Better in Profile

There's been a lot happening in the past month. The News of the World phone hacking scandal has shaken the foundations of Murdoch's global news empire. The massacre in Norway has left a nation in mourning and highlighted the threat of fascism. The death of Amy Winehouse has cloven a hole in a music industry dominated by synthetic and cynically produced acts. Harry Potter has ended*. Morrissey is still a bellend. But all this is as mud in the eyes of my Facebook friends, to whom the only topic worthy of consideration over the past few weeks has been the unearthing of my old profile pictures.

I was at first glad of their rediscovery - without wishing to sound too presumptuous, they rank amongst the most profound and nuanced examples of self-portrait photography of the 21st century, and seemed to me long overdue critical re-evaluation and recognition. Imagine my dismay, however, when it transpired that their genius had been entirely misinterpreted; the pictures themselves being received as the mere awkward and embarrassing attempts of a 14-15 year old to appear cool and interesting. In order to correct this, I'm providing you all with a once in a lifetime insight into my creative process ;a detailed commentary of the photos in question. May you enjoy, and be thankful.

Exhibit A - "Influences"

Here I've attempted to represent the varied musical influences of a modern day teenager, and the way that the contemporary appetite for nostalgia essentially erodes the earlier cultural hierarchies of the age in which they were conceived. In this case, the symbol of high-culture, the John Lennon sunglasses, is combined with the comparatively low-brow symbol of the hard rock band AC/DC, creating a cultural synthesis that defies narrow minded attempts at categorisation that social consensus attempts to impose. The clumsy background choice of my little brothers wardrobe only adds complexity to this vision.

Exhibit B - "Appetite for Destruction"

I really think I've captured the intensity of the average teenager here - the brow-furrowed stare directly into the camera lens seems almost to see through the monitor and into the viewers soul. The raised hood symbolises my innate rebelliousness - despite being an item designed to protect the head from the affects of adverse weather conditions, I've chosen to have it on indoors, defying accepted attitudes to clothing - as does the background poster of Guns 'N' Roses' 'Appetite for Destruction'. I felt this album uniquely represented me, for in many ways I too had an 'appetite for destruction'. I never actually destroyed anything, of course, but my bedroom could get pretty messy sometimes, and on occasion did a decidedly half-hearted job on the washing up.

Exhibit C - 'The Point'

'What is "The Point"?', this picture seems to ask. Is he being ironic, or genuine? Indeed, would he be more hateful if he was trying to be ironic, or genuine? With the cowprint beanbag acting as a Rorschach blot test, the pointed finger seems to switch the agency of interpretation onto the viewer - they much project their own selves onto the photo, and discover what it truly represents. And it's in black and white, which makes it all profound 'n' shit.

Exhibit D - 'Pipe Dreams'

Seemingly innocuous, closer examination reveals this to be a biting satire on the pervasiveness of drug culture upon the modern youth. Note the subtle inclusion of the plastic 'Young Sherlock Homes' pipe from the dress-up box, and the 'mushroom' haircut. The brow-furrowed stare here conveys an accusation - how have you, the viewer, allowed society to become so debauched? The raising of social issue has always been an important aspect of my work. And the pipe makes me look like a badass.

Exhibit E - The Sunday Supplement/Book Jacket Photo

In many ways this is the most radical of my works and the one that best demonstrates my uncompromising vision. It amounts to a total subversion of the purpose of a profile picture, which is supposed to show you in as likeable and attractive light as possible, by depicting me in a pose so supercilious and hateful it makes you want to tear my kneecaps off and slowly feed them to me whilst listening to Cliff Richard's 'Millennium Prayer' on repeat and giggling. It's also my mother's favourite one. She must really hate me.

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I hope you found this insightful. Up next; all my old statuses, or why I explained my life using My Chemical Romance lyrics.

*More on this coming soon

Condomnation

Last week I went out and bought a pack of condoms. Not because I was in any increased danger of getting sex, but because I was off to an eastern european country for a week and didn't want to find myself forced to use a bit of stapled pig intestine, or whatever the local variant might have been.

Xenophobia aside, I was also a little curious. I hadn't bought any since being at Uni - walk into any student nurses office scratching your crotch and wearing the expression of a man who can't cope with child benefit payments and you'll be pelted with free packets by the fistful - and at this juncture felt it my journalistic duty to document the process. I was the Walter Kronkite of male contraception. So, coming from the gym appropriately dressed in shorts and a Batman t-shirt, I entered my local Boots and got to work.

There's a lot to appreciate about condom purchasing. It's the only item of sexual health apparatus men have to buy, and thus the marketing remains attractively simple. Whereas women have to worry about absorbency and applicators and pleated wings (I know, I've no idea either) condom marketing hasn't advanced far past the stage of STOPS SPERM to STOPS SPERM, BUT BETTER, and thus choiceaphobes like are unburdened. A spade is a spade, and a rubber fun tube is a rubber fun tube.

Brand variance is a different matter. Arriving at the relevant shelf (in the act of which the shop emptied of everyone except disapproving-looking old women) I was met with a choice between a named brand like Durex and Trojan, and the store's own brand, which was significantly cheaper.This raised the possibility of a difference in quality, which wasn't necessarily what I was after. If I by own brand cornflakes, I'm prepared to accept that they'll be just a little bit less tasty, but if buying own brand condoms means getting someone just a little bit more pregnant I might not be so prepared to fly economy. Do they work differently? Perhaps the expensive ones stop all the sperm, and the cheaper brands simply shout demotivational slogans at them as they swim through. "Call that a tail?", "You couldn't reach the uterus with a Sat-Nav", and so on.

It's the same with variety of type. All the brands offered an 'extra safe' option, which necessitates the fact that all manufacturers accept that the majority of their products could be safer, which struck me as a little unnerving, since their principal function is the provision of safety. Such knowledge makes the purchase of the 'featherlite' varieties seem not so much risky as actively flagrant. I'm surprised they don't offer one with holes in it for extra breathe-ability.

I scanned the shelf and saw that Durex offered an 'extra large' variety, demarked by a fucking massive 'XL' on the front of the packet, which seemed kind of tactless, since it meant that anyone buying them would look like a similarly gigantic tosser. I couldn't, however, see any 'XS' ones, which made sense; but then I couldn't see any on the Durex website either (this is all for research, by the way). They seemed only to be available by special order, with patronising names (it's for research, honestly) like 'Little Tiger'. All this gave the impression that having a smaller than average dick is a physical deformity requiring specialist prescription, rather than a simple fact that just under half of the male populace are faced with. Not me though, because mine can been seen from fucking space.

Finally, I observed with some bemusement the flavoured and coloured varieties. I still fail to get these on any level. For starters, I can't see any reason why someone would need to taste the condom, unless they were worried about getting pregnant from oral sex, in which case they aren't the sort of person sex was intended for in the first place. As for coloured, I've absolutely no clue. If I had to compile a list of ridiculous and humiliating-looking things I've encountered in my lifetime, both cocks and condoms would make it into the top ten. Throwing a bright, garish colour into the mix seems like the worst idea in history. You may as well scrawl a pair of school-boy cartoon tits on it while you're at it.

Anyway, after much deliberation, I made my selection (Boots own, if you're interested, but I went with the extra safe as a happy compromise), took them to the counter, and tried to look neutral and aloof as they were scanned through. At the conclusion of the purchase all the disapproving woman left to harass a fourteen year old trying to buy a porn mag at W. H. Smith's next door, and I left, glad that I wouldn't have to repeat the experience for the next six years, until moths eat through the ones in my wallet and I have to buy another packet.