Every nanosecond in the depths of your brain, neurons are ignited by a chemical reaction that make you think. It’s the process that governs everything your body does, from eating a sandwich to not shitting itself.
For the brain, this is the equivalent of boring office admin; a thankless chore it quietly gets on with until we keel over and die. But occasionally one of those exploding neurons becomes something more tangible: an idea.
The genesis of everything mankind has ever created can be traced back to a single idea, from the Space Shuttle to The Breakfast Club. Every great piece of art you’ve ever admired was, at the earliest point in its life, an electrically excitable cell detonating in someone’s mind like the world’s tiniest fireworks display.
I have ideas almost constantly, but never act on them. The instant they’ve entered my thoughts, I’ve screwed them up into a ball and hurled them into the nearest metaphysical bin. But what if one of those ideas was destined to become something great? The very idea terrifies me; that I’ve pointlessly squandered something of artistic importance because of laziness. What drove all those great writers, musicians and artists to pursue, rather than dismiss, their flashes of inspiration?
Facebook – People from school you only add because you feel like you have to, wittering on and forever on about their banal, suffocatingly mundane lives. Girls posting albums called ‘RANDOM NIGHTS OUT’ containing five hundred identical photos of them pouting in gaudy night clubs. Invites to events that not only do you have no intention of attending, but that are in a different country.
Tumblr – People with no imagination or creativity of their own living vicariously through the artistic accomplishments of others. A self-indulgent pedestal for pretentious teenage girls to post pictures of Jared Leto and faded vintage-effect photos with arbitrary quotations super-imposed over them in Helvetica.
LinkedIn – A depressing, characterless spreadsheet filled with self-prescribed social media ‘gurus’ (read: pricks) who are desperately obsessed with acquiring ‘connections’ to somehow validate their meaningless careers.
Twitter – Whiny liberals and media ‘professionals’ endlessly retweeting each other in an infinite loop of pointless backslapping. Drunkards tapping out cries for help in a lager-clouded stupor. People trying desperately to tease replies out of celebrities. Ceaseless fucking iPhone photos of pints resting on tables in pubs.
I love Charlie Brooker. Reading his filth in PC Zone in the late ’90s is ultimately the reason I’m now a professional writer. But this isn’t a post about that – it’s about how Charlie Brooker is changing.
At first, seeing his scowling Guardian masthead photo suddenly animated and on television was hard to get used to. But as the first series of Screenwipe went on, it became part of the reason he was so much fun to watch. He was one of us – a normal person saying things we’d always thought, but had never been smart enough to articulate. He knew he wasn’t the image of the archetypal TV presenter, punctuating every other segment with a joke about how he looked like a ‘paedophile walrus’ or had a ‘face like a bag of dented bells’, endearing him to us even more.
Humility, and normality, are rare commodities on TV, as Brooker himself has often pointed out on his various ‘wipes’, and more recently on How TV Ruined Your Life. In ‘Aspiration’ we see a repeat of a section from Screenwipe – this time with a massively inflated budget – in which he talks about the disparity between the misleading gloss of television and cruel, bastard reality.
But compare the two and you realise that success in television is having a visible effect on Brooker himself. This makes his comments about ‘prettified televisual delusions’ feel less convincing; his words don’t ring as true now that he has designer stubble, nicely cut suits and a hot celebrity wife-to-be.
Brooker’s success is well-deserved, of course. He’s one of the smartest writers and broadcasters on telly. But as he becomes more involved in the medium he made his fame and fortune sneering at, he could fall into the same traps himself. The bitter, alienated misanthrope schtick doesn’t have as much resonance when you’re swaggering around with a hundred-quid haircut and Konnie Huq on your arm.
In the kitchen at work there’s a cardboard box. I’m not sure who put it there, or why, but written on the side it says: ‘GREEN MILK TOPS’.
The box is always full. There are a lot of tea drinkers on our floor, and thus a lot of milk. But sometimes – and this has happened more than once – someone puts a blue one in the box. My brain can’t even process this. It says in large, capital letters on the side ‘GREEN MILK TOPS’, and it’s always full of green milk tops. What would compel someone to put in a blue one? Okay, so maybe they made a mistake. They assumed it was some kind of recycling box. They didn’t notice.
But I don’t think so. I think someone likes the idea of disobeying the rules. A small moment of subversion in an otherwise drab working day. For that brief second, in their head, they’re Iggy. They’re Sid Vicious. Fuck you, box. I’ll do what I like.
I see a lot of this. People who gob their chewing gum in urinals; people who ignore the ‘reserved’ ticket on a train seat; people blasting obnoxious music through their cheap, tinny headphones; people who cycle on the pavement.
Why do we break society’s minor rules so flagrantly? Is it a way of subtly lashing out at the rigid, formalised routine of our humdrum daily lives? Or are we all really just, at a genetic level, selfish, oblivious dicks?
I’m walking down a busy pedestrianised street that’s being dive-bombed by birds hunting for sandwich crusts and discarded chip bags. In this situation one will sometimes swoop slightly too close to your head – enough that you instinctively duck to avoid it. It’s nowhere near you, but some kind of survival mechanism kicks in.
But on this occasion my reaction is significantly more dramatic. I’m deep in thought, headphones on, when I see a shadow suddenly rise in front of me. It’s a fat, rabid-looking pigeon. Rather than dodge, I swing at the beast.
I make contact. The bird would have missed me, but I actually aim my blow upwards. Something in my brain says that today, this animal has to die. I don’t even know I’m doing it. I feel feather and beak. The bird shrieks and tumbles clumsily to the ground. Stunned looks from people around me. Panic in my eyes. What have I done?
The pigeon writhes on the floor for a second, regains its senses and flies away. It’s not dead, but here I am, in the middle of a busy street, having just assaulted a bird.
I lower my head and hurry onwards, shame creeping through my bones.
