that annoy me.
35) People who ask your advice on a subject you know a lot about, not so they can make an informed decision, but so they can pretend they've considered all the alternatives before doing what they'd already decided to do.
And then blame you when they realise they've fucked up.
36) Getting interested in a band on the basis of one song, tracking down the album...and discovering that one song is the only good one they've got.
And it's a remix anyway.
37) People whose method of arguing is to nitpick a minor point...with great care and extensive knowledge that would be admirable if it were relevant. Going on at length until you've forgotten what the major point was.
38) The following lines of reasoning:
"You're gay, and he's gay, so you two must be compatible."
"There's an age difference of more than ten years between those two friends, so the older one must be fucking the younger one. And that's wrong."
"He was once accused of looking at someone in a funny way, so obviously now he's been accused of an actual crime, he must be guilty."
"I don't know anything about science or religion, but science is just another religion."
"Don't you want to be normal? Everyone wants to be normal. It's the normal thing to want."
39) People who think that because they've been doing something for forty years, they've been doing it right for forty years.
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100 Things About Kapitano, Part 7: What Was I Doing I When....?
31) May 5th 1980 1725GMT - SAS storms Iran embassy
I was 8 years old. I know exactly what I was doing at the time because half the UK population was doing the same thing - watching it happen on live TV.
For the past 5 days, the news had been full of 5 men keeping 23 hostages in the embassy, demanding the release of 91 political prisoners.
Listening to the journalists, I understood the 91 were imprisoned on trumped up charges because they were inconvenient to the man who ran Iran. The man was apparently a mad tyrant and Iran a horrible place because of it. But Iran was an ally of the UK, which made it a good country.
I didn't understand how both could be true. Like I say, I was 8 years old.
The next day at school, the teacher gathered the class around her and told us the SAS had done a truely wonderful thing, and we should all be grateful these brave men were working in secret to protect us against bad people. She got quite emotional.
I wanted to know why it was bad to want innocent prisoners freed, but didn't ask.
32) January 28th 1986 c1800GMT - Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes
I was just barely 14 years old, and preparing to go with my mother to the Computer Studies evening class we'd signed up to. I'd had to lie about my age to be eligible.
We sat around the kitchen table, rushing an evening meal and watching the explosion played again and again on TV - feeling an odd combination of shock at what had happened, and creeping boredom at the endlessly repeated non-news that no one knew why it had happened. Father couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
At the class a TV had been wheeled in, and the dozen students and teacher spent 10 minutes watching the continued replays, before getting on with the lesson.
33) January 17th 1991 - Operation Desert Storm begins
It was my 19th birthday. Marked with a celebratory cake and cup of tea with parents, and a present - possibly a new dressing gown.
Kuwait had been in the news, or rather Iraq's invasion of it had been in the news. The only thing I remember hearing about the Kuwaiti people was something about its royal family being in hiding.
The TV pundits were all jumping between two themes - how evil Saddam Hussein was, and how important Kuwait's oil was for the British economy, but they never mentioned a connection between the two.
The run up to Desert Storm was high profile, and it was virtually certain it would start on that day, but mother still climbed four flights of stairs at midnight just to tell me it had started. We had a brief "the world's going to hell and there's nothing anyone can do about it" conversation before I went to sleep.
The next day, the DJs on my bedside radio were all unusually subdued and tense. The normally chirpy and cheerful morning show presenter played a just-released song by Seal called "Crazy", remarking that it seemed more appropriate than ever.
That would never happen now.
34) August 31st 1997 c0200GMT - Diana Spencer dies in a car crash
I was...asleep.
There had been an advert on TV for a tabloid newspaper, urging everyone to buy the next edition because it contained exclusive photos of "Di and Dodi". The gist was that the princess had found another new boyfriend, this time the son of some arab millionaire.
The last two boyfriends - a rugby player and a fighter pilot - had been a bit disastrous, but this one apparently was a sizzling romance. They'd tried to get away from the intrusive press for a romantic holiday in Paris, but the paparazzi had cleverly tracked her down to bring exclusive pictures to her loyal British fans. This was a selling point.
It later turned out Diana's last phone call had been to the press, telling them her itinerary for the next day.
My boyfriend thought the name "Dodi" was hilarious. I shrugged at the whole thing and went to bed early. He came up later to tell me that Diana and that man she was with had been in a car crash. We both shrugged and got some sleep.
The next morning he made us breakfast in bed - fried eggs, fried bacon, fried sausages, fried mushrooms and probably more. He'd taught me to cook and we'd both been steadily gaining weight.
We chatting over our fry-up with the radio on in the background. A newsreader's voice broke through saying "...on the tragic death of Diana, princess of Wales".
My first thought was: That's the next month's TV schedules buggered up. It'll be wall to wall biography and tribute. I hope it doesn't push out Star Trek.
35) September 11th 2001 C0200GMT - The Twin Towers attacked
I was trying to synthesise a snare drum. Specifically I was trying to recreate the snare of the Roland TR808 drum machine - but I couldn't get the noise part right.
An email came through on a music technology discussion email list, reading "Are you alright?". I didn't know what to make of it.
I took a break and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. On the kitchen TV was the image of a skyscraper with thick smoke billowing out of a large hole in the side.
My first thought was: It's a bit early in the day to be showing a disaster movie. They're usually shown at night.
My second thought was: Oh shit, there's going to be a war.
My third thought was: I wonder which country they'll blame?
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100 Things About Kapitano, Part 6: Things I Just Don't Get
26) Weddings.
Marriage is a contract to produce offspring. Any sensible interpretation of this includes adoption and divorce.
The catholic church allows lots of divorces, but in its efforts to evade this obvious fact, pretends to have a time machine instead.
Domestic partnership is a matter of doing all the things married people do, but without the legal contracts or parenthood, the legal paperwork of divorce, or the legal rights.
Civil partnership is a domestic partnership with the rights of marriage tacked on, but not the marriage contract.
None of which has anything to do with the wedding ceremony, which is a religion-coated affirmation of the already existing contract.
Deciding to live together because you love each other has nothing to do with anyone else, so there's absolutely no reason to subject your respective families to each other.
Deciding to raise a child together because you were careless enough to let it be born...is something that families can certainly help out with. But spending vast amounts of money to bring them together in a dull church service before feeding them badly catered food while they try vainly to get along...
I mean, why? What exactly is the point? Seriously, what is a wedding supposed to achieve? Don't tell me it cements the bonds within and between families, because we've both seen plenty of families and we know it does no such thing.
So far as I can tell, it's an expensive party with a disco and a couple of fights at the end.
27) Funerals.
If you feel the need to celebrate someone's life, do it while they're alive. If you do it after they're dead, it'll sound insincere - not least because it usually is.
If there was something you wanted to tell someone all their life but you didn't, what the fuck were you waiting for?
And if you're going to dispose of a health hazard that used to be a person, don't pretend you're doing it for their benefit.
28) Immigration controls.
You think it makes sense to have quotas for jews, Spaniards, Mexicans, East Europeans etc? Why? You don't know do you. No, you don't, because you've never thought about it. If you had, you'd realise it doesn't make sense and never did.
You think there's no room in your country for more people? You fail basic geography.
You think there's not enough jobs or wealth for newcomers? You fail basic economics.
You think they'll steal away your women? You're just a basic failure.
You think foreigners smell bad and eat funny food? You're a worthless racist fuckwit and you should be forcibly deported, if only for the irony.
29) Royalty.
What exactly does a royal family do? What is it there for? What functions does it fulfil that no one else could?
Bring the nation together under a common figurehead? I'm not sure why that should be a good thing, but in any case, footballers do a better job of that, and footballers also provide more entertainment.
Conduct diplomacy? We've already got people who do that, and do it much better. They're called "diplomats" - and sometimes "political leaders".
Provide tourist attractions? There are indeed tourists who come to see the big houses and pageants of recently invented tradition. None of which actually requires an immensely rich semi-dysfunctional family of unemployable inbreds.
30) Homophobia.
So, you're a man and so am I, and you hate me because I have a kind of sex you don't want to have. But you don't hate people who have other kinds of sex you don't want to have.
Oh I see. You're afraid of me because you think I might find you attractive. Which is frightening in some way, somehow. But you're not afraid of women you don't find attractive...finding you attractive.
What's that? You're threatened by my having emotions and drives you can't understand. But you're not threatened by other people having emotions and drives that are beyond your comprehension.
If you were, you'd feel threatened by women. Oh, I see, you do.
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100 Things about Kapitano, Part 5: Things I Like, but Shouldn't
21) Crappy Sci-Fi Serials
Earth: Final Conflict. Most shows have a shaky first season, then get better, then get stale and cancelled. This one started off smart, intriguing and even believable...then got a new lead, new writers, and new budget for the second season, and became the biggest pile of aimless dren ever to lose its entire fanbase.
Enterprise. Trekkies are a loyal bunch, but even they (we, cough) gave up on this one. A thuggish captain leading a forgettable crew through a galaxy composed entirely of hostile, fanaticalforeignersalien species.
Even when it tried to be intelligent and right on - with the deeply hamfisted AIDS allegory - it shot itself royally in the foot by portraying metaphorical AIDS victims as metaphorical gay sex fiends who brought it upon themselves.
Andromeda. Imagine Firefly, and subtract everything that made Firefly worth watching. The same cast of strong leader (Hunt/Malcom), kickboxing pseudo-girlfriend (Rommie/Zoe), psychopathic strongman (Tyr/Jayne), wimpy geek (Haper/Hoban) and mysterious outsider (Trance/Book), but with no clear plot, no deep characterisation, dialogue that only thinks it's smart and snappy and the the same politics of liberal imperialism that blight nearly all TV sci-fi from Buck Rogers to Babylon 5.
22) Cheesy pseudo-cyberpunk synthpop bands
S.P.O.C.K sing about Star Trek. They've got titles like "Mr Spock's Brain", "Charlie X" and "Never Trust a Klingon", which features lyrics like:
"With their cloaking device they remain invisible
until the time has come
To appear right ahead of us
and obliterate everyone"
23) "Straight" men.
Men who are completely and utterly heterosexual...but have gay sex because "My girlfriend doesn't understand me" or "I just want to try it for a laugh". Men who feel it's really important to tell you they're thinking about women while you twist their nipples. Men who's idea of plausible deniability is the sexual equivalent of "The dog ate my homework".
Men who are not supposed to say things like this;
24) Incredibly Stupid People on the Internet
This fellow reckons he's got a cure for all psychiatric disorders, that also eliminates "birth trauma" and resets dislocated joints. And it is...to slap someone's head so hard they lose consciousness.
Schemefighter is a youtube poster with a political theory. See if you can figure out what it is from these quotes.
25) Porn with Faintly Disturbing Titles
Straight porn tend to be, well, straight to the point.
Gay stuff is slightly wittier:
But titlewise, bi is best:
...and my particular favourite:
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100 Things about Kapitano, Part 4: Stupid Things Adults Told Me When I was a Child.
16) When you die you'll go to heaven.
One day, when I was four or five, I asked my mother what happened to a person after they died. Her answer was long, rambling, hesitant and embarrassed, and I didn't understand most of it, but the gist was: I, but not my body, would live forever in paradise, which was known to be a nice place, even though no one knew anything about it.
Exactly why she felt the need to tell me this is unclear, because she didn't believe a word of it. She'd been raised in the vaguest religion in the world - Church of England style Anglicanism - then asked some very basic questions about it in early teen years, and getting no answers, jettisoned the whole thing. I followed the same path.
17) You must always tell the truth / You must always be polite.
This pair puzzled me, because the truth usually isn't polite. Eventually though I figured it out.
"Tell the truth" actually meant "Always confess to wrongdoing when accused by adults, even when you didn't do it". "Be polite" meant "Adults are emotionally fragile creatures and don't really want to know what you think anyway, so tell them reassuring lies".
So in fact, both imperatives meant the same thing: Tell adults what they want to hear. Lie to the grownups, but only on their terms.
18) Struggle makes you a better person.
Between the ages of four and ten, I went to a school run by a headmaster who regularly got all five hundred of us to sit in the big hall, and listen to him give some strained parable about how you'll only be able to cope with the world if it almost - but not quite - destroys you.
The reasoning ran like this: The world will try to destroy you, and you'll only survive if you've got the strength you got from the last time it tried to destroy you, which you survived because you had the strength....
I suspect this leads back to the old notion that enlightenment comes from suffering. That personal tragedy makes you a better artist, sticking needles into your flesh brings you closer to the gods, and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Thus people who overcome disabilities are heroic, but those who don't are embarrassing and should be hidden away.
19) If you try hard, you'll succeed / If you do your best and fail, that's okay / Failure is unacceptable
This trio of mutually incompatible ideas formed the basis of my school life. The teachers couldn't decide whether I was diligent or a dropout. I suppose in effect I was both.
20) You must pretend to believe in Santa Claus, even though everyone knows you don't.
This one had a lot of variations, such as:
* You must visit your grandmother, even though she's a daft old bat and the adults don't want to see her either.
* You must go to church and sing the hymns, even though it bores the shit out of you and you don't know the lyrics.
* You must eat everything on the plate even though you're not hungry, and you must never ask for more even when you are.
In other words: Only appearances matter. It's all bullshit, and everyone knows it's bullshit, but as long as we all pretend, it'll somehow work eventually - so pretend, dammit.
The same idea came back in teen years as "You're not gay because if you were and the neighbours found out they'd think we weren't respectable".
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100 Things about Kapitano, Part 3: Education
11)My two earliest memories are of my mother, teaching me to swim, and teaching me algebra.
I'm not much good at either.
12) I have a masters degree, a bachelors degree, most of a computing HND, one third of a theology degree, five A-Levels, fourteen GCSEs, miscellaneous computing qualifications...and a teacher's certificate for ESL.
Only the last has ever been useful, though getting the others was a fun excuse for learning about completely different things.
13) I'm always interested in a subject least when I'm supposed to be studying it.
At seventeen I was supposed to be studying for exams in computing - but discovered ancient Greek philosophy, which was much more interesting. At 21 I was supposed to be studying for exams in the ancient Greek world - but discovered molecular biology, which was much more interesting.
14) The greatest single failure of the British school system was in not teaching me any languages.
I got interested in linguistics after learning Esperanto after (a) spending six weeks getting nowhere learning German and (b) not-quite having an affair with an Esperantist I met through an interest in twentieth century English Literature - which I'd got through accidentally seeing a stage play on late night TV, while looking for sounds to sample for making music.
I'd sell half my life to regain that feeling of constant mindblowing discovery,
15) I always feel like either the smartest person in the room...or the dumbest.
Sometimes in the same minute.
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100 Things about Kapitano, Part 2: Love
6) I've been deeply in love just once, with a brilliant guy who was too ashamed and closeted to say yes. A year later he found the man of his dreams. Don't you just hate it when that happens?
I hooked up with two guys on the rebound. The first said he wanted a bit of fun with no strings, but what he actually wanted was a longterm monogamous relationship.
The second jumped eagerly into a relationship, then changed his mind but didn't know how to say he'd done it. We were both on the rebound, which is a particularly bad formula for happiness.
7) When you've been deeply, totally in love, I don't think you ever fall completely out of it. Unless of course it turns to hate, but I've never experienced that.
What is it about straight couples, when they split up, they seem determined to spend the next year vocally hating each other? Especially married couples.
Heterosexuals are weird. I'd never be one.
8) Sometimes the best way to find someone as a friend is to lose them as a lover. The reverse seems not to hold.
That happened with second rebound fellow - a good friend and quite wise. I keep meaning to visit him again, in his new home with his new boyfriend.
9) On two occasions, I've told someone I loved them because they said they loved me and I didn't want to disappoint them. The results were painful.
You'd think, after the first time, I'd know not to do it. Especially as the first time ended in bankruptcy, lots of shouting, and bits of flying glass.
10) I think it's very easy to live without the love of a life partner, and impossible to live without the love of close friends.
Why do people find it hard to believe I'm happy being single? Sometimes a fondness for stringless sex is not a search for true love in disguise.
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100 Things about Kapitano, Part 1: Food and Drink
Inspired by Leah, I've decided to tell you 100 things about me. In installments, and with annotations.
So, here's part one.
1) I'm overweight, because I'm something of a glutton. I try not to be, but I don't try very hard.
I find it very easy to not start eating. But once I've started, I just want to keep on doing it.
I think it would be great if a person's whole body had tastebuds, inside and out. I could taste food as it goes down, and the enhanced sense of touch would be astonishing.
2) I'm very good at sauces and pastry, and completely useless at cooking anything else.
I like cooking curries, but my parents hate the smell.
3) I didn't get drunk till age 24. This was on vodka, provide by some obliging Polish students. The event is on videotape, including the bit where I lay on the floor yelling "sit on my face".
I prefer red wine to white, don't like beer, drink guinness when I need to drink slowly, and like spirits - which get me drunk very quickly.
4) I'm not sure I actually like tea - it's just sort of comforting to have a cup of it there. I definitely don't like liqouriche or raw tomatoes.
I've a theory that when you eat a whole bar of chocolate one piece at a time, with each piece you're trying to recapture the first, but it's never as good, so you try again till it's all gone, and then feel disapponinted.
5) I've got so used to watching TV while eating, that each feels incomplete without the other.
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