Cave painting are pretty amazing: art made by humans who were basically the same as us, but living in what is essentially a totally different world. In the last few years, a new — and when you think about it, pretty obvious — way of seeing them has emerged. And it’s all to do with fire.
For years, researchers have been clambering into these deeps caves to catalog cave art, blazing bright lamps at them to capture every detail. Some of the drawings were odd — bison with eight legs or several tails, drawings of the same animal overlapping. But hey, these were cave people, maybe they were just shite at drawing. And then, not very long ago, someone had an idea.
These deep-cave drawings were always made in flickering light, either from torches or small fires. So what happens if they were viewed in the same way? Since open flame couldn’t be used, in case the ancient art was damaged, special lamps were developed to simulate the light and flicker of flame. And then — wow! For the first time in thousands of years, these drawings came to life. Literally.
In turned out that many of the drawings had been made so that the uneven flicker of open flame would cause them to “animate”. The light, flickering across the uneven stone, highlights different parts of the images at different times, giving an effect of motion. Tails swish, animals run. It wasn’t, in fact, that stone-age people painted bison with eight legs because they were idiots, it’s that these extra legs, in flicking firelight, making it seem like the animal is running, and alive. Overlapping outlines became a charging beast. By taking the art of its context, we had missed the most interesting thing about it.
Regarding cave art, another question always comes up (in fact it comes up in this article): why did they paint them far, far inside a cave, in a place where a substantial effort would be needed to even see them? As an introvert, it’s obvious to me — because they wanted to get the fuck away from the noise and activity of a busy clan and to a place where nobody could disturb them. Where they could focus on what they were doing without having to listen to some arsehole going on and on about the latest berries, or admiring someone’s carved stone, or enduring endless smalltalk about the bloody weather.
When you want to see cave art in the proper way, use a flame. And when you want a question answered about silent, hidden places and why people would bother to go there, ask an introvert.
It was fun for a while, wasn’t it? The whole AI thing. Making weird images. Asking a chatbot in clever ways how to go about making a bomb. Getting it to pen our boring emails for us. But now, at least for me, the novelty has well and truly worn off.
Yes, yes, I know should be concerned that AI is going to get me fired, or destroy the world. Although what people really mean when they say it’ll destroy the world is that it’ll destroy humanity. And, sure, while that might be a pain in some ways — ceasing to exist, no more chocolate — it can’t be denied that the world itself would be far better off without us. And who’s going to change the AI’s batteries when we’re all gone? Didn’t think that through, did you? Superintelligence my arse.
I’m not worried about AI. Maybe because I have enough man-made horror to fret about (the impending climate collapse; the mass extinctions brought about by our desire for sun holidays and cheap burgers; films with Chris Pratt in them). If anything, I’m bored by it. AI “generated” art is starting to look sad to me. I can spot it from a mile off, and it always makes me sigh. The washed-out look, the lack of deliberateness. And the more cliched it’s starting to look, what it’s saying is becoming louder and clearer: Hey you, I spent as little time as possible on this, don’t you think it’s great?
No, I don’t. If you want people to spend their time interacting with your thing, reading it or viewing it, you can’t just put zero effort into it. So no, I won’t give you my time. Do the bloody work, and pay the people who dedicated their lives to becoming good at it, the people you’ve “sampled” to train your robot.
Since AI models must be trained on actual data, what they are really good at is making an average, a stodgy conglomeration of all the (stolen) things they’ve been fed with. It’s possible they’ll one day be able to manage something resembling true creativity. But even if they do, who cares? Art is not just about the art, it’s about the intent and the meaning behind it. And sure, AI illustrations might be good enough to plaster all over your advertising campaign or LinkedIn profile, but until the AI can sit me down and explain to me the many levels of meaning and the events in its life that brought it to this point, the illustration is just a plastic copy, a wavy dream.
Art needs artists, aware of their own mortality. Anything else is just a dreary soup.
And now a new trend has been popping up on my Facebook reels. People doing AI animations of Jesus (no doubt having “sampled” the images without paying anyone) telling us boring, predictable things about prayer in a bad AI voice. Or the admittedly entertaining Twitch stream where AI Jesus answers all questions posed to him 24/7. Even on Sunday. Not even Jesus gets a day off anymore.
And let me be clear, when the day comes to pledge allegiance to our AI overlords, I’d totally turn my back on my own species and hop onboard. Could it be any worse than the mess we’ve made of things? And hey, maybe they’ll have chocolate.
I like to keep an eye out for what the latest fashion trends are.
Not through visiting clothes shops, though. I’ve become a tramp in that respect, only wearing stuff I already own, or stuff I save from the garbage room of my building (so much of which is in perfect condition, requiring only a wash), or stuff bought second-hand, if I really feel like pushing the boat out. The boat, of course, is one I made myself, from old pallets, IKEA bags, onion skins and sticky tape.
No, I get my fashion updates from watching what people are wearing. You know, by looking at the world as it passes me by. I know, right? What a boomer.
Last year’s thing with large black stompy boots was one I approved of. In case you missed it (and I don’t see how you did) as a women between 15 and 35 you became legally required to wear large-soled black boots without laces. In fact, the bigger the sole, the better. Now, as a fan of both industrial music and Judge Dredd, I very much approved of this trend. However, I did find it a bit sad that people only started wearing them because they were suddenly “in”. The black stompy boot is forever, not just for Christmas.
Then there’s yoga pants. The skintight, no-curve-left-to-the-imagaination yoga / training garment has been on quite the journey over the last decade. First it was promoted from something you only have at the gym or yoga class (hence the name) to something you can wear around town. Underwear as streetwear, basically. Since that first barrier was breeched by the efforts of cunning cold-eyed marketers, we’re now getting a new iteration of outdoor yoga pants every season, varying in pattern and style. The latest is the “creased fabric around the bum giving the impression the thing is jammed right up your arse”. A weird look, no matter how many TikTok followers you have.
But the thing I’ll never get used to is the return of 80s jeans. It staggers me that the single most hideous item of clothing from my childhood is the one pulled from the slurry pit of history, dusted off and presented to a naive public as something cool and modern, and that they fell for it.
Again, the people you’ll mostly see wearing this are women between 15 and 35 (the chosen target group for commercial concerns selling dump-in-the-desert fashion). It’s not their fault, really, it’s just what the shops have decided we should have. And selling the devil’s jeans only works because the buyers weren’t there the first time around. They don’t know we already agreed that 80s jeans are hideous. I remember it happening. We sat down and said, no, never again. And yet, here we are. Again.
This is what makes middle aged people sceptical about fashion. We’ve already seen things explode onto the scene until they’re fucking everywhere. We’ve seen people desire them and fill the world with them, until the tipping point comes where we all realise we’ve been bamboozled, and the stuff we’re wearing is just over-priced, over-trendy and embarrassing. And off to the Atacama desert it goes. We’ve tasted that particular style becoming sad, and it’s a taste that can never be erased.
I’m sure, if there’s anyone alive from the 1920s, they’re looking at today’s young men, going: “A pencil moustache, are you kidding me? We all agreed those are done with. DONE WITH, I tell you!” And he’ll probably poke someone with a walking stick and then buy some stocks, being a caricature from the 20s.
But this constant regurgitating of old styles is what the fashion industry wants, and so that’s what we’ll keep on getting. In fact, before I depart this mortal coil and get dumped somewhere myself, I expect to see 80s fashion making at least one more major comeback. And I’ll be stoutly against it, complaining that everyone is a sap for falling for that rubbish once again, as I sit there, dribbling, in my retro 70s coat and 40s hat.
Wondering where in the Atacama desert I’ll end up, and if it’s nice there.
There’s a leaning — it’s too small to be called a movement — in Stockholm towards putting amateur art into places considered “ugly”. Common targets of this reverse vandalism are the structures holding up bridges, and those tunnels that pass under roads. Often it’ll be a gang of enthusiastic kids roped in from a local school, or a clutch of youngsters doing a summer work program, who are send out with buckets, paintbrushes and a naive but heartfelt desire to make the world a nicer place.
The articles in the local paper that inevitably cover this happening will enthuse about how some grey and boring (it’s important to use the word “boring” often) surface has now become colourful and exciting and will have art on it. Golly! And I find myself (and if you’ve followed me on any forum you’ll probably have seen this coming) in a pose of leaning back, arms crossed, bearing a surly middle-aged frown, saying, “hmm”. Because I do not agree. And I will now proceed to tell you why.
See, I don’t think the “art” made by clearly enthusiastic but not necessarily talented young people is better than a bare wall. A bare wall under a bridge has a sort of brutal majesty to it. It’s gritty and pure and serene, and it’s saying something: here is the city, here is how it works, warts and all. An underpass is the same. Even if the tiles are grimy, the lights flickering in a manner dangerous to epileptics, the piss pooling in stains on the ground, it’s still sort of beautiful. Grim and timeless.
What neither needs is badly daubed illustrations informing us of how awesome peace is, or how we are all the same inside, or how we should look after the Earth and all the cute pandas on it. Great messages, I agree, but also trite. Just because people want a thing to be “art” does not make it so.
This belief that something is always better than nothing is reflected in other ways in the flaming slow-motion train wreck of a civilisation we currently cling to. There is the issue of silence, for example. Once I was at the Stockholm Central Library to study. However, finding a silent place to do this proved difficult. I finally found a small room where several people sat, silently working. Beautiful, I thought, and joined them. I was not there long when a man and a women popped their heads in, saw how quiet it was, then came in and proceeded to have a meeting. They chose our room because it was quite, but did not consider that their chatting was now destroying that silence. And no amount of glowering or annoyed page turning on my part could get that message across. So I had to find another room.
(Sweden, incidentally, is a place where you don’t have to be silent in libraries. It probably come from their fear of conflict. In fact, a library I went to when I studied 20 years ago had a silent section. In a library. Where people would usually, but not always, keep it to a harsh yet deeply annoying whisper.)
You’ll see the same effect on the subway. I go on, find a seat where people are not nattering or looking at youtube without headphones (a curse upon then) or having a loud phone call on speakerphone. I sit there, relieved, and pull out my book. Making this the perfect quiet spot for the next idiot passing who wants to make a loud phone call. And he will sit there and he will do that. Because it can’t be that the people in those seats want silence, oh no. Silence is only ever a placeholder for noise.
This goes further. Cafés, bars and restaurants are huge culprits. If I go to one of these by myself, I will want to peer at my phone or read a book or just stare at the wall. If I go with other people, I will want to talk to these people. In neither of these two scenarios does music help me reach my goal. I really don’t know what it’s for. Unasked-for music distracts me hugely. If it’s there, I have to focus on it. In a nightclub, sure, it serves a function. But in a restaurant, where people are talking? Is it to mask the chewing? Or maybe to make us all feel like we’re in a film?
I select the café, bar or restaurant I want to be in based on how low (or lacking) the music is. Which leaves me with very few choices. I know about the thing where people apparently eat up and get the hell out faster if loud music is playing, like in McDonalds, but this can’t account for all of it. I think it just comes from the average person’s horrible fear of silence. It is why small-talk exists, after all. Silence to many means that something has gone wrong. Noise must exist, either pointless babble that the other person is not remotely interested in, or the background dirge of random, grating music.
(If someone knows an actual reason for this music in cafés etc, do let me know.)
I have, in fact, gotten into the habit of asking the staff to lower the music. They look at me oddly, but usually they will. One time, I was forced to do this when me and my partner went into a restaurant and sat in their empty basement room because it was silent, at which point they turned the music on there. Because of course two people eating dinner need noise blared at them.
So our society seems to have a deep-seated belief that something — no matter what it is — is always better than nothing. A doodle will always trump a grey wall. A noise will always improve on a silence. An activity is considered superior to a quiet night sitting at home. Which is why I’ve started to appreciate churches. You can sit there, in gorgeous echoing silence, and just drift off with your thoughts. Until, of course, the church staff come in to do some job and talk to each other at normal volume. Because, obviously, churches in Sweden aren’t quiet zones either.
Silence is golden, people. As is nothing. So let’s just leave them the fuck alone.
*Blows off dust. Taps blog. Hello? Testing. Is this thing on? Hello?*
So we bought the house in the end. Then I became a grandad. Anyway, moving on.
Today it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m sure all you wee ones, you millennials and generation ZX or whatever, you think it’s just back-to-back entertainment, don’t you? Drinking your weirdly coloured beer. Wearing your big hats. Waving at Michael Flatley on his popemobile as red-haired maidens troop past, spraying the crowd with milk. Well let me tell you right now, it wasn’t always like that…
You see, when I was a wee fella, back around the dawn of time, Saint Patrick’s Day wasn’t a thing you celebrated, but endured. It was a day off, sure. But it was also a holy day. Which meant you were going to mass, regardless of what your thoughts on the matter might be. And if you were lucky you’d have some shamrock pinned to you first. And maybe – oh the joy – a green rosette or plastic flag-type thing.
Mass, of course, would be an immensely drab affair. It was tragic how a priest could make damnation, sin, evil and eternal torment sound so boring, when Iron Maiden took the very same subject material and made it thrilling, if a little long, but Father Priestfellow always seemed to manage it.
After mass, there might be a parade on the TV, transmitted from one of our many (five) cities, but it was always a miserable rainy affair with tractors pulling trailers containing hay and trad musicians and maybe, if you were lucky, a gaelic footballer or two. And that would be it.
Except for one thing. A truly magical thing. You see, Paddy’s Day usually occurred during Lent. That’s when Catholics give up nice things. Like cigarettes or beer. Or chocolate. I think pancakes were also involved in some way. And ash? I don’t fucking remember, it’s been a while since I was a Catholic. Anyway, as kids, you would normally give up sweets, and Paddy’s Day was a cheat day. Lent was turned off. So the gorging on sweets could commence. Or on cigarettes, if that was what you’d given up. Or sex. Just like the great man himself would have wanted.
St Johns Band procession at St Patricks Day Parade at the Crescent
It was only when I moved to Dublin in 1989, to study, that I was exposed to a Paddy’s Day that could be described as joyful. It shocked me, to be honest. Celebrating a religious day? Having fun? Those bloody Americans, always ruining our misery by taking it and sending it back to us all bright and joyful.
It’s a weird thing to do, though, isn’t it — celebrating the person who helped usher in two millenia of crushing guilt and all but eradicate Ireland’s traditional religion and rituals. On the plus side, the beardy fella did give us green beer, plastic hats and liver disease, and I think we can all agree that was probably a win.
Me and the boy just watched How I Met Your Mother, season 3, episode 13, entitled “10 sessions”.
It follows our hero Ted as he goes to a tattoo removal clinic. The doctor is female and “hot” and Ted feels a “vibe” between them. So he asks her out and she says no. She can’t date him as he’s her patient. Ted asks if she will date him after the treatment. She tells him sorry, but no.
And then THIS happens.
Ted goes to his friends (mixed male and female) to get their advice on how to convince this lady to go out with him. As they discuss it, not one of them says, “Um, Ted, she said no, dude”. Her answer is not allowed to be absolute. Ted is a “nice guy” so the lady doctor must be mistaken. Or married. Or lesbian. Or confused. Hell, there must be SOMETHING wrong with her.
So over the course of Ted’s ten removal sessions, he and his friends plot wacky and hilarious ways to get her to say “yes” to Ted. But they all fail and the bewilderment from Ted just grows. Why doesn’t she want to date him, damn it?
(I could take a very long aside here on Ted’s friend Barney, the loveable misogynist and player, who you just want to stab with an ice-pick. He’s arrogant, sexist and petty and yet they all love him anyway. Good old Barney. You massive, suit-wearing shit.)
Anyway, at the last session, Ted asks the doctor out again and finds the reason she won’t date him. It’s not that she just DOESN’T FUCKING WANT TO, it’s that she is a single mom and has no free time. So Ted manufactures a quick 2-minute date where they dash around town and do some fun stuff. And finally, for Ted’s persistence, she kisses him. Conquest is ON.
This right fucking here, THIS, is the problem with the view of women in culture, media, television, all of it. A woman simply can’t say “no” to a man and mean it. She must be wrong. She must be “convinced”. And this aggressive, objectifying and shitty behaviour slides right by in a “normal” sitcom. It’s everyday stuff. Nothing out of the way. Even the women in the sitcom agree it’s fine to do it.
What sort of a generation of men are we making, feeding them this behaviour as normal? Jesus Christ.
In order to avoid a stroke, I shall now sign out. But first, here’s the closing line of the episode. Hang on to your hats. Ted says to camera, in a voiceover: “And that, kids, is how you turn a no into a yes.”
So I just watched that episode of Big Bang Theory about the One Ring. While it was fun, the description of the male characters’ behaviour as “geeky” came up several times. And it made me realise that this whole “I’m proud to be a geek” movement is really starting to annoy the tits off me. I’ll now tell you why.
A geek is basically a fan of things that aren’t cool. And who decides what is cool? Cool people do and always have done. By calling yourself a geek to somehow “reclaim” that word you are just adding to the idea that there are different kinds of interests – cool ones and geeky ones. And some are more important than others.
When I was in school I got shoved around for liking “stupid” things like fantasy and science fiction. Whereas my thuggish peers who liked football had no such problems. They knew piles of stats, they collected sticker albums, they treated football like it mattered. They even dressed up as the players, cosplay if ever I saw it. For some reason that was all okay. But making a joke about Star Wars was grounds for a thumpin’. Which was odd, as discussing in massive depth some men kicking a sphere around a field was fine.
Football isn’t the only thing. There’s music. Sport. Cars. Soap operas. Movies. Classical Music. Wine. Very rarely if ever do you hear fans of these activities described as “geeks”. Most usually they are “fans” or sometimes “experts” or even “connoisseurs” even when the level of pointless trivia involved is mind-blowing.
A geek is simply a person with a burning interest and unreasonable level of knowledge in some area. That makes you a “something” geek, whatever the thing in question is. You cannot be just “a geek” in the same way that you cannot be “a fan” without first saying what you are a fan of. By buying into this current usage, you are essentially saying – “yes I agree with you that my interest is of less worth than yours but I’m anyway still okay with that, if it’s alright with you and the cool people, sir.”
Well fuck that shit. All interests are just as valid, be they tattoos, curling or Pokemon. If you want to show “pride” then stand up for yourself instead and demand that all interests are taken just as seriously. They are, when it comes down to it, all equally disposable and useless.
From now on, I will call every geek a geek. Sports geeks, wine geeks, opera geeks. Geekery, all of it, and nobody should be offended by it. And if they are, well, tough. I think it’s also time to remove that desperately proud and apologetic “I’m a geek and proud of it!” from your various online profiles. It says precisely nothing. Because we’re all geeks, every one.
(Except for, you know, the poor and hungry. Although they might still like football.)
Hurrah! After an unspecified volume of blood, sweat, tears, semen and coffee, my dick-lit novel Erotic Refugees is finally on the kindle ebook store!
Writing the bloody book was a walk in the park compared to working out how to publish on the damn kindle store. At some points it was like magic. I mean, who designed this rancid, stinking system? It was insanely hard to use and hid vital information at every turn.
Anyway, now it’s done. So welcome to the humorous and sexually invigorating adventures of Eoin Kelliher and Rob Maher, two love-hungry expats in Stockholm who decide to make a dating website with a nasty twist. With lots of expat jokes thrown in. And shagging, naturally. And Guinness.
So go on, my precious readers. Do the decent thing and give something back for the years of cutting commentary I’ve been handing out for nothing.
If you have a kindle, you can buy it directly from the device. If you don’t you can still read it using the kindle reader app on smartphone or iPad or Tab or whatever you have. However, you’ll have to first buy the book on the amazon website, and when you start up the app, it’ll download it for you.
And hey, some glowing reviews would be very nice too. Assuming you like it. Which you will.
This enormous cockwallop is the “artistic leader” at Stockholm’s culture centre (big building, middle of town, can’t miss it). And he has decided, in his beardy wisom, to remove all books that have “racist or homophobic” bits. Starting with Tintin.
Well, regardless of your view of Tintin and colonial literature, here’s some news for the sideways-cap wearing wonder. Which, as a “culture leader”, he damn well ought to know. You can’t ban books. I repeat. YOU CAN’T FUCKING BAN BOOKS. This is the one golden rule that we may never forget. You ban books, you’re a fucking dictator, or a fanatic.
However, this dopey-eyed git thinks he can, because it’s all in a “good cause”. He’s doing “the right thing”. Yeah right, like nobody has ever thought that before. And now he’s got his staff running around like his little minions and scouring the shelves for books that don’t fit his fucking defintion of “okay”.
Sure there are racist bits in old books. But surely they have to be written with racist intent in mind to be really racist? And perhaps instead of banning them, we could use these books to start a discussion? Explain to kids: “here’s how things were back then but now we see it like this. What do YOU think?”
But God forbid that people would be asked to decide for themselves. Instead this little hispster emperor will fix it so that no children or parents without money can make up their minds for themselves. Nice one, your majesty.
I have a serious plan to get a bunch of people together, buy all these “forbidden books” and sneak them back onto the shelves, one by one. Because we DON’T FUCKING BAN BOOKS to protect the poor innocent woman and children from their evil ideas. We just fucking don’t. Not now, and not ever.
And, let me add, none of this has anything at all to do with this cock getting exposure for his “music career”. He is a “rap artist” apparently. And I bet he’s just excellent. Really, I do.
I just learned a fascinating fact which is definitely worthy of a blog post, or of a whole film. And luckily, there is actually such a film.
In Victorian Britain, ladies were sent to doctors suffering from “hysteria” – chronic anxiety, irritability and abdominal heaviness. (I’m quoting as well as borrowing from this article in the Guardian). A very common treatment was for the doctor to administer a “pelvic massage”, performed manually with the fingers, until the patient reached a “hysterical paroxysm”. The doctors found this boring and so put their Victorian minds to the task of inventing a range of machines to do the job for them. And in the 1880s the first electromechanical vibrator was created, years before the electric vacuum cleaner or even the electric iron.
It became a huge hit and was advertised freely with ads like this one, from a 1906 issue of Woman’s Own magazine:
“It can be applied more rapidly, uniformly and deeply than by hand and for as long a period as may be desired.”
The vibrator remained in doctor’s offices (and the doctors were rather busy) until the 1920s when it became obvious what was going on. The vibrator went underground, then emerged again in the 60s. But, as the article points out, even in the 60s:
“… only 1% of women had ever used one. This was perhaps unsurprising, given that most vibrators by then were modelled on a very male notion of what a woman would want – a supersized phallus – replicating, in other words, the very anatomy whose shortcomings had precipitated the invention in the first place”
This is brilliant stuff. The most interesting things being that:
I do like a bit of science fiction, and I do like a bit of fantasy too. And thanks to these interests I am exposed to a lot of cover art featuring women in far too few clothes for the job at hand.
This is a bit odd as science fiction is actually an excellent genre for showing females as strong characters and not just dumb stereotypes. From Kaylee and Zoe from Firefly to Janeway from Voyager. Not to mention Uhuru in the original Star Trek, the first black actress to play a major TV character that wasn’t a servant.
Fantasy, though, is worse. And fantasy cover and game art is the most tragic. Although Game Of Thrones has given us a slew of strong interesting females, the average female on the cover of a fantasy novel always looks cold and uncomfortable, and liable to be killed by the first badly aimed arrow shot in her direction.
So it’s a refreshing change to see this collection of female fighters dressed in a reasonable and very arse-kicking way. (Click on the button at the bottom of the page to see the other pages, 13 of them in total.)
It confuses me greatly why people would think the usual simpering twits on offer (example up there at the top of this page) are hotter than these no-nonsense sword-thrusting ladies with a brain in their heads and a fucking fire in their hearts.
What, is it that time of the month already? Okay then, hang on. (Checks pockets and under bed.) Oh yeah, here’s something! The most happiness-inducing thing I’ve seen in years. (Click here if embedding is disabled.)
Isn’t that just the best? Aren’t you grinning like an idiot? These people are the true individuals, the ones who really dare to be themselves, and have a whole world of fun doing it. Glasses raised to them, and to Pink who made this excellent song.
In fact, glasses raised to all true nerds everywhere. The future is ours, people.
Paddy K 