When I Dance

When I dance....

It looks like I'm having a seizure in slow motion

Its a far cry from the intended result

O2 Y U no luv me?

I like to think of myself as a moderately social person. In my younger days you could often see me languishing about clubs in the early hours of the morning, surrounded by many a chum. My social activities at present are rather more tame, but get out and see people I do. When I don't feel like seeing people, I do what any respectable person would. Retreat to the sofa and watch TV until my eyes bleed.

Sometimes however, there is an incongruity between what I want to do and what my friends feel like doing. I would like to do something, and they would like to do nothing. This is a period of high personal vulnerability. Bearing in mind I also have literally no initiative when it comes to organising my social activities and tend to just wait for people to contact me. It's at THIS precise moment, when I'm sitting along in my house, waiting for my phone to do something, that this then occurs.

A FRIEND!!!!!!!!

 I scuttle over to my phone, imagining all the fun I am going to have with my as yet unspecified friend.

Enjoy a salad

Watch a movie

Partake in healthy, outdoor pursuits

Laugh at your friend's really old phone

Then I realise who wants to talk to me.

I don't know HOW O2 knows how I'm feeling like this, but they always do. Because of the already sad feelings brewing inside me, the blow is is particularly crushing. The pièce de résistance occurs when the offending text is informing me that I am out of calling credit. It's like O2 is saying to me 

'Not only are you a loner, you're broke as fuck too. Have a nice day :D' 

Motherfuckers. 

Musical Tumours

This may sound like a bizarre topic of conversation, but I swear it makes perfect sense and has nothing to do with real tumours. It could quite easily have been called 'Musical Fungal Infections' or 'Musical Tapeworms'.

In order to properly explain what a musical tumour is, first the 'Scale of Music' needs to be discussed. The Scale of Music is a simple way of classifying popular song and is comprised of two extremes. At one end you have your high brow thinking man's music; James Blake, The Knife, Bjork, Postal Service, anything by Laurie Anderson. The sort of bands you quote at people when you're desperately trying to impress them.

At the other you have your gratuitously cheesy bubblegum pop. The Venga Boys, Blue, The Glee Soundtrack. The sort of stuff you  sing along to at weddings and when your doing housework. Stuff at this end is hardcore guilty pleasure, you love it, but that love is tinged with self loathing.

In the middle lies the Twilight Zone, Top 40 bands which in no way are going to alter your perception of the Universe, but are a far cry from Gina G. Bands like Coldplay, Maroon 5 and the Arctic Monkeys. Inoffensive 'four chords and the truth' set-ups. It's within THIS zone that the musical tumour is born.

A musical tumour is an artist, band, or even a song that you DESPERATELY don't want to like but eventually do. They grow on you against your will; like a tumour. My most recent encounter with this phenomenon at the hands of the ginger haired guitar swinger Ed Sheeran. When he first began gracing the airwaves of British popular radio stations I was all like:

Three Short Months Later......

This pattern has repeated itself many times. Over the Summer I had to begrudgingly accept that I did like Coldplay, after a long period of solid scorn. 

The most bitter pill to swallow was my emerging love of The Smiths. For years I had hated the Smiths, and I had not been quiet about it.You could almost define me as a person by my hatred of The Smiths. You know how some people are good listeners, or enjoy painting? I hated The Smiths. It was universal and all encompassing. It's what I did. 

Not anymore......

It is a hell unlike any other. 

What kind of person Google thinks I am

Like the government, Chinese Industries and the charming Russian gentleman who controls the natural gas supply, Google is a power that I am vaguely wary of yet completely reliant on for a large part of my daily functionality. I suckle at the proverbial teat of Google morning noon and night, researching all topics under the sun from the higher concepts in physics to Courtney Stodden's freakish marriage. At some points I am painfully aware of this dependence but there is just no way around it.

Now to the main issue at hand.

I'm 98% sure that somewhere in the Californian bowels of the Google megastructure lurks a programme that logs each individual's Google searches and compiles them into some sort of 'profile'. I doesn't matter if your using your computer, a friends, or rubbing elbows with the pay-per-hour perverts in a public café. They will always know it's you.

Because of this notion, occasionally during my frenetic unending quest for largely useless knowledge I become increasingly uneasy about the kind of searches I am making and how they reflect upon me personally. Normally this isn't a problem, the majority of my browsing consists of Facebook, Youtube, News websites and until very recently checking THIS page every 13.5 seconds.  

However during moments of deep procrastination and boredom my mind has a tendency to wander to darker places and if Google IS keeping files on us all, then I am in deep shit. 

I don't INTEND to end up probing into these unnatural topics, it just seemed to happen. However recently I have been monitoring my own behaviour and I think I have pinpointed the series of events that leads to these shameful acts being committed. 

The process goes a little something like this: 

I begin a session of work, hyper motivated and super pumped about the challenge assigned to me. 

This feeling doesn't last long; and then my mind begins to wonder. (In this instance to Family Guy, as I have a 14 year old boys sense of humour)

This begins to irritate me. It irritates me to the point that I can no longer do any more work until I know WHAT that term means. I know I won't like the answer, and I know I'll bitterly regret Googling it, but I do it anyway. 

This process can be repeated up to ten times during busy work days. It not only limited to depraved sexual acts either. It can be anything from finding out if you can order explosives online to learning more about something I saw on Bodyshock that I didn't believe was physically possible. 

In real life, I am quite nice and unassuming, and you would not expect this kind of behaviour from me. However, in the eyes of Google, I probably look a little like this: 

No. No this is not normal in the slightest. It is an abomination. Thank you Google. Thank you for making me this. 

Don't ever leave me.....<3

(P.S. The irony of posting a blog about Google dependence on a Google hosted website is in no way lost on me )