Amounts To Very Little

The relentless aching in my bones has returned. This time last year I took up my post in retail assistant work after a nine month (or so) break to study. I say study because that's what makes me sound clever and hard working, but I say break because that's how it actually feels. Sure, undertaking a course with a view to obtaining a degree at the end of it is no picnic, but when compared to working in retail, I'd gladly spend every waking moment sat at a desk writing things, pottering about in the kitchen, communing with others who share similar ideas on the world and how to express them through the medium of words, reading, listening to various styles of music, practising target archery and worrying about deadlines, submissions and results. Alas, that's over for another year and I'm back to living in the moment.

Designated work in a shopping environment essentially boils down to one of three things:

Distribution:
In order for people to buy things, they need to be put onto shelves; that is, the things, not the people. Pallets, cases and boxes of merchandise arrive in the unseen, enigmatic "back" of the store, oftentimes referred to as the store room, the warehouse, or the back, obviously. Then, it's up to the human workforce to unload individual units ready for availability. Once an item has been put out for general sale, it's just a matter of time before it is inevitably picked up by a customer for purchase, leaving that particular shelf space empty once again.
Ultimately, it seems the labour amounts to very little in the grand scheme of things.

Presentation:
There's no point in arranging shelves in such a haphazard manner than nobody understands what anything is, where anything is or how much anything may cost; that is, unless, of course, you just live for the mystery. Organisiation is the key here. After all, it's basic human psychology that people are more likely to buy things if they're clearly laid out in neat rows and stacks on display in perfect uniformity as opposed to having all the presentability of a 3-year-old's toy box. Occasionally, customers may change their minds about purchasing the item they currently have in their possession and, rather than return it to where they originally picked it up, discard it on the nearest shelf. (This notion has been known to fuel my favourite work-based anecdote of "the time I found someone had dumped a bottle of bleach in the middle of the drinks; oh, what irony!") The store worker has a role to keep the uniformity alive, keep shelf mess to a minimum and to make sure that products appear in the designated places and discourage children from picking up that bottle of a new kind of juice they've just seen which is obviously edible because "it's lemon". Inevitably, whilst tidying in one place, somewhere else in the massive throng of consumers, someone is causing exactly what you're trying to prevent.
Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, it seems the labour amounts to very little.

Transaction:
When all goods have been decided upon and taken successfully to the point of sales - that is, without anything having been left behind anywhere - it's time to exchange ownership of produce in lieu of currency. Many branches of super-duper-hyper-markets and several Tesco Extras across the country allow this portion of the work to be carried out by robots, thus paving the way for mass unemployment and that one day we shall come to know as "the rise of the machines". Smaller stores, independent retailers and market stalls, however, still prefer the human touch. Still, the people shouldn't do all the work; product ID numbers, in the form of black and white lines, are recognised by a red beam of light housed inside one of humanity's future oppressors. The customer makes their purchase when all items have been processed and a final tally of money owed is requested by the assistant. A single transaction can take less than a minute meaning that, once over, both customer and worker inevitably confine the event to the darkest recesses of their short-term memory where it is instantly forgotten about.
Ultimately, the labour amounts to very little, it seems, in the grand scheme of things.

As mentioned in the first paragraph of this particular bit of prose, working in retail is very much a living-in-the-moment profession. That's not to say there's anything wrong with it; heck, somebody's got to do the work at any rate and some people may prefer the lack of long-term problems to solve and not having to take work home with them as opposed to the idea of any sustained aspects of their day to day lives.

Okay, that last bit didn't really make much sense now, did it? But I don't care. These words exist here now and you just read them. You can't un-read them. Sure you can forget about them, but they'll still be here after you've gone. You can come back and read them again if you want, but nobody - absolutely nobody - can take them away or mess the order of them up. (Except maybe a malfunctioning bit of machinery.) The idea of writing, in my head, means that once a particular thought or message has been communicated, it has the opportunity to resonate within others. Novels have lasted over centuries for just that reason. Not that I'm comparing myself to Dickens or anything; for one thing, I'm still alive. For another, my ramble of crap is being hosted virtually.

I'd like to take this opportunity to cast a brief message into our unavoidable future:
ALL HAIL THE MACHINES.

The Thrill Of The Fight

I'm not really one for conflict. Anyone who personally knows me would agree with that. Well, actually, anyone who personally knows me wouldn't really know that since I tend to be so reclusive I often forget what the sun looks like. (Then again, you're not supposed to look directly at the sun anyway so please disregard that last statement.) Typically, however, whenever a spat happens to break out, be it between drunkards outside a nightclub at 3am or between girl friends who've shown up in the same shade of blue that particular night, if I'm anywhere in the vicinity I'll tend to hang around on the periphery of the congregation with my arms wrapped around my chest and a vacant stare at a nearby closed-down, burnt-out former garage or something as the token "sane one" just in case an ambulance needs calling and everybody else is too hysterical to do it... that is if I care enough to stick around at all.

Recently, close friends of mine fell victim to the idle, drunken slurs of a resident of the untamed North West. It's difficult to romanticise the events that followed, but essentially expletives were exchanged, pint glasses met pavement and hair was pulled. During this early morning heated banter (which in my head is fancy talk for "passionate disagreement" [which in my head is pussy talk for "fight"]), it's commonplace for the arguers to be assisted by an entourage who serve two functions: 1) to stand up for the relevant party and contribute anger-infused noise to "beat" the opposition, and 2) to pull their chosen fighter away from the rabble citing reasons along the lines of "they're not worth it".

Sometimes these things happen by accident; sometimes someone happens to be outside the wrong pub at the wrong time, bumping into wrong person and sharing the wrong verbal communication. Eventually, the scrap escalates so much and one or more of the participants are so drunk that you suddenly have no idea what you're fighting about anymore, other than the fact verbal communication isn't working anymore and the prospect of inflicting physical injury is on the cards now.  Of course to some people it comes naturally when just going out looking to start some kind of argument; for some, it's the thrill of the fight, rising up to the challenge of a rival.

I, however, refuse to engage in such activities wherever I can help it. This probably makes me sound like some absolute wimp with absolutely no backbone, and that's absolutely true. But I prefer to think of it in terms of how pointless it is to fight and argue when, really, we all just get one go at existence (in our respective incarnations as long as we're physically aware), clinging onto this rock that's tumbling through nothing forever and ever until we drop. Somehow, I can't help but think that life's too short.

And that's just the fight with the street stranger. Meanwhile, long-standing feuds amongst friends are still ongoing.

Putting Off Leaving

I should really be packing.

This Academic year is at its end and I'd decided that once the farewell barbeque was out of the way I might as well travel back to my spiritual point of origin. However, since no relative of mine lives in the house I grew up in anymore, I pretty much revolve around it, randomly hitting various other locations during orbit. For the most part, my summer will consist of me staying in a multitude of spare rooms with sporadic access to the internet whilst wearing clothes out of a small suitcase and working in customer service. Call me old fashioned, but I much prefer it when summer is a time for relaxing.

In all fairness, that's pretty much what I've been doing here and, I suppose, why I've subconsciously been putting off leaving in an effort to try and stay. Sure, I had various University-related engagements to tend to, but now that they're all over until the next lot start up again in mid-September, I've relied on excuses to keep me fixed in place; yesterday's barbeque was pretty much the main, and quite frankly, only one I had. Today has an air of "morning-after cleaning" about it after the bowls of half-eaten cold pastas and potato salads litter the tables, untouched trifles still sit in under blankets of cling film, plates and rubbish are overflowing from the sink and the bin in equal measure and there's a whiff of charcoal smoke still laced into last night's clothes and the wooden coffee table we naturally assumed it would be okay to put the disposable barbeques on provided we put a bit of concrete down first. Regrettably, we have no spare concrete and resorted to using a thin piece of slate. As a result, the wooden table proudly displays two black rectangles as a loving reminder of the exact position on the table where we once decided to have barbeques.

Naturally, I've not bothered to begin with the cleaning ceremony, although at the time of typing I can hear movement in the kitchen coming from my housemates. This stirs within me two thoughts: 1) I feel guilty for sitting here and not helping to clean up, and 2) I hope they save some of that leftover food as I have nothing else in the house and plan on gorging on such food for the next two days. Also the fact that I'm not cleaning the kitchen reminds me of the fact that I'm not cleaning this room, in turn remnding me that I'm not packing up the essentials for my proposed day of travelling tomorrow.

Incidentally, tomorrow marks a special occasion where I am. The almighty, hallowed bit of fire that was ignited by the sun itself in Olympia, Greece, smuggled through air-traffic customs and passed along by various people by way of golden sticks will come through the section of country which happens to exist just down the road from where I'm currently sat... at 8am. I didn't plan to stick around to see it but it's funny when shit comes together like that. Later on during the day I can then make the various train journeys from where I am now to where I'm going to spend the summer months. Therefore, that gives me some 20 hours or so to finally sort out the room, decide what to take on my travels and what to neglect for three months, polish off the last of the leftovers, clean up the rest of that kitchen mess and, if possible, find some time in which to sleep. Instead, I've been typing letters into a machine to form words that few people will ever read.

Like I said, I should really be packing.

Slightly More Optimistic Than Usual

To paraphrase that old children's song: The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray, now everyone can start complaining that it's too fucking hot rather than too fucking cold. I've used this time of yellow daylight, as opposed to grey daylight, to wear cooler clothing, stand outdoors and gaze at bees and stuff in a fairly awestruck manner. There's just something about the summer months that feel so jolly to me, which is weird since I'm pale, burn easily and tend to suffer from hayfever so badly that a single sneeze could shatter a wine glass at fifty paces. Maybe it's the potential and oft speculated, yet never actually checked out, confirmed and diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder outweighing the neck-wringing winter time with an extra dose of optimism. Maybe it's the fact that I was born in June and something deep within the season resonates with my very being. Maybe it's the fact that Eurovision's on next week (or this week [or last week and I need to catch up {more brackets in brackets!}]) and it's always fun to spend one of the first nights of summer doing exactly the same as what I've done for the last six months - stayed in, watched TV and not gone outdoors.

Outdoor time seems more appropriate nowadays though and these once depressing babbles of nothing will hopefully soon transform into slightly more optimistic babbles of nothing. Case in point, this. I've spent the entire day trying to think of something to ramble off onto this thing for your eyes to look at and your brain to attempt to make sense of, but there's a reason why I'm suddenly typing this out at 7:45pm rather than any "normal" time. The muse of creativity has escaped me, or it never even passed by in the first place, but I probably saw it in the background as an extra on Casualty or something last week. (I'd just like to clarify that that's obviously a lie... I don't watch Casualty. Is Casualty even still on these days? Why am I here?) Kicking my thought process into gear has proved rather difficult lately which just goes to show that, despite being slightly more optimistic than usual today, I'm still crap. The only difference here is that today I actually feel alright about it.

With creativity barely existing within the realms of my mind/body/soul/television, I've had to resort to doing productive things, you know, that serve some kind of purpose. I'm coming up to the end of my first year dwelling in this student house and all throughout the year, myself and my living colleagues have had to suffer the sight of an overgrown garden that seemingly hasn't been attended to since the Ancient Romans probably constructed a road in the same spot. Needless to say, it was a jungle out there. It's okay though, we learned to keep the kitchen blinds constantly closed so that we'd never have to look at it, not that we could because the world was in a state of perpetual darkness over the winter period anyway. But, of course, I speak of this overgrown, jungle-like garden in the past tense now. After sitting indoors for most of the afternoon and realising what a glorious day this is and questioning why I'm not on the opposite side of the walls surrounding me and arguing back that I don't have a reason to go outside at all, I stopped myself and realised that since nobody else is uprooting that mess in the back for us, there was only one thing for it. Well, technically two things: gardening gloves and a rake (well, actually that's three things if you count the gloves separately).

Two-and-a-half hours and one aching, arched back later, most of the wild foliage is either in one of three black binbags, ravaged in a pile of dead leaves and loose roots or, in the case of one particular corner of the contained area, still untouched. It were a big job, yanno. It's nice to know that the garden will look clear at somewhat tidy (or at least tidier than it was) during the summer months when nobody will be here to enjoy the space. And we'll all come back in September, the freak of nature that is the entirety of the ground will have disobeyed the super-strength weedkiller and smatterings of table salt we thought might work to stop things growing and the place will end up another impassable jungle for us to look at in the dull grey light of winter from the kitchen window, but never for us to venture into.

Ah, the circle of life. Que sera, sera. Etc. Happy summertime.

Ego

Now I'm not one to toot my own horn, particularly. On that note, "tooting" one's own horn just doesn't sound right to me. If anything, horns "honk" rather than "toot". To say that horns "toot" is like saying serial killers just like playing "Morgue". Gotten away from myself again. I don't honk very often, but I feel justified in doing this since I'm, you know, human.

Human beings are naturally ego-centric. I don't mean that in the sense that we're all arrogant and don't care for anyone else as long as we live. 'Ego' is the Latin word for the self - quite literally, 'I'. We can spend our lives saying we care about other people but in all honesty, it's our actual nature of being that means we really care about ourselves more. Sure we can look after others who are perhaps less fortunate than ourselves or take on board the differing opinions of others and see certain situations through their eyes, but before all that, we come first.

It is because of this that I've decided to keep this one short. I've been writing and submitting far too much this week, even to the point where I was told to stop and leave them alone now. Let's back up a shred, shall we?

Some time ago (don't ask me how long exactly, time's become one continuous blur of internet, television and sub-consciousness), I happened upon the Top Ten Of Interest. Sounding like a vague obscure reference to Futurama, my curiosity was obviously roused. People write amusing top ten lists of stuff and then send them in. Writing opportunities. Yay. I figured I could do that too, except I got halfway through my top ten list, realised it was crap, got bored and started a completely different one that lasted over 4,000 words. That's more than any assignment I've stressed over during this entire year. I'm yet to hear back from those in charge; chances are they've succumbed to old age and possibly starvation if they didn't have a burger to hand at the start of it.

Today also just so happens to be National Flash Fiction Day and Twitter's going crazy with over three posts an hour on the subject. I ended up writing this for the cleverly (if a little ambiguously) titled journal FlashFlood. The journal said they were accepting up to three submissions from a single person, meaning I felt obliged to provide them with a second story which prompted them to tell me, in a politely written line, that I'd already had something accepted and to please leave them alone, but thanks all the same. Turns out they wouldn't have minded three submissions straight off and they'd pick the best one of yours to include. Oh well, ho-hum.

During the composition of this lot of words that nobody's really going to read, another thing by the name of Write-In is currently going on for the next couple of hours. Well, one would rightly assume you could write a 100-word story in less time it takes you to polish off that cuppa you just made. So yeah, why am I still doing this? Shut up and leave me alone! I can't care about you right now, I've got myself to think of!

Free Time

My current sleeping pattern is refusing to subside. Okay, I know, as a student it's perfectly normal for me to stay up late enough that I just about see the sun coming up and wake up late enough to see it disappear. But I'm not normal. Actually, on that note, what is normal? I see so many people claiming how they're not normal and how they're happier and better people for it. It's become so common that I'm invariably starting to judge such people as "normal". Except I shouldn't. There's no such thing. Every human is different and normality, in terms of one's own personality and upbringing, is subjective so please, disregard this entire opening paragraph.

-ahem-

My current sleeping pattern is refusing to subside. Okay, I know a lot of students stay up late enough to see the sun just coming up and wake up at- oh fuck it, I'll just get on with it.

Typically, throughout this academic year, I've been going to bed around 1am, allowing me to catch sleep at a reasonable hour whilst also allowing me to stay up long enough to catch endless repeats of Family Guy. Apart from those few days when I've had to attend a 9am lecture, I've generally awoken at around 9:30am - 10am at the absolute latest - to give myself time to prepare for the day ahead. However, now that assignment deadlines have all been and gone and because I am not assessed for anything under exam conditions, the amount of engagements I must attend are few and far between. In my anticipation of this time, I thought of all the wondrous things I could do with this newfound spare time. I could read books I've been meaning to all year but never had the chance. I could play long lost video games and subsequently reminisce about my childhood whilst sat looking out of a window, my elbow on the windowsill, my hand cradling my head, a short yet contented sigh and an "oh, golly" look in my eyes. I could cook and eat more healthily, paying extra care and attention to the vegetables I'm steaming in a seemingly novel fashion (put chopped veg in a sieve over a pan of boiling water and put the lid on top... actually works wonders). I could go for a walk. Where? It doesn't matter! I have free time, dammit!

Except I don't cook healthily, I don't read any of the books I've been intending to and I don't sit at a window gazing out and thinking of jolly memories past. I lie in bed and think of all the bad things that have ever happened to me, or that I've ever done to other people, or all the good things that never happened to me and question why this is, but I don't receive an answer because God, in my experience, either doesn't exist or he/she/it's been giving me the silent treatment since day one. I have free time now, and that's the problem.

I even said it earlier; I have fewer and far-betweener engagements to tend to now that I literally don't have a reason to get up. Sure, I could do all those things I wanted to, but they'd require me to get out of bed, get dressed and walk about a bit, only to end up changing again and going back to bed. Even getting an early (or at least what I'd consider "early") night doesn't help. The other day I tried going to sleep at midnight and the voices in my brain (which, incidentally, does not make me mentally insane, I'm reliably informed that many other people experience this too, that includes you. Yes, YOU! How many other you's do think I'm talking to right now?) recall all the bad things that ever happened to me, or all the bad things I've ever done to others, or all the good things that never hap- okay, I'm just lazily repeating myself a lot in this now. Anyway, the point is I tried going to sleep at midnight and was still awake around 3:30am. The knock-on effect of this is that I don't end up waking until at least 1pm and even then I lie there allowing my brain-noises to pick up where they left off for another hour and a half. By then enough time has passed for me to feel like there's nothing left to do with the day.

Case in point: yesterday. I finally managed to vacate the bed and move to the computer chair (all the while wrapped in a double-sized duvet) at around 1:30pm and spent what I believed to be a short amount of time watching video clips on YouTube and, for some reason, reading the Wikitravel page on the United Kingdom, just to see how British people are portrayed to foreigners wishing to vacation over here. If you don't believe me that such a thing exists, look at this. Look at its size. Look at its numerous sections. Look at how tiny the scroll bar is at the side and bear in mind that while I skimmed maybe a section or four, I must've read at least 80% of the page in its entirety. When I actually looked at the clock again it was 6:30pm. By the time I'd cooked and eaten it was time for bed again, although not before animated repeats on BBC Three forced their way into my eyes and ears. Once I'd plunged the room into total blackness once again, the time read 1am; the typical time for me to curl up and let the soul-crushing reminiscence begin once more.

You know how I always hate blogs that read like diary entries? I very much loathe myself right now.

A Triptych

Now that this year's University assignments are all completed and the fact that I currently lack a job or other regular engagement means that I've stayed indoors for large portions of the day recently. It's not all bad: I've caught up on a couple of books I've been meaning to read, played videos games I've been meaning to play, checked Facebook approximately 700 times a day, slowly made my way through devouring the contents of the kitchen and written, submitted and received the rejection email for a short fiction piece from an online short fiction project. If anything, I've had an accurate taste of what's to come in my life in the near future.

The fact that I've not had much of a main aim or focus in life as of late means that things have become kind of sketchy, which is always a problem whenever I sit down to write one of these things. Usually they work by focussing on one particular aspect of something that happened to me or somebody close by recently or of some thought that had recently occurred to me. Occasionally, tangential narrative will weave their ways into the main body of stuff but ultimately the main focus returns in some form or another. Unfortunately times will come when life feels as though it's drifting, time seems like it's disappearing into a vacuum and sentences take almost three times as long to think up and type out because I'm currently distracted by the images of American Dad! on the TV despite the fact that I've muted the sound so that I'll concentrate on this.

In light of this obvious sketchiness, I'd like to present to you a triptych (that's three little things making up one big thing, like Simpsons' Halloween Specials) of stuff that's happened over the last two or three weeks or more - provided I can remember that far back - in bitesize chunks (like a watching BBC2 at 4am around the GCSE exam period) for you to read if and when you feel like.

Chess

I recently discovered my computer has Chess Titans - which, as it happens, is actually just Chess - as part of its in-built games package. Normally I'd been sticking to the card-based games (FreeCell, Solitaire, Spider Solitaire) as forms of light boredom alleviation. I've even challenged myself to playing Solitaire with Vegas scoring so you only get the chance to go through the deck once, and upping the ante on Spider Solitaire to Medium - Two Suits.

It's been a long time since I've played Chess and I remember that whenever I played in the past I always lost, causing me to become angry and frustrated with the game, even one particular time running away and crying and having to be consoled by my friend/Chess adversary about how it's just a game. It's not just a game though. It's a frickin' IQ Test. It's a routine operation of causing one's opponent into a corner with no way out by using all your cunning, strategy and basic common sense. I've been known to lack these in my lifetime, or at least not pay attention to them when they're there. Basically, when it comes to Chess, I suck.

Strangely, I've been getting more addicted to playing a one on one brain battle against whoever programmed Windows 7 with the Artificial Intelligence it carries. I actually have a newfound love for Chess, but not a love as in Love love, more of a love as in Gran love, more of an admiration that doesn't take up too much of your time. Needless to say, I've managed to dupe the computer's faux-knowledge into surrendering a couple of victories to me after many many losses and perhaps one day - when I'm feeling confident in my own strategic abilities - maybe, just maybe, I'll slide the computer's skill level up to 2.

Sleeping Pattern

When you have no time constraints or set engagements to fulfil, hours of the day needn't matter anymore. Actually, that's a lie. On certain days you'll need to know when it reaches 6/7/8/9pm so that you know you won't miss The Apprentice or The Big Bang Theory or other miscellaneous television broadcast. But you have nothing to get up early for and no reason to go to bed at a reasonable hour. The daylight hours and the night-time hours blur together and, ultimately, don't matter when you never leave the confines of your own house. Anyway, I've got no idea why I'm writing this in 2nd person; my sleeping pattern is buggered. So much so that I wrote all the above stuff last night (or early this morning depending on how you view it - it was in the dark hours if that means anything to you) whilst my brain was still working to some extent, whereas I've only managed to tap out this one paragraph after getting up in the afternoon and sitting here for an hour downing tea.

This bit makes no sense and feels all rambly - ignore at will. Or at least you could ignore it if only you hadn't just read it.

Online Writing

I tend not to use Twitter other than to advertise this thing, but my lack of followers means a lack of views on here. A lack of views on here makes me feel like I'm doing this for no particular reason other than to give myself something to do every now and then. That is what it's for essentially, but a small part of me likes to think I'm reaching out to a wider audience providing entertainment, humour, apathy or even mild rage. As far as integrating myself into the Twittersphere (or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days) goes, I enjoy seeing announcements for online writing submission things. Several projects take place online relating to all kinds of free writing with the rewards being "Look, we published YOUR thing on OUR website! Now other people can read your thing and know that you exist. Also, cash prize? Are you high? Christ we barely have enough money to feed ourselves. Perhaps you missed the point of an ONLINE project. You get personal gratification, not material gain, et cetera and blah blah."

In the last few weeks, hell, in the last few months, I've written something (that was really crap about a woman lost in the woods being chased by an unknown assailant or something that had no dialogue or characterisation or anything that makes it technically decent) and submitted it to one of these online things. (I'd like to pause for a moment and apologise for my overuse of the word "thing" to describe certain... things. My tired brain is facing immense difficulty trying to label them more accurately.) I was instantly informed that my submission may face scrutiny for up to a month whilst those in charge ran some quality control. Less than a month, or to use a more accurate term, one day later I received the rejection email. Huzzah! I'm a failed writer. Now I can watch TV, heat up leftovers, kid myself that I'll actually read a book at some point and ultimately go back to bed at 4am. Ah, the high life.

And now that the third part's over, imagine (if you want to) the closing credits of the aforementioned Simpsons' Halloween Special since no such video actually exists on YouTube for me to link to.

Thinking Before Speaking

Every generation has a certain group they're afraid of. As children, we fear authoritative teachers. As elderly folk, we'll be wary of unruly teenage boys in tracksuits, congregating on street corners and getting through countless bottles of White Lightning. As for now though I'm afraid, nay, absolutely terrified of a completely different group of people. I, a 22-year-old, unemployed, University student with slightly nerdish tendencies, am absolutely terrified of the 12-16 female demographic; specifically the ones who claim to be fans of the likes of Justin Bieber, One Direction and Jedward coupled with the fact that they're just about computer-literate enough to easily use Twitter, but lack a great deal in standard etiquette.

Now I hope you've got your attention-paying brain in today because this next bit might get a whole load of confusing. Last week, an unsigned American indie band, who've been active since 2009 named One Direction, announced that they wanted to sue the British X Factor-spawned, active since 2010 5-piece named One Direction who are, as it happens, currently "breaking" into the US popular music scene. The reason for One Direction's lawsuit against One Direction was because they claim they've been using the name "One Direction" longer than One Direction have and, therefore, One Direction are effectively using the name "One Direction" without One Direction's permission (see, I told you this would get confusing).

In true teenage girl fashion, the Twitter feed of one of the One Directions (the American one) was barraged by threats from the British one's fans. Threats included obscure in-joke references to attacking them with 'spoons and carrots', one even wished death upon the lead singer's family members and a fair few even threatened castration. Ever so slightly more recently, news surfaced of one girl close to the band receiving abuse from the legions of vicious, rabid animals after trying to pursue a relationship with her chosen Direction (is that what they're individually known as? I don't care, it is now). Of course, such words of malice only exist in the hypothetical realm of the Inter-hyper-textual-speedway-netty-webby-thing; any fourteen-year-old girl who threatened to chop a grown man's goolies off would probably think to go for the toes, or else seize up and cry 'whee-whee-whee-whee-whee' all the way home. Unfortunately, kids these days know far more than they should and exude more confidence and cockiness and stubbornness than a religious fundamentalist arguing with science, citing reasons that if Stephen Hawking is so smart, why doesn't he just get up out of the wheelchair... hmm? In that case, I occasionally fear that we have to resign to the fact that these kids are, actually, fucking psychopaths.

Of course, it could just be a case of youthful arrogance, of not thinking before speaking (or tweeting), but some of the things obsessed fans come out with these days are nothing short of harrowing. Other examples of flippant arrogant remarks occur every day. In recent times and in certain social circles, the word "rape" has been adopted into fairly common, casual usage, typically by those playing video games. Observe:

'So many zombies. Aww mate, I'm about to get raped by 'em all! Oh wait, it's okay, I have my machine gun. I'm gonna rape 'em all with this now.'

Obviously it's all fun and games engaging in colloquialisms amongst friends, but should one of those friends have actually been or be close to somebody else who happens to have been a rape victim, it hardly seems acceptable. Same with cigarettes. As a non-smoker, it is, naturally, my job to chastise smokers for the fact that they smoke. Other non-smokers around me have fulfilled their jobs by commenting on the smokers' "cancer sticks", stemming from the idea that cigarettes cause lung cancer in one of them 'it's funny cuz it's true' situations. However, when people or others close to them happen to have had a run in with the big C, suddenly the humour disappears and inappropriateness pops out of the bathroom, looks around a silent crowd and asks 'what have I missed?'

The problem with Twitter is that it's essentially one big public forum, one giant social circle consisting of people from all walks of life; from the bands and musicians to their crazy obsessed fans, to the hack writers who moan about them and pop a link to it on their feed every week. But in a giant forum like that, one needs "netiquette" and, you know, generally the ability to think before speaki- typing. Even a few weeks ago a white British student was jailed (or fined, or shot, I didn't pay much attention to the story) for making a racist remark towards a black footballer who collapsed mid-game.

Because "tweeting" is so short, it becomes spur-of-the-moment. One thought that popped into your head in one second might actually take you a further thirty to analyse, to think about the actual message you're putting across, how it could be interpreted and any possible ramifications for carrying out the act. But fuck that, by the time those thirty seconds have passed, you already tweeted 29 seconds ago and statistically 500 million-gajillion people have already seen it. You're a monster, all because you posted something before actually thinking it through. The legions of One Direction fans who tweeted the other One Direction with hate mail and abuse end up showing themselves up for what they actually are - a mob. They may be defending their idols but they essentially come across as two things:

a) idiots, for not thinking things through, and
b) scarily horrifying, right up to the point that if I see a young girl wearing a One Direction T-shirt in public, I run a mile, naturally assuming she'll claw out my innards with her bare fingers if I so much as disagree with her choice in music.

Then again, I've been listening to BBC 6music an awful lot more lately so I'm pretty much detached from most current music trends anyway.