Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I finished reading Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard the other day, and whilst it was a good read, I couldn’t help but feel that it was very, very similar to a few of his other books that I’ve read over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, as I have done all of Ballard’s books. With the exception of Empire of the Sun, which was essentially an autobiography of his childhood in Shanghai, Ballard explores some very interesting themes, usually concerning the potential for society to eat itself. He is very good at finding a dark underbelly to a seemingly innocuous situation, and showing how easily passions can be inflamed to destroy or alter what exists before.

In Cocaine Nights, for example, a journalist travels to the Spanish coast because his brother has been arrested for murdering five people in a house fire in their gated community. As he stays there, trying to prove his brother’s innocence, he gets drawn into a world which is very different from that which he sees at first glance. Essentially, the book boils down to forcing people out of the monotony of their lives and into something more interesting or rewarding. The catalyst for this is crime and violence, naturally.

As I said, this is all good material, and it’s nicely plotted too. Ballard is a very good writer, although his writing of sex is a touch iffy. It’s odd, because he can write eroticism particularly well, but the sex itself comes across as very mechanical. He’s more than capable of granting a character a huge charge of eroticism, or inserting a huge amount of it into a scene, but it then goes a bit dry (so to speak) as soon as they’re actually getting down to it. Odd.

Anyway, what I realised is that the character interactions are somewhat formulaic across a number of his books. In all four that I have read which tackle dystopian themes (Cocaine Nights, Crash, Millennium People, and Kingdom Come), the main character or narrator is taken from his comfort zone into the seedy underbelly of society by a charismatic newcomer to his life. He is cajoled and prodded into exploring the new experiences by someone else, rather than on his own accord.

And it always seems to be male to male as well. The central characters are male (if memory serves), as are the newcomers. I detect a certain air of weakness on the part of the central character every time, and he is always looking for someone to provide him with excitement, rather than seeking it out for himself. The newcomer is always welcoming, and swiftly takes the main character under his wing, making him a protege and imparting his wisdom.

Yes, the methods differ slightly, but essentially it’s the same character journey each time. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but in Cocaine Nights the newcomer’s “charisma” is mentioned so often that it’s just drilled into you. It reminded me massively of the TV spokesmodel in Kingdom Come who is the face of the shopping mall, and also of the driver in Crash who introduces the narrator to the sexual violence of car crashes.

What it also vaguely reminded me of was a theory I came across at university: Max Weber’s charismatic leader. OK, so I remembered the theory if not the philosopher, but it was up there in my head somewhere. University was evidently good for something!

Weber says that charismatic authority is one of the three possible bases for legitimising power in a society (the others being traditional authority, which is patriarchy, monarchy and so on, and rational-legal authority, which is more of a rules-based system), and that it comes about when a leader arises who can command obedience through nothing more than his own personal appearance.

He does not have legitimacy through being elected, nor from being an heir to the throne. His power derives from commanding others and having those orders obeyed because the populace believes him to be better than them, and so are loyal to him. A very simple explanation, and no doubt glossing over some subtleties, but that’s the basics.

In Ballard’s books, these charismatic newcomers fit that mould exactly: Cocaine Nights’ is a tennis coach, for example. It is only through relentless application of their charisma and forcing the other characters to believe in them that they gain their power, and their legitimacy.

For me, the characters which are attracted to these charismatic leaders are all the same: weak, searching for something a little different, and then surprised at just how far down the rabbit hole goes. Too often, they eventually want out, and try to rebel against their new leaders, sometimes too late to avoid the inevitable deaths and destruction.

I really do enjoy reading Ballard’s books, but if I find the next one to be following the same kind of structure, with the same basic characters, I think I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that kind of modern-day sociological dystopian novel?

Because I’m an idiot, I managed to lose my iPod on Friday evening as I made my way home. With my memory a little hazy and booze-addled, I’m not sure exactly where. What’s odd is that my headphones made it back with me, but not the iPod.

Hopefully, it’ll be covered by my insurance, but in any case I need to get myself a new mp3 player. My shuffle just isn’t enough for me.

I had the older 80GB version, so the iPod Classic 160GB is winking at me. Can anyone recommend any other players somewhere in the region of 80GB+?

Having a salad for lunch negates the sausage and egg sandwich I had for breakfast, right?

RIGHT?!??!

Anonymous asked: If Samuel Pepys were around today would he use Tumblr?

I think he would blog, definitely, although not necessarily with Tumblr. Tumblr is perhaps too geared towards making it easy to post all forms of media, whereas Pepys seemed to thoroughly enjoy the written word.

Blogging, in general, is a form of writing a diary, is it not? I certainly treat it that way, and quite enjoy going back to look at what I was doing seven years ago, when I first started blogging.

There’s much more chance nowadays that the writing will survive, and get an audience. Previously, we relied more on luck for diaries to survive, whereas everything is cached pretty much instantaneously online. For better or worse, you could say, but it’s important to document what’s happening in the world, no?

In terms of Pepy’s writing on London life, I can highly recommend Diamond Geezer as a modern-day equivalent. His writing is brilliant, and he somehow seems to do an incredible amount every week.

kapi asked: What are your thoughts on Lady Gaga?

(I'm gonna need a long reply to this.)

You know, I don’t really listen to the radio, and I don’t have too many music channels nowadays, so by the time I hear of a pop artist or a particular song, it’s already pretty ubiquitous. This can mean it’s already reached annoyance level for most people, whereas for me it’s new.

But usually still crap.

When it comes to the genres I enjoy, then I’m absolutely always trying to hear something new, or eagerly awaiting a new album, looking out for it all the time.

With pop, it’s just not my thing. The only time I’ll hear that kind of music is in a bar or something, or on the car radio if the girlfriend is giving me a lift to the station. Even then, I usually have no idea who sings a particular song, nor their usual ouevre.

When it comes to Lady Gaga, it wasn’t really until last autumn that I really became aware of her, or realised that a couple of songs were hers. I remember being in a bar in Newcastle last year and seeing it go mental when Poker Face came on, and that was my first realisation that she was something big.

Musically, I guess I can understand the appeal. It’s fairly nonsensical, standard pop fare, ranging from the dancey stuff to the slower (yet still upbeat) ballads. It’s not really my thing, but as pop music goes it’s not bad. Better than the middle-of-the-road crap that we get from X-Factor and the like, but still pretty formulaic.

I wouldn’t say that she’s particularly turning the pop world on its head musically. Compare her stuff to Britney’s earlyish material: it’s basically the same style. I’ll grant that Gaga’s lyrics have a little more to them, but they’re still all about sex, love, relationships and fame.

Away from the music, and onto her image. It’s pretty clear that she fancies herself as a performance artist more than a music artist. And it does take a certain amount of confidence to wear some most of her outfits, so I’ll give her credit for that.

But there’s a fine line between being noticed for being outlandish, being on the bleeding edge of fashion, and just plain being ridiculous. She’s crossed it, for me.

Yes, I realise that she’s trying to make some sort of commentary on the public obsession with musicians’ looks and images, but she just looks like an idiot. I just don’t get the need to dress up loke that on a daily basis, or to go that far overboard with it all.

A coat made of Kermits? Really?

She’s canny and media-savvy in terms of milking publicity and infamy wherever she can (that video with Beyonce, for example), but too often she’s becoming what she’s in theory supposed to be satirising: she’s relying on her raunchiness and sex appeal to sell music, just like Britney, Christina, et al, before her.

Her videos are without doubt aimed to titillate as much as to entertain, as are most of her outfits and her stage shows. Take, for example, the crotch-tastic green thing she wore at the Brits. My eyes water at the memory of how tight that was downstairs, and I ain’t female.

It amuses me that so much of the media is in thrall to her, covering her every move whilst trying to say that they aren’t really obsessed with her. Gawker is particularly guilty of this.

Maybe the best thing I can say about her is that she really has made an impact on the public consciousness. I don’t listen to her music, nor the genres she operates in, and I don’t read celebrity magazines/websites, yet I still know a decent amount about her.

It’s a sign of her ubiquity, perhaps, that even people like myself are able to have an opinion about her, and in a fame-obsessed world, you have to applaud the amount of self-promotion that it’s taken for her to get to that level.

Predictions for headlines in tomorrow’s Sun:

• Clegg on his face

• Cam’s the Man

• Brown and Out

Any more?

Anonymous asked: Have you voted Lib Dem (tactically) because Labour is a wasted vote in Putney or because The Guardian have just pledged allegiance to them?

Well, this question was asked (I’d love to know by whom, email me or leave a comment) whilst I was writing a big long post explaining my reasons for voting Lib Dem. Christ, even in the photo of my vote I said that I’d be explaining my reasons later on today.

I would never vote tactically. The statements yesterday and today by two leading members of the Labour party, pretty much telling supporters to vote Lib Dem so as to avoid the Tories winning particular seats, is nothing short of a disgrace.

To run a campaign based on fear (and the Tories are equally guilty of this in terms of their crowing about a hung parliament) is to lower yourself to the very bottom of political debate.

If your policies aren’t strong enough to beat the other guy, then you need some new policies. You can’t just become negative and try anything to keep the other party out of power. You have to merit being elected, not just get it by default because you’ve scared people into believing that the other party will fuck things up.

Negative campaigning is abhorrent, which is why the Lib Dems have been a fresh of breath air this year. For me, they have genuinely risen above the pooh-pooing of the other two parties and tried to present their own policies positively, correcting the falsehoods raised about them by the other parties.

In Putney, it’s actually more likely that voting for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote. Look at the notional voting split for the constituency: the Lib Dems are a long way back. Yes, Labour will no doubt lose some votes, but Justine Greening was a pretty clean MP in terms of expenses, and hasn’t really done anything wrong. There’s not a huge campaign to oust her, and she’ll probably get re-elected. It’ll have to be a big Lib Dem surge to unseat her, but I hope I’m doing my bit.

And in terms of voting for who the Guardian is supporting? I’d actually made up my mind to vote Lib Dems shortly after the manifestos came out. I didn’t even know that this weekend’s Guardian and Observer had published the editorials I linked to until the girlfriend pointed it out to me this afternoon.

Just because I read a newspaper doesn’t mean I agree with everything it says. The Guardian can be as bad as other papers from time to time. I happen to think it is less often though.

And yes, I probably do consider myself as smarter than the average bear for being able to see through the bullshit which masquerades as news for most media outlets. I have no problem with seeing myself as quite clever in those terms. You can take that as arrogance, ego or whatever, but I know where I stand in the food chain.

I view the media critically, rather than swallowing its crap whole. It’s a shame that a lot of other people can’t or won’t.

Righty, I need some new books for my holiday at the start of June. You can see my bookshelves on Goodreads, and the kinds of books I’m into.

Any recommendations?

Anonymous asked: Were you happier with Gordon Browns performance during tonights debate?

I thought he did a lot better, definitely. He relied a little too much on the “I’m doing this job every day, therefore I know best” mantra, which would work if he hadn’t so comprehensively fucked so many things up in the last three years, but it was a good performance.

To be honest, I didn’t really feel that there was a massively outright winner of this debate, as there quite obviously was this time last week. All three landed some blows on the other two, and each had to take some hits from the others as well.

I was disappointed with the debate as a whole, because they spent so little time on foreign policy, despite the debate theoretically being on foreign policy. The final 40 minutes just felt like a rehash of last week’s topics, and the moderator let each candidate waffle too often.

It descended into petty party politics a little, which is a turn-off for many voters, including myself. Last week’s debate was a lot more ideological in basis, for the first time in bloody ages.

Hopefully the third debate will be a return to that style.

In an inspired decision to combine politics, pizza and booze, I’m off to Hannah’s place tonight with the girlfriend, Kapi and Ashley to watch the next leaders’ debate. And drink beer, more importantly.

We might break out some Debate Bingo to keep things entertaining and to provide us with at least a small excuse for drinking. I’ve come up with a half-decent list of keywords to look out for, but need some more.

This debate’s theme is foreign policy, but I’m sure that some of the daily ups and downs of the election campaign so far will be aired too. Any ideas?