Kapitano

Family (4)

Your family are your first peer group.

Which is odd, as there's no such thing as a peer in a family. Everyone is defined by their place in a complex, broiling power structure, and by what they do to change or maintain that place. For someone to be your peer, you must regard each other as equals.

It's almost impossible to be friends with a family member, except by both trusting each other enough to maintain a truce. You have friends at school, and in after-school associations. You have friends at work, on internet forums, and in sporting societies. At home you have folks.

Church fellowships are more like families than clubs - but that's not surprising, as authority (not belief) is the foundation stone of religion. Which is why you can be a member of a church without even knowing it's doctrines, and if you're a dominant member, you can make the doctrines.

Political parties also are, to slightly misquote Marx, "Bands of hostile brothers". In my experience, university departments are the same, with enough nepotism, sycophancy, jealousy and back-stabbing to match any royal court.

If you want to know whether your association is a peer group or a family, look at who gets into sexual relationships with who, then why and how the relationships end.

So, if and when you grow up and leave your progenitors and siblings, you have a choice. Find a substitute family, or find something better than a family.

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we can't appreciate great trash, we've no reason to go."

- Pauline Kael

"Myth is what never was but always is."

- Joseph Campbell

"No society has been able to abolish human sadness."

- Eugene Ionesco

"Excellence makes people nervous."

- Shana Alexander

"Fundamentalists don't like the bible they've got."

- Clark Pinnock

"A little respect will take you a long way."

- Hugh Heffner

"A philosopher is a physician of the soul."

- Epicuras

"In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined."

- Thomas Szasz

"People who think in herds behave in herds."

- Christopher Hitchens

"The answers you seek will never be found at home."

- Jimmy Sommerville

Family (3)

TV + PC = PC
In the first half of the 20th century, families clustered around the radio. They bonded and spent their quality time sharing in weekly dramas, news and DJ banter.

In the second half, they did it around the TV.

Now, we've each got our own computers. We've also got netflix and tivo, which relagate TV broadcasts to a poor substitute.

With the exception of Dr Who premieres, I can't remember the last time I watched more than a few minutes of TV as it was being broadcast, or with someone else in the room.

For these premieres, I make weekly visits to a friend and we munch through nibbles watching Peter Capaldi's latest adventure...followed by whatever's on the friend's tivo box. Yes, the friend is gay too and we have zero sexual interest in each other and thus he's what gets called "family".

Tonight, I'm upstairs on my laptop, bingeing through episodes of a radio comedy series. My media player is set to playback at double tempo by default, so I can get through twice as much.

Yes, there's a work ethic for pleasure too.

My parents are downstairs. Father spends his retirement ploughing through every espionage serial we can find, plugged in through the headphones that are my early christmas present for him. In the next chair, in front of a different computer screen and through her own headphones, mother is watching 3 or 4 science documentaries in a row.

We sometimes eat together, and the conversation is usually about computers or what we've been watching on them.

"I think I went mad then."

- HP Lovecraft

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

- John Galsworthy

"Some things have to be believed in order to be seen."

- Richard Seymour

"There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept."

- Ansel Adams

"Pop music today is something people hear while doing something or going somewhere more interesting."

- Mark Simpson

"You never see a sign saying 'Please don't spit on the ceiling'"

- David Scholer

"Contempt breeds arrogance."

- Ray Jasper

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness."

- David Dunham

"Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination."

- George Bernard Shaw

Family (2)

When did my father turn into me?

Today, a man with an indian accent telephoned, claiming to be calling from "Microsoft in London".

He said our computer (or computers, or operating system, or internet, or network - he kept changing his mind) had been hacked (or infected) and that Intel (or Microsoft, or the ISP, or "Windows") had somehow detected this...and as a safety precaution they were about to shut down our computer (computers, system, network, operating system/s)...unless we gave him the Access Code to our computer. Which was also Windows. And the router.

So...our computers had signaled them but not us that we'd been hacked, and they had access to our computers to shut them down, but to prevent this they wanted our codes to give them access to our computers to prevent them doing it. Or something.

I used to enjoy leading phone scammers on with ambiguous or meaningless questions for a few minutes before telling them to fuck off. But dad...is an artist. He adopts the persona of a trusting but extremely pedantic old man - one who needs to be told everything in exquisite detail at least three times, while he writes it all down. Very slowly. With copious mishearings and misunderstandings. Before half an hour later saying he doesn't know about any access codes, and putting the phone down.

But our new friend from ~~India~~ ~~London~~ Microsoft/Intel/The Internet was persistent, calling back another five times. And going through the same rigmarole each time.

Dad eventually got tired of the scammer, passing the phone to mother - who has a degree in computing and decades of experience with networks. She spent ten minutes asking the man a lot of technical questions which he completely failed to understand, but tried to bluff his way through.

They let me take over for the final five minutes, in the guise of the local network administrator. I asked a few meaningless questions - "What is your personal identification code?", "Do you mean the XP registration or the Linux Serial Number?" - and getting confidently stated gibberish in response. Though I'm not sure what kind of personal identification code "687-43 Section B" might constitute.

I let my character have a psychotic break, and he screamed some obscenities down the line before hanging up.

Quality time with the family.

EDIT: He later left a message on our answer-phone system, mumbling something about "motherfucker" and "bastard". Which I enjoyed more than is probably healthy.

EDIT: My uncle also received a call from a man with an Indian accent, from "Microsoft". He let the caller spend half an hour trying to explain why his copy of Windows was in imminent danger of locking him out, without ever quite explaining why...before mentioning that he used Linux, and hanging up.

"Being too accepted is not good for your art."

- David Cronenberg

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

- Simone de Beauvoir

"A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"How is it we have so much information, but know so little?"

- Noam Chomsky

"Everything bad is good for you."

- Stephen Johnson

"Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement."

- Pauline Kael

"The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person."

- Quentin Crisp

"Don't argue with a fool. The spectators can't tell the difference."

- Charles Nalin

"If you have nothing to express it is very much like thinking you have so much to express that you don’t know how to say it."

- Pauline Kael

"Man's memory is not as good as man's pen."

- James White

Family (1)

When did I turn into my father?

As a child, I had a varied diet. Not because of a cosmopolitan atmosphere in the home or a spirit of culinary adventure. Just because whatever was on special offer in the shops that day, father bought, and we ate.

I said it was a varied diet - I didn't say the food was good. I thought dad was a cheapskate with a palate of iron.

But now, wherever I am, I make a point of trying out whatever cheap local food is available, working through the selection in whatever combinations suggest themselves.

That's how I invented lemonade tea...made with ordinary Indian tea and a capful of lemonade concentrate. It also works with lime and kiwi fruit...but not orange squash.
It's how I came up spicy barbeque pasta with sardines. Or noodles with meatballs in tomato sauce. Digestive buscuits topped with peanut butter.

Or one one particularly unsuccessful occasion, a spanish omelette "loaf" made with frozen mixed vegetables, several slices of broken-up bread, salt and pepper, and a handful of herbs. Result: a heap of crumbs varying from undercooked to burnt.

So, I guess I've turned into an iron-palated cheapskate.

"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The human being is the story telling animal - the only animal which tells itself stories to understand what sort of creature it is."

- Salman Rushdie

"A rational mind needs regular maintenance."

- Scott Adams

"One has only has to stand still to become a radical."

- Alan Bennett

"Once you pick a side you lose the ability to reason."

- Scott Adams

"If you have to persuade yourself of something, you're already inclined to doubt it."

- Christoper Hitchens

"There are questions you can't ask if you don't have the tools to answer them."

- Brenda Milner

"Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education."

- Chuang-tzu

"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity."

- Johann Goethe

"A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world."

- Albert Camus

"Never cut what you can untie."

- Joseph Joubert

"Being on the edge isn't as safe, but the view is better."

- Ricky Gervais

"If you are the smartest person at where you work - quit."

- Paul Tyma

"There is no sinner like a young saint."

- Aphra Behn

"If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you."

- Oscar Wilde

Look Back in August

A small personal landmark that went past unnoticed. My tenth blogiversary - at around 10pm on August 22nd, I'd been writing here for years in double digits.

Ten years ago....

I was dealing with the end of a hopeless relationship by getting pointlessly drunk and having lots of meaningless sex.

This last weekend I got drunk with some old friends and afterwards decided to re-visit an old cruising ground, just to see if it still worked for me after all these years.

And I had pleasantly meaningless sex with three strangers. One of who I kind-of almost fell for - we swapped phone numbers, but any thought of a relationship is, um, hopeless. Which is fortunate, because I only feel romantic when I'm drunk.

That at least is different now.
I was teaching myself to sing, and trying to record some songs. But constantly getting sidetracked by technical issues.

Today, having promised myself I'd start work on some music, I hit upon a way to synthesise a strummed guitar instead. And spent the day working on that.
I'd just finished a contract with an idiot employer.

Yes.
I was running around with a band of socialists, despite severe misgivings about their theories, strategies, and indeed aims.

Now, most of my non-net friends are disenchanted socialists.
I had vague ideas about being a science fiction writer.

I have vague ideas about being a horror writer.
I was back living with my parents.

Yes. But they don't seem to mind so much this time.
I couldn't figure out a snappy way to end a blogpost.

"People are not who they say but rather who their actions reveal them to be."

- Ziad Abdelnour

"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God."

- Edward Abbey

"You need to be thought of to be ignored."

- Russell Peters

"The truth doesn't work for everybody."

- Robert M Price

"Arts degrees are awesome. They help you find meaning where there is none."

- Tim Minchin

The Crass Ceiling

I don't get many unwilling students.

I get students who party all night and don't have the energy to study all day - and that's fine. It's their youth to enjoy, their choice to make, their quota of daily strength to allot how they choose.

I'm all in favour of fun - in fact, I wish I'd had a lot more of it when I was a teenager. Getting drunk for the first time at 23, eating a block of marijuana resin at 28 - supplied by a friend who'd decided to give up...and falling hopelessly in love for the first time at 32 - that's my pattern, trying everything a decade after everyone else.

I do get students who want to learn english, but don't want to put in the hours practicing, so they never become fluent - that's okay too. I don't have the patience to get good at the guitar, or program properly in python, so I understand.

I get students who're only want to use english for one purpose - whether that's discussing ponies on facebook or (I kid you not) qualifying as a teacher of english. Kein Problem (german), La'isa Moshkila (arabic), No Hay Problema (spanish).

What I almost never get is students who aren't at all interested in the subject, and don't want to be enrolled in the first place. When I get them, it's because their pushy parents or pointy-haired bosses are making them take the course.

You can't force someone to be interested, you can't bribe them into it, and you can't rationally persuade them they ought to force themselves to work at it until magically it becomes interesting to them. Which is why, contra the preachings of certain managerial types, I don't try.

Teaching in the private sector, your job security is nonexistant and whether your employer is sensibly professional or a delusional nutjob is luck of the draw. But the job of teaching itself is bearable, because you actually are a teacher, not a glorified prison warder.

However, I do get two distinct types of student. Type A is happy to forumulate opinions, present them in clear sentences and discuss them openly. Type B is afraid to form any clear belief, really really doesn't want to put them into words, and is afraid to state them in case someone else disagrees.

Type A is known as "most of the boys". Type B is "most of the girls".

It's the conventional wisdom - and therefore probably wrong - that boys outperform girls academically until about 13, then girls overtake them. For all I know, that could be broadly true of physics and literature. But for language learning, the boys consistently outstrip the girls.

It's not for lack of raw ability - not that I think there really is such a thing. It's confidence. The attitude that there's no personal shame in making a mistake and being corrected, that if you don't understand the explanation you have the right to ask again, that one doesn't need to fit in and have fashionable opinions to be respected.

Among the boys, even the nerds are jocks. Among the girls, even the most forward are apologetic about it.

So what can I do about it? Not much. Simply because you can't force someone to be free, and you can't inject confidence by encouraging someone to invent their own there and then from nothing.

In talking about this with female teachers, they say the same, so I don't think it's just that I'm intimidatingly butch (ha!) or that female student connect better with female teachers.

The classroom is a rather artificial environment, so perhaps in the real world outside the boys become taciturn and the girls are the gossipy flirts. But I don't think so.

It seems that even though young women now want careers, independence, and not to be quiet housewives...they still habitually act as though they don't.

"Truths kept silent become poisonous."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"If the world is crashing around your ears, you choice is future or no future."

- Eric Hobsbawm

"Patriotism is a disease."

- Albert Einstein

"The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts - the less you know the hotter you get."

- Bertrand Russell

Boys of Summer

They voted me "Best Teacher".

It's not difficult to be the students' favourite - you just have to be the one out of fifty temps on zero-hour contracts who's on their side and admits the obvious.

Yes, the timetable is wrong.
Yes, speaking and listening is more interesting and useful than reading and writing.
Yes, you do learn more vocabulary from watching kids TV than a textbook chapter on marriage ceremonies in outer mongolia.
Yes, you're supposed to spell country names like mongolia with a capital letter, but it's okay if you forget.
Yes, this exercise is incredibly boring and doesn't teach anything you'll ever need. So yes, we will abandon it - but mark it as "completed" in my pointless pile of paperwork that I have to fill out but no one will ever read.
Yes, the managers are idiots, and so are their rules, and yes, if we want a productive lesson, we have to find ways around them.
Yes, the school's very own custom-made textbook which I'm under strict instructions to follow is boring, unclear, irrelevant, badly thought out and often just plain wrong. Which is why we just have it open on the desk in case an idiot manager looks in.
Oh, and yes, that other teacher is a complete moron who fills out very neat paperwork but couldn't teach to save her life.

Well, I don't actually have to say that exactly. The students say it themselves on their official "feedback" forms. The bits of paper they fill out at the end of the course, where I ask them to *not* emphasise just how much they learned from the Dr Who transcripts we went through and the Dr Who videos I'm not supposed to show.

I got an email today from someone I taught two years ago - just to say she's taking a baccalaureate in biology.

You can never predict who'll stay in touch. But you can usually predict who'll make progress while you teach them and after they leave. The best speakers have the confidence to stand up and make mistakes, to accept correction...and to not mind that there is no single correct way to say things.

They're also the ones who aren't bored by grammar but also aren't really interested in it either. Which means the best speakers are the worst linguists. Which is why I'm such a lousy language student myself.

Most teachers have a particular view of what students are capable of. Specifically, that:

They can learn the base meanings of 10 words at a time, but can't handle simultaneously learning three meanings of one word.
They can learn a grammatical rule, but can't cope with there being more than one opinion about what the rule is.
Anything the teacher doesn't know how to explain, they can learn by a magical process called "osmosis".

I always learn from my students. The only reason I know about drifting and slenderman is a class of ten year olds told me. Usually what I learn though, is that my book about their language is wrong.

The german word for "bullshit" is..."bullshit". Not even "bulschitt".

And no one has said "Angenehm" on meeting someone for the first time in a century.

In seven years doing this, two students have figured out I'm gay - and both were called Alex. Alejandro, nerdy bespectacled spanish polyglot. One of those clearly advanced-level students who gets miscategorised as lower...and thus gets to be the unofficial teaching assistant.

When we did the dumb lesson on "What do you want to be when you grow up?", he wanted to be a pole dancer. Then changed his mind to "dandy".

He lent me his Jeanette Winterson novel...and I lent him my William Burroughs. He said he was "interested in androgeny and sexual ambiguity...but liked girls". Can you say that in your second language?

The other, from this last month: Alexander, big blond handsome german metrosexual. Straight but loved flirting with everyone - boy or girl, staff or student.

The kind of guy who will offer, in front of the whole class, to do anything - "Anything at all, mein Kapitano" - if only I give him an A-grade. Which he deserved anyway. And he knew it.

I've actually never been tempted to try it on with any student. The idea isn't repulsive - just as the idea of sex with a tree isn't repulsive, just a bit surreal with no attraction.

I guess I'm nonpedagogicosexual.

It's not quite over yet. There's a few classes still running for the next one or two weeks. After which I'm officially unemployed again...or officially emigrating for work again.

"Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence."

- CS Lewis

"Whiners, if given power, become tyrants."

- Gary North

"Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away."

- Tim Minchin

"Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom."

- Quentin Crisp

Monsters from the Id

I am surrounded by idiots.

But everyone thinks that.

If you're an idiot, your definition of an idiot is anyone who disagrees with you. Seeing as that's pretty much everyone, they surrond you.

If you're not an idiot, your definition of an idiot is anyone who can't bear to think they might be wrong, misguided, or not respected. Seeing as that's pretty much everyone, they surround you.

The difference between an idiot and a fool is that a fool accepts all criticisms unquestioningly, while an idiot accepts none.

So if you're wondering whether you're an idiot, imagine someone calling you an idiot. If your response is to consider that they might be right, you know they're wrong.

But if you're wondering, you're already not an idiot, because idiots can't endure introspection - because that's a form of (self) criticism.

The result of educating an idiot is an educated idiot.

If you can list ten arguments against a belief which is important to you, you're educated. If they're all strawmen, you're still an idiot.

Idiocy is not a failure of intellect but of courage.

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