Perhaps you need to find a set of objective standards that everyone can agree on. Some people like tall people, some people like short people, some people like blonde people, et cetera — but perhaps we come closest to agreement in the following statement: there is beauty in symmetry.

From art and architecture to the human face, people feel more “comfortable” with symmetrical designs. It’s partly instinctive: we’re hard-wired to find people with good genetic material attractive, and symmetry is the most obvious sign of good, strong, healthy DNA. (Consider the reverse stereotype: the slack-jawed yokel of redneck myth is patently depicted as unsymmetrical and considered universally unattractive). But is it a true judge of beauty? I think not.

Anaface is a computer program which claims to do just this – judge your attractiveness by the symmetry of your face. It is of course wrong. You can’t judge beauty on symmetry. I happen to have a very symmetrical face. However, I’m fairly average. I scored almost twice as high on Anaface’s test as a friend of mine who’s a professional model. Symmetry, it seems, is no great judge.

In fact, perfectly symmetrical features are bland and characterless – I’d never cut it as a model because my face doesn’t have “character”. So what do you do? Do you reprogram the computer to understand that some asymmetrical faces are beautiful (because they have character) while others aren’t?

Computers can’t handle variance without record to mathematical equations. Computers are essentially binary – on or off, yes or no, all or nothing. Computers seek veracity — they’re problem solvers, literally. You could plug an equation for “variance based on asymmetry” into a computer but in doing so you have introduced an element of subjectivity rather than objectivity (based on one person’s personal perception, or on crowdsourcing, etc) into the formula, and computers alone will never be able to do this. A computer, in short, cannot make judgements about beauty.

And that is why computers will never be able to make meaningful art.

There is no objective truth in beauty. Charles Bronson, for example, was considered handsome – despite his unconventional, weatherbeaten looks. What do we tell the computer? Well, we can only tell it that some people find weatherbeaten faces attractive some of the time. The computer is confused. You feed it a picture of Charles Bronson and tell it that sort of face is attractive to some people, therefore the computer gives it a score of “above average”. Then you feed the computer a similar picture of someone, say, an old fisherman who’s been exposed to the open seas for two or three decades. Is he attractive? Based on the new information you’ve fed the computer, yes. The computer is incapable of making the same “judgment call” we as humans are.

It’s not simply a matter of updating the formula, either. Adding further exceptions, refining the formula to include fishermen, all other types of weatherbeaten / asymmetrical faces etc — the most the computer will ever be able to reply is that there is variance. ie, some people find this sort of face attractive, others don’t. And as for why some types of weatherbeaten / asymmetrical faces are attractive and others aren’t… how can the computer tell? A scar on one side of the face might be considered attractive by some people because it makes the person look dangerous. But others might be repulsed. Again, the most the computer can say is that there is variance. There is no “objective truth in beauty”.

Mathematics and art don’t match.

If you ask the computer what it thinks, it doesn’t have an answer except recourse to mathematics, ie “I have been shown a photo of a weatherbeaten face a little like Charles Bronson and there is a 50% chance that this face is attractive” — in order for the computer to say yes or no, you would have to program it to either like or dislike asymmetrical / weatherbeaten faces. A computer cannot simply decide if it likes a symmetrical face or a weatherbeaten one until you tell it.

Consider Shakespeare’s famous love sonnet, ‘my mistress eyes are nothing like the sun’ — in which he goes on to explain that the object of his affections is unappealing by conventional standards, but he loves her and finds her attractive. By objective standards he is wrong. But art, like beauty, is not held to objective standards.

This is why computers cannot be good artists. They have no perception of beauty. If you fed a computer every Rembrandt, Picasso, Poussin and Pollock, and told it to extrapolate from that what’s beautiful and create art based on that, you’d come up with a nightmare splattering of nothing.

If you tell an “art producing” computer to imitate one of those styles, it is merely a very clever photocopier. A computer decides on mathematical formula what is or isn’t beautiful. It can either say yes or no based on preprogrammed criteria, or it can tell you what the variance is, what the likelihood that certain types of people will find certain types of art appealing. This is not an adequate.

The creation of new art cannot be based on formulaic analysis of what people have found attractive in the past.

We cannot simply deconstruct what has gone before, evaluate its attractiveness, and create new art based on that.

This method might be a good way of creating, say, Ikea prints, but it’s not art. Art, like beauty, requires a subjective element. Let us say that a vandal throws a tin of black paint over the Mona Lisa. Let us then say that vandal is a currently respected but controversial artist, someone like Banksy or Damien Hirst. The art community is divided. 90% say it’s a travesty and our artist / vandal should be locked up. But 10% say that it’s a powerful statement about the nature of art, that it’s an act of iconoclasm and should be praised. Those 10% may have radical political ideas, for example — that make them differ from the other 90%. Of those 10%, 5% would leave Mona Lisa as she is, covered in black paint, hanging for all to see. The other 5% believe that, point having been made, the painting should be restored.

Feed this information into our computer busily churning out brilliantly made (from a technical perspective) oil paintings to sell at Ikea. It will continue to make 90% of its output as it was. But from now on, it has a difficult decision. Should it make 10% of its new canvases with a big black splodge of paint in the middle? Or should it make 5%? Or should it make none, because 10% of people only consider a black splodge on a painting to be art if that painting happens to be the Mona Lisa?

The answer is probably the latter. It’s very unlikely that anyone will find black splodges attractive except by reference to famous artworks. But some might. It may become a counter-cultural symbol for people with radical political ideas. The black splodge could be imbued with meaning. Having a black splodge on your paintings may become iconic as a Marxist symbol. It’s unlikely, but possible. And a computer cannot adjust to this new fact until it has again been programmed, until the formula for artwork has been updated. Again, a computer cannot lead, cannot make new ideas. It can only copy what people do, what the general consensus becomes, and follow.

Computers are problem solvers, not artists. Computers do not create, they copy. Computers cannot account for subjective beauty.

My example of the Mona Lisa was there for a reason. As was the mention of Banksy. One of Banksy’s oldest works, the “Mild West” mural in Bristol, was vandalised in just this way, with a tin of red paint streaked from side to side. It was done as a political statement, not as an act of vandalism, by a group that disagrees with graffiti as it is an inappropriate use of public space. The council restored the “artwork” — why? If it was an ordinary graffiti artist, the council would be painting over the mural itself. The “is it graffiti / is it art?” debate is entirely subjective. You cannot ask a computer what it thinks, because it cannot tell you until you have first told it. The most it can tell you is that there is variance.

So the computer churns out lots of different types of artwork based on this variance formula, based on what it thinks certain people will like. It doesn’t produce art, it is a photocopier. It is a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters, and it may eventually churn out something that some people find beautiful. But it isn’t an artist. It doesn’t have an artistic vision. It doesn’t imbue its artworks with meaning. The same is exactly true of a computer that generates poetry, novels or music. Art is imbued with meaning when an artist makes a subjective decision and applies that to his work. A computer cannot do that because it cannot be subjective, it either accounts for variance or makes a decision based on what is random, based on a flip of a coin.

Computers only follow, they never lead, and they never create anything that is new. For these reasons, computers will never replace the role of the artist / creative in anything but a technical sense. They can create a fine copy, but they can’t create fine art.

Of course you pay your taxes. You’d be locked up if you didn’t. It’s easy for the government to catch you. But what if avoiding tax was as easy as pirating a film? Would you do it then? Even if you wouldn’t, you’d better bet someone out there would. Swiss bank accounts are for the very very rich. P2P technology (the kind you use to download films) is for everyone.

Say hello to Bitcoin. Here’s the science part.

Bitcoin is P2P currency. Billed as ‘global, untraceable money’, Bitcoin uses P2P technology to circumvent state control — and hand it back to you. It’s a virtual currency that’s distributed between a network of users — and the way it’s distributed makes it virtually untraceable. Money is transmitted using a similar system to PGP encryption and the amount of money in the system is independently verified by users running a ‘proof of work’ algorithm on their computers, rewarded for their efforts by a regular lottery of bitcoins distributed at random to people who take part. If it helps, think of it as a kind of digital cash-in-hand — a shadow economy beyond the reach of prying eyes.

Bitcoin is essentially a barter mechanism for the 21st century — anonymous, practical, secure, cheap. But it has the potential to be much, much more. Don’t worry too much about the science part. What’s really important is that Bitcoin is anonymous, grass-roots, and utterly out of reach of the state. In other words, it’s a currency that’s full of possibilities.

A digital gold standard?

Bad fiscal policy, quantitative easing and continuing uncertainty have seriously wounded currencies such as Sterling and the Dollar. Meanwhile the debt crisis contagion spreading across the Eurozone makes the Euro look more and more like a crash in slow motion. It’s only a matter of time before Greece defaults. And when that happens, all hell will break loose. It’s little wonder investors are switching to gold.

Gold remains the international standard for barter and exchange outside the realm of fiat currencies which are, by definition, only as good as the governments that guarantee them. But it’s slightly impractical to pay for your groceries in gold sovereigns. Last time I checked, Tesco wasn’t accepting the Krugerrand. And unless you live in Fort Knox, it’s probably not safe to stash gold bullion under your bed. Suddenly, Bitcoins are looking much more practical. While they aren’t widely accepted — yet — a growing number of individuals and companies are getting in on the action.

Introducing the digital wallet – and the digital rebellion.

Of course, there’s already a way to pay and be paid that doesn’t involve the bank, cash, or credit cards. But Paypal have already stated they’re not going to be trading in Bitcoins any time soon. Nonetheless, digital wallets such as Paypal, combined with contactless payment technology via smartphones and apps, provide us with both a digital and a real-world model for how a cashless currency system might work in the future. Add anonymity into the mix and it becomes a powerful brew.

Paypal is already running scared. On July 26th thousands of users cancelled their accounts as part of a viral protest against Paypal’s refusal to hand over legitimate donations to Wikileaks. The alternative payment mechanism recommended by the campaign — you guessed it. Bitcoin. The effect was immediate. The share price of eBay, Paypal’s parent company, fell from $34.5 to $33.5 in an hour, wiping over 2% off the company’s value in minutes. Their shares continue to trade lower — over 3% off their July 26th peak at last count.

The numbers are small but the analogy is clear. When users boycott your currency, you become less powerful. Translate that analogy to fiat currency and suddenly the power of Bitcoin becomes apparent. If just 1 or 2 percent of government revenues are lost this emergent technology will have caused a major upset at the exchequer. And the government will have no-one to blame but themselves — for taxing people too much and for wasting the money when they receive it. For blowing our money on foreign bailouts and foreign wars. For pursuing reckless economic policies and expecting ordinary people to pay for it with runaway inflation. Given the ability to choose, people might not choose to pay for it.

Demand more for your money

While a mass tax revolt seems a long way off, technology has finally given us a way to hit the government where it hurts — not at the ballot box, but in the wallet. A government that cannot pay its bills cannot stand. Or else it must use violence and risk open revolt.

I’m not suggesting revolution. Truth be told, I’m a little too conservative for that. It’s unlikely that emergent technology such as P2P money will bring down governments. But it may lead to a brighter, freer future.

P2P filesharing hasn’t killed the entertainment industry. It’s forced studios and record labels to adapt to the demands of their customers, offer newer and better services, and deliver value for money. Perhaps P2P money will force governments to do the same thing.

The government has the ability to demand tax from you and then spend it how it likes. No private company would be allowed to function that way. In the free market, you choose how your money is spent.

In the future, emergent technology like P2P money may give people the ability to withhold payment from the government — forcing it to take greater account of our wishes.

Schools and hospitals or bailouts and foreign wars? In the future, you might be able to choose. But you won’t make your choice through the ballot box. Because whoever you vote for, the government always wins.

With P2P currency, you’ll finally be able to vote with your wallet — and demand real change.

My poison was always booze and it was one one boozy night that the sudden urge to change my ways struck me. This unexpected moment of clarity came when an old friend of mine took me to what must be the dirtiest, sweatiest, seediest gay bar in all of London. Not that I have much experience of gay bars — all I know was this one was pretty seedy, the windows blacked out like an old bookie’s, the thudding sound of techno beating from outside. First of all I was astonished that everyone on entry took their shirt off. I’d never seen anything like it. I’m reminded of the Homer Simpson quote: everyone else came with a six pack, I’m the only one who showed up with a full keg.

For me, the opposite was true. The girl of my dreams (I thought — how wrong I was!) had abandoned me and, in silent protest, I’d refused to eat for several months. I weighed somewhere under ten stone. With my pale skin, waxy complexion, and ill fitting clothes, I looked like the skinniest white boy (barely) alive. Blake Fielder-Civil looked like a paragon of virtue, vitality, and health in comparison to me. A virtual skeleton, my body had given up the ghost — and though I didn’t realise it, I was in danger of becoming one.

I wasn’t anorexic. I was on hunger strike. My body demanded change.

The next day I woke up with a habitual hangover and (unsurprisingly) no girl beside me in bed. I looked at myself in the mirror. I thought back to the writhing mass of exquisitely carved male bodies I’d seen the night before. I laughed at the irony. It’s typical. We spend our teenage years making fun of the gays and the geeks, yet they’re the ones who end up inheriting the earth. I was never going to be an investment banker — oh no. A lazy arts grad, I was stuck peddling words for my crust. But it wasn’t too late to do something about what remained of my body. I had two choices. Accept mediocrity, or join the gym. I joined the gym.

Determinedly, I threw myself into my new role. With my geek glasses, wiry physique, and permanenet aura of bacherlorism, I was like an ad for Mr Muscle. Unsurprisingly, my right arm was stronger than my left. Had it really been that long? I guessed so. Every time I felt like giving up, I looked in the mirror. And so I set to work.

Of course I never expected instant results, but results came quickly enough. After the end of the first month I’d slowed down my drinking. I’d started eating better. I’d put on weight. More importantly, for the first time in my life, I felt strong. No longer needing to resort to the withering putdown or the silent snarl (the practised look of contempt) I found myself feeling more comfortable in my own skin. I offered to help people lift their furniture. I playfully arm wrestled my friends. I got into fights, and won.

At three months girls began to notice me or — should I say — a different kind of girl began to notice me. Previously, I’d only ever been able to attract extremly small girls (usually the sort with an eating disorder, a drug problem, or both). After all, what girl wants to go out with a man who weighs less than them? What woman wants a man who can’t put his arms around her and make her feel safe? What woman wants an emaciated wreck? I’d been in the dating paddling pool. Now I was in the ocean. And it’s true what they say. There’s plenty more fish in the sea.

The trouble with fishing is it’s no use having an enormous rod if you’re not strong enough to reel them in.

My work life started to improve as well. I went to bed earlier, I got up earlier, I felt tired less often. Sure, I was spending up to two hours a day, every day, in the company of a combination of muscle-bound posers, butch bears, and muscle marys — all to the pounding beats of balearic four to the floor — but (headphones in) for the first time in years, I felt good about myself.

I began to wonder what had kept me from the gym so long. Was it pride? Was it insistence that it was my mind, not my body, that mattered? Or was it simply laziness? A refusal to admit that results demanded hard work? Personally, I think it was the latter. Before I started working out I always assumed that eventually I would earn something for nothing, that my life would improve without me working at it. Working out made me realise that improvement is gradual. Improvement is painful. But improvement is worth it.

These days I’m healthier, happier, a more rounded individual. I look back at photos of myself from those days and I wonder just how close I was to just disappearing. I became so light, so ethereal, a breeze might have swept me away. Now I weigh a little bit more but I think the most important thing is this — I’ve got both feet planted firmly on the ground.

“The Incredible Sulk”

Blockbusters aren’t depressing — and they’re rarely cerebral. Yet Dick is responsible for films ranging from the Harrison Ford cult classic, Blade Runner to the Arnie vehicle Total Recall. This article intends to investigate what Hollywood loves about PhilDick (as fans sometimes lovingly refer to him), and why they keep coming back.

Dick was born six weeks premature in 1928 in Chicago with a twin sister Jane. His twin died six weeks later, something that would haunt his dreams and influence his fiction for the rest of his life. After his parents divorced, when he was six, Dick was brought up by his mother in Washington, DC and then California, where he spent the rest of his life. His interest in sci fi started at the age of 12 when he read his first science fiction story.

Were drugs responsible for Dick’s prolific output?

Arguably the other key influence in Dick’s life was drugs. Specifically amphetamines which he was proscribed in the mid-fifties for anxiety and depression. It seems odd now to be prescribed speed for anxiety, but this was way before our current the notion of a ‘drug culture’. We can only guess what would have happened if Dick had settled for a bottle of Marks and Spencer Chardonnay. But none of this gives us an idea of why Dick is king of the Hollywood castle.

The sheer quantity of material. Speed had a practical benefit – it allowed him to write fast, so there are many novels and short stories to mine for movie ideas. As Dick himself put it, “In five years I wrote sixteen novels, which is incredible.” Some of these, especially the early stories are out of copyright. With reports that some modern writers are turning to Modafinil, are we heading back to the good old days of page-a-minute-page-turners?

Perhaps not. Because there’s another important ingredient to Dick’s writing. Dick was a Christian. While his books may be pessimistic, they have a strong moral heart that appeals to Hollywood moguls (and many non-moguls among us). We may or may not call ourselves religious, but faith in humanity and the power of love are attractive qualities. And ones that remain stubbornly irrational, an atttitude Dick liked.

A moral man who questioned his place in the universe

Dick was a gnostic. Dick’s spiritual faith was not your usual piety of church and good deeds. No, this was the amphetamine-powered, reality questioning variety of belief. He was a man who’s earliest and pre-drug fictions had probed the nature of what is real, and this became a deeply personal matter for him as his mind – and identity – crumbled under industrial quantities of speed. What could be more contemporary than the radical doubt that lies at the heart of gnosticism.

So, Dick combined a somewhat conservative ethic with an exceptionally radical, or at least trippy, epistemology. – bingo. Here we might remember that in his final novel VALIS, he referred to the Dick character as ‘Horselover Fat’ – Philip meaning ‘horselover’ in Greek and Dick being the German word for ‘fat’. It is exactly this ingenious kind of thinking, and sense of humour, that makes him perfect for Hollywood. And luckily, for every conventional movie like The Adjustment Bureau, there is a weird gem like A Scanner Darkly.

Why does Hollywood keep coming back to Philip K Dick? Perhaps it’s because no other sci-fi writer managed to combine quality with quality — and maintain a deep-set moral outlook. Dick was a prolific writer, so we’ll probably see many more films based on his work in years to come.

Apart from the prurient anger that comes from knowing this overpaid cock muncher is getting soapy tit wanks off a double-D list celebrity, while I’m tugging my own cock with a bar of soap in the shower, I really couldn’t care less.

Having said that, if said footballer makes a living off his clean-living image, then maybe, just maybe, the public has a right to know. But despite that being the main argument for naming and shaming this pathetic little turd, that isn’t the real reason we’re all angry.

We’re angry because superinjunctions expose the legal system for what it is.
No, we’re not angry because superinjunctions make a mockery out of the legal system.
Superinjunctions perfectly expose the system for what it is:

Unequal access to the law. Depending on how much money you’ve got.

Now let’s imagine for a moment I were to shag Imogen Thomas. In fact, let’s imagine for a few moments. When we’re done doing that, let’s also imagine it gets reported in the Daily Arsewipe. What do I do about it? Nothing. Because I don’t have a spare fifty grand lying around to get a superinjunction.

Yes, this is about freedom of speech. I mean, what kind of thick, idiotic, piece of shit, wouldn’t-we-all-like-to-throw-you-int0-london-zoo-and-watch-you-get-raped-by-chimps kind of cunt tries to sue Twitter? What kind of utter shit-for-brains moron names everyone who’s tweeted about his pathetic, sordid little affair, in his case?

But once you get over the sheer idiocy of this twat, you’re left with a clear narrative about power and influence in the halls of justice. It’s Goliath versus a million Davids. The rich and powerful are using superinjunctions to grant them unequal access to the law. But in a digital age, that’s no longer possible. Together, we can fight back.

The rich and powerful are being brought down to our level, and there’s an enormous amount of schadenfreude about it. People are revelling in naming this twat precisely because he’s wasting hundreds of thousands on legal fees on it.

It’s the media equivalent of dawdling at your job and taking that little extra time over something because your boss is a cunt. Let him take on the entire internet. Let him spend every penny he’s got trying to force an eleven stone cat back into a small polythene bag. The whole world is laughing at him.

But the fact still remains. These high profile superinjunction cases are proving one thing and one thing alone — the rich and powerful have better access to the law than the likes of you or I. And even though I have modest means (by premiershit football standards), I still have better access to the law than someone with no money at all.

So take a moment out of your hysterical laughter. Stop to think. When the dust settles, who will have the last laugh? Wholesale reform of the justice system is needed to ensure all are equal before the eyes of the law. When law can be bought and sold, it becomes nothing more than a commodity. It is no longer justice.

Twitter has levelled the playing field — this time. But when this is all over and we go back to being a million individuals, rather than a million people united by a common bond (namely, being sued by a colossal dick), we’re just little people. A million of us may be able to fight one rich footballer on an equal footing. But individually? We wouldn’t stand a chance.

Think about that before your next tweet.

Chad Fanstor

What I’m talking about is the service you and I get on the high street.

Actually, if my bank is anything to go by, you don’t get any service on the high street at all. The last three times I’ve popped into my local branch, they’ve told me: sorry, we can’t help you. You’ll have to call telephone banking. Telephone banking is, of course, in India. After a half hour wait, I’m greeted with a line that sounds like they’ve trailed a thin copper wire half way across the globe (or maybe just two tin cans and some string) and connected me with a guy who, if he learned English at all, he only learned it yesterday.

They charge you twenty quid for going five pence overdrawn. They charge you 18.9% on your “approved” overdraft. Yet they only give you 0.0000003% interest on any balance you actually have in your account, whether it’s £5 or £5000.

The service is appalling. The charges are outrageous. The banks are a rip off. The smug banker says: “Yeah. But what the fuck are you going to do about it?”

The answer at the minute, of course, is nothing. Sure, you could take your account somewhere else. But they’re all the same. I’ve had the same experience at both Lloyds and HSBC. I transferred from Lloyds hoping for better service. HSBC gave me precisely jack shit. What’s worse is the rigmarole of moving your account. And that’s where my plan comes in.

If you want to change your phone provider, but keep your phone number, your network is obliged to give you a simple string of digits called a PAC number to take to your new network, transferring your old number across in a matter of days. Why can’t we do the same for banks?

Your bank annoys you. You tell them “fix it, or I’m leaving.” In three days, you get your PAC number, you give it to the new bank, and all your details are automatically transferred. Your account keeps working as normal. It takes five minutes to do.

Greater regulation of high street banking isn’t the answer.

Sure, there would be a cost to set up a system like this. But that’s what governments are for: light-touch regulation. Setting up the infrastructure to securely transfer people’s banking business from one bank to the other would be much easier than drawing up and enforcing ever greater regulations to limit the banks’ behaviour, regulations that probably won’t even work anyway.

The trouble with banking isn’t lack of competition. It’s the immovability of capital. The ICB’s report fails to see the forest for the trees. Sure, it’s important that the man on the street is protected from rampant speculation (if only because it’s a much better to ring-fence funds than it is to give every last penny a government guarantee). But what matters to people like you and me is the quality of service we receive. And the reason the quality of service is so poor isn’t because “all the banks are the same” so there’s no point moving your money. It’s because it’s so hard to move your accounts from bank to bank, it’s too much trouble for most people to bother.

In other words, your bank is able to carry on giving you poor service, ripping you off and behaving grotesquely incompetently because 99.9% of people can’t switch. A system whereby people could switch their accounts to another bank inside of a week would generate the much needed incentive for competition.

In other words, rather than forcing the banks to offer a better service with more red tape and regulation, increasing competition between the banks by making it simple to take your business elsewhere would force the banks to offer a better service, in effect, fixing themselves.

Al Allday is a digital copywriter and small business owner based in London.

I’m guessing you’ve seen the old drawing about the two paths a girl’s life can take –either virtue or dissolution. Well, it turns out there’s a boy’s path too. And while I really didn’t expect either image to have a “clubbing, ketamine and co-dependent relationship with drug addict” phase (although a modern version might) I definitely think both images are missing something from the virtuous path: the dinner party.

At first, I thought the arrival of dinner parties in my life was a sign of creeping old age. Then I thought it was a reaction to the £4 pint. Sure, young people don’t go out any more. But who wants to sit in the living room with a four pack of Skol?

Then I realised my descent into the world of dinner parties was far more sinister. Lots of other twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine year olds are going out clubbing, taking ketamine, and stealing shoes. I’m not. That’s when it hit me. Far from being on the road to ruin, I’m on the railroad to respectability.

All aboard: why do people switch tracks?

It’s funny. Most of the people I knew from my teens and early twenties who were into hard house or spiral techno or sticking acid up their bottoms are much happier these days ‘unwinding with a glass of wine after work’ — while the work hard, study hard contingent have discovered the ‘work hard, play hard’ lifestyle, pulling 14 hour days with ritalin, going out on a gramme, knocking back a couple of valium to help them sleep. Good luck to them.

I don’t really fit into any of these categories. In fact, I’m a nightmare dinner party guest, because as a robot-like INTJ, I’ve never learned how to do small talk. Which means if you’re lucky, I’ll bore you to death about work. Or I’ll sit in the corner silently. If you’re unlucky, I’ll pick up on one of your opinions and start an argument with you.

This weekend, for example, I had dinner with a champagne socialist. He wound me up so much at the end of the dinner I found myself saying “You believe in redistribution of income, fine. You earn twice as much as I do, you’re paying for half of my dinner.”

Saturday night was a little better. Mainly because it was completely unplanned. I’d arranged to meet up with an old uni friend for a pint (to chat about work!). ‘Oh, xxxxx is having a party,’ he said. ‘Bring a bottle.’

What he didn’t tell me was that the evening was a wine-and-canapes tasting evening. Some people had spent a whole week researching their choices. So naturally I showed up with a dusty bottle of corner shop wine that had invariably been kept next to a radiator for the last six years. Luckily, we all saw the funny side.

“When he said bring a bottle,” I joked, “you’re all lucky I didn’t bring gin.”

I’ve averaged a dinner party a week so far this year. And while my investigation is unscientific, I can definitely suggest there’s anecdotal (pun intended) evidence to suggest that dinner party conversation is, 9 times out of 10, about one thing: food.

What do people talk about at dinner parties?

If it’s bad form to talk work and even worse form to talk politics, what’s left? One doesn’t discuss the x-factor, my big fat trailer trash wedding, or whatever else it is the lumpenproleteriat are discussing in the dole queue this week. So you go for the obvious and talk about food.

Recently, I got in a half hour debate about whether or not putting a stone with home baked bread improved the flavour. And I had a rather earnest discussion about whether or not rhubarb crumble was comfort food or a real dessert.

It seems every dinner party needs a centrepiece. Maybe because people realise how intrinsically dull they are. At one recent event, the host took out her milk snake and let it writhe around the table. Oh, how we laughed when it went up one of the guests’ skirts. Well, it’s better than talking about the thousands of innocent civilians getting slaughtered in Libya.

I started to wish I was getting slaughtered myself.

Cheese

This weekend, the centrepiece was an unpasteurised, potentially lethal cheese. The centre oozed out of the protective rind like pus from the open wound of a repressed Tunisian citizen. Bravely, I grabbed a bit of brioche and dived right in. And I have to admit, it was pretty delicious.

I do still find myself yearning for the old days. We used to have dinner parties back then, only they’d be held around midnight and various lunatics would drop in through the course of the night, usually wired on one drug or another. They rarely ate the food, but at least they made interesting conversation.

And that’s when it hit me. I asked myself — where are they now, those crazy people? Well, they’re: not holding down jobs, they’re in and out of mental hospitals, they’re dating other crazy people, stealing shoes, making a mess out of the rest of their lives.

And suddenly I breathe a sigh of relief. When you put it that way, spending the rest of my life making small talk around the dinner table doesn’t seem so bad after all.

Al Allday is a freelance copywriter based in London.

Well, folks, the inevitable has finally happened: the Neo-Burlesque Movement is now fully mainstream.  This initially underground movement started in the early 1990’s with the founding of Dixie Evans’ Miss Exotic World pageant, and has been growing and growing to the point that now Burlesque is everywhere. Neo-Burlesque has finally crossed the mainstream threshold with the release of the movie Burlesque starring Christina Aguilera and Cher.  To complicate the situation, stripper-turned-burlesque instructor Jo Weldon just released The Burlesque Handbook, which spills the beans on most of burlesque’s trade secrets and lowers the bar for practically anyone who wants to do burlesque to jump in. There’s nothing wrong with being mainstream unless you can’t handle it, and there are many problems within the Neo-Burlesque Movement where they have set themselves up for their own failure now that the spotlight really is on them. One of Neo-Burlesque’s problems is inherent in its very existence: Neo-Burlesque is part of the very problem that it is trying to be a solution for. How?  Read on to find out.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association released the 68-page Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. The report seeks to demonstrate academically something that women in Western culture already know—that women are subjected to an ongoing and never-ending sexualization contest that values them solely on their “sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics.”  This comes largely from the media, but to exacerbate the problem further, women become obsessed with the sexualization contest themselves to the point that they objectify themselves and each other, using a few impossible-to-obtain body types as their reference points for performing well in this competition.

There is really no better way to explain the rise of Neo-Burlesque than as a response to this appalling sexualization contest. The stories about how women get into burlesque generally follow this pattern: They were already obsessed with the sexualization contest, depressed because they were losing it, or both.  They went to a burlesque show, saw the wide variety of body types parading across the stage and being cheered unconditionally for it, and wanted to get in on the action.  They were nervous and scared before their first strip show, but when it was all done, they too got their own unconditional adulation.  It forever changed their lives, and now they are happy and gleeful in the burlesque community, regularly taking it off for other women and being praised for—sexualizing themselves. In other words, the Neo-Burlesque Movement still buys into the Western Culture Sexualization Contest’s ever-present message that a woman’s value is primarily based on her performance as a sex object. Their sexualization of each other continues on, only in a “soccer mom” kind of way where everyone gets a prize.

Over and over again in burlesque, women will use word “empowered” to describe how they feel when they perform.  But is this really “power”?  If she were the only woman alive, the argument that a woman has acquired “power” by causing men to helplessly lust after her would hold some water.  But what if this man is bored with the “empowered” dancer’s act and falls asleep during her performance?  Or, let’s assume that while our “empowered” burlesque dancer is putting on her show, another woman came along that was a little more willing, and the man the dancer has “power” over trots off to bed with the other woman.  What happened to her “power”?  What we see is that her “power” is not tangible power at all, but rather an illusion of power. She may feel like she rules the world, but what she feels and what exists in reality are two very different things.  The 30% of the burlesque audience that are men and who smittenly watch our “empowered” woman are consensually giving her the “power” that she possesses, and can shut it off at any time.  She cannot collect lust from them the way that the government collects taxes.  So how exactly is this “power”?

In the previously mentioned The Burlesque Handbook, author Jo Weldon tries to explain how burlesque dancers differ from strippers: “As a strip-joint stripper, I usually looked for one individual to perform to, and that individual paid me.  As a burlesque performer, I play to the entire house, and the house (show producer or venue owner) pays me.” She then recalls the pain when “As a…stripper, my appearance was constantly evaluated and commented upon openly…it was a rollercoaster for my ego.” As dehumanizing as it is for conventional strippers to be scrutinized like they are, at least they have the strength to get up close with men.  Burlesque dancers, on the other hand, have a wall of separation between them and the audience, and have rigged the show to where the audience can only give positive reinforcement. In this environment, all the “power grabs” and attempts and being “daring” end up being, as Roger Waters put it, “the bravery of being out of range.”

The Alternative: The Vintage Movement

So you’re an audience member that’s getting bored of burlesque and tired of saying “Woo!” to everything they do.  Or you like older styles of clothing and ways of doing things, and really want to get away from the sexualization contest. Where to you go? The answer: check out the Vintage Movement, which had its breakthrough year in the UK in 2010.

The Vintage Movement looks to the larger culture of the mid-20th Century, with the intent of bringing the better ways of life from the period to the current day.  It is welcoming to newcomers, features real gentlemen that are kind to ladies, and ladies who come in all sizes and shapes who are appreciated as whole people.  The ladies in the scene are genuinely loved and appreciated for who they are and what they do, and don’t even have to take their clothes off to receive that love and appreciation.

Here’s an overview of what has been going on so far.  The tradeshow-sized Vintage At Goodwood festival made the biggest splash of the year, followed by the traveling event Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fairs. Vintage resellers fuel much of the movement, some running their own shops on Etsy, and others, such as Sadie Boon Vintage, running handsome online boutiques.  Vintage fashion blogs like Va-Voom Vintage also drive the scene, and hard-copy magazines such as Vintage Life support it further. The men come in with blogs like Manly Vintage and magazines like The Chap.

The Vintage Movement’s music looks to be what will gather people together and perpetuate the movement even further.  Dutch chanteuse Caro Emerald broke this territory open in 2010 with her multi-platinum selling Deleted Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor. Expanding the musical vocabulary further is the upcoming compilation This is Vintage Now, which features Miss Emerald, living saxophone legend Big Jay McNeely, exotica revivalists The Waitiki 7, classic jazz singer Beverly Kenney, and many others.

With so much excitement and so many nice people in the Vintage Movement, who needs the same old trite Cherry Bettie Kitty Bottoms taking their clothes off whilst holding the PC gun at the audience, demanding unconditional applause?  The sexualization contest is tragic, but obsessing about it further in a narcissistic way and seeking “I win you lose” answers and imaginary “power” acquisitions is not healing, but a continuation of the problem.  And this is only one of many issues inherent within the Neo-Burlesque Movement that suggest that the show is almost over.

David Gasten is a Vintage enthusiast and producer of the soon-to-be released compilation This is Vintage Now.

Now I’m all for a good protest. Stop the war, end global heating, make Cher Lloyd get her tits out. People power can do fantastic things. But ultimately this protest comes down to a bunch of spoilt children fed on years of socialist tripe that’s made them believe they’re entitled to a living and to have other people pay for it. I mean, you don’t see 50,000 people smashing up Labour HQ because we’ve all got to pay higher taxes because they bankrupt the country now, do you?

It’s the shouts of “Tory scum” I can’t stand. Like any of these fucking hippies was even born in the eighties. I mean, it was the Labour government who introduced tuition fees in the 90s, wasn’t it? Where were the shouts of “Leftie scum?” back then. And now Labour’s bankrupt the country and someone’s got to foot the bill for what really is an incredibly expensive education system and students are saying  “well, it shouldn’t be us.”

My question is this: if it’s not the people using the service who should be paying for it, who should? Oh yeah, that’s right. Muggins the taxpayer. Students, give up, go home. The days of student grants are long gone. We grumbled at the time but my generation got lucky in retrospect paying subsidised fees and taking out whopping loans, and we accepted it, because we knew we were getting a good deal. We weren’t entitled to free money. Who is? £6,000 p/a isn’t a bad price to pay for an education. Not a proper one. It might convince a few of you to get proper jobs instead of partying for three years, though. Folks, I fail to see why being forced to pay for a service you’re using this is a bad thing. I don’t ask the government to pay for the petrol in my car. I pay for it myself because it provides a clear benefit to me.

It’s the hypocrisy of the protesters that really fucks me off. I hope they’ll be protesting in force when they’ve all got good jobs and are paying the top rate of income tax. Quite why this narrow sectional interest group thinks it’s okay to smash up a party political HQ and subvert democracy and generally act like children just because we don’t have any money left to subsidise their three year party any more is beyond me.

If you want something, you have to pay for it. We don’t live in a socialist utopia where everything’s free, and this bunch of namby-pamby bed-wetting liberal middle class hippie student scum is about to learn this very important lesson.

At least they’re actually learning something.

Chad Fanstor

And go nuts they did. Remember Police Squad? How about The Naked Gun? Yup, I’m really gonna compare this film to those masterpieces of deadpan (if rather unsubtle) humour. This is Herzog sending up cop dramas, from Dirty Harry to CSI Miami. Everything here is bizarre, twisted and out of joint. Because it follows, then breaks, formula and convention.

Cage is a dirty cop sniffing, snorting, smoking and pill-popping his way through a murder investigation. He’s quite literally so bad, he’s good. But the real genius of this film is that it’s only about half an hour through (when you see Cage hallucinate singing lizards) that you realise you’re in the middle of a comedy. Then, suddenly, all becomes clear. Cage is wielding a gun longer than his arm. He’s walking with a hunchback. He has a hooker girlfriend and a lucky crack pipe. Suddenly, you realise you’re in the thick of one of the best comedies of the last decade.

Bad Lieutenant is brilliantly subversive, in the same way as Robert Altman’s take on Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973) subverted the hard-boiled noir of the 40s. It’s an instant cult classic, with off-the-wall humour reminiscent of The Big Lebowski, eminently quotable, infinitely re-watchable.

Take time out to watch Cage, Herzog and, of course, Xzibit, stick two fingers up to the film-making estabishment. I don’t want to spoil any more surprises for you. Just go and buy this film and be pleasantly surprised.

Lizardman