Cheesing Hell

Language is such a bitch, very much in the way that one person's "bitch" is another's "naughty word". It's just as subjective as philosophy, religion or social standing, and yet it's one of the key things that's supposed to keep us all united in the same frame of reference.

In the flashback portion of this post, I'll be taking you way back to my A-Level English Language days. I studied Sixth Form in my old High School, thus knew the teachers from the age of eleven. Therefore, reasons for not swearing in school were two-fold:

1) On some moral level, you didn't want the teachers to have a negative view of you as an uncouth, monstrous, little devil child.
2) On some selfish level, you didn't want to get detention.

During one of my first English Language classes at the A-Levelly age of sixteen, therefore, when asked to read out from a given sheet, one girl hesitated when she came to the word "shit". That dilemma hit. I could read her mind. 

"Do I say it and risk being told off for swearing in school? Do I say it as if it's just a normal word and no-one cares about its use? Do I skip it as if it doesn't even exist?" 

It was at this pause that the teacher stepped in and said the thing I made you read through all this expositional bollocks for, the thing that stuck with me in regards to my view on, not just "swear" words, but on language as a whole. 

"Don't be afraid of language. As linguists, we're here to study language, and part of that means looking at language which may seem bad, and why it may be used in this way." 

OK, that's not exactly what she said; please remember it was over six years ago that this linguistic epiphany came about, but that's pretty much the message I got from it. Now, I wouldn't particularly call myself a linguist. I don't study language for a living. If anything, I observe it as a hobby, and the fact that I do that just proves to you how boring I actually am. But the general point I'm trying to get across here is that I am not afraid of the various uses of language and all the linguistic possibilities that language has to offer. (Are you bored of me using the word "language" yet? You should be. Anyway...) The fact that I see little problem with words in this way makes me wonder why other people (who are not myself) do. This means I have to crawl out of this narcissistic shell of mine and take into account that, yes, there are other people on this planet, and yes, their minds do work differently to mine.

To explain the random mess of my mindstuff slightly less erratically, let's take a typically formally-unacceptable word. Pretty standard one: "fuck".

"Fuck" exists. You might like it, you might not. Whether you like it or not, it exists.
        Fuck.
        F-U-C-K
        /fʊk/
        fuh-uhh-kuh
It is fact in both combinations of written letters and phonetics. There is no denying the existence of the word "fuck". Complaining about the existence of "fuck" is like complaining about the existence of Simon Cowell: people may not like it, but nevertheless, it is fact.

However, when it comes to the meanings of words, "fuck" has - over time - adopted generally negative, unpleasant and occasionally uncouth connotations. Yet there is nothing within that set of letters, or sounds, to suggest such negativity. "F" and "U" both appear next to each other in the word "fun", while "C" and "K" can often be used to refer to items of stylish mens' clothing. Otherwise, the "CK" combination can be found in many words; one such word being "lucky", a fairly positive-feeling word, n'est-ce pas? Therefore, those who claim not to like the word "fuck" whenever it's used cannot possibly disapprove of the word itself, but rather the connotations it conjures up in their minds, which just seems totally ironic considering that those who disapprove of the word would, in fact, be the last people you'd expect to have such uncouth thoughts in their heads in the first place.

It's by this logic that I do not particularly regard "fuck" to be a "bad" word. In fact, I'd probably view it in the same way I view the word "baby" in that they both consist of four letters: three consonants and a vowel. That is, of course, only looking at the words as entities in their own right. If I were to look at the meanings of both of them, I'd view them differently, seeing as "baby" denotes a human infant, all cute and pudgy and running around and screaming the house down, whereas "fuck" indicates an expression of sudden shock that the irate parent may exclaim when the infant starts accidentally drinking bleach, or (in some respects) could refer to the physical action that functioned as a precursor to the resulting existence of the baby.

If, for some strange, fucked-up reason, the various meanings of "fuck" were reversed with that of another word - "cheese", for instance - then "fuck" would not actually be considered a bad word. If its meaning could be defined as "a dairy product made from curdled milk", "fuck" would seem like a fairly normal word indeed; whereas any use of the word "cheese" in television broadcasts before 9pm would be bleeped out, teenage boys would talk about "cheesing" as many girls as possible and the stressed out parent would scream "cheesing hell" as the baby's stomach turned inwards on itself after guzzling too much Cillit Bang.

Anyway, that was just my general observation on language as a whole. I don't really think there was any fucking point to this, except I do like the fact that it gave me an excuse to say "fuck" a lot.

Pseudo-Mathematics And Marker Pens

Some hours after my last feeble attempt at begging for attention using words oft found in your local dictionary, I managed to cast off the shackles of monotony and - by extention - stop using clichés by entering into the social realm of public houses, or rather public house, singular. This allowed me an opportunity to evaluate human psychology and witness ulterior motives, which may transpire amongst competitors, through the medium of pseudo-mathematics and marker pens. I speak, of course, of Bingo.

The opportunity to experience the respective insanities and mundanities of human existence, however, flew over my head quicker than explaining the definition of the word 'existentialism' to somebody from Essex. From the moment my eyes latched onto the skin-thin slips of paper and multicoloured blobbers (which I believe are called 'dabbers', but I'm calling 'blobbers' for the purposes of perceptive accuracy), my whole being became transfixed with the idea that this game of chaos was, in fact, the most important moment in my life thus far. When that round inevitably fell through, the next round of number-mentioning became the most important moment in my life thus far. And so on, and so et cetera in that fashion, until either the night ended or the random number generator ran out of double-A juice.

All concept of human behaviour, social interaction and bladder functions suddenly need not matter in this domain of fat ladies and little ducks - none of whom, unfortunately, made it. The announcement-of-the-numbers ceremony took place in a much more civilised manner, without any berating of overweight women or undersized Anatidae. Naturally, I felt somewhat cheated by this, but you know what, fuck it, I'm playing bingo, and damn it all if I don't win.
     I didn't win.
         DAMN IT ALL!
Except that's a lie. I did actually win, and my life's sole purpose as far as the night was concerned had been fulfilled on the final game of the evening. My prize: no selection of prize.

The Generation Game-esque conveyor belt of mediocre prizes graced the bar with its presence for most of the evening. A toilet brush here, a money box there, a set of men's deodorants, a toaster, a desk fan, a pack of bingo markers, a cuddly toy; it gave all the feel of a village fête raffle or an explosion in the SmartPrice section of Asda. However, along with my prize-selecting abilities being relinquished, I was granted ownership of the final prize of the night. (I'm going to stop using the word "prize" now, for reasons which will become apparent in the next string of words or so.) So lo, and behold, the white box with the green stripe and the picture of white plates blending into its purgatorial scenery: a plain, bland, Asda-brand Dinner Set.

Huzzah! Now I can dine! Joyousness and other such jubilant feelings. Except not really because I could do that anyway. And even if I couldn't, I could've anyway. Explain? Alright, regard:

When I set up dwelling in this new house, the three of us (the people what live here) brought along our own belongings. For the kitchen, this means the cupboards currently overflow with three mismatched sets of cutlery, utensils, cheese graters, three mismatched sets of pots, pans, baking trays, three mismatched sets of cups, mugs, glasses, and a whole mindfuckery (which I'm using as the collective noun) of plate, bowls and dishes. For three people, it's fairly difficult to get through nineteen plates in a short space of time, and believe me, we've tried. There have been times when the pile next to the sink has multiplied drastically, growing like the mould on the very plates themselves. We don't need any more plates. On my Christmas list to Big Red Dumbledore, I will not be asking for plates. Trust me on this. Meanwhile, as part of the moving-in ceremony, the woman what birthed me (whom, I'm told, is commonly referred to using the name "mother") granted me with the very same SmartPrice Dinner Set I'd go on to 'win' some weeks later. Cheers Mum. Excellent foresight.

Now the white and sparing green boxes live in my kitchen, along with all the other white and sparing green items of food which grace my cupboard so. I live the SmartPrice way now. And no, I'm not advertising Asda. I'm not advocating Asda. I'm not a plant, nor a mole, hired to attract more customers to the consumer conglomerate that used to have adverts that condoned self-spanking. I'm not getting paid for using their name in this way, for Tesco's sake; I just told you I'm living SmartPrice!

Nothingness Overdrive

Having to live as an adult - because "overgrown child" isn't as acceptable in modern day society - means I'm rapidly running out of time to do nice things. The arduous tasks of going to classes, self-imposed studying, buying food, cooking food, eating food, defecating, cleaning, tidying, walking, even waking just seem to occupy every second of the day, if each day lasted approximately 173 hours. I've resigned to the fact that I'm simply existing rather than living right now, and will do for a considerable chunk of the foreseeable future. Even socialising feels like such a chore when I have to walk through the cold and dark, especially considering that sometimes I'd prefer to be alone and lie motionless with my head propped in a fixed, non-moving position directed at the moving-picture rectangle. Either that or sat bolt upright holding some form of interactive game-playing control device and doing the interacting; either way, the TV's involved. The fact that I've managed to put aside twenty-or-something minutes to aimlessly tap a bunch of letters into this thing seems nothing short of a miracle these days.

But surely, ya daft idiot, that means you have an awful lot to talk about from your past week of adventures, rather than moan on about how boring you feel your life is?
Ah, but that's just it. I find it unbelievably boring to even think of such misadventures, since that would actually involve active thought on my part. I'd much prefer it if, when life happens, it managed to be interesting and the memories of experiences gone by stayed inside this sieve-like mind, but life (being life) doesn't like to cooperate like that, instead opting to occur as monotonously as possible. Case in point, you just read a paragraph or two in which absolutely nothing has happened. Ha! Take that, you! You just got owned by life!

Even so, when something interesting does feel like happening, it tends to be on the verge of sleepytime, when the brain goes "Hey, I've got an idea" and the rest of the body shoves a tranquiliser in its gullet and rubs its neck 'til it goes down and forces it to slumber and leaves me to ponder why I've suddenly anthropomorphised my brain and given it a throat. Furthermore, I'm now creating sentences with far too many words and almost as many commas, without breaking them up any other way. My tedium-ridden mind is now in nothingness overdrive and likes spouting off words consisting of more than nine letters, which is ironic since Countdown's on in the background, bringing with it that daytime-friendly version of the Apocalypse through song upon the elderly and those who can't find the remote in time. Or those who just want background noise as they make words appear in a blog post and it's either that or The Alan Titchmarch Show, which, quite frankly, is a programme title bad enough to strike overwhelming depression into anybody's existence.

Is this actually going anywhere? No? Didn't think so. Anyway...

It's now been half an hour since I tapped Enter twice after "Anyway..." and I seem to have lost the will to comprehend any human thought whatsoever, meaning I might as well pretend to do some work towards studies, cook something, eat that something, tidy up and socialise once again, and stare forlornly at the red standby light on the Wii, as I apologise for neglecting it for yet another day.

Poetry Is Not Necessarily My Forte

Today is National Poetry Day, and to mark this ground-breaking, monumet-crushing, planet-annihilating event, I've produced a poem based around this year's obligatory theme: Games. Read this and understand why poetry is not necessarily my forte. Also try and make sense of it.

The Game Of Life

There is no box.
There is no picture on the box.
There are no pieces inside the box;
          they lie scattered.
There is no indication
          of eventual completion.

There is building upwards.
There is climbing the ladder.
There is fear of falling.
There is fear of snakes.

There are obstacles.
There is advancing one step at a time.
There is making it to the other side –
          King me.


There is no box.
There are pieces missing.
There is no logical solution
          to the mystery
 other than finding Professor Plum
          in Old Kent Road
                    with the Funny Bone.

Grown-Up

October 5, 2011

Dear friend,
       It's been two weeks since my last one of these to you. I'm sorry. I really wanted to do one every Wednesday but missed last week's self-imposed deadline. I suppose normally that would mean I'd have an awful lot to write about now, but to be honest, I'm still struggling. I guess I can start with the basics, though, and see how it goes from there.
       The fact that I'm now writing to you means that I now have Internet access in my house. I'm so happy about this. It means I can watch things like Kleiner Hai on YouTube, look at naughty pictures (if I so wished), and type the starts of sentences into Google and see what the Auto-Fill suggests whenever I want from the comfort of my own room. It feels strange though, because I've been living in this house for two-and-a-half weeks without access to the Internet that I'm sort of used to it. I'm used to filling my time with making food and watching crappy daytime television. As I type, I have Masterchef Australia on in the background and it keeps distracting me from this every forty seconds or so.
       I've also been trying to read a lot more; in fact that's why this particular entry looks and sounds the way it does. I finished Stephen Chbosky's The Perks Of Being A Wallflower some eight hours ago - that was at 4 a.m. just before I went to sleep - and I still have it on the brain. I know it sounds cheesy to say that the book really speaks to me and I find it easy to relate to. So I won't say those things. Except I just did, so instead I'll just say I liked it and can understand certain things from within the story. Also, it's set in America in the early 1990s and since I was only two or three years old then, I had no concept of what America even was, so I guess I can't relate to it all that much. Apparently, they're also making it into a movie ready for next year starring that clever girl from Harry Potter, so I hope it turns out well.
       Some of my normal book-reading has been disrupted by University, unfortunately. Although, it's probably not unfortunate, it just feels that way because if I'm going to read, I'd rather read for pleasure than to read up about theories of concepts I barely understand. It just so happens that understanding those concepts are what will help me pass University and therefore they should be a priority. But those in-depth readings have made me tired and sleepy with too many words ending in "-ism" and "-ist" and "-ity" and "-ology" and it keeps making my brain hurt. By that logic, I also want to blame it for my stomach aches, intestinal whines and general bad feeling for the last few days, but I may have to put that down to eating possibly out-of-date food since Monday.
       Luckily, I have today and tomorrow to crack on with the work I need to do, but tomorrow I'd like to put something here again, breaking with the not-very-established tradition of posting on Wednesdays. It's purely a one-off though. It just so happens that tomorrow is National Poetry Day, and even though I'm not normally one to do poetry, the poetry tutor I had for half of last year is, in fact, the organiser or the director of National Poetry Day or something like that. Whatever her title or position is, she's pretty much in charge of it. So I'm inspired to at least do some poetry, even if it is only for one day of the year. And the theme is Games as far as I can remember, and I had an idea for what I could put in a poem a while ago when I first heard about this, but it's not complete so I suppose I'd need to finish that today if I'm to put it here tomorrow.
       I keep feeling like there's something I'm forgetting here, but I can't remember what it is. I guess that's the curse of forgetting stuff.
       Oh, I remember, that's it. I woke up this morning to an envelope by the front door. Turns out it's a water bill which we only have to pay as a one-off once a year, or once every six months or something like that, but split between myself and the people I'm house-sharing with, it's going to cost us about £60 each, which I'm sure I do have, but I only have a limited amount of money to last me for the rest of the year and I'm not entirely sure how much of it I actually have left. I've even resorted to signing up to Google's ad-revenue scheme for this blog and for my YouTube, in the vain hope that you actually exist and that you actually are reading this right now and that you form a small part of Internet traffic for this site, which could culminate in me getting paid about 14p for a year's worth of writing. In that case, I'm sorry if the sudden inclusion of adverts is distracting. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how the getting-paid-by-Google-for-doing-this actually works. All I know is that if there's a chance I can get extra pennies by doing one of these every week then I might as well not pass at the opportunity.
       I suppose that's pretty much it for this now. I need to go and check my bank balance, worry about paying the bill and make breakfast before sitting down and getting on with my studies. When did I suddenly become a grown-up?

Love always,

Jamie