PP meet-up the THIRD

WARNING: This is a post of incredible mediocrity, as I have spent the whole day doing an essay that I now see in my nightmares, while simultaneously panicking about upcoming exams and work-placement. RUNAWAY! RUNAWAYFAST!

That's right. That's right mofos. Here is the write-up that none of you have demanded, and that even less of you (yes, I know it's theoretically impossible for 'less than none of you' to exist) care about reading.

Pickled Politics, that blog what I read, had a meet-up yesterday, and I went to it. There happened to be civilians ('non-regulars') present and consequently, an equal number of white people and non-white people for once! Though it must be said that the turn-out could have been better... like if the thread for the meet-up had gone up sooner... *coughs and looks deliberately in Sunny's direction*

Sunny, our Lord and Master was of course present. A struggle betwixt his inner Body Clock (set to run on Indian Standard Time) and his better instincts had obv. ensued, as he was only an hour late. He told me to give him a hug as I was staring, half-blinded somewhere in the direction of the sun behind him (I would tell you why if I could work out why myself... For now, t'shall be blamed on a heady mixture of dry-ass brownie (oh, NT, do you know how my heart withered and died with every love-free disintegrating bite of the broken top? The inside was moist. Why then, a top crumbling like old-person foot?), sun exposure, not enough sleep, walking around and being inappropriately dressed for the outdoors. A sausage sandwich may also have been complicit.

So yes, our Lord and Master, living fully and ironically up to his name, commanded me to give him a hug. I lurched to, wondering if by some trick he was going to move and I would end up dangling around his neck like a pendant ( which incidentally, The Libertarian's favourite economist has been accused of being...). The awkward grapple lasted mere seconds, after which I was returned, immensely relieved at having neither incurred nor caused any injury, to TL. The mysterious 'people on the second floor' looked at us from the table, and my sense of irony kicked guiltily in. The Second Floorers were both very slender, probably thinner than me; further down the table, right at the end, were two women of a build closer to mine, who seemed to be enjoying a never-ending meal. Rowenna - the female of our Second Floorers - disposed of them with the polite efficiency of a sort of cross between Uma Thurman's Bride and Mary Poppins. Sonia and I were suitably impressed; then, with TL in tow (of course!) we sat...

... and talked about legalising drugs. Immediately prior to this, Sunny introduced us in customary fashion: 'This is -----, she's a blogger and on Pickled Politics.... What's the name of your blog again? I never remember it.' Thank you, for that demonstration of support, O Great One. 'Get there steppin',' I reminded him sheepishly. TL, Sunny and Sonia then cranked smoothly into action while I sort of tried to arrange my upper body at 45 degrees to the bottom, fuse with TL and generally avoid the suddenly-unfriendly wind. It began with Our Lord telling us about the author of Freakonomics writing another book, which he had brought with him, about being a gang leader for a day. My hood went up. I mentioned The Wire and Ben (with perfect timing and quite possibly taller even than he had been at the previous meet-up) took the piss.

We shifted indoors, and I ended up 'at the head of the table.' However, for a good 10 minutes, I was preoccupied with trying to make myself sufficiently taller than said table so as to be able to feel like an adult whilst conversing like one. I achieved only the former, and only just. I don't know what happens to me at these events. The inner child is awakened, and cries out for satiety. I blame the seats. When you have to fight to keep your chin above the table surface, I tell you, you just can't take discussion of Moldovan election issues quite as seriously as they deserve. Having Ben (who turned out to be 6'3'', and hence the tallest real person (i.e. 'non-basketballer') I have ever met, and that INCLUDES my brothers-in-law) to my right didn't help.

Fighting down the chaos inside, I ventured to make conversation LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO, with D-Notice and Ben. However, as seems to be characteristic of every meet-up at the NT so far, a uniquely British band (I think they were blues?) were playing as we tried to have lengthy and intellectual discussions. I say 'uniquely British' because I returned from the toilets to hear the singer bleating 'Too many cooks spoil the stew'. Not the broth - that dodgy foreign word of proverbs and Americans - but stew. Aaah. :-D Neatly-attired old white people sat, enraptured by this lyrical gem, saved from blending into the background by the gentle luminosity of their grey/white hair.

I don't know what happens to me, but every time I'm at the NT for a meet-up, I just want to RUN AMOK. Maybe it's the way I dress. Perhaps my neon-green tights and bright blue miniskirt had somehow infiltrated my bloodstream, and worked their way up to my brain? Lots of old people. With their clutch purses and pearl necklaces. Enraptured to stew. 'Twas all sweetly tragic. Some perverse instinct was urging me to jump on all the tables like a five-year-old and/or draw my rather wordless compatriots into a game of Musical Padded-Stools. Political bloggers are a serious and mature bunch, and I, unfortunately, am not.

Then, I remembered that D-Notice had been regarding me in a perplexed manner and decided to prove conclusively that I am not the freak I in fact am. I made jokes to reassure him and Ben of my (ongoing) sanity. They laughed, and sometimes I even heard what they said! W00t. However, Ben confessed to having read this blog, which was almost enough to make me fall off the tiny tower of scrunched-up Libertarian-jacket, scrunched-up hoodie and Libertarian wallet narrowly keeping me at their chin (if not face) level. Two posts at that. I later revealed to him that I thought Oxbridge people were androids. He then revealed that most of his family were Oxbridge-ites. I conceded that maybe there are some out there who are merely part android. Oh, I learn so much from my blogging associates.

I also tried desperately to complain about the culture of impatience and its effect on blogging to my poor captive audience, whilst wondering what the fuck I was actually talking about. I remember complaining (repeatedly) about right-wing trolls, spelling and syntax (urgh, how original). D-Notice laughed at least twice, reassuring me that the words had left my mouth in the right order if nothing else. Then, contrary to my best wishes, my brain informed me that BIATCH, I was hungry. I tried to continue seeming erudite and civilised as a mental screensaver of different types of cakes began (why? why? I blame that GODDAMN brownie again). Then, the smell of sausages descended. I resisted the urge to bob hypnotically to the wafting scent like a snake being charmed.

Blah blah blah, Sonia told me a lot of very interesting things about hijabi women such as Shelina Zahra Janmohamed (whose book, Love in a headscarf, I highly recommend!). I took the piss out of TL's eating habits to her, and he began to stop having elite political debates, and grin slightly at me. Sonia quizzed him with her usual forensic meticulousness about what he ate. I laughed. Rowenna, overhearing mention of Cambridge, joined us. I asked her about her article on the 'blokeosphere', which I unsurprisingly agreed with, and whether it was designed to elicit waves of absolute nobs proving her point in droves in the comment box. She laughed and explained to the others. I suggested that perhaps such commentators should be diverted towards taking pictures of their penises and posting them in the comment box instead, as that might at least be entertaining. She laughed, but I was serious. Everyone's been going crazy for Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent... It's evidently time for another Internet Sensation.

So, to ease the frustration of all them there Cif-ers who think they're a cut above because they post on the Guardian website, I say this: bring it. Bring the cocktasticness. If you still desperately feel the need to invent creative (read: stupid) names for Gordon Brown or froth uselessly about 'ZaNuliarbore,' feel free. You could Photoshop in a little placard with it on, so it looks like your penis is protesting. Or get it in there in some other amusing fashion. Then, send in separate pictures of your faces so that we can have fun matching up the two. I mean, seeing as how you think virtually all the female writers are 'feminazis' who of course can't by definition be straight, why would we laugh? (Er...) The winner can get a brand-spanking new porn career.*

So yeah, Rowenna was a very nice lady, but today I found out that apparently she is only a year older than me, and now I am terrified of her. Nyrone, who was his usual mellow self, arrived unexpectedly and got on like a house on fire with her for what may have been all of eternity, before revealing that he got a job at Al-Jazeera English. Classy! He also praised me for my honesty when writing (and wasn't the only one to do so!). I ended the evening looking into TL's eye and muttering about enchiladas. On the way home, I proceeded to fight hunger by gossiping about Sunny like a harridan of the highest order. I leave you with this, which was delightedly and pointedly brought up by TL and I. Two words: sexy goatee. HILAAAAAARIOUS!


* career not included.

P.S.: I found out what I would be, were I a pop song - and I didnae even need a fucking Facebook quiz to tell me.

Down With Anti-Intellectualism!

Down with anti-intellectualism! Down with anti-intellectualism! I have been reading some things online which have moved me to issue this war-cry.

We live in an age of MASS INFORMATION, I think you will agree. The Internet is a waterfall of differing accounts, of video and audio clips, blog posts and news articles. Waterfalls enrich and keep the supply of water coming steadily. However, if they flood, there will be deaths by drowning as the water overcomes all.

Now my alarmist metaphor might be a touch, well, alarmist, but the point stands. The Internet is a huge and wonderful thing. Some people don't like the notion that putting your data out there into cyberspace might mean that you never get it back, but life is full of risks and gambles, and for what you get in return, it is a glorious system.

The problem then, lies not with the Internet, but with us. Fucking lazy-ass humanity. We are an ineffectual lot, aren't we? We want to leap straight to the end-product of everything without making the journey. Did nobody ever tell us that it's not the winning but the participation that counts? Evidently not, and that is why we idolise Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - we like the notion of a string of successive victories. We don't like to think about the work that goes into producing those victories and the long hard slog that results in a brief shining moment of sporting history at Wimbledon. Between the titles, a person's life is lived in single-minded devotion to training and fitness, a special diet and upon hearing that, we recoil in horror. It doesn't fit with the glamour of the brief shining moment.

To return to the Internet though - we fail to do it justice. We do not look upon it as a tumbling stream of water which could be combed into little rivulets to make it more comprehensible. Instead, we see a river bursting its banks and run, panicking, towards the opinion-ghettoes of the blogosphere or tabloid papers' websites, hiding out among those who share our views, be they justified, informed, articulate or not.

And Jesus fuckin' H. Christ, if you're looking at the Mail website or similar (which I categorically refuse to link to), it's a depressing sight. Don't be fooled - the Guardian's Comment Is Free is similarly packed to the cyber-rafters with morons, tunnel-visionaries and smart-arses. Trollish figures turn up everywhere, desecrating all our pathetic notions of humans as 'superior animals.' On the Web, it would seem, Darwin's rules don't apply. It's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the stupidest.

Now, I know that people will be inclined towards sites that express their own views - that's perfectly natural. It is honestly sad though, to see how commentators pop up on Pickled Politics, for example, with the sole purpose of trying to be the sole right-wing maverick or whatever (I'm looking at you, Ashik!) and the numbskulls inhabiting the comments box on Guido Fawkes' blog are legendary among those with even a cursory awareness of the UK political blogosphere (that bloody word again!).

It is not about debate, it is not about legitimate criticism or disagreement, but about pathetic self-affirmation at the expense of others: I R A REBEL WOZ ERE, pretty much. Then you have Liberal Conspiracy, where the debates can descend into the most minutely finicky semantic wrestling, essentially to the point where people might as well be saying: 'You said X' and are responded to thus 'No, I said Y! YOU think I said X because that's what YOU think is right, but I think Y is right and I KNOW I'm right anyway'.

Let us move beyond words for a minute, I'm asking you. Let's break this fucking Great British tendency to complain and sound off about things, especially when we know next to nothing about them, because that's what is expected of us. The Web is a giant, giant place. Crawl out from under your tiny, little rock and actually open your eyes a little. Read articles - actually read them. Then try forming some thoughts.

I often castigate myself in the presence of people who write for a living, such as at yesterday's PP meet-up, because I can't always express myself particularly well. In fact, I'm even worse in person than in writing or print, or whatever. My tongue quivers hesitantly at the back of my throat as my brain swells dangerously, like a hen about to produce an egg. No egg is produced however - instead I get lots of strands that explode messily out, out of my mouth. Yet I do not feel shame about this. Why should I?

I talk to other people and I try to make sense of myself in the process, and that is what life should be about. Society is not something we can make disappear as if by magic, so trying to actually interact with it and the world around us might help. I am proud at the very least that I listen and take things in and try to collate grand ideas in my tiny little head. So many of us when we're forced to 'grow up' have moments where we extol the virtues of childhood. Conservatives in particular often seem to be the sort of people who wish they could 'go back' to that time (and I don't mean that in any good way whatsoever), whereas far-leftists often come off like that sulky, cynical smartarse in your sixth-form that everyone fancies for two years and then when you start uni you realise he was a total ass.

Yet it doesn't have to be so painful, it doesn't have to be all about loss. Just like the Internet should not be a series of adjacent ghettoes. It's called the fucking World Wide Web after all - a web is made of connecting threads. Let's learn a lesson from childhood in a constructive way for once, and apply the principle of homo viator. Life is a journey and when you decide to stop seeing it as a learning experience, you might as well jump in the coffin and let 'em beam you up Scotty. Or not, because you won't be going anywhere, just stagnating in the cesspit of your lazy ignorance.

There is a fine line between ignorance and bigotry and I think that a great majority of people are very much on the side of the former. So let's try and remedy that shall we? I was talking to my boyfriend and suggested that, given that the trend for reality TV does not seem to be weakening (X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, etc.), why not take something along the lines of Secret Millionaire, Faking It and Wife Swap? Except that it must expressly be people of different races and classes. Put them in each other's shoes for a week, no holds barred (unless you're forcing a vegetarian to eat meat or whatever) and then see what they learn from it.

I would be loath to suggest something like this as I am no fan of reality TV but as my eminently sensible fella pointed out (I am actually looking forward to when I can legitimately refer to him as my 'partner'), you can't force people to do things because they'll hate it. So, given that there's a recession on - coax 'em with fame (if not money)! Generate more cheap entertainment, and do it for a good cause! I think that it should be as full-on an experience as possible, and for this reason, only the 'younger generation' should be involved, not older people. We don't want anyone having a meltdown! If it was up to me, I'd force my male cousins and brother to see what it's like for a girl brought over from India - or force them to have an extensive interview with a prostitute.

The reason that specifically comes to mind is because an (unwanted) conversation with my 14-year-old American cousin made my blood boil. He said he wants to date but remain a virgin till his wedding night (ha! Yeah right) and that he wants a virgin wife. Now, if they're both virgins, that's fair enough, I suppose. However, I'm taking this to mean that he wants to marry a woman with next to no sexual experience, while having sexual experience. When I remarked how appalling this was, amounting as it does to rape as pointed out by Jai on PP (see comment #155!), he went 'Yeah, but I think your brother and male cousin (names have been omitted) would agree with me.'

Ooooh, I BET they would! I bet they would! My wrath was about run seriously unchecked, and I hammered out something along the lines of 'Of course they would, because you're all men.' What a terrible thing to say. I was angry, but it was because they were Asian boys, growing up in a sexist, patriarchal world where every move for women is simply countered with another backslide. Not because they were male - it's never as simple as our generalisations would have us believe. So you're letting your daughters work? Excellent, because no boy in his right mind wants a gold-digger! Don't think you're going to get off the house-work though, beta, what do you think this is, India? We haven't got time to sit around all day! Do your job and come home and take care of dinner!

I am very much in agreement with Halima and Germaine Greer: there's no point trying to bring equality into an unequal world. I have resolved not to fall into the trap of ideology; if ever I have sprogs, I will lead by example and let them take the model of my own relationship rather than trying to ram my beliefs down their throat. Children are not stupid, but they need to see a total role-reversal in order to have any concept of going against the system. My man grew up in a household where the relationship between his parents is very respectful and equal and to add to that, his mother cleans while his dad cooks. Not a highly conventional arrangement, I think you'll agree. Plus, his dad spent a lot of time with him and he has never wanted for a male role model. When I compare this to what I saw in MY upbringing, I am a tiny bit jealous. However, I have ended up with the product of that healthy and admirable relationship, so I can't complain now, can I? :-D Ain't life grand.

P.S.: Has anybody else guessed who my boyfriend is? A couple of people developed suspicions which turned out to be correct. I have kept his identity completely secret so as to respect his privacy (and mine!) but most of my readers know who he is and I have referred to him previously, but I tried to be surreptitious about it... I don't know if I should just refer to him directly occasionally, because I really don't want to repeat history by going down the 'My boyfriend this' 'My boyfriend that' de-humanising route again...