Spicy Food

Something I have never understood is why people choose to eat spicy food. I can, and do eat spicy food, but only ever to be polite or if there is no other option available. I will even say that I have enjoyed some spicy food but know that it would have been just as nice had it not had chillies in it. Maybe I am missing part of the experience, but I just can’t comprehend how people experience pain as a pleasure sensation. When I eat food I like to be able to taste it. I believe, chillies are sometimes added to food, that without the chillies is so disastrous that it needs something added so that nobody can really taste the end result.

Some people go to extremes when eating spicy food. They try to prove themselves by eating food that by the end, will turn them into a sweating, crying, red, snotty mess (this description applies to a particularly shocking challenge on the TV programme man vs. food). Why eat food where it’s substance is used to temporarily blind people, in the use of pepper spray? Our bodies are very good at letting us know when something might be harmful to us. We feel pain normally because there is some sort of damage happening to our body. It is the reason we never find that we’ve accidentally left our hand resting in a fire. Similarly, foods that are poisonous for us taste bad or create a sensation of pain. Eating an excess of chillies can cause a raised temperature and heart rate, and when we feel this it is our body telling us to stop! The fact that some chillies can only be handled using gloves is a strong indication that it might not be a good idea to eat them. If it damages your skin just by touching it, imagine what it could do to your insides. But so many people ignore this, and continue to force down their throat food which causes their entire body to burn up. So, unsurprisingly this is not an experience that I like to be part of.

Those who like very spicy food often find others reacting to spicy food that for them would be mild hard to fathom. But, it is likely to be the case that after so many years of eating a plant that can have such adverse side effects, many of their taste buds have been burned off, and so they are no longer a reliable indication of how spicy something is. Thus, making people feel that they are in some way inadequate because they ‘cannot take the heat’ makes you look like your prime source of entertainment is seeing others in pain. Admittedly seeing people eating chillies can be fun, but it becomes tiresome when you can’t go to Nandos without being judged on what level of spice you choose to have. It is as if the hotter, the better, as if extra hot is some sort of goal to aim towards. Well, again, I politely refuse to have a burnt tongue and bum, just to prove that somehow I am immune to pain.

This clip is a great example of where the spice is not worth the pain!

Allergies

It’s that time of year where it is almost summer. People are getting excited about the summer clothes that they can finally make use of, festivals and drinking Pimms. I love London especially in the summer. On a sunny day you’re never far from some green space where you can relax and enjoy the British weather for a change and it’s not far for a nice day trip to the coast if you want to get away from the city. It’s a time when people are looking their best and feeling great. Unless, you have allergies.

At a time when everyone is instagramming their ciders in the sun, I am not looking so good, and neither is poor Ren here.

I am someone who has allergies all year round and so my only reprieve is that in summer I am not alone in my sneezing and eye discomfort. For me, although it’s a time when my sneezing is at its worst and my eyes are in the most pain, it is kind of nice to see that some people react worse than me to pollen. Part of this cynical response to my fellow sneezers is that almost as annoying as the allergies themselves, is people’s confusion at them. I don’t have any major reactions but all year round I generally sneeze a lot which is quite annoying and sometimes leaves me feeling drained and as if I have a cold. I have had this for years, and people have known me all the way through my allergy years and yet still they back away in disgust thinking I have a cold. I understand that sneezing is normally a good indication that someone has a cold but in my case it is rarely an indication that I am ill. People often then follow their confusion that I don’t have a cold and yet I am sneezing with the obvious observation that it is winter at the time: “but it’s winter, it’s not hay fever season”. I didn’t realise that this was something that people didn’t know but from the amount of times I have been told that I am sneezing at the wrong time of year, it seems that people must be unaware that there are allergens that exist other than pollen.

As if it isn’t enough to deal with daily allergies, I have genuinely experienced people’s annoyance at my sneezing. People still archaically feel obliged to say ‘bless you’, and sometimes I do too if I am feeling particularly kind but I never expect to be ‘blessed’ precisely because I sneeze so much and I am not ill. There is no need for divine intervention to help me through the illness. But if you do say ‘bless you’ there is no point saying it if by the end you are shouting “BLESS YOU” as if I am continuing to sneeze because I didn’t hear you the first time. Similarly, it doesn’t help to say it in a way that appears an effort; after all I am the one having to go through convulsions of 100 mph through my nose, 14 times over (that’s my record), not you. And I tell you now, it is quite exhausting.

Bandwagons on Facebook

There are the obvious problems associated around Facebook such as the way it uses our information and our obsession with it, but for this post my issue will be with the way people use it. In the beginning Facebook was a way of finding friends and looking at their profiles to see how they were getting along in life without the hassle of talking to them. As its features grew, it became a good way to organise events easily, and create groups who had mutual interests. Statuses, although often dull, used to be a simple way of letting people know how you were feeling or what you were up to that day. Now however, statuses are a way of people expressing their thoughts on subjects they know nothing about.

People jumping on bandwagons on Facebook is rife. All it takes is for one person to make a status that sounds vaguely revolutionary and people follow like true ‘Facebookers’ and repost and comment to get the bandwagon  going. One that often pops up on my newsfeed is that on some future date Facebook will release all of our information to third parties and maybe steal even more of our information for their evil use. I saw this quite recently and the user’s ‘solution’ to stopping this was to post a status declaring that they did not give Facebook their permission to use their information. A meaningless few words on your wall does not stand up to the agreement that Facebook can use your information, something that you gave permission for when you accepted terms and conditions and signed up. People really thought they were starting a revolution against Facebook… by using Facebook to vent their discontent. It is now a well known fact that Facebook uses our information and if you don’t like that then you shouldn’t have signed up in the first place.

A useful button that I think Facebook should adopt

Often when people share controversial campaigns it turnsout that they have done no research into whether what they are sharing is actually true.  Sometimes they can be comical when people post their sorrow for the recent death of Taylor Swift for example, even though the last three deaths didn’t actually occur. It is lazy and naïve to assume that the person who posted it before knew what they were talking about. A simple google search can clear up this sort of embarrassment. Some are more serious; one campaign that got a lot of people very angry was the campaign to stop the whale hunting that occurs in the Faroe Islands. Shocking images of waters red with whale blood were thrown around Facebook to show the barbarity of the locals that take part in this 1000 year old tradition. As an animal lover myself, at first sight I thought what they were doing was brutal, but not wanting to get involved in an unnecessary bandwagon I did a little research before I started sharing with the world my thoughts on this practice. Through a very small amount of searching I quickly found that the whales are not endangered, the locals eat the meat, and for many of the people on the island it is a very important tradition for them. I think if people had just considered the other side there may not have been the unnecessary outburst. After I found out these facts I still wasn’t sure if I agreed entirely with the practice, so I left my thoughts to myself, I feel unlike the countless others that shared away, abusing the locals and its practice without thinking for a minute first.

It’s important not to take things on Facebook at face value. So before sharing the latest campaign, or post, we should check to see whether it is actually true or if we really agree, so that we don’t end up looking like right unconscious, unthinking idiots to the world.

London Transport

You wait for more than an hour to step on to a heated box in the middle of Summer. As you step on you realise there is not enough money left on your little blue card that allows your access. Never mind you think. I’ll just use cash. Yet, it turns out that the humming, heated box does not accept the local currency known as ‘cash’. So, already late, you step off in the hope that there is somewhere nearby that will let you top up your card. It is at this point that you realise you may have well have walked, as by the time the next rail replacement bus arrives, you should be taking your lunch break at work.

When the tubes are running, it’s a quicker service but every minute on the underground is an uncomfortable one. Even in winter the temperature is high due to the masses of people that cram on to the underground. By the end of your journey you’re likely to be a bit wetter from other people’s dripping armpits and generally look like you’re a little bit melted after spending an hour in sticky, 30°C heat. After just half an hour you’ve had the effects of smoking one cigarette but none of the joy that comes with smoking the cancer sticks.

As the tube is pretty damn ancient and it did lead the way for newer, more efficient systems it deserves some credit. Thus, it can be excused for its downfalls. However, the same cannot be said for the trains. They are often delayed, overcrowded and decide to stop running completely if there are a few too many leaves in their way. If there’s snow there is no point in even leaving the house. Although it snows almost every year, every year the transport in London does not run as if it is freak weather. To their defence, Transport for London does have measures put in place, but every year ‘the wrong kind of snow’ falls and the measures for snow type #69 can never actually be used.

Even in summer when the buses can manage the roads they are not in service

Whilst TFL is hopeless, the people that use it are equally stupid. Like TFL being surprised by snow, it seems that Londoners are still surprised to see barriers at the end of their journey. They may have been in London all of their life and yet when they see the barrier, they STOP. And they wait. And they slowly realise that to get through the barrier they must find their oyster card buried somewhere in their bag. So, where better to stop and have a look if front of the barrier, at say Clapham junction, which is only EUROPE’s busiest railway station? Ignorant ignoramuses stop in front of the barrier as if they have a right to reserve it.  There is no such right. If you’ve spent only a week in London you should have learnt at least one thing; there is never a good time or place to stop.

Abusing the English Language

It is an amazing thing, the way we can use language to express ourselves and to create great novels, and some poetry can be ok too. It has been observed that the English language is such that we can take two perfectly ordinary words such as cellar and door and when put together they sound beautiful. Interestingly though I think the reason that they work so well together is because they flow more like a French phrase rather than an English one. It is frustrating when some words are frequently misused entailing that their original meaning is lost, or they end up having no meaning at all. Words that are often misused, or I should now say were misused due to revised definitions now in the dictionary which I will explain later, are ‘ironic’ and ‘literally’ .  One of the worst cases of ‘ironic’ being misused is in the song ‘Ironic’ by Alanis Morrisette.

To clarify, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (online), the definition of irony is; ‘a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.’ Morrisette’s song about the irony in life includes many examples where one can experience irony. Apparently it is ironic to have rain on your wedding day. If I am to understand irony correctly this is more a case of bad luck. Unless, you are someone who LOVES rain but NEVER on wedding days for that would be terrible. In this case I would allow it to be called ironic but Morrisette really needs to be more specific if this is what she means.

According to the song it is also ironic to be in a traffic jam when you’re already late.  Again, rather than this being irony, it is more an example of simple bother. It is probably also even more likely that you’ll be in a traffic jam when you’re already late as your normal time probably beats the rush hour. Furthermore, your being late adds to the traffic jam, meaning that the only irony is in the fact that you hate the traffic jam and yet you make up part of it. No, the only ironic thing about ‘Ironic’ is that there is nothing ironic about it, which as the definition says it should be, it quite amusing.

At this point in the blog, I was going to talk about the misuse of the word ‘literally’ and my anguish when people say things like ‘he was literally the size of the Eiffel Tower’ referring to someone who is  a little over 6ft. However, due to the definition being changed, it is now no longer a misuse of the word to use ‘literally’ figuratively.  The problem I have is not with the evolution of language but I fear that if we continue to use words in a way where we mean their direct opposite, eventually it will be impossible to understand any sentence. We will live in a world of opposites. So rather than ranting about the misuse of the word ‘literally’ I just want to make a very small but important note on the word ‘expresso’. My note is that the word does not exist! There is no such thing as an expresso coffee; the word is ‘espresso’. I was horrified to find this word at the end of ‘Sophie’s World’ by Jostein Gaarder but I have an old edition so I hope by now the editors have realised their mistake. This coffee does not exist, so stop asking for it.

This man is literally taller than the Eiffel Tower, if the tower is really small and not really far away

Star Signs

A belief in star signs is a belief that the position of the Sun, the Earth, and the constellations between them somehow affect our character. The belief is that depending on what sign of the zodiac you are born under, you will have certain basic character traits that you will share with all people born under the same sign. Furthermore, these twelve signs can be broken down into earth, air, fire or water elements and certain elements will clash with others. As a Piscean (a water element) it is likely that I will have trouble getting along with anybody who is a Virgo. Although Virgos are an earth element and therefore should be comfortable with a water sign, we are polar opposites on the zodiac cycle, which will always lead to inevitable conflict. With this in mind, I can now make sure to drop any Virgos I currently know (sorry Granddad) and ensure when meeting someone I find out their birthday to know whether or not to bother carrying on with the conversation.

Awkwardly this couple didn’t check their compatibility

A belief in star signs will unfortunately entail that all Taurus’ will share some character traits with Hitler. Now, the assumption I am sure is not that all people born around the time of April or May will have Hitler’s extreme nature. Some of my good friends happen to be born around this time and I am yet to see any worrying qualities in them that mean they will one day become abhorrent dictators. But, according to the horoscopes, they will share some similarities. However, it is interesting to note that John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher of the 19^th century was also a Taurus. Widely known for his political philosophy and views on freedom, it seems hard to ever think that because he was born under the same star sign as Hitler that he should be remotely similar. For example, on the notion of liberty he writes “the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them”. This view on freedom, without wanting to put it too mildly, is something that Hitler would most likely find disagreeable.

Consequently, a belief in star signs is a belief in the absurd. I’ll accept that for many it can be a bit of fun and it can be nice to relate to a pretty picture that might one day be a tattoo. But I have heard people say, with no lack of seriousness things like ‘he’s a classic Aries, outgoing and independent, I always find I get along with Aries’. Translated this should say; ‘he’s a classic April born boy, the position and movement of the moon and stars has really made him independent, almost as if it was something to do with his upbringing. I always find I get along with people who also believe that they share qualities with others based on when they were born.’ I can’t believe that in 2015 there are still horoscopes in the back of newspapers, if horoscopes were translated similarly to how I translated the sentence, people may realise the ridiculous nature of star signs. Or maybe they are based on something substantial. I don’t know anymore! Depicted by two fish swimming in opposite directions, maybe I am just a classic Piscean; always confused and torn between what decision to make. Probably not though.

‘Real’ Women

I am going to start this blog post positively, what with it being the New Year. I am fully behind any campaign that makes women feel comfortable about their bodies. It is great to see more realistic images of women being shown on social media and in magazines. Often aimed at the larger lady, these campaigns can help women to feel normal and happy in whatever body they have. However, a term that is often thrown around and is in no way progressive is ‘real women. Originally the term ‘real women’ is likely to be a response to the mass of photoshopped images that we are faced with daily on various forms of media. Yet now, it seems to be a term applied to women who are overweight or have unusual body shapes. It is very important to note that I am attacking people that use the term ‘real’ and not the bodies that are representative of the term.

By using the term ‘real women’, in the hope that you make certain women feel that they are true women who are more accurate portrayals of the general population, you insult those that do not fit into this category. By all means criticise the overuse of Photoshop, but don’t criticise the models that are the subject of the cutting and cropping. Just because these models (or anyone else for that matter) are skinny, it does not make them any less of a woman. A larger woman may certainly have more skin or fat to her, but that does not make her more ‘womanly’ than someone who is a size 6. Like many women who feel they are just big boned, many women feel that they are naturally skinny or slim and will be just as insulted if they are criticised because of their weight. By using the term ‘real’ you can target the wrong person. Rather than targeting the companies that live by Photoshop you target the women who do not have curves or are not as voluptuous and make them feel inferior.

Though showing a range of body sizes in magazines is a good thing, at the same time it is important to promote a healthy lifestyle. It is a fact that there is a line between being curvaceous and being clinically overweight. Whilst it is important not to criticise the way overweight people look, I don’t think calling rolls of fat ‘curves’ is very helpful either. In the same way it is not a positive thing to show an underweight model, it is not positive to show an overweight one. Rather, we should be seeing a happy medium of healthy bodies. Being underweight or overweight is unhealthy and in the campaign to see more ‘real women’, what I have seen is an increase in images of people who although seem happy, are also overweight. As it turns out, hopefully not as a surprise, all women are real; your BMI does not affect how real you are. Slim women without curves are just as real as bigger women with curves and it seems strange that I even have to say that. All of the women that you see in magazines or on adverts are real, it just may be that their images may have been changed by others. It goes without saying that when referring to a woman you are probably talking about one that exists. So, there is no need to use the word ‘real’ as if it were a helpful predicate.

This is an example of a non- real woman. Although impressively she does somehow have curves whilst at the same time having a body made of blocks

Old Is Not The New Cute

The elderly, just like people a few years their junior, can possess many qualities such as kindness, rudeness and stubbornness. One major quality they lack however, just like everyone over the age of 10, is being cute. I think finding an old person cute is a relatively new reaction that people seem to have developed over time. I however, definitely do not feel this emotion when I see an old person getting by in life. Yet, it seems all too common for people to find it cute that an elderly person still has a sense of humour, that they are still married or even that they still smile (for all we know, like a baby, an attempt to get rid of bad wind can often be mistaken for a smile).

I’m sure many people will find it cute that my Nan is playing operation, but WHY?

Finding the elderly cute is patronising. Most people find babies cute and I find having a similar emotion to the elderly weird. When older people are more composed, or like their former selves people seem to find this ‘cute’. But what is so amazing that someone is just the same person that they were 10 years ago? If anything, the fact that they have the same wife, still watch the same programmes and like their tea a certain way is more unadventurous than cute. Calling the elderly cute, I find implies that in their old age they have regressed, and people find it endearing when they still see glimmers of the person they were when they were middle-aged. But it should come as no surprise that the elderly can be just like everyone else, because surprisingly they are, just older.

I think I am one of the few people that are looking forward to getting ‘old’. There’s no exact age for when you count as old, but I think it is around the age of 70. I am looking forward to retirement, where I hope it will be a bit like university life, which consists of enjoying doing nothing. Except, hopefully by retirement age I will have a lot more money than I did at Uni and so can enjoy it much more. I also look forward to being able to say almost anything I want, and people letting me, just because of my age. I imagine I will be ranting just like this but in the extreme. But, I would hate for anyone to find me cute, just because I have managed to not get myself killed yet. Whilst being really old can be an achievement, it is because of the things you might have done, not because somehow your withered face is almost as cute as a babies’.

By seeing the elderly as cute I think we have lost some of the respect that the older generation used to have. Rather than pillars of the community, we now view them as cute old people that don’t really understand what we are saying to them, so it is fine to call them cute as if they aren’t even there.  I find nothing cute about a withered, wrinkly, grey, deaf old man or woman. Rather, I can admire them, or look up to them, but never look down on them as cute. I hope that when I am old I am feared and never thought of as cute.

The X Factory

The X Factor has been going for a decade now and people still can’t seem to get enough. I feel a more accurate title would be the X Factory as year after year so called ‘stars’ are churned out of the machine that is the show, with no real special talent that the X in X Factor is supposed to stand for. Rather, the show has been going on for so long that its as predictable and mundane as Simon Cowell’s overuse of superlatives. There is little hope that we will ever get to hear someone that has the X Factor, the thing that sets a singer apart from the rest. Maybe, the show should just be called ‘The Factory’, but I guess a title that reflects what the show is really about may put people off.

I guess I am surprised that people still care. I lost interest years ago, and thought for a moment the rest of the British public had come to their senses too, when the campaign to stop Simon Cowell getting Christmas number one again happened in 2009. At the time it felt like a real revolution! People were standing up to the Syco brand and showing that not all power over the music business belonged to the soppy X Factor winners who knew the Christmas number one was their only good chance of ever being in the charts. Most X Factor winners often won because they were likeable, and not because of their talent. In a way I feel sorry for the people who go on X Factor, as many are talented, but on a show like X Factor, the rest of the music industry and the public in general are unlikely to take them seriously. After seeing them bust out their best moves to a Take That song that Louis Walsh will have picked for them, because they remind him of a young Gary Barlow, it’s unlikely they’ll have anything but the Christmas number one. Part of what made the campaign to get Rage Against The Machine to number one so great is that I think many people probably didn’t even like the rap metal song, but just wanted to spite the X Factor, making the situation all the more comical.

The X Factor is one of the few places where it seems OK to laugh at people for being bad at something (this moment was pretty special though).

The show has been running the same format since it started, trying to get people to fall in love with the contestants who take over our TV screens for about a quarter of the year. The main way to do this is with a sob story. The sob story has now become an integral part of the X Factor and it seems that the more people you know to have died a slow and gruesome death, the better. You hold a true trump card if you yourself have almost died, and it is almost a sure way to at least get to judges houses. Now though, some of the sob stories are beyond pathetic. In desperation for some sympathy, contestants whine that they work in Greggs or their local chippy. That’s no reason for you to get a chance! At least you have a job! And the fact that they are one of the few that get to go on TV means that they already count as privileged. They should be grateful that when they inevitably end up back at Greggs, someone will occasionally recognise them, unlike the poor sod in the back making sausage rolls who will never get the chance to tell his moving story. Luckily though, I don’t care anyway. Unlike the humble sausage roll, the X Factor will not be loved forever and for me, this day can’t come too soon.

Smartphones

Following what seems to be an emerging technophobic theme of the blog, I extend my dislike of technology to all smartphones. Since the rise of the smartphone social interaction has fallen, that is in the real sense of face to face conversation rather than a few emoticons on Facebook. Years ago when having a mobile phone wasn’t a given and I had my Nokia 3210 it was thrilling to be able to text my friends about things that I may have forgotten to talk to them about earlier in the day. But now, the smartphones have replaced much of human interaction all together. It’s a very common thing that people can often not say something they want to in person and so instead, hide behind their safety blanket that is Facebook messenger, a text or WhatsApp. They have made people more socially awkward because we now no longer feel the need to be social at all. Whilst someone may have 3000 followers on twitter, in the real world they are alone with their hand glued to their phone.

Sometimes I look around and I see people on the train, eyes firmly locked on their phone. I now play a game I like to call phone centipede where I try and beat my record for the amount of people I have seen in a row on their phone (the current record is 8). Yet, I hate to say that on occasions I am one of these people that find scrolling through the 9gag app more interesting than what is going on outside. I recently got an iPhone after years of being the only one I know to have an archaic phone, which for some reason used to annoy my friends more than it annoyed me. What I liked about my old phone which seems not to be an options for smartphones, was that it was so easy to be detached from social media and pointless apps as it would take half hour to load up and cost around £10 if you’d tried.

Now, the lives of my friends and people I don’t even know all live inside a tiny white cuboid, always in reach. People now exist through their phones and it is absurd. The ease of taking photos now means that people rarely get to enjoy the real thing since they never actually see it unmediated. One of the worst things to come out of smartphones is the ease in which people can take pictures of their food. And people do in their masses. I can tell you now; I am yet to see one picture of food that has interested me. I don’t care that you’ve managed to make your own noodles, stop being a boring fart and eat them before they get cold. Today, I think there is too much of a focus on other people, and trying to impress them. Stop tweeting every hour, taking photos of food, or showing how much fun you’re having on a night out. Get a real life, and get off your phone. The video below by Charlene deGuzman captures the essence of my distress caused by smartphones.