#oneaday, Day 133: Lazy Days

Everyone has lazy days. Days when nothing – nothing – gets done. And sometimes there’s not even a reason for getting nothing done. Just pure laziness. Or possibly your body telling your mind that it’s quite comfortable where it is, thank you very much, and would it mind awfully if it just sat here and atrophied for a few hours KTHXBAI.

It starts innocently enough. You sit down on the sofa. Perhaps you wanted a quick breather. Perhaps you’ve just had a phone call that went on for so long that that pacing-around-the-room thing that everyone does with mobile phones got a bit tiresome. Perhaps you were about to watch some TV. The circumstances of how you got to the sofa are about to become completely irrelevant.

At some point during your blissful reverie, something of earth-shattering importance will occur to you. Perhaps there’s a letter that you need to post today, or you’re running out of toilet paper and the shop is closing early for refurbishment today, or maybe you’re out of milk, or perhaps you actually have something useful to get on with. Whatever it is, your mind can’t stop thinking about it. A feeling of lurking panic starts to set in. What if you really need to take a dump and there isn’t enough toilet paper? There’s no-one else in the house so you can’t ask anyone else to go and fetch you some. Could you sink as low as using a towel or a newspaper? Or would you want to wash your shitty arse in the shower, like some sort of incontinent old person, only without a nurse to help you with the hideous process? The feeling of panic builds and you almost feel obliged to get up.

But no! Why should you get up? You’ve been working your arse off all week for little to no gratitude from the people that you work for. So you’ve earned this little sit down. You shouldn’t feel obliged to do anything. So you don’t. You say to yourself – possibly out loud – no. You are going to sit here until you’re nice and relaxed, or at least until Top Gear has finished. Then and only then you might think about getting up to post that letter.

“But the post goes at 4pm, and it’s 3.50 now,” says your mind. “If you don’t post that letter today, the council are going to charge you eight-hundred and fifty-four pounds for the privilege of another letter asking you where your eight-hundred and fifty-four pounds owed in money that they paid you by mistake actually is.” You close your eyes and block out the whingeing and nagging that your own mind is setting about you with. This is your time. Besides, the postman will come again tomorrow, and you can always change the date on the letter to look like you posted it earlier and it actually got lost in the post and then feign ignorance when the council start hammering on your door and bringing the bailiffs round.

You decide to give up trying to be productive and you lean back on the sofa in a more relaxed posture. Perhaps your mouth falls open in an expression of gormless contentment. You stare into space for a little while as the light starts to fade outside and you wonder if you probably should get up and cook something, but you’re not sure you can be bothered. You’d phone for pizza, but you don’t have any cash, and ordering one with a debit card is always such a hassle because they always phone back and say it hasn’t gone through and you think your card’s been declined because you’ve got no money but it’s actually them just typing the number in wrong and oh for heaven’s sake being by yourself sucks and wouldn’t it be much better if you had someone to talk to or cook dinner for? That might get you up off the damn sofa.

There are only two possible outcomes to this scenario once it gets to this point:

The first possibility is that you achieve victory over the soporific powers of the sofa, stand up and get something done. You post your letter, putting it right into the postman’s hand just as he is emptying the postbox into his big bag. Then you go and buy toilet paper and milk and order a pizza. Your evening goes swimmingly well, and you collapse into bed satisfied that you have spent your day as productively as you possibly could, with a much-needed break in the middle for a little quiet time and reflection.

And the other possibility is, of course, death.

#oneaday, Day 128: Leveraging the Monetization of Excellence

Dear Businesspersonages of the World,

You don’t half talk a load of bollocks. Whether you’re sitting around a boardroom table with a cup of petrol masquerading as coffee, standing in front of an overhead projector training people who aren’t listening by patronising them (in the English way, not the American way) or writing job advertisements, your language is full of shit that doesn’t mean anything. In case you weren’t aware, the English language has been around a lot longer than the double-breasted business suit and so was already adequately equipped to allow clear communication between individuals, or even large groups of people, through the media of writing or speaking.

Therefore, I must please ask you to remove the following words from your vocabulary forthwith:

Leverage

Use. USE. You don’t “leverage social media applications to crowdsource popular opinion”, you “use Facebook to see what people think”. I have no idea where this word has come from and I see no reason for its existence other than to keep websites like Mashable in business. I guess people use the word “leverage” to mean “use really hard”. But I say again, the simple word “use” has been perfectly well-equipped for this purpose for years. And the word “leverage” has been quite happy with its original meaning of how much, well, leverage you can get on something. Like leverage on a boulder that you’re trying to push down a hill. Or leverage on a glued-down tabletop that you’re trying to remove. (I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but you need leverage to do it.) Leverage is not a verb. So just stop it. Or I will see how much leverage I can get on your arse with this crowbar.

Monetize

I understand that this is the 21st century and everyone wants to communicate as efficiently as possible. Therefore that oh-so-cumbersome three-word phrase “make money from” appears to have been replaced by the much more elegant word “monetize”. Was this really necessary? Again I point the finger at Mashable, whose favourite question about websites appears to be “how will they monetize this”? Were I writing an article about, say, Twitter, I would ask the question “how will they make money from this?” It’s just as clear. Yes, it uses a couple more words, but it sounds infinitely less pretentious. “Monetize” sounds like something a money robot would do. It’s a bit sinister. Imagine the money robot coming into your bedroom in the middle of the night and monetizing you. You’d wake up as a big pile of dollar bills or pounds sterling or the currency of your locality, unless the money robot was made in a different territory in which case it would probably use its own local currency. Which would make it terribly difficult to get anything done. Also, people would want to spend you all the time. So please stop this too. Or I will monetize the violation of your rectal cavity with this crowbar.

Excellence

Mottos used to be inspirational pieces of text, usually in Latin to make people look clever. Here are a few examples:

Natura Artis Magistra (Nature is the Teacher of Art – Amsterdam Zoo)
In Somno Securitas (In Sleep there is Safety – the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland)
Ex Obscuris Lux (From Darkness, Light – American Association of Ophthalmology)
Vita donum Dei (Life is the Gift of God – Royal College of Midwives)

Here is the motto for Purbrook Park School in Hampshire:

Working Together Towards Excellence

Somewhat less inspirational, I’m sure you’ll agree. It implies that the school is, you know, all right, but not what you’d call “excellent”. The word “excellence” is constantly used as something to strive for which is never actually attained. Therefore, I suggest that it is actually utterly useless. You may as well put “Working Together Towards Some Of The Children Here Actually Leaving With Some Qualifications And Not Getting Knocked Up And Living On The Dole At The Taxpayers’ Expense While Daily Mail Readers Get All Upset And Blame Immigrants For Taking Jobs That You’re Too Lazy To Get Anyway Because You Couldn’t Be Arsed To Work Hard At School”. Although admittedly that’s somewhat less snappy.

So please stop using “excellence”. Otherwise I will strive for excellence in the infliction of pain in and around your anus with this crowbar.

Self-Starter

You use this an awful lot in job advertisements, don’t you? Usually coupled with “confident” and “motivated”. What exactly is a self-starter? Can you tell me? Is it someone who can actually tie their own shoelaces? Someone who knows how to boil the kettle and press the button on the toaster so that the coffee and the toast are ready at exactly the same time so you have hot coffee and hot toast instead of boiling hot coffee and dry, cold toast or burnt toast and tepid coffee? Is it someone who runs like those new cars that don’t have an ignition key and you just press the button to start them up? Is it a person who doesn’t run on clockwork? Because most of us don’t run on clockwork, so I’d argue that most of us are self-starters. If we weren’t, we’d spend all our time lying in bed wanking, if we could be bothered. So please stop it. Otherwise I will demonstrate how much of a self-starter I am by, without any outside intervention or assistance, performing an amateur colonoscopy using this crowbar and a late-90s Handycam.

Fit for Purpose

No. It’s not “not fit for purpose”, it “doesn’t work”. What’s wrong with “doesn’t work”? I’ve been using the words “doesn’t work” for years. See this old pair of headphones? They don’t work. This remote control? It doesn’t work. This battered old PC? It doesn’t work. It’s pretty clear that none of these are working as intended (and that I should probably throw out some of these things that don’t work or at least replace the batteries) but I have never once felt the need to describe them as “not fit for purpose”. Similarly, the shirt I purchased from Primark who seem to think that XL-size gentlemen are actually more like S-size gentlemen was “too small”, not “not fit for purpose”. The fact that when you drop a mobile phone onto a concrete floor it tends to shatter into a million tiny pieces doesn’t make it “not fit for purpose”, it makes you a clumsy idiot who should know when to put your fucking Blackberry away. So please stop using this, otherwise I will show you just how fit for purpose this crowbar is for inserting into businessmen’s arses.

There are many other words I could continue this letter with, businesspeople (and don’t even get me started on why you use the word “persons” instead of “people”) but I have already written over 1100 words on the subject and I imagine that you have some important leveraging to get on with. So please remember what I have said, otherwise I will be paying you a visit with my friend the crowbar. And no amount of ergonomically-designed comfort-leveraging chairs will make sitting down comfortable for quite some time when I’ve finished with you.

Yours sincerely,

Pete

#oneaday, Day 120: Education, Edducaytion, Eddyukayshun

Schools are “failing our children”. So say various government watchdogs, quangos, hypocrites, rhinoceroses and jabberwockies. But aforementioned bodies (some of which I may have made up a little bit) don’t take into account that it’s their fault in the first place that schools are “failing our children”. Not to mention the fact that there’s also a lot of blame to lay at the feet of both the parents and the kids themselves before you start pointing the Finger of Justice™ at the hard-working teachers and other school staff who are trying very much to make the best of a bad lot.

I quit being a full-time teacher. Twice, in fact. I’m not going to make that mistake a third time. Fool me once and all that. Currently, to pay the bills, I am enjoying the life of a supply teacher. This means that I can choose whether or not to sleep in every morning or maybe be woken at the crack of dawn by a phone call saying some festering scumhole school in the very armpit of Southampton is short of a teacher for today and could I possibly go along with a chair, a whip and a net and see if I can do anything with them? There are two very simple equations to bear in mind here.

1. sb = 0(£) + 100(j) where sb is “staying in bed”, £ is money and j is joy.

2. nsbapcdtvfssvas = muchos(£) – 5000(j) where nsbapcdtvfssvas is “not staying in bed, answering phone at crack of dawn, visiting festering scumhole school in very armpit of Southampton”, £ is money and j is joy.

So while equation 1 leads to a gain in joy, it does not lead to a gain in money. Indirectly, in fact, it tends to lead to a decrease in money, as staying at home often leads to wandering out in search of coffee. However, while equation 2 leads to an increase in money it leads to a substantial hit in the joy department. And no, that’s not a euphemism for your dangly parts.

But I digress in talk of made-up maths. I was about to tell you what is so very wrong with education. Particularly primary-level education, as that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time recently. So let’s do another list, shall we? Good. I know how you like lists, particularly if they’re illustrated.

1. Overcomplicating everything.

I remember when I was at primary school. A tick meant “correct” and a cross meant “wrong”. If you were lucky, you got a brief comment, like “Good.” or “Lazy work.” depending on whether you’d done good or lazy work.

In the school I was working in today, they had a “marking key” on the wall. A squiggly line meant “look at this”. A straight line with a “sp” meant “spelling mistake”. A circled letter meant “you should have used a capital letter”. A circled empty space meant “you have missed some punctuation”. A caret meant “you’ve missed a word out”. And then and only then did the key reveal that, yes, tick means “correct” and cross (or dot, now) means “wrong”.

Seriously? These are eight- and nine-year olds we’re dealing with here. Some of them can barely read, and you expect them to decipher that babble? Not only that, but then every book is expected to have a comment in there which, at the very least, says something inane like “Well done! You have shown me you are able to use connectives to join sentences together!” or “Congratulations! You successfully subtracted two things using the written method!” or “Super! You were able to recreate the entire Nutcracker Suite through the medium of rectal flatulence!”

Which brings us nicely on to…

2. Using unnecessarily high-level language.

Remember: eight- and nine-year olds. Do they really need to know terminology like “learning objective” and “success criteria”? I am yet to meet a child who actually knows why they write down the learning objective and success criteria other than “it’s the stuff we copy at the start of the work, innit”. The sole purpose for it is so when the inspectors come to play that the teachers can point proudly at the various learning objectives and say “Look! They’ve done this!”.

Bollocks.

3. Making unnecessary work.

Oh silly me. I made a mistake. The children shouldn’t be copying the learning objective and success criteria. The teacher should have prepared them all in advance, trimmed them to size and stuck them in the children’s books for them. Bear in mind at this point that a typical class has about 30 kids in it, each with at least five books (literacy, numeracy, “topic”, science, art) and each day typically has four or five different things going on throughout the course of it. So hey, with all that to plan, what’s a little extra cutting and sticking into ninety different books?

4. Dumb-ass theories that make no sense.

There are too many of these to count. Phonics is one. Anything involving behaviour management is another. Take a quick detour and go and watch this, including the stupid interactive part. The first shot of the class and the obnoxious children in it is the most accurate depiction of what it’s actually like to be in a classroom. However, the supposed “strategies” for dealing with the class are complete bollocks. Giving the teen who thinks talking about fucking his classmate’s mother a “positive note” if he sits down and gets on with his work? Don’t make me laugh.

5. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

I was talking to someone the other day – I think it may have been Rhiarti – and talking about how the imagination of young people is stifled these days. UPDATE: Yes, it was definitely Rhiarti, right here, in fact. So yes – the imagination of young people is stifled by the fact that they’re expected to learn all these million-and-one different techniques which there’s no way in hell are going to stay in their tiny heads. I remember “writing” at primary school being all about writing stories. Now, they’re expected to write Reports, Explanation Texts, Instruction Texts, Recounts, Narratives and all manner of other things (all inevitably capitalised, too) rather than, you know, just being able to sit down and write to express themselves. Even when they do get the rare opportunity to write a story, it’s inevitably got such a long list of completely arbitrary success criteria for them to fulfil that any semblance of creativity has been battered out of them by the end of their school career. Which is sad.

All this is the tip of the iceberg. Don’t even get me started on the “three stage lesson”, on “thinking skills”, “thinking hats”, Bloom’s Taxonomy, starters, plenaries and all manner of other shit.

So, in summary, a lot needs to change. But unfortunately, all of the things above, which are quite obviously and clearly dumb and stupid, are the sorts of things which men in suits with clipboards think “get results” and “show progress”. Well hooray for progress. Somehow we managed without it for a long time. Why can’t we go back to those days, for the kids’ sake and for the sake of the poor, anxious teachers constantly on the verge of nervous breakdowns?

#oneaday, Day 119: Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t

When you’re a kid, you pick up what you think is “knowledge” from somewhere. God knows where – probably a combination of things you thought you’d overheard your parents saying (but had inevitably misheard or misunderstood), things you’d seen in the media and things your friends had told you were absolutely, positively 100% true because their big brother said so and their big brother knows everything about the world because he has got a girlfriend and a car and goes to secondary school and you don’t.

Some of these things are myths perpetuated by society to give more meaning to particular events. The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. Santa. Jesus. (Sorry.) But others are just plain wrong, and sometimes you don’t get corrected on them until much later. And sometimes you don’t ever get corrected on them.

Take these five examples. I know they’re all nonsense, but there are at least three of them I haven’t seen compelling evidence against. So if you’d care to set my mind at rest about any of them, please feel free.

1. Car crashes always cause explosions.

Hollywood can take full responsibility for this one, since almost any movie involving a car crash inevitably ends with one or both of the cars exploding into a ball of flames while our intrepid hero manages to get out just in time. So when I was being driven to a piano lesson by my mother one night, and a car misjudging a peculiar junction bumped into the front of our car at less than 20mph (hardcore, right?) I was terribly surprised to not suddenly be engulfed in flames and smoke and be battling for my life. Pleasantly surprised, I might add – even more so by the fact that we could drive off after the accident, because the second thing I assumed about car accidents at the time was that they caused your car to immediately die. However non-severe the accident was. Scrape a lamp-post? Uh-oh, better start walking!

2. Someone throwing a cigarette out of their car window and it passing underneath your car will cause your car to explode.

I am genuinely quite paranoid about this to this day – not unreasonably I feel, as we’re taught quite early on that cars run on quite flammable materials and as such probably shouldn’t be in close contact with anything that is, you know, on fire. To this day, any litterbug smoker flinging their fag-ends out of their window hasn’t been successful in detonating my car behind them but surely it’s only a matter of time.

3. Using a mobile phone anywhere in the vicinity of a petrol station will cause the petrol station to explode.

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that three out of the three irrational fears so far have involved explosions. I don’t have a particular explosion phobia – although like most people, it’s not something I would choose to stand next to – but it occurs to me that no-one gives you a particular education in the things which do and do not cause explosions. This is clearly a failing of the current education system and should be rectified with a new section of the National Curriculum immediately.

Oh, right, mobile phones. Well, there are signs everywhere in petrol stations telling you what you shouldn’t do because petrol is flammable and blah blah blah. And the instruction to switch off one’s mobile phone is always right under the instructions to switch off one’s engine and to not light fires or smoke. Therefore, it’s a natural assumption that the mobile phone thing also has something to do with fire. It probably doesn’t. But to tell you the truth, I don’t actually know why you’re not supposed to use your mobile phone in a petrol station. It’s the sort of thing I think of every time I see that sign and then never bother to ask anyone about.

4. Having been to the place depicted in a TV show makes the TV show approximately one thousand times better.

Okay, sometimes this is true. If you saw Jack Bauer storming a hotel you’d stayed at, that would be pretty cool. But having suffered through many, many episodes of pensioner-based “sitcom” (and I use the term loosely) Last of the Summer Wine when I was little, and then having visited Holmfirth, the Yorkshire village where it is set, I can state with some confidence that this is simply not the case. In fact, I recall being rather disappointed when I discovered that the café in the series was actually a hairdressers in reality. Oh, and the programme still wasn’t funny.

5. Noel Edmonds is watching every house in the country.

Bearded light-entertainment twat Noel Edmonds (now in charge of the utterly pointless Deal or No Deal) used to have a show on Saturday evenings called Noel’s House Party. It was a variety show of the type you don’t really get that much any more, unless there’s some sort of charity gig like Comic Relief or Children in Need going on in which case they draw the format out over the course of approximately fifteen hours. One of the segments on the show was called Gotcha, where Noel would look right at the screen and start talking, then click his fingers and suddenly on everyone’s TV screens, there was a family sitting together on their sofa looking all “OMG!” while Noel was all “LOL!” and the audience was like “ROFL!”

I can’t even remember the point of the segment. I think it involved Noel talking to the family through their TV set and possibly they won a prize or something. The only effect it had on my young self was inducing a state of almost total paranoia while this show was on. As soon as the Gotcha segment started, I started looking around to see if I could spot any hidden cameras. Leave aside the fact that we clearly hadn’t had any visitors from a TV crew to install said hidden cameras at any point. I always wondered why the family was surprised. Maybe Noel’s team broke into the family’s house in order to install the hidden cameras, which just makes them even worse, given the fact that I know I’d be utterly terrified in a break-in situation. But you never saw that in the papers, did you? “Noel’s House Party team in hospital after shotgun break-in incident”.

Fortunately, I no longer think that Noel Edmonds is watching me. Probably for the best.

Super-Important Edit!

[EDIT: “Mike” in the comments below has graciously pointed out that the segment in question was not, in fact, called Gotcha but was actually called NTV. I apologise profusely for this gross failure to check my facts properly before writing. But, to be honest, the prospect of trawling through footage of Noel Edmonds was so repulsive to me that I couldn’t face it. So consider this an official correction and apology. Thank you, Mike, you’ve done the world a service by remembering Noel’s House Party so we don’t have to.]

#oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet

Dear The Internet,

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that’s beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word “tenacity” to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying “less is more” is not always true. Consider these two sentences: “Pete is a dude.” and “Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people.” Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/”quotation marks” combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

“LOL” is not a punctuation mark. It means “laughing out loud”, something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type “LOL”. I’ve heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type “LOL” and they’re not actually laughing, please?

I’ve bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis’ first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn’t know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn’t annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn’t feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it’s possible to stop people saying what I’ve bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That’s why I chose to buy it over the thing they’re recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I’m fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I’m sure their thing is really good too, which is why I’m not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like “information superhighway” and “global village” were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn’t suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn’t suck because they think it doesn’t suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn’t suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don’t suck, and I don’t think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I’m sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison