Monday 30 May 2011

Bad Inventions

Gorilla Philosophy is all about making the world a better place, so JK has come up with a list of the four most annoying inventions of recent times we could all do without.

SPEAKERS ON MOBILE PHONES  
These are the work of the devil himself, Satan must have been moonlighting at Nokia or done work experience at Apple. The speakerphone is a handy invention for telephones, no question. If you need to take a call but can't hold the phone to your face, for example you're in a hot tub at a swingers party, getting your nether regions waxed or are worried about the phone giving you cancer fair enough. (Interesting to note that the people who fret about mobiles cooking their brains really don't have many functioning brain cells in the first place. Maybe that's why they are so touchy about losing the few working synapses they have left.) But letting phones play music through the speakers is pure malice. Now every bus or train journey is blighted by some little scrote listening to their toons handsfree and all of us make the mental calculation, is saying something to the ratboy or girl worth the small chance of being stabbbed. JK suggests you take the phone in question and throw it out the window. By the way, this works best if you are a large silverback gorilla.


JUNK MAIL
Like smallpox, junk mail is a plague on humanity and its evils are legion. Gone is the excitement of post arriving through your letterbox, to be replaced with annoyance and trips to the recycling bin. Those clever folks who generate this garbage have even started using regular envelopes with print that looks like handwriting to stop you immediately chucking it out or putting big warnings, saying 'This is not a circular, Important Information enclosed' when in fact you local estate agent just wants to let you know he sold a house. JK does not know of any other profession so insecure, so beset by fears of their own worthlessness, that they need to tell you what they've done on a regular basis.  In fact profession is the wrong word, as that implies you need some kind of qualification to become an estate agent other than the ability to buy your suits at River Island and use your own body weight in hair gel on a daily basis. The only rational explanation for junk mail is that somebody must really hate trees or wants to keep Royal Mail in business. As for remedies,  JK suggests filling a tuperware container with your own crap and posting it back to the sender, which is only payback after all. Do remember to wear latex gloves when doing so both for hygeine reasons and to avoid prosecution.  


OUTDOOR HEATERS 
Since time immemorial humanity has sought to shelter from the elements, to heat their dwellings and generally make life indoors more pleasant. No one until a few years ago was anyone mad enough to try to heat the outside.  Why?  Because it's the outdoors, you idiots. If the sun, a massive thermonuclear fireball, struggles to heat the air on a cold day, what chance does some crappy gas heater from a DIY store have. None. It cooks one side of your face whilst the rest of you freezes. A few hundred years from now, when climate change has turned the earth into a blighted desert, imagine Wolverhampton in the Sahara without the vibrant cultural life, children will be shown videos of these monstrous creations. They will ask questions and their teachers will shrug and say, in 2011 people didn't like putting a coat on when they left the pub to have a cigarette.  Children will argue that makes no sense, how could they be so self-destructive and their teachers will get annoyed and reply, because they were morons, alright. Now put on your safety goggles and factor 75 sunscreen, it's break time. There is sadly no answer for patio heaters, save going to a deserted beach, falling to your knees and howling at man's folly like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. Or we could ban them, just a thought.


SPAM EMAIL
Ninety nine percent of all emails sent are offers for cheap Viagra or penis enlargement devices. Of the other one percent, only one tenth are worthwhile communication and those are badly spelled and make little grammatical sense.The remainder are people at work asking who's going to lunch, round robin emails from corporate communications that are so pointless it's miracle the person typing them did not commit suicide at the futility of their own existence and back and forth exchanges which could be avoided if the people in question just picked up the phone. You cannot blame the spammers for junk email, however, as they would not send them if there were not a tiny percentage of men who actually replied. Yes, it is men again, you can add buying penis pumps online to the charge sheet along with war, Top Gear and Vin Diesel films. Unlike the other three blights mentioned, there is a really easy solution to this dilemma: make replying to a spam email a criminal offence, find the sad sacks who actually click on the offer of discounted boner pills and  publish their names. Bazinga,  no more spam.

JK will back soon, with some suggestions on inventions that don't exist but need inventing really urgently. Peace out.

Friday 27 May 2011

Colonel Gaddafi

Yo, wha gwan,

It's been a busy week with superinjunction busting tweets all over the web. Colonel Gaddafi would have no such scruples in dealing with uppity media types and the squidgy-faced nutcase is my subject this time. If you're going to declare war on a despot, it's a bonus that he looks like his face is made of plastic and he fell asleep next to a radiator. So much harder to deploy Tornadoes and Apache helicopters against a kindly visage. (Note to Gaddafi, if the war goes on for much longer, consider getting cosmetic surgery to look like Alan Bennett, we would  surrender at once and offer you a BBC4 series). At £100 million and counting, the Libyan adventure is turning into a major  financial drain which combined with a potential Greek debt bailout may mean we have to close all the libraries and replace modern medical care with castor oil and fresh air. Hey it worked for the Victorians, oh hang on,  they died when they caught a cold.  Perhaps the aged loon will quit tomorrow, but nonetheless West is finding its smart bombs and precision munitions have been countered by sophisticated Arab stealth technology known as hiding. As the Americans discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, non-Western opponents have an irritating habit of not standing out in the open so we can call in an air strike.

Does this mean this intervention was wrong? Unfortunately as Macmillan said, 'events dear boy, events' make a mockery of noble principles or any kind of long term plan. Doing nothing was hardly an option, but doing something is not working too well either so thankfully we have Imogen Thomas to distract us. Many armchair generals have been quoting Clausewitz, who never dealt with the 24 hour news cycle. And as the Chinese sage Sun Tzu once said, 'Never go to Libya apart from winter sun holidays and to be honest, Sharm el Sheikh is better value'. He may not have said precisely that, but what works in ancient China does not help with a war fought on CNN. The problem put simply, is that to finish off the awkward Colonel ground troops are probably required and the British government is to use the technical term broke, moreover our collective patience for foreign adventures is wearing thin. Unlike the Vietnam conflict, current wars are not even producing decent films - instead of kinky boot wearing hookers seen through an opium haze with a Martin Sheen voice over, our boys are stuck in a hellish deserts with no nightlife apart from sporadic attacks by bearded maniacs. Let's pick our future battles with an eye to cinematic potential. With the success of Wallander and Stieg Larsson's books, Sweden might be a popular choice and probably an easy win. Then at least there would be something better to watch in the multiplexes than Kung Fu Panda Two which must be some kind of divine punishment.

Frustratingly for the West, the Libyan rebels' military tactics mostly involve driving around very fast and shooting into the air,  so if Gaddafi's forces were badger and pigeon based only it would be game over. In recent footage, one rebel had a bandana made out of .50 calibre shells, which looked excellent but did violate a key principle of protection in a warzone which is not wearing a helmet that explodes if hit by shrapnel. Your monkey philosopher does not pretend to have answers for the problems of the Middle East, other than readily available alcohol and a more relaxed attitude to sex before marriage might work wonders in creating a less dysfunctional political culture. When you watch footage of large numbers of young men running around shouting, setting fire to things and generally being a huge pain, this monkey can't help but think that pent-up energy would be better employed necking shots in cheesy suburban nightclubs called Temptations or Mystique, whilst trying to pull legal secretaries dressed in micro-minis and strappy shoes. Say you what you like about the young people of Britain, JK prefers vomiting in bins and blow jobs behind Asda to political extremism any day. There's very little in that part of the world that would not be improved by getting the young male population laid on a regular basis - yes we all think it but must tread carefully round religious sensibilities. Not.

But one final thought, some are suggesting we should offer Gaddafi an easy out, a pleasant retirement option in the Costa Del Sol perhaps. This should be rejected at all costs, not least that living with British ex-pats is a cruel and unusual punishment. Now that we have started a war to remove Gaddafi, offering him a cosy exile is a betrayal of his victims. He belongs in the International Court in the Hague and then  a prison cell - to paraphrase Magnus Magnusson of Mastermind fame, we've started so we must finish.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Pay Days

Greetings Web Wanderer, 


In this instalment of simian philosophy, JK wants to talk about high pay for senior executives. Don't worry, it's not Bob Crow style rant, suggesting that all pay should be set by government committee. The red star on my hat is just a fashion item, I have a Chairman Mao mug, it's for coffee  not collective farming induced famine.  As for my Hitler pyjamas and matching Goebbels slippers, let's just say when you see a deal that good on Ebay, you ignore political correctness. The high pay commission announced this week that top executives pay has rocketed further into the stratosphere, with inequality reaching levels not seen since the Victorian era - an extreme form of retro chic. Apparently chimney sweeps are  the new black. You were too probably to busy to notice, probably wondering how Pippa Middelton gets such a pert behind, is it Pilates, is it agave syrup? No, it's genetics and not really having to work for living. Here's the gory details  if you want to spoil your day (no it's not about Pippa's bum, concentrate, this is important):
http://highpaycommission.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/HPC-interimreport2011.pdf


Chief executives these days get golden hellos for turning up for work, golden handshakes, golden showers and golden handcuffs (or perhaps that's something they do in their lunchbreaks with a PVC clad Lithuanian) and golden parachutes if they leave, regardless if they have run the company into the ground. This doesn't feel like free enterprise, it looks like socialism for the rich where success and failure are rewarded equally with buckets of cash. In fact buckets aren't big enough, you can only fit £100,000 in, so these boys get their money delivered by dump truck. It's a shame that the golden parachutes aren't actually real parachutes made of gold, then the taxpayer could put the directors of the recently nationalised banks in a light aircraft and chuck them out at 10,000 feet. With luck, just after they hit the tarmac, the golden parachute would hit them, leaving a imprint of their startled expressions in the soft metal canopy - a bit like Han Solo frozen in carbonite at the end of Empire Strikes Back. As an added bonus, RBS would have an interesting work of art to hang in their lobby. JK thinks the cost of the gilt parachute would be cheap at the price to have Fred Godwin's shocked face captured in 24 carat for eternity. It would certainly be conversation piece, perhaps with the title 'Superinjunct that Fuck Face': http://www.flickr.com/photos/macensteph/342044675/


What is the answer to his outrageous explosion in executives' pay?  Some dogmatists believe whatever happens in business is evidence of the free market at work, therefore it must be right. So by this logic, if a company voted that the Chief Exec had jus prima noctis with every female member of staff that would be an example of the market's invisible hand, in this case working its way down a secretary's pants. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneurCuriously though as heads of public companies laugh all the way to their secret offshore bank accounts, plenty of journalists are fighting their corner, probably hoping to get invited to swish on their yacht in the South of France, populated by women who charge by the hour. Dream on, you useful idiots,  these guys would not give you the time of day, even if they were the voice of the speaking clock. Adam Smith, the much misquoted sage of economics,  warned that  'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public'. Sounds like the minutes of the remuneration committees of most large corporations. But the Ayn Rand acolytes do have a half a point, namely that  last thing we need in this county is more government interference. The state is hardly doing a stellar job of the areas it currently controls as anyone who regularly uses Royal Mail will attest. So long as you want to post unsolicited junk mail, no problem. Try send any large packet and Mr Postie will give himself an early Christmas bonus. To anyone in the Paddington sorting office, stop nicking my post, they are not pornos and you are not going to enjoy the films of Kurosawa. 


So do we just put up with executive pay trebling in real terms in 30 years as one of life's little annoyances like wasps, Russel Brand's film career or Piers Morgan's face? No, there is another way and it doesn't involve smashing up the local Tesco. This typing monkey has modest proposal: make all large companies publish details of pay, then let the power of consumer boycott work its magic. No one begrudges entrepreneurs who've risked everything to build a business paying themselves a fat return; but the public rightly resents talentless non-entities trousering moolah irrespective of results. If they complain, then they've got something to hide. After all, why would you mind if the police wanted  to look under your patio, unless your name was Fred West? Let's lift up the golden stone and see what crawls out. 

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Voting Alternatives

Dear Reader

If you were a supporter of electoral reform then you must be hurting from the almighty pimpslap you received from the British electorate, which knocked you seven ways sideways or, as some commentators claim, thirty years into the future. The debate was conducted with about as much good grace as a late night punch-up in the high street, with David Cameron hitting Nick Clegg over head with a metaphorical traffic cone whilst the Lib Dem leader then hid in a mini-cab office and called the police. In this analogy, the cone represents smear tactics, Paddy Ashdown is a mini-cab and Ed Milliband is the police.  Hang on, that made more sense in my head.

The British voters decided that in the middle of three wars, yes three - Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq (not over yet), the greatest economic downturn for seventy years and national debt on course to double, that changing the not-obviously-broken voting system should figure low on everyones' to do list. One tip for any future reform campaigns is beware the celebrity endorsement. Much as we may cherish and admire screen and stage work of comedians and actors, no one is really going to trust them on political issues as they quite clearly could not be left in charge of a box of pencils.

Both sides in the AV debate used and abused the word 'fair', as if it proved their respective case. There can be few words more misleading than 'fair' when used in a political debate other than perhaps 'radical'. 'Radical' should be removed from all policy documents and media is coverage as it is nearly always redundant. Using the simple Pol Pot sliding scale of radical policies, with zero being not radical at all and 10 being Year Zero, totally-bat-shit-mental-radical, most policies count as one or two out of 10, namely more of the same with a few tweaks. Be grateful that radical policies are nothing of the sort, real radicalism tends involve working in a slave labour camp with only mud soup for dinner. (If you work in a call centre in the North East, this may sound like an improvement, but for the rest of us it isn't).

'Fair' when employed in a political debate  is often another way of saying that the speaker prefers one set outcomes to another, so the Liberal Democrats claimed that AV was fairer because they would get more seats. The Tories on the other hand, said that first past the post was fairer because there would be less Liberal Democrats and regardless of the Coalition most Conservatives would like to bury the Liberal Democrats at sea, before they are dead. The Lib Dems want to do the same, but in sustainably sourced coffins.

There is no commonly agreed standard of 'fairness' in elections and voting systems. They all have flaws and all produce outcomes that some resent. For those readers in favour of proportional representation then there is one image to bear in mind:  a Viagra-charged Silvio Berulsconi naked in a hot tub with four women whose combined ages still don't equal his own. First past the post has numerous problems, not least that you are forced to elect someone, even when you think a random person plucked of the street would do a better job. In some cases that is clearly true, Nadine Dorries,  come in your time is up, the man who stacks the trollies at Asda wants to have a go.

So this typing ape concludes that whatever your preference for voting: FPTP, AV, PR or CTDAPP (chimps throwing darts at a piece of paper), there's no such thing as fair. Life isn't, why should voting be any different?

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Paranoid Dreams

Dear Reader

Time to celebrate this week, you clever monkeys shot Osama Bin Laden in the head, proving that America always gets its man, even if it is ten years and one trillion dollars later. So expensive was the hunt for Bin Laden that the White House was hoping to recoup some of the money with the film rights to helmet-cam footage. They were planning a director's cut in the style of Apocalypse Now Redux. Instead of the raid taking 40 minutes, it lasts 4 hours with an interminable dinner scene involving French colonists and a CGI fat Brando spouting nonsense. Also in the pipeline was a Navy Seals blooper reel,  including one hilarious mix-up where they got their famous bearded Muslims confused and almost shot Cat Stevens. But some politically-correct killjoy has now decided it would be bad taste to release a picture of man with half his head blown off, so don't order those mouse mats just yet.

Still Bin Laden has hardly reached the bottom of the Arabian Sea and the conspiracy theories have already started. It is a government cover up as Bin Laden has been dead for years, killed by the same Peugot that did for Diana, but Bush and Obama have to conceal the truth because they are working for Freemason lizards who plotting to take over the world using Kofi Annan,  a black helicopter and gay rights. Some of that may be in wrong order, but much like fridge magnets you can rearrange these conspiracies any way you want. The trouble with the conspiracists is you cannot win. Even if the White House released gory pictures, a video or a statement from Al-Qaida's no. 2 saying he was sorry his boss was dead but he relished the challenge of keeping a medieval death cult relevant for the Twitter generation,  there is no standard of proof that would suffice. Much like a schizophrenic on public transport babbling scary nonsense, the general principle is not to react to conspiracists as it only encourages them.  In the case of the bus nutter, you may get a screwdriver in the leg anyway, but it's worth a try.

What this typing ape finds most peculiar about conspiracy theories is you find them on both sides of the political spectrum and there are not solely the preserve of the educationally challenged. They even get turned into award winning documentaries such as The Power of Nightmares,  expertly produced and edited programmes which suggested that Al-Qaida was to an extent invented to serve the neo-conservative agenda. An intriguing idea as long as you ignore just one thing: reality. In particular those pesky Al-Qaida operatives, who are not RADA graduates between jobs, but go round preaching jihad and setting off bombs.

Likewise Nigel Lawson and many other people who should know better are claiming there is a conspiracy of the world's leading scientists to falsify evidence about global warming. Again, a beguiling idea until you think about it properly using all your brain rather just than reptile bit that keeps you breathing. Ignoring for a moment that he has no scientific expertise whatsoever, Lawson is seriously suggesting that leading minds of our age and all the worlds scientific institutions are engaged in the greatest fraud in human history for the sake of grant money or perhaps because they own shares in windfarms.

The diversity and range of conspiracy theories in the modern age is truly awe-inspiring. Makes you wonder if someone's behind it all. No but seriously, the bigger question is why in an era of modern communications with overwhelming volumes of evidence to the contrary do strange movements such as the 911 truthers persist. Your gorilla thinker believes you monkeys have a passionate need for magical thinking. Before science and reason,  you could easily indulge those urges by burning a witch, exorcising demons or sacrificing some random animal to a grumpy deity. These days, however, irrationality is pushed to fringes of public debate, lurking in newspaper horoscopes or the pages of Psychologies  magazine. Like a cartoon bruise, the irrational urges pop up elsewhere. The world is more exciting if it is run by shadowy forces and agents of global reach and power. Any humdrum office worker, who would otherwise lead a life of quiet desperation and borderline alcoholism, can thanks to conspiracy theories feel like they are part of their very own Bourne film.

If, dear reader, you still think that the government, the Met Office or the Pentagon are part of some vast conspiracy, consider one key word: government. These are the same bureaucracies that struggle to deliver your post, spend £7 billion on aircraft carriers we then have to sell and claim for duck houses on expenses. If there really was a conspiracy, someone would leave a laptop on train, get drunk and tell somebody or they would get sacked from the plot and then expose it all in a bestselling book. Let's not forget, Project Kill Bin Laden is a classic government programme, 9 years and 999 billion over budget. These guys really could not manage a conspiracy, even they could insert mind-control chips into people - they would use the wrong sort of chips, the software would be incompatible and the batteries would run flat.