Nada Surf - Inside of Love

In my view, this track alone establishes Nada Surf as a quality act:

Watching terrible TV,
It kills all thought.
Getting spacier than
An astronaut.

Making out with people
I hardly know or like…
I can’t believe what I do
Late at night.

I wanna know what it’s like
On the inside of love.
I’m standing at the gates..
I see the beauty above.

Only when we get to see
The aerial view
Will the patterns show.
We’ll know what to do.

I know the last page so well.
I can’t see the first.
So I just don’t start.
It’s getting worse.

[Chorus]

I can’t find my way in.
I try again and again.

I’m on the outside of love.
Always under or above.
Must be a different view
To be a me with a you.

Of course I’ll be all right…
I just had a bad night.

Commonplace profanity

Swearing has now become so common in everyday langauge here in London that, although still vulgar to hear, it is becoming devalued. The point being if we all swear all the time habitually, from what lexicon will we borrow when we really want to emphasise a point?

The London Paper

If it wasn’t free already, I would say The London Paper here is totally worthless. Instead I will say it robs you of minutes of your life to read it. Even staring into space would be preferable. This trash is so shallow and sheerly bitchy that it actually makes our tabloids begin to look respectable, which they certainly are not.

Advertising Lie

“I could tell she was the one from the glint in her glasses.”
- Some contact lens firm

It takes a moment to realise what this advert is trying to say, but its principal (wrong) claim seems to be that the wearing of glasses prevents eye to eye contact and that the unfortunate female wearer is therefore destined to be sad, lonely and neglected in terms of romance.

We will have to come up with a name for this cynical and often-seen mode of attack by advertisers, if there isn’t one already. ‘Emotional blackmail’ would be fine (’buy our product or you will be sad and lonely’), but I think we can go stronger than that and call it ‘emotional bullying’. Incidentally, the claim here is not only false, but as far as I’m concerned it is contrary to the truth - I find women in glasses particularly attractive and always have done!

If I could even remember the company’s name I’d urge you to boycott them.

Celebrity

Why, oh why, is such a disproportionate amount of attention paid to “celebrities”?

A set of portraits of the model Kate Moss has been commmissioned for the National Gallery.

What? Why?

As far as I can tell there is nothing remarkable about her at all. She’s not particularly attractive and I have never heard her say anything profound. She just seems to be a waster. Literally wasting her money and her life, contributing nothing. There are thousands of more attractive and more substantial women than her - more deserving of having their portraits in the National Gallery.

Actors too. They act. We should evaluate them on their performance. Who cares what else they do? I certainly don’t. The plumber sorts out my sink, the actor entertains me, why would I care more about the private life of one than the other? I can see no reason - I’m not interested in either.
It’s very sad when people are more interested in the lives of others (who couldn’t care less about them, incidentally) than they are in their own.

We seem have to a society now where people are famous for no reason at all other than the fact they are famous. It’s circular, and sad to see. (Personally, I would hate to be famous, and feel a little ambivalent about even posting my views up here.)

Think about all the unsung heroes. Think about the sensitive people who find themselves stuck in squalid council estates. Think about the abused, the orphaned, and about those who put their own happiness second to care for others first. Think about the paramedics and the police (yes, the police), the toilet attendants and the others - all the others - who do so much more for us every day than wasters like Kate Moss ever do. Also think of people who really are exceptional. People like Jonathan Miller, Richard Dawkins, John Barry. Put portraits of them in the National Gallery, then maybe we’ll have a better society. Don’t dumb down. Don’t say to people “admire these people because they are just as unremarkable as you - and yet we have made them famous”. Aspire to be more, be the best you can be, totally regardless of the shallow values of the press…

Civilian commandos

I love khaki colours, but don’t you find those members of the public who dress in full camouflage commando jackets, when they are not in the army, slightly, um… scary?

Twelve year old child spotted on Underground

It’s so rare that you see a 12 year old child on the London Underground during rush hour that when I saw one this morning at first I thought it was an adult with something wrong with them!

Great quotation

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

- Edmund Burke

Recognising qualities

In order for a person to appreciate some qualities of character in others, they must actually possess those same qualities themselves. This is why those with rarer and more refined qualities are often less appreciated than we might expect.

Praising talent

We do not blame people for things they cannot help, for example if they are disabled. We are careful only to blame people for things they could actually have helped. (Whether it makes sense to say they could actually have helped anything is actually an interesting philosophical question in itself, which comes under the topic of Free Will.)

So, perhaps by the same token we should not pay people any particular credit for things which come easily to them either. The Mozarts and Einsteins of this world. We should instead credit people only when they work hard against adversity to achieve success in field in which they perhaps do not naturally excel.

39 hours and counting

I have now been awake 39 hours. In my student days I used to do even longer than this. I don’t feel too bad actually. In fact it’s quite a nice feeling.