Match Royale

Dear Reader

Welcome to the first article of Gorilla Philosophy, the product of an educated, part house-trained ape with typing skills. If you only skim this piece, thank you for those precious seconds squeezed in between status updates, browsing porn, shopping for vintage trainers or emailing amusing videos to your friends. The purpose of this blog is simple: to entertain and if nothing else to help stave off the gnawing existential despair that hovers over your shoulder, as you pretend to work in the office, staring blankly at the computer monitor whilst secretly wondering what would happen if you just walked out, pausing only to  smash a ring binder into that smug bitch/bastard (delete as applicable) who makes your life hell. In case you are considering stationery-assisted GBH, the most likely outcome is arrest. At the very least you will struggle to get a reference for your next job, unless you are hoping to join an organised crime syndicate, in which case face-smashing is very much seen as a plus rather than a negative on the CV. (1)

So what is Gorilla Philosophy? Think of it is as a little digital corner of contrarian cussedness that strives to amuse. Even if like most of us, your every waking hour is signed away to the bank paying off a mortgage on a flat you don't really like in a part of town you chose only because it was marginally better than sleeping rough, then you can still let your mind roam free. The bank doesn't own that yet. Gorilla Philosophy will take you in its great big hairy ape hands and grope you mentally - go with the metaphor, the gorilla isn't real. Of course a genuine sexual assault by a large primate is no laughing matter, unless the assaultee is Piers Morgan, in which case the event should be celebrated by a national holiday or a public sculpture.

For its opening article, GP (that's Gorilla Philosophy for those of you too busy sending taking Polaroid effect pictures with your Iphone) , turns its furrowed, simian brows to the upcoming wedding and wonders what the fuck? No subject produces more instant mental retardation in otherwise intelligent citizens of this fine nation of ours than the Royal Family. Mention the Queen to an English person and it's like saying the codeword to a KGB sleeper agent. All normal brain function shuts down and they adopt a strange faraway gaze as if they have just taken too many magic mushrooms. Instead of rational conversation, you get dream-like phrases about Albion, tradition, charity work, the war and what if Tony Blair became President - total cognitive shutdown. Monarchy it seems is the Hannibal Lector to our frontal lobes, sawing through the skull and scooping out the thinking parts, to fry them lightly in garlic butter.

This wedding in popular discourse is a good thing, in the same way that murder is a bad thing, the goodness is intrinsic and not debatable. (2). We, the British people, are all looking forward to the wedding and stop asking inconvenient questions about why the landed gentry still owns 12 percent of the land in Britain and exercises political power.  It is a good thing, now stand up when the national anthem plays.  Yes, we know deep down it is an absurd anachronism that makes Britain seem like a cheesy historical attraction, complete with animatronic Shakespeare and 3D Churchill experience.  But Kate Middleton is pretty girl, everyone likes a wedding and won't it be fun to see both her and Wills dressed up smartly.

Maybe this presentation of the royalist case is unreasonable, so let's not forget the crucial role of tourism in determining a political system. The Royals are good for tourists.  Apparently any tradition, no matter how antiquated and obsolete, should be retained for the benefit of tourists, preferably the high spending Chinese, given that the rest of us will be paying for the banking crisis until Fred Goodwin and friends develop a conscience. (3) By this compelling logic, it is a shame that hanging, drawing and quartering no longer takes place at Tyburn, now known as Marble Arch. Think of the missed photo opportunities for visiting foreigners.

If the tourism argument doesn't quite persuade and it really shouldn't unless you have had both a stroke, a blow to the head and are drunk, then the royalists have to scrabble around elsewhere to justify keeping our political structure frozen somewhere in the 16th century. Time to bring out the charitable work that our current royal family does as if the merits or flaws  of a political system should depend on the vagaries of personality rather  than founding principles. Whether the Queen does a lot of a work for charity or whether she goes out every night to set fire to tramps for kicks makes no odds. Either the idea of the monarchy is defensible on its own merits as a concept or it is not. Truth is if the Windsors were poor and lived in a council flat, Harry and Wills would have been taken into care and the rest would be serving time for tax evasion, but that proves nothing about the idea of a hereditary monarchy.

And what a strange idea it is, even in a symbolic, ceremonial power to someone on the basis of their DNA - it's not even special DNA like the bit of the double helix that makes Angelina Jolie's lips quite so pouty. No we have picked a run of the mill family, with no special attributes to be our head of state and to pass that role from generation to generation as it were a family heirloom - an antique dresser or sideboard that you don't really want but you don't have the heart to get rid of it. If we were a Stone Age tribe that worshipped the Sun God and thought an eclipse was the Moon eating the Sun, then there would be no shame in rule by kings. Hell we paint ourselves blue and sacrifice pigeons to make it rain. Equally if Britain were a Disneyworld theme park it would add a extra sense of authenticity. But in theory, Britain is supposed to be meritocratic, democratic state, except of course when it comes to the head of that state when it's a birthright by blood.

The wedding throws this nonsense into focus and it's a call to action, or rather inaction. Perhaps best way to fight the upcoming surge of forelock tugging and brown nosing this wedding will induce is to ignore it, a strong dose of popular apathy may finish the monarchy off in the way no po-faced movement every could. Remember, these pair are just a regular couple who were not for accident of birth would lead regular lives. For those of you who give in to the monarchist brainwashing and you know you are, get a grip.

Notes:

1)  For best results when whacking an irritating work colleague, use a laptop not a ring binder.
2)  Murder is wrong 99% of the time, most of us would agree. There are notable exceptions, for example, the mobile phone designer who allowed the phones to play music via their speakers turning bus and train journeys into the upper levels of hell,  is fair game.
3) This means a really long time.