Single Subject

Yeah yeah I know my last blog was about music but this is important shut up okay right so.

We all have those songs that remind us of people, right? Like there's songs that you pop on and, almost instantly, there's images and memories running riot of times past - good or bad.

What about, though... what about those songs that strongly remind you of just one person? And always will?

There's a lot of songs like that in my head, too. Some of them are easier to talk about than others.

In The Living Years by Mike & The Mechanics will never, ever not make me think about my dad. It was one of his favourite songs. The lyrics depict a somewhat hostile relationship between a father and a son, which lasts all the way to the older man's dying day - the regrets that follow knowing that things were left unsaid, and the younger man looking at his own newborn son and wondering if it will play out the same way.

I think it goes without saying that my father and I had that kind of relationship. Until he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, we didn't see eye-to-eye at all; he didn't know how to treat me, when I was a child. We got on a lot better when I grew into a man, and we weren't living under each other's feet all day.


Goodnight Elisabeth by Counting Crows evokes the memory of an old flame. Their name isn't even Elisabeth. It just...fits. Perfectly. Not in a good or bad way. It's just the way the cards were dealt, and the way life went. Bittersweet, sure, and there's regrets there - but we learn. We live and we learn and that's how we get better.

Tainted Love by Soft Cell will ALWAYS make me think of my buddy Josh from school. There's no way we'd ever hit the pub without listening to this in his house on his Technics sound system at least once. Truth e told I sometimes preferred the pre-gathering to the actual pub trip. As much as I
actually hate the song (I REALLY DO), it always reminds me of good times.

Colorful by Rocco DeLuca was probably written about an ex-girlfriend of mine that I am still on good terms with. It's just true. I mean sure there's some people that it MIGHT be about, some people it MIGHT remind me of, but there's only one that comes to mind literally every time. Drink like it's water, girl.

Short Skirt Long Jacket by Cake reminds me of a good friend of mine from Bradford. The first time we met, she was wearing a short skirt and a long jacket. The song came out later that year, and I played the song over the pone to her (I'd left college at that point). She loved it. Also she always said that she'd love to have fingernails that shine like justice.

Show Me How To Live by Audioslave - my wonderful friend Kristina from Oregon. We were in the car with her mother, and the only radio station we could get along the Wilamette was the local rock station. So her mom spent almost five minutes laughing at the pair of us as we tried to sing along to this...

The Dambusters March by Eric Coates, while evoking the Dambusters themselves, also reminds me of the inimitable Mark Edwards. Medwards as you may know him. If you need to ask why then you clearly don't know him...

Kings & Queens by 30 Seconds To Mars can't help but make me think of my girlfriend. One of the ways in which I discovered she was a keeper was when I went to the cinema with her, before we ever got together. It was to see Despicable Me. (Yes, the first one.) A trailer at the beginning was for some owl cartoon (Legend of the Guardians maybe?) and it featured this song - and the fact that she didn't disown me immediately the moment I jumped up onto the top ot the steps, threw my arms opened and bellowed "We are THE KIIIIIINGS!" ...well, you know. That's a good acid test. Love you baby boo.

Veteran Of The Psychic Wars by Blue Oyster Cult - well this one makes me think of my spirit guide. It seems to be about him. Which is a hard thing to say about a song that paints such a bleak and hard picture...but it is ultimately a song about strength and survival rather than suffering, and I hope he'd see it that way. (Yes, my spirit guide is a guy, not an animal. Yes, I am more of a scientist than a spiritualist. Yes I know. Hush your gums.)

Snuff by Slipknot reminds me of someone very specific. If you know the song then you may understand why I won't go into details. It is a hard song, a hurting song. I doubt the person even knows this is how I feel, or what they would do about it if they did. It's not really something I want to find out, either.

Music makes things easier, for me. It always has. Emotionally speaking I find it difficult to process complexity. It's whyt I always try and approach situations with my logic hat on, at the detriment of...well...you can imagine. So when I form emotional attachments I suppose it is only understandable that I find music that resonates with that attachment. It makes it easier for me to describe and decode.

Well. There we have it. Far from an exhaustive list, but certainly a good place to start.

What's John Listening To?

Every now and then I'll do a thing where I tell you the kind of stuff that is popping up on my playlist. Often when penning anything else is a bit of a stretch.

Soooo herein is a list of the songs that are guaranteed non-skip on Spotify at this moment.

Funeral For A Friend - All Hands On Deck (pt1 & 2)
I love this - especially the second half. The progression is beautiful. I just plug this in and lose hours. Wonderful. The album this is from (Tales Don't Tell Themselves) is a concept album and I'm usually a fan of those.

JonTron - Firework
So the original is okay, if a bit saccharine. But bloody hell. JonTron just SLAYS this. Bellows it at full volume! What a bro. I love this, if only for the spirit behind it, the sheer guts required, the... determination.

Styles Of Beyond - Nine Thou (Superstars Remix)
This is a stomper. It gets played a lot during gaming sessions that involve things, well, being stomped, or otherwise trashed or demolished. Really gets the blood pumping.

Hundred Reasons - I'll Find You
Just listen to it. It absolutely rocks. The vocals just sink into your skull. The guitar gets into your soul and makes you feel alive. Pulls on bits of you that have lain dormant for so very, very long. It's my favourite Hundred Reasons song.

Salt-N-Pepa - Shoop
Go and see Deadpool. Right now.

Mutemath - Typical
This was recommended to me by a good friend of mine, and it has rapidly come to be my favourite song by the band. It just sits very well with me as a package. It's a tidy song, great in concept, and makes me sway.

Rat Boy - Move
This is another one that I got introduced to by someone else. Almost accidentally. They left their youtube list playing in my living room. Catchy as balls. I'm sure you will agree.

So what are YOU guys listening to right now?

Heaven Knows He's Miserable Now

Emo.

It's quite a word, isn't it? Summons up a lot of imagery. More often than not I hear it used in the perjorative sense, a dismissive term applied to something with emotional content, or someone expressing something considered too sensitive. It's a symptom of societal pressure to never wear your heart on your sleeve - nobody wants to know, it's awkward, don't be so emo about it.

I asked a bunch of folks on Facebook - what's the last song you heard that you'd describe as emo?

There were some joke answers of course. I'd expect nothing less from my friends. (My personal favourites were Elmo's Song from Sesame Street and Rod Hull & Emu.) Then the serious answers came out, things like Linkin Park, early Fall Out Boy, bits of Evanescence, so on.

What I was waiting to hear, never came out - but then, perhaps my definition of emo is a bit different.

Folks, the most emo song I have heared in recent times is Hotline Bling.

Let's take a look at some of the lyrics:

Ever since I left the city, you 

Got a reputation for yourself now

Everybody knows and I feel left out

Girl you got me down, you got me stressed out

Cause ever since I left the city, you

Started wearing less and goin' out more

Glasses of champagne out on the dance floor

Hangin' with some girls I've never seen before 

...so basically Drake...left. And now this girl that apparently used to message him is having fun and living her own life, and he feels she shouldn't be or that he has the right to stop her or...something?

I mean that's just sad. Like at least Simple Plan and their ilk are talking about being actually hurt. This guy is whining because a girl he had some kind of relationship with actually has friends that he doesn't know? ...really?

I mean this is bordering on creepy control-abuse territory.

Fact is though, seems like this girl left him in the dust, and so he's whining to himself. He's so sad that he's forgotten how to dance - an artist usually so filled with swagger and confidence, a man who deliberately tries to surround himself with beautiful women as symbols of his success, reduced to whining about his ex having a life.

THAT is pathetic.

So shout-out to my pimply rock gods who are sad because a girl left them but don't dance like an idiot to demonstrate their chagrin.

There's Your Hoverboard

So I did a blog a while ago about technologies and changes that I can't understand not currently existing. You can find that right here.

Well, I've been thinking about it - and I have my theories.

Technological advances happen in a concertina fashion. You can see it during and after wars.  Sometimes there's fallow years - or more precisely, I should say, there's fallow years in perceivable, publically shared technology. Telephone technology, for example, or cars.

Fact of the matter is, people find it difficult to accept technology. They find it hard to adapt when the pace of change goes down certain routes. Like once everyone has a mobile phone, most things that involve that phone become a lot easier to accept - but that jump to mobile phones in the first place took a long time and a lot of ridicule. Remember the pictures of the high finance guys from the late eighties with the ridiculous shoulder pads and the phones the size of kettles?

Car technology? Much the same. We've used the same engines for decades. They're obsolete already. Have been for a while. Talk about a new car with an internal combustion engine that has seventy quadrillion miles per gallon? Raised eyebrows but possible. Talk about a car powered by a li-ion battery? Huuuh, not sure about that...

The human appreciation for advancement, and its ability to accept it, is unfortunately directly tied into how things develop. Science requires funds, funds come from governments and businesses, and those things ultimately have to care a great deal what people think.

It's an example I often give - the difference between concept cars and the cars people actually buy. Those of us who care look at concept cars and go Ooooh...then people go out and actually buy cars, and those cars barely change, year after year.

If there's a big change - people can't deal with it. If the company doesn't like taking the big loss to the nose, then the change won't be repeated. That's the nature of risk - see, now it's no longer a scientific advancement, it's a risk.

People don't get on with big change. They need things to be comfortable. Look at GM food. We've been genetically modifying food since we started planting it - but because that process took centuries, it's cool, whereas directly toying with the genetic code of something isn't. Nuclear technology still makes people very uncomfortable, and folks still seem to have difficulties with renewable energy sources.

More than anything, public opinion shapes where our research goes - and 98% of people don't skate, haven't skated and don't take interest in skating.

There's your hoverboard.

Nevermind the fact that most people have a computer in their pocket with a highly sensitive touchscreen control mechanism, hugely high-definition graphics, a processor speed undreamed of thirty years ago, that can also make phone calls and act as its own modem.

We mostly use them to send each other smiling poos anyway.

It Was Better When...

We've all seen those posts on Facebook about how much better it was back in the 90s/80s/70s/dark ages.

Does that annoy anyone else?

I mean, there's the airbrushing, for a start. It's pure confirmation bias - the tendency to overlook evidence or arguments that counter the point one makes.

Take for example this whole fad of "Like this if you (did things that kids in the eighties tended to do) AND YOU TURNED OUT OKAY!".

1) Are we implying that people aren't turning out okay today? Like, specifically because they didn't watch Thundercats or whatever? Can we seriously make that claim without producing evidence?

2) There's some folks who did all the little things, played football with jumpers for goalposts, didn't have mobile phones, et cetera, that DIDN'T turn out okay. They just didn't. Coming home when the streetlights go out and riding a three-speed bike with clickers on the spokes doesn't mystically protect you from the traumas of life.

Yes, there are stresses in modern life, and there are things that we can claim to be signs of moral degenration or collapse of the fabric of society. Spoilers: these things have existed for a long time in different stages.

Has anyone else seen the photographs of people on the bus today with their phones, and the contrasting picture of folks in the 50s all staring at newspapers?

People are people are people. People have always BEEN people. We have different means of communicating and exhanging ideas, of partaking in media and sharing things with each other. We're still people. Some of us are assholes. Some of us do things that others think of as rude which aren't, on reflection, all that bad. Such has been true since the stone age.

"People these days" has been a sentence uttered in every decade. People feel less safe year on year, despite the fact that crime has generally been on the descent for decades. The insecurities are continuous. Our generation were better than this new one, of course. The last one were too old, but our one is fine. Et cetera, ad nauseum.

I ignore the posts about how good the past was, usually. I just put them behind me. It's not worth the fight; besides, we have bigger things to worry about.

Just think though. Each time one of those posts come up, it's not a genuine study of how good things used to be. It's a despair at how things are now; and it's easier to look back through rose glasses and sigh, than actually change things.

Drowning In It

The UK government's projected deficit for the 2015/2016 budget is £69 billion.

Projected revenue is £673b - that is, the income the government takes. Meanwhile, the government's spending is projected to be £742b. The debt is owed toward a wide variety of individual funds, 35% of which are overseas; debt is an asset, and so it gets passed around and sold just like any other financial instrument.

Let's be real. These kind of numbers are big. They're not global-fiscal big but they are big nonetheless.

Government finances don't work the same as personal finances - something that a lot of people who advocate austerity and cuts don't realise.

You see, in your personal life, if your expenditure outweighs your income - then something has got to give, because no person has access to a near-limitless source of fiscal stimulus to buy themselves out of trouble. You reduce your expenditure, and you increase your income, and just like that - your deficit goes away. Therein is the acumen of austerity. Cut costs and increase income as best as possible.

Of course this is sometimes easier said than done. There's a certain amount of minimum spending that any human being has to do - guy's gotta eat. Just acquiring more income isn't that easy, either. As of right now the job market is still suffering, especially in my corner of these sceptered isles, and businesses (who are also still suffering) are trying to cut their costs as much as possible, so pay raises and extra hours aren't ten-a-penny.

If one could lay hands on a certain amount of resources, mind, then this would become easier - and not just in a sense of paying for bills that the income isn't covering. Many people have debts that can be paid off (and thus reduce monthly costs) - many people could make investments in business, especially those that are self employed (and thus increase monthly income). People just can't, very often, count on that cash injection.

As previously mentioned, however...government finances don't work the same as personal finances.

So perhaps I can forgive those that might think that austerity cuts are truly the best way to repair an economy. Perhaps. Up to a point. There are those that should know better - if they don't, they shouldn't be working where they are, or governing us.

This country's debt has been increasing steadily (as a percentage of our GDP) since 2001 - slowly and steadily until 2007, then rapidly and vastly increased by the global financial crisis. It is still increasing now, despite the savagery of the cuts that have already been doled out.

The fact of the matter is - just decreasing cost to make the deficit go away won't actually solve problems. A country's economy is an elastic thing, and it is a thing that can be nurtured as well as atrophied. We can emerge from this crisis with no deficit and an economy that is shot to hell, or we can look at our recovery as more long-term - and actually recover.

But that's just me.

Wide And Prejudiced

It is my belief and experience that every single person on this earth holds at least one prejudice.

More than one, usually - and that does not mean to say that everyone is a little bit racist (regardless of what the song tells you) or anything to that extent. More I am stating, with a degree of certainty, that everyone has at least one belief that is prejudicial, that is not borne out by evidence, but that is part of them and hard to even recognisea s a prejudice - let alone combat.

I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. I have several prejudices. The one I am going to be looking at, though, is my prejudice against the wealthy.

I think this is part of my raising as much as anything else. I was brought up during the time when Margaret Thatcher had her way with the economy, and when the divide between the rich and the poor just kept growing. My parents were both hard-working people, and both needed jobs. I saw very little of them; my dad in my early childhood, my mother in my tween-teen years.

I was always told by the wider world that being rich was the cure to all ills, and that everyone should shoot for that goal. Sure, there was the odd object lesson about money not buying you happiness; but each example of that was outshone by other examples, of how one needed to shoot for that new promotion, get that job, earn the respect of your peers. That was the prevailing culture.

At school, being poor was a thing to be looked down upon. It earned the derision of your peers. Despite the fact that we were children and couldn't earn our own money, we couldn't admit that we couldn't afford something. To do so was unthinkable. Rather than just say that our parents couldn't (or wouldn't) buy us the new trainers or the new game or whatever, we used to make up excuses as to why we didn't want them.

I once stood up for a friend of mine who was called some pretty fucked up names because they got school dinners paid for by the school.

It's very easy to have an unhealthy relationship with money. You may be looked down upon for it on a personal level, but hey - in business, you work for an organisation that has signed a contract stating it must try to make as much money as possible. That's corporate charter. Money, and the lust and reliance for it, is an immense evil that causes untold problems worldwide every day - and yet holds the world's economy together, in the optimistic hope that everyone's greed will somehow create a balance in which the market fixes everything.

We're told that what is good for the very rich is good for everyone. Usually we're told this by people who are fairly wealthy themselves, and this isn't an accident. We were told that trickle-down economics would benefit everyone, which it simply doesn't - the only thing that tends to trickle down is the burden of debt.

All this probably contributes to the way I feel about the wealthy. It's not a healthy thing to feel, but I feel it. I try not to let it effect how I live my life, but boy that is hard sometimes.

I feel that if one does have prejudice, it doesn't make you a bad person unless you act on it. If you try and fix it, or put it behind you and try and treat people decently regardless of your gut instinct, then it makes you a better person. If I help up someone who is my friend, isn't it more worthy of respect if I help up someone who is my enemy? We're all in possession of instinct - we defeat it every day with logic. That's what makes us better.

I have to acknowledge that how I feel is irrational. There are wealthy people who are good, both objectively and subjectively - and likewise, those who are poor can be bad. Income and resource does not dictate morality.

Still. I know it is there - but I'd rather know it is there so I can do something about it, rather than be unaware that I'm viewing the world through a flawed lens.