19

Just over seven years ago, in our after lunch registration, our form teacher announced that London had won it's Olympic bid and would be hosting the games in the summer of 2012. I found the news only marginally less exciting that I found it up until my epiphanic viewing of Danny Boyle's opening ceremony (see previous) but what did fascinate me was thinking about the date itself. 2012? I'd be...two years into University (being a precocious little sod I'd already assumed University would be an inevitability). I'd be a hip and happening semi-adult, able to drink and drive and put my penis inside women with reckless abandon (though not, I reasoned, at the same time, even if the image of myself perishing in a car accident clutching a whiskey bottle with a screaming hooker on my lap did have a certain poetic appeal).

And now 2012 is here - and in only a few hours time, I'm turning twenty. Sitting in registration, dreaming up morbidly awesome car-crashes, I was twelve. The entirety of my teenage existence lies sandwiched somewhere between these moments - every drink I've had, every woman I've failed to cop off with, every stomach-full of half-digested gunk I've ejected into a friend's garden hedge is about to be filed away in the defunct 'teenaged' folder of my memory, consigned to the foggy ruins of time. A bit like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the first Indiana Jones film.

At these junctures, it's customary (for me at least) to look back, take stock and think 'did I get what I wanted? Did I succeed?' But it's hard to quantify what succeeding as a teenager might look like. At twelve, I'm sure I had no idea. Beyond a few treasured goals such as 'grow a moustache' and 'touch a breast' I had no wider scheme in mind, no sense of a bar I was reaching for. So I don't need to feel guilty about not achieving some standard I'd set myself.

Yet if there was something I'd thought I would have gained, it was a sense of having arrived. I felt sure that at some point during the next seven years I'd have worked out that special trick it takes to really 'do' life, and I wouldn't have to think about living; it would come naturally. But now I'm almost twenty, I can confidently attest that there has been no point in which I thought life was getting easier. It's fucking difficult, man. I still don't even know what trousers we're supposed to wear.

In Martin Amis's novel The Rachel Papers, the main character, Charles Highway, creates the narrative of his life on the eve of his twentieth birthday from diaries and journals. What he ends up with is a rather limp story of a past love affair, along with an awful lot of himself being a pretentious, filthy-minded little arse. But maybe this is the point. I can't say I've succeeded at anything in particular, but I've fulfilled a lot of the teenage stereotypes. I've stormed upstairs and slammed doors, worn the same pants for weeks at a time, lusted aimlessly, written tiresomely wank teenage poetry, and generally pratted about. Holden Caulfield would be proud of me. Maybe it's doing these things that point of the whole venture.

And If I may be permitted a pinch of earnestness on the edge of my innocence, maybe it's not about 'arriving' during your teenage years, but all the ways in which you don't. And please kill me now, because that is the most awful thing I've ever written. Dear God. I'm am sorry x x x

Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants

After watching almost four hours of Olympic opening ceremony last night I've woken up with one abiding impression; fuck other nations. No, seriously, fuck them. What other nation on Earth can claim to come even vaguely close to the sheer ragtag madcap spangled brilliance of the British Isles? France? Fuck off. Go sit in the corner with an onion or something. No, don't get up til I say so. Don't even fucking look round. I'm not kidding.

I haven't written anything on the blog for an embarrassingly long while, and one of the reasons for this was apathy. Sure, I'd spent a good few dozen posts honing and establishing a serenely satirical, comedically ranting style. I had the Platt-blog framework down to pat. I'd take a topic, get a bit angry about it, make a few jokes, clangingly drop in a masturbation metaphor to please the hardcore fans, and the job was done. Except after a while, I ended up looking at things and thinking, you know, what's the point? Why bother?

Over the last few weeks I've tried desperately to think of something to say about the Olympics that's worth people taking a two minute detour from their Facebook feeds to read, and I just couldn't. Too corporate and shonkey to be praised, too earnest and genuinely heartfelt to be derided, there was no side to come down on. It was like anticipating a nativity performance involving an infant relative; it will no doubt be adorable, and he's put too much into it for you not be be proud of him, but he can't sing for shit and even under his shepherd's robe you can still see the gentle bulge of his budding man-tits. I had no angle to take.

And then I watched the ceremony. And it was amazing. It was inspiring. And it shook me to the core because it did what nothing about the preparation thus far has been able to do; remind us that, hey, wait a minute, we're fucking Britain.

Amongst all the run-up furore - the G4S debacle, the unsold stadium, the thousands of spare football tickets - and all the godawful marketing bollocks, it was hard to shake the infamously pessimistic self-image we've had of ourselves of late. Welcome to Britain, we seemed to be saying; our economy's shit, we're run by dickheads, and everything we do feels a bit second-rate, but don't be too mean about us and we'll promise to stop Phil Collins from emigrating again.

What I loved about the ceremony was that it started out predictably - a large spectacle show that illustrated a rather earnest aspect of our national history and ended up just being a series of raised fingers to the rest of the world. It's as if Danny Boyle did the whole countryside/industrial revolution transformation bit, looked around, saw the pleasant but not overtly astounded faces of the other nations and just wait; well, you know what, fuck it. We've got James Bond. James fucking Bond. And the Queen. In a helicopter. Parachuting. Yeah, fuck you. And you know what else? Free healthcare. That right, free motherfucking healthcare. And Voldemort. Fighting Mary Poppins. Fucking eat it, you bastards! And look! We've got Mr. Bean! And the Rolling Stones! And the Sex Pistols! And Alex Turner! And a Beatle! In the flesh! Are you watching France?!! Are you paying attention. Drink us in, you mothers! Drink, you inferior people of the world, you vermin, you slugs, drink in the might of this great nation! Kneel before us, maggots, kneel before us and DRINK!!!


What made it all the better was the knowledge that, had France been made the hosts in our place, they'd have fucked it up. They'd have got the Cirque de Soleil in, and some teenager with a piano, and a bunch of infants in wigs singing about diplomacy, and it would have been wank. You want to have a killer opening ceremony for the future, France. I've got your best bet right here. Daft Punk, Asterix and Croissants. On a motorcycle. In berets. You'd be set.

Green-Eyed Monsters

Regular visitors might have noticed I've kept pretty schtum throughout 2012 so far. The short answer is I've been quite busy. I co-directed a play. I edited a newspaper. I wrote a play meself, which is *SHAMELESS PLUG* being put on this May*. And during the bits in-between I was so bloated by my own arty smugness I could only sit breathing in the guff of my own farts and demanding sexual favours off my more star-struck acquaintances. But that's beside the point. In the eyes of my mother, and of society, all of this amounts to precisely nothing, because I should have spent the time applying for internships.

It was with surprise that, a few months ago, I first heard of the concept of the internship - heard it discussed, no less, not as some foreign novelty but as something that's been familiar to us since birth, like water or gravity. It took me a while to work out what an ‘internship’ was. I though it was the sort of thing you sent off empty Coco-Pops packets for. By the time I finally figured it out people were already mourning the application period’s passing - pining after the halcyon days when you could experiment with the font of your CV at your leisure. Then I went on my careers service website, found out that applying meant filling in a form, and abandoned all hope. It clearly wasn't meant to be.

It’s only now that I’m beginning realise what a grievous career error this has been. Actually, I didn’t realise I even had a career. As it turns out, I’ve had one for the last nineteen years - since I was born, in fact. And you have as well. Every moment up until this one should have been a calculated move toward furthering my professional life for the better, and having been temporarily distracted by prancing and scribbling, I’ve just taken a massive detour down fuck-up alley.

Now, I’ll have a pause at this moment and acknowledge it – yes, I’m speaking from the viewpoint of a tosspot English student, a student who’s never had to earn a penny in his life, who’s off gallivanting around with books and acting and crumpets at the taxpayer’s expense. I know all that. And a large degree of my issues with fixation upon job applications and CV’s is because I Don’t Know How To Be A Grown-up And Don’t Really Want To Try. A good kick up the arse and a ticking off by society is probably just what the doctor ordered for me.

But part of me resents this utter obsession, on all sides, upon the career, upon making money. This isn’t a particularly new viewpoint, but I think it’s gaining more traction during the recession.

The recession is teaching us to be obsessed by money. We’re in a time of Economic Hardship, says society. Look at the failing banks, look at the failing businesses. We need to counter that. We need to scrimp and save. We need to count every penny.

In one way this mindset is good, because it teaches us all to be more practical about money, which is a lesson we could all (and especially tosspot English students) do with. But it starts becoming poisonous at the point at which it pervades every discussion or debate about the way society is run.

When the government was arguing its case for collectively fucking over every academically promising teenager in the country through the raising of university tuition fees, the two main points offered up where these; one, one, no graduate would have to pay a penny of this before they were earning over £20,000, and two, the economic advantage in terms of earning power graduates gained outweighed the cost. Both of these arguments portrayed university as little more than an investment, a small purchase you made for the promise of a larger overall return in the future. 'Feeling the pinch? Fancy a few extra coppers to line your pockets? Try University®, the time-tested cash-generating solution, for only £9000 a year! Sit back and watch your savings groooooooooow!'

Which is a terrible way to view education – education, a concept which, surprisingly, doesn’t intrinsically involve money at all. If I’m honest with myself, I know the reason I and most other people went to University was this prospect of higher earning – but in my more sentimental moments, I like to think I’m here for other reasons too. You know, reasons like gaining knowledge, or having the opportunity to do things like edit a newspaper and put on a play, or working out what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. And I’m naive enough to believe that university can provide these things, and should do.

Raising a nation of young people fixated upon money and the process of earning it can be a dangerous thing. It might teach us all to be more pragmatic, yes, but what does the breeding of an obsession lead to? On the only hand, you’ll have among the toward the lower end of the economic spectrum a generation convinced that they don’t have any chance at improving their lot in life because they didn’t have a public school/posh university education, becoming resentful and apathetic as a result; whilst at the higher end a generation who see society as nothing but a system of monetary gains and losses that needs to be exploited at the expense of others. How anyone expects people to be happy and good under such a model is beyond me.

Now, I don’t really know what I want to do as a career. To be honest, I’d quite like to carry on for a bit with the prancing and scribbling and see where it takes me, but suggesting as such to my parents is like telling them I’m going to spent my life rubbing my cock-end against a radiator and hope people pay me for it, so I’m a little wary of saying so. But nevertheless, I think this desire is something that should always be okay to say, and something that society should allow for. Prancing idiot I might be, but I’d rather live in a nation of prancing idiots than ‘aspiring investment bankers’ any day.

P.S. In the event that I ever do cave and send off my application to Goldman Sachs this blog will have to be deleted. And in which case you never heard of me. So shush.

*15th to the 19th of May, at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, in case you were wondering

Sherlock - A Study in Harlots

Have you watched the new 'Sherlock' yet? You really should. It has tits! Well, not really. Maybe a bit of side tit. A little cleft. Not much worth buffering for. But I was watching it with my parents, so the effect was heightened somewhat. It felt a little like seeing Lucy Pinder enter during a Victorian funeral. I could feel my Dad's mutton-chops bristle.

Then, all of a sudden, as I was loosening my breeches a little to accommodate the excitement, the dead six year old broke through the lid of its coffin, pointed a rotting finger at her and cried 'Sexism!', and I thought I should probably put my stovepipe away.

Sexism! The elephant in the room. Actually it's an elephant in the room that some people keep trying to point out, and others keep trying to ignore, whilst still more stand up and claim that the elephant stands for strong family values and the natural order of things, whilst it stumbles around bumping into furniture. It's a divisive elephant.

The elephant is present at this funeral (at this point both metaphors have completely broken down, so just ignore them) because of what the makers of the show have done with the character Irene Adler. Simply a bit of a vamp in the source material, she appears in the modern adaptation as a dominatrix with Sapphic tendencies, taking her kit off for the first scene in an attempt to throw poor Sherlock, changing his text alert tone to an orgasmic sigh, using her measurements as the code to unlocking her personal safe, etc, etc. Some key grievances here (plus lovely spoilers);

• Her powers are sexual rather than intellectual. She's clearly smart, but no match for any of the rational men - outwitted by Sherlock and getting Moriarty to help her out with the trickier bits of her plan. She uses raw sexuality as her prime, but only real weapon.
• In the end, her plan is foiled as a direct result of her attraction to Sherlock, who, though he spends a few days moping earlier in the episode when he believes her to be dead, never succumbs to such emotional fripperies.
• The episode ends with her in a hijab, knealing down, about to be beheaded, which could almost symbolise her rightful punishment for her reckelss, immoral ways and the ultimate assertion of patriarchal authority. Then it turn out one of them is Sherlock in disguise, and her life is saved. By a man.

There are several ways you could respond to this. You could say 'It's just a bit of harmless fun.' This would be the stupid response, but if you're a Sun reader you should probably just stop here. However, if you had a least a few spare brain cells and a little typing time, you could probably mount a nicely robust defence of the episode. You could argue she was an enlightened, modern woman, using her sexuality to her advantage. You could go further; you could say that the episode was actually subversively feminist, in delivering the message that in a world dominated by patriarchal and bureaucratic authorities (notice that no other women occupy positions of dominance in the episode - it's pretty much a Sherlock/Mycroft/Moriary cock-fight) raw sexuality is the only power that she has access to, alienated and disenfranchised from any other method of asserting power. You could argue that, though she is indeed bested, one woman manages single-handedly to bring the government, and the country's best detective, to its knees. You could have a go, basically.

But I'm not here to call it either way. I'm just saying, it is possible to call it either way.

Feminism is a deeply complex ideological sphere, which involves intricate and often directly conflicting branches of thought. Which means that, at this level, the debate has progressed past the point of determining whether something is 'sexist' or not.

There's things that can be labelled sexist, but these are things that have an agenda, or that can be shown to be actively contributing to negative stereotypes and attitudes about women, or even that clearly betray prejudices on the behalf of the creators. When it gets to this level, where the sexual politics are contentious and blurred, we're cannot apply simple demarcation. It's more nuanced than that. We can look at the individual parts and try to discern what they say or imply about the role of women in society; we could even say that something contains sexist/misogynist elements. But we can't say Sherlock is sexist. As the master himself would agree, the evidence doesn't add up. Even if that bit at the end was just fucking ridiculous. It's not Doctor fucking Who, Stephen Moffat. Try harder.

This was supposed to be an anniversary post, but I got distracted. By breasts. It'll come eventually, don't fret.

Merry Smithsmas!

Well, Christmas has come early. Yes Ladies, you can stop line-dancing in nothing but furry boots and dousing each-other in golden syrup (at least that's what I imagine you get up to when you're not reading my blogs) and gather round the monitor, because the Bunyip is back. And wishing you a merry one.

I do this sincerely. I like Christmas. That is to say, I like it a rational amount. I'm not one of these people who announce to the room that I'm feeling 'all Christmassy' in late November and keep getting up to put Nat King Cole on Spotify. These people are generally the sort who think show tunes are a good choice for a pre-drinking soundtrack and feel frightened when they don't recognise a song being played in a club, and clap and bark like seals when they do. Those people. But it's November. November is for human music.

In essence, I feel about Christmas how I feel about the Smiths. I'd like them more if other people didn't like them entirely too much.

Like Christmas, the Smiths can be responsible for a thoroughly good time. It took me a while to get into them, however, because for years, judging by the manner in which the name was uttered, I assumed 'The Smiths' was a codeword for a love egg that certain trendy people kept gently buzzing against their prostate. It's impossible to talk about them without encountering the kind of quasi-devotional bollocks usually only found in the context of certain faiths. Only a couple of hours ago, an article on an entirely tangential subject could include the detail 'her weekly visits to church were replaced by a new house of worship, the monthly Smiths disco in Manchester (the hymns are better, apparently)'. You suspect she's only sort of joking. In the light of this, you can't just enjoy the music; you must be 'saved' by it. This sort of thing haunts the Guardian's music section (often tainted by its presence up the arsehole of itself) like a particularly fishy case of the clap. One reviewer's nostalgic lookback at Meat is Murder from their 'Favourite Album' series contains the line 'If you were a teenager in the 80s, perhaps – what are the chances? – misunderstood and alone in a fraying household in a northern city with only books and records to save you, well, you might have fallen for them too'. Misunderstood! In the North! Drop your wilting marigolds and save her, Morrisey! Another, which doesn't even appear to have been prompted by anything other that sheer circle-jerkery, argues they made 'a virtue out of eschewing the epic and documenting in hyper-realistic fashion the rhythms and textures of daily life. In 1983, when the Smiths first started playing shows outside Manchester, to stand up for ordinariness – as they did, most forcefully, with their name itself – was a bold statement. It seemed a refusal of the sartorial overload and yacht-rock opulence of most chart pop.' What prophets! Excuse me whilst I orgasm into the Hatful of Hollow sleeve-notes.

Both these bugbears - Christmas and the Smiths - came to a head in November during the infamous John Lewis ad campaign, and for once I was thoroughly on the side of Saint Nick. After the horrid ad machine used a licensed Smiths song, the fanbase spat its chips. The Guardian immediatly shat out a fevered, apocalyptic response, which conceived of the song's use as akin flogging roman crockery with Jesus' face on it. 'Those left standing wondered how The Smiths, of all the anti-consumerist, anti-Thatcherite and anti-establishment bands of the 1980s, allowed a song so clearly about non-material varieties of desire to be used to part us from our festive cash.' (I'm guessing it's because they fancied the dollar, but who knows). 'That song is, definitively, not about wanting things. (Author hint: it is) Nor is it about the cosiness of family life and our fantasies of the perfect Christmas. It is a raw, painful song about alienation and unfulfilled longing, not duvets and crockery and baubles.' Well, that's one interpretation. As he never states the object of his desire, we're free to speculate that what he actually wants is a bunch of really nifty John Lewis bed-linen, making the advert entirely in-keeping with the Smiths' ethical standpoint. If they licensed the song, let it be used to flog tat. Who the fuck cares. You know why I like the Smiths? Because they make nice music. End of. Use it to advertise infanticide if you want. I couldn't give a purple toddler.

So, back to Christmas. I like it. I hate the hype and excitement surrounding it, but I like it. Not being a Christian nor an under 12 year old, it's hard to state what part of it appeals to me. I suppose I enjoy it in the sense of it being a festival to stave off the ravages of a harsh winter, as it was enjoyed in the past. As such I prefer a sombre, introspective response to festivities. My favourite carol - indeed, one of the few I can stand - is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen because with its sonorous and melancholic tone it presents Christmas with an edge of 'oh-christ-I-hope-God-gives-us-a-plentiful-spring-and-we-aren't-forced-to-eat-the-children-to-survive-like-last-time'.

So, in this spirit, I recommend that you spend this evening quietly supping on a tankard of mead. Then, wrap yourself in a sheepskin, stand in the middle of the nearest field, and stare at the rime-coated horizon, contemplating a universe ruled by a vengeful God and devoid of reason and meaning. Then go home, baste your tits in Tate&Lyle and go line-dancing. You'll have a belter.

Nice Pube-beard, Monkey Boy

Money. Did I miss the meeting on money? Was there a class everyone went to, or an assembly, or a notice read out in registration or something? Was it on a Thursday? I could never be arsed making it in on time on a Thursday. Thursdays are the disoriented pensioner of the week. It’s easy not to give a shit about them.

But yeah, I've got no idea how money works.

This would seem a perfect (well, not perfect; I'm not that arrogant. Plus I definitely said 'Thursday' too many times) segue into a blog about the incomprehensible financial situation Europe is in at the minute, but I'm afraid I'm pitching my ignorance a little way above the 'not-getting-the-whole-Euro-thing' level. I don't understand money at all. Full stop.

Like, what is it? Isn't it all done with computers now? What happened to the paper squares and metal circles when we get to the bits where it is done on computers? Who pays the people who make the money? Are they even paid in money? If I judiciously draw a Hitler 'tash on the queen and print NICE PUBE-BEARD, MONKEY BOY in capitals on Darwin's head every time I find a tenner, how long before I'm arrested? And for what? Treason? And so on.

As such, I find it hard to jump on the whole banker-bashing bandwagon that's been rolling around for a couple of years now. I've no doubt the bankers are fucking us over, but all it would only take one twonk in a tie and a few hours of G.C.S.E Economics under his belt to ask 'but how are they really responsible?' before I crumbled and clutched him by his sensibly-chosen Marks & Spencer corduroys and begged that he asked me something about poetry instead. Because I've no idea.

All this means I've developed an uneasy relationship with money over the years; a confused hatred mingled with a sense of awe and love at its inaccessible omnipotence. Such as you might feel towards a molesting parent, or God.

I've been able to muddle by more or less unscathed by this ignorance, but it is troubling. I bet my bank can't even imagine the power it has over me. It sends me statements every so often, and administrative letters about online accounts and passwords and other crap, and I never read them. They send me forms and I never return them. If they suddenly announced a mandatory £1000 quid fine for anyone in the star sign Leo, for example, I'd just lie down and take it. For all I know it's a pretty reasonable deal.

That's the other thing about money; we never talk about it.

Talking about money is one of the few nationwide faux-pas we hold. I guess it’s because we still have a class system we’re all desperate to ignore, and we float around on the notion that everyone’s basically okay and poor people are only found in Charles Dickens novels and the smellier parts of Africa, but to bring up relative wealth and incomes is to blunder into an upmarket dinner party with your cock hanging out whistling the German national anthem. It’s just not British.

Now; I’m middle-class. Almost painfully so. I’m Pesto on Rye. I’m a Volvo on a sandstone driveway. I’m David Mitchell and Andrew Marr in a bath of pine-nut hummus. Despite all my efforts as a social pioneer and class crusader, I’ve ended up with friends both from home and at Uni who are, by and large, in a similar economic bracket. There’s a scale in there, sure, but not a huge one. But here’s the thing. I’ve no idea how much money any of them have.

I’m by no means hard-off, but not having a job, and having parents that have always made a point of only giving me what I need to subsist on (which they are of course entirely right in doing – hi Mum!) I can’t be cavalier about how much I spend. What I didn’t count on was the sheer amount of off the cuff expense Uni life would demand.

“£5 quid club entry? Of course! £7 for a student play? Sure! £10 for a birthday present? Why not? £12 quid for a place on a curry night? Fucking bargain! Tell you what, in future, why don’t I just shove all the notes in my wallet up my sphincter every morning and then I can just waddle around whilst you pick them up whenever they flop out! Job’s a good ‘un!”

I really need to be better at saying no to people, but it’s hard, because knowing I’m not particularly poorer than they are, to imply that they’re a frivolously privileged cash-crapper seems unfair. For all I know they could spend every holiday saving kids from burning buildings or tossing off pigs into buckets just to be able to seem carefree in term time. What we could do with, really, is a little more clarity.

In the meantime, I’m debating taking my anorak and my cardboard sign and shacking up with the big issue seller across the street. Even though I know that if anyone does shell out anything I’ll just confusedly stare at it like a monkey holding an iPhone dock before spending it on Tennents Super. Life is grand.

How To Protest (Do The Igor)

So I missed two months. Yeah. Do you mind if we just forgive and forget? Kiss and make up? Stop bullshitting and get on with it? Hear, Hear.

Something very strange is starting off in America. I'm not entirely sure, but it looks like...wait...people protesting against large corporations...demanding a living wage...free healthcare...free schooling...hang on, is this...socialism? And by socialism I mean, a vaguely left wing movement? In America? Land of the free, home of the Captain Crunch's Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Crunch with Free Handgun promotion? The same America seemingly poised on choosing between two Action-men and a female Michael Myers to be their next presidential nominee? Mind boggled readers. Mind boggled.

Yes, for the past few weeks, Wall Street has been occupied by protestors intent on chipping away at the foundations their singularly fucked-up nation is founded on. I've done my bit by sitting in my room, heartily approving, and occasionally raising my free hand in red salute whilst masturbating*. Then about a week ago, a video surfaced of an incident of profound police brutality - the unprovoked kettling and macing of several female protestors. Boo, hiss! Thought I. Then I watched it.

First thoughts; horrible, yes. Brutal, disgusting, sadistic, yes yes yes. But I couldn't keep my eyes of the woman in the centre. I mean, Jesus. That reaction.

Now, I've had the misfortune of being pepper-sprayed in the past. And I can sympathise. It fucks you up. I only had a small dose, and look at me. I did the Igor.

But watching the video over and over - watching her fall to her knees, flailing and crying like a victim of the rapture - I couldn't help thinking that it seemed to me like a good thing she'd been pepper-sprayed. I was glad it happened. I quite wanted to see it happen again.

Then, later, I stumbled across this article by Mark Ruffalo. You know Mark Ruffalo. Well, okay, you don't, but perceptive readers might sort-of recognise him as that-guy-that-was-in-that-thing-about-the-lesbinims. I quite like him. I'm looking forward to seeing him as the Hulk in the new Avengers movie. But after reading that fucking awful gushing first paragraph...

It was a beautiful display of peaceful action: so much kindness and gentleness in the camp, so much belief in our world and democracy. And so many different kinds of people all looking for a chance at the dream that America had promised them.

...I couldn't help thinking that it would be a good thing if Mark Ruffalo was pepper-sprayed. I'd be glad if it happened. I wanted to see it really pretty badly. To the point that I was considering setting up a charity fund to try and make it happen.

At first I thought this was just simple schadenfreude. But it isn't. It's because modern day protesters are fucking annoying.

Over the past year I've attended several protests (well, three, and one was more of a sissy march, but if I remain vague I look more hardcore) and have come away with little other than a higher blood pressure and a greater general contempt for the species. I've made my views clear on the use of violence at other points, so I won't go into them here, but anyway; here's five things you can do to avoid protesting like a dick.

1.) Stop being happy

Let me lay it out for you; you're protesting. Protesting is, according to Wikipedia, 'an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations'. By definition, you're unhappy. Unhappy to the point that your sole objective for a period of time is demonstrating how unhappy you are. So no music, no singing (sober chanting only), no smiling. And especially no fucking hugging. It's hard to take seriously people's grievances when there's 14 year old girls clutching at each-other's backflab in the background.

2.) Dress appropriately

By 'appropriately' I'm not talking anything specific. 'Not like a twat' is your only real guideline. Here's a simple exercise; picture a 'protestor' in your mind. Congratulations. You've thought of this guy.

In a perfect world this exercise would be pointless, because protester should look like anybody, precisely because they could be anybody. But after decades of cultural reinforcement we've ended up with a protester stereotype. Look, I don't really care how you wish to express yourself stylistically. It's just that if you turn up to a march with dreadlocks and a keffiyeh then I'm going to hate you, no matter how much I agree with your argument. You want to change the world? Get a haircut.

3.) Be specific

The protests I did attend this year were all to do with goverment's raising of tuition fees and cutting of the EMA, but in the midst of things this was easy to lose sight of, because I kept seeing signs saying things like 'ORGANISE A GENERAL STRIKE' and 'ONE SOLUTION: REVOLUTION' and 'CARVE OUT CAMERON'S EYES AND THEN GO FOR HIS KIDS'. It's a bit like trying to advertise a new cold medicine with phrases like 'CURES BLINDNESS' and 'MAKES YOUR BALLS MASSIVE' on the box. If you confuse a coherant and pressing argument with vague and hysterical pretensions toward anarchy of revolution you're only going to rob the protest of any sort of clarity and force. Stick to the party line.

4.) Don't succumb to the narrative

You know why Mark Ruffalo's article was annoying? He's succumbed to the narrative. He's forgotten that he's a mere human being amoungst a crowd of other mere human beings protesting against inequality between them and a further group of mere human beings, and instead sees himself as a member of a heavenly group of benevolent meta-people rallying against the forces of darkness and money and other baddy type things. People need to stop aggrandising. There's enough injustice in the world without needing to blow it all up into some massive binary soap opera. Yes, there are isolated examples of police brutality that are appaling and need exposing, but the police aren't the long arm of the Establishment, they're just a large disparate group of people given the task of maintaining order with virtually no training or direction. If we paint them as faceless henchmen of the order, we look silly. Then they get away with murder.

5.) Did I mention the Kiffeyeh's? I did? Well, just...stop.

These points are important, not because they annoy me personally (always a pretty good reason in my eyes) but because they're some of the main reason protests get ignored and derided. If you want to get a point across, show some maturity. Otherwise people only really want to see you get pepper-sprayed and do the Igor.

*Just kidding mum!