Calpol – The Miracle Drug

I have often wondered which medical speciality would be the quickest to learn, and whether other consultants look down upon their colleagues in the “easy” departments.

For many years, I presumed it would be something to do with feet. How much can go wrong with feet that you can’t blame on some other part of the body and make some other specialist responsible?

However, since becoming a parent I have come to the conclusion that training to be a paediatrician must be easier even than foot doctoring, because 95% of childhood health problems have one single cure – and that is Calpol.

For those of you not in the know, Calpol is paracetamol in a pink sugar solution. And it cures LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

When you are an adult, you wouldn’t dream of taking the same medicine for – say – a headache, an upset stomach, a cold, skin complaints, trench foot, hammer toe etc. And yet, Calpol sorts all of these out in children.

This is not just me saying this. I cannot remember a time taking our kids to the doctor (well,  a time of Elvira telling me about her taking the kids to the doctor) where Calpol has not been foremost amongst the medically-mandated remedies.

And kids bloody love it (admittedly, the white version does raise the occasional eyebrow, despite tasting exactly the same and having identical medicinal properties).

Granted, there may be some problems that Calpol can’t solve. But why is the top priority of the entire global pharmaceutical industry not the synthesis of an adult version of this miraculous wonder drug? 

Sometimes the best ideas are hiding in plain sight. 

Skylanders: Pester Force

My kids are obsessed with Skylanders. Your kids may be as well. Alternatively, you will have no idea what I am talking about.

Allow me to explain. “Skylanders” is, in the first instance, a series of computer games and, secondarily, a gigantic range of associated tat. There are seemingly hundreds of individual Skylander characters (some of whom are pictured above) and in the games, they run around doing quests, fighting, upgrading and buying stuff.

What – as far as I can see – makes this different is that to play any of these characters, you have to buy a figure of them.

A Skylander on a Portal of Power

The figures themselves are no great shakes. You can’t move their arms or legs and they appear to be of the same quality as something you’d get with a Happy Meal (despite being priced at £8.99 upwards...).

But, you stick this figure onto the “Portal of Power” – some sort of data-reading device that plugs into your

games console – and, hey presto, you are controlling that character on-screen.

Boys' infantile mania for collecting, listing and classification of made-up fantasy worlds has been successfully harnessed. Pokemon's "gotta buy 'em all" mantra has been successfully transferred to the physical world. My kids are five and three, but this has them completely hooked. For this week, anyway.

Now, I am not a “gamer”. When I was a kid, I had a ZX Spectrum and a Commodore Amiga – and I played a lot of games on them, from Jet Set Willy to The Secret of Monkey Island. I did own a PlayStation One and the original Tomb Raider and subsequently a PlayStation Two and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. But I played the games I had when I had nothing better to do and had no desire to acquire any more or find out about acquiring any more.

My interest in gaming came to an end when I was unable to complete the “flying a ridiculously uncontrollable biplane through a bunch of hoops and then landing it safely in less than a minute” task about 2/3 of the way through San Andreas after about 100 attempts.

I wasted far more of my youth doing role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

So yes, I spent a lot of weekends as a dungeon master – go on, get it out of your system and we can move on. Finished?

Role playing games then were like computer games are like today, only in your head. In principle, you could choose whatever you wanted to do within the limits of your character’s abilities.

Freedom of choice, simplified

Computer games can now appear to do something similar because their memory capacities are so enormous as to give the illusion of freedom of choice, by storing so many different option-scenarios (rather than the “go left”, “go right” or “jump” options I am familiar with).

The whole matter of my RPGing teenage years and the damage it did to my ability to function as a 20-something are deserving of a blog in their own right.

The reason I mention these games is that, sooner or later, everyone who was into it got seduced into the matter of buying more and more supplementary bits and pieces – lead men or additional rule books or whatever – so that they didn’t have to imagine quite so much. It's hard work using your own imagination, whereas buying stuff is easy.

What I have to show for this today is three biscuit tins full of Space Orks in the garage and a well below average stock of interesting anecdotes from my mid-teenage years. 

To return to Skylanders. What the company responsible has done is genius – they have created a computer game that you have to keep buying more things for in order to get more out of it. Some bits, I am told, can only be accomplished using a character of the appropriate element (you know - earth, wind, fire etc). So if you don’t have one, you have to get one or you’re stuck.

Neither the Nazis nor the Soviets nor even fizzy drink manufacturers ever found a way of turning kids on their parents so effectively. You have to had it to Activision . They’ve come on a long way from the Spectrum version of “Ghostbusters” I used to play in the mid-1980s - complete with incomprehensible speech synthesis that mangled the word “ghostbusters” into something that sounded like “granny bastards” being shouted through a paper-and-comb.

Yes, I have to applaud this Machiavellian brilliance, even while I am disquieted by my three-year-old talking to me about “the undead”. I have to applaud it because I wish I’d thought of it. 

The Ghost of Xmas TV Past

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

So said St Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the best lines in the Bible – right up there with 2 Kings 2: 23-24 (the bit about bears eating 42 youths who took the piss out of slaphead prophet Elisha).

"Go on baldy - AHHHH"

Christmas is a time (isn’t it?) when childish things have a tendency to come back out, no matter how carefully we have put them away.

We imagine (don’t we?) that because we remember things a certain way, that this is how they in fact should be – whether they were or were not actually ever so. And when things do not live up to those imaginary expectations, we are disappointed. The secretly-nurtured belief we all hold quietly in our hearts – that the present will never live up to the past - becomes ever so slightly harder.

Crikey. Two Bible references and a load of pop-psychology waffle and we’re only four paragraphs in. Might as well be in church, eh readers?

My point (aren’t we?) is that while nostalgia can be fun and comforting, when it starts to makes you resentful, you have to let it go.

That’s why it’s time to stop pretending that Christmas TV is some great collective experience, something makes the nation collectively pause to huddle together around a Radio Times.

Oh yes. This is about what’s on TV at Christmas.

If you want profundity, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Films

BBC1 gave us Toy Story 3 in the 3pm Christmas Day slot. I remember being so excited I could barely contain myself some year in the 1980s when it was Dumbo in that spot, or when it was The Empire Strikes Back.

My kids got Toy Story 3 on DVD LAST CHRISTMAS. They watch it IN THE CAR.

Network television – you cannot compete with the availability of films through other media. So don’t bother. If it’s nostalgia that makes you broadcast “family classics” at set times over the period, in my humble opinion that is BAD NOSTALGIA.

Classic Christmas Specials

What is this supposed to mean to me?

 I have and do enjoy a “classic” Christmas special. When I have been trapped indoors drinking all day and have finally got the kids to go to sleep, I can certainly see the appeal of watching a festive Morecambe and Wise Show or Only Fools and Horses.

But that’s not because it is actually any good. It’s because it’s comfortable and familiar, like an old pair of jogging bottoms. I can smile along without having to think at all, because I’ve seen them all a hundred times before.

It’s not that these programmes actually entertain. Instead they evoke the memory of having been entertained. Which may very well be a completely false memory.

Morecambe and Wise – for example – did their last Christmas special in 1983. I was 7 years old then. What did they mean to me then? Why should they mean anything more to me 30 years later?

Nothing, other than that over the years, culture has implanted the idea in my head that Eric and Ernie are an integral part of the Christmas experience.

Operation Yewtree, by the way, looks rather more likely to eradicate a lot of this kind of ‘70s and ‘80s nostalgia much quicker than any kind of critical reassessment of what our “traditions” mean to us will. 

Because you can’t have Christmas Top of the Pops without a memory of Jimmy Saville bedecked in tinsel, can you?

I notice that Rolf Harris has been swiftly replaced as the narrator of Olive the Ostrich. Innocent until proven guilty, eh Nick Jr?

Modern Christmas Specials

It doesn’t snow at Christmas in this country.

People do not buy the biggest Christmas tree they can find – with hilarious consequences.

Christmas jumpers are only worn ironically.

Why do programme-makers continue to perpetuate these myths about what Christmas is like and what people do at Christmas that are nothing but remnants of Victorian sentimentalism, 1970s bad taste and echoes of what they’ve seen in other Christmas episodes?

Oh Miranda...

How about someone tries to depict a 21st century Christmas that actually reflects people’s real experiences rather than a mid-century fever dream and hope against hope?

Or rather, don’t even bother. Because the TV may be the focal point of the living room – but unless it’s plugged into the Blu Ray Player, the Xbox and the internet – it is just not the focal point of family life any more. 

A Thought Experiment for Dog Owners

In 2014, the human race will be enslaved by aliens. They start landing on earth in January; by February, it’s clear that they’re not interested in talking to us but want the planet for their own.

By the end of June, what’s left of mankind is totally subjugated and is living effectively as domestic animals in the homes of our ten-foot tall insect overlords.

Suppose then, that you are one of these survivors and that you are being taken out for a walk by your “owner”. Coming down the street towards you is another gigantic bipedal crustacean accompanied by a man on lead.

What is your natural inclination at this point? You want to greet, speak with, possibly even sniff the anus of your species-mate – right? You’re a prisoner of a being you don’t understand and you see a fellow human. Of course you’re interested.

But when you try to sidle over to communicate, you are yanked back immediately and hustled on down the street by the firm grip of three chitinous space-tentacles.

Dog owners (you see now where the anus-sniffing reference came from? Well, actually I suppose the title gave it away somewhat...). Dog owners: your dog is interested in other dogs. Just deal with it. 

They're not interested in other dogs because they perceive their lives as some kind of post-apocalyptic servitude (although some might –who knows what they think?). No – because they are dogs and the most interesting thing to a dog, is another dog.

It never ceases to amaze me how many dog owners – at the sight of another dog – dash to render their own dog as immobile as possible or to drag it along as though there was no other dog there at all.

What are you afraid of? A bit of jumping around? A bit of ass-sniffing? That they might be conspiring to overthrow us?

The number of people who live near me who (i) own a dog and must therefore be credited with some degree of insight into dog psychology and (ii) who nevertheless view the presence of ANY OTHER DOG as presenting a threat level equivalent to a gang of drug-crazed African child soldiers is truly astonishing.

Dogs are not people. They interact differently from people. Sometimes that involves growling, play-fighting and other forms of behaviour – including bum smelling - we would rightly be unpleasantly surprised at were they to occur between two humans meeting for the first time.

Dog owners: let your dog be a dog this new year. Remember, the boot might be on the other foot one day.

The True Meaning of Christmas

I’ve been helping my eldest with his homework: a project on Christmas around the world.

Now, there are no doubt people out there – not ODHSNM readers, of course – who would find this outrageous.

Not me helping my son with his homework. The “around the world” bit. The true meaning of Christmas, they declare, can’t be reduced to some multicultural, relativistic blah blah blah...  - a line of argument which you know full well will inevitably end in someone blurting out the word “Immigrants!”

The true meaning of Christmas, they will say, is...erm...

Well, dear readers, let me put this to you. Christmas is just a celebration of good stuff at a crappy time of year. It has had all sorts of stuff superimposed on it over the centuries, but at the end of the day that’s what it started out as and that’s what it still is.

Don’t give me all that “it’s the birth of Jesus” malarkey. Christ is a late addition to Christmas.

He’s been stuck on top of at least two sets of pre-Christian traditions.

Pagan dessert

Firstly, the Northern European pagan Yule celebrations around the winter solstice. That’s where you get your holly and ivy, your Druidic mistletoe, your Christmas trees, your Yule log (chocolate or otherwise) and all those other Germano-Celto-Scandinavian accessories.

Not one of those things – except perhaps a log – would have been found in the Iron Age Middle East, so have clearly come from somewhere other than the Jesus story.

The second source is Greco-Roman paganism, specifically the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia (Kronoia for the Greeks among us) was a month long celebration of the good old days before that bastard Zeus cursed mankind with the need to work for a living. It involved:

• Gift giving
• Eating and drinking to excess
• A general end-of-term, office party kind of vibe all round, when slaves were afforded freedoms usually denied them and the bosses made fools of themselves

Sounds Christmassy, doesn’t it?

There are loads of other hypotheses kicking about saying that the Christian myth is based on other bits of

Not real

ancient lore, but why get into all that? It’s like arguing about whether Tolkien’s orcs were green or grey. Even if there’s a right answer, it doesn’t matter what it is because it’s ALL MADE UP.

The point is – and I’ll go out on a limb here – it is completely impossible to extract a “true” Christian core or indeed a “true” pagan core. It’s a big syncretic mess of bits and bobs appropriated from here, there and everywhere.

Look at Santa Claus. Where does he fit in? Don’t try to tell me that he’s “really” Saint Nicholas, the fourth century Turkish bishop and early Christian martyr. What the hell would he be doing with reindeer and elves? He’s as obviously mashed up as Baron Samedi.

Balls

Why do you think the Puritans banned Christmas in 1647 as “a popish festival with no biblical justification”? Precisely because they could see how pagan it all was. At least Oliver Cromwell had the balls to recognise it for what it was instead of whinging about the corruption of the “real” meaning on Radio Four.

You can’t select certain bits and say that’s the “real” Christmas and the rest of it isn’t – the Christian bits, the non-Christian bits, whatever. Every step along the way contributed to getting us where we are today. Who can say where taking any of them out would have taken us? There is no distinction between the signal and the noise.

The materialistic aspects of Christmas are just as ancient as the spiritual aspects.

And if we accept that consumerism is our current religion (or substitute for it), then a 50 year tradition of buy-buy-buy from Black Thursday to the January Sales is getting on for half the age of all “ye olde traditions” the Victorians bequeathed us.

It’s as silly to worship a tree or indeed money as it is to worship a big old beardy sky-fairy.  If you pick away rationally at every part of the Christmas myth, eventually you’re left with nothing but a bloody long winter ahead of us.

Maybe we don’t need to have a justification for having a party. The weather’s shit, it’s dark all the time – don’t we have a right to cheer ourselves up?

Perhaps THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the true meaning of Christmas. 

Apocalyptic Visions

My kids love going to the fairground. I do not share this love with them.

A trip to the fair inevitability concludes in:

1) A large wad of cash wasted – one leaves either with nothing at all to show or with something that is actually worse than nothing, such as a dart gun or a squeaky inflatable dolphin.

2) A screaming tantrum from one or both of the boys, who do not realise that there are precisely zero ways for them to have fun at a fair when the cash reserves have been exhausted.

For them to have fun, I say.  There is one thing I take pleasure in at funfairs – and best of all, it’s free.

I am, of course, talking about admiring the astonishing artwork on display.

Now, I like charmingly amateurish unlicensed renderings of popular cartoon characters as much as the next man. But what I really like are epic-scale depictions of beautiful people having KERRRAY-ZEE PARTY TIME!

In hyperreal colours!

Via airbrush!

This, for example, appears to be Amanda Palmer, with the words “Energy Dome” exploding out of her ears. Perhaps this fairground owner is a massive Dresden Dolls fan.

Actually, that’s quite a good one.

What I really like are the ones that defy the laws of perspective; which look like superficially skilful renderings of the human form (or of Porsches), but which have disturbing, subliminal inaccuracies which leave the viewer uneasy for reasons they cannot describe.

You can’t tell me that is not a disturbing image.

If Hieronymous Bosch was alive today, I think this is what his last judgments and visions of hell would look like. 

Reading Homer

Homer, not Uncle Albert

In my last post, I referred to “the child of morning, rosy-fingered dawn”. Some of you may be surprised to hear that I didn’t make that phrase up.

It is, in fact, an epithet used repeatedly by the Greek poet Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Pretty much every time he mentions the dawn - which is a lot – it’s waggling its rosy fingers.

Anyway, these books are kind of a big deal. They are, I hear, a central part of the Western literary canon.

And as we all know, the Iliad tells the story of the Trojan war and the Odyssey tells the story of Ulysses’ (the translations I read were all Romanised) return from Troy.

Or do they?

In fact, the Iliad tells a very small part of the Trojan war. It doesn’t include:

Just good ol' war buddies

1. The beginning
2. The end
3. The bit everyone knows with the Trojan Horse

Essentially, it tells the story of Achilles acting like a dick because Agamemnon acted like a dick, until his boyfriend Patroclus gets killed and then Achilles kills everyone.

Not included, again, is the bit about Achilles getting killed by tearing a ligament or whatever.

In fact, what we primarily have is to pad out the above is:

• Exhaustive descriptions of various Greeks’ and Trojans’ ancestry;
• Followed more or less immediately by exhaustive descriptions of how those sorry descendents died horribly.

If I learned one thing from the Iliad, it is that there are far more ways to fuck someone up badly with a spear than I had ever imagined.

For example:

The spear struck Archelochus, son of Antenor, for heaven counselled his destruction; it struck him where the head springs from the neck at the top joint of the spine, and severed both the tendons at the back of the head. His head, mouth, and nostrils reached the ground long before his legs and knees could do so.

Thereon Polypoetes, mighty son of Pirithous, hit Damasus with a spear upon his cheek-pieced helmet. The helmet did not protect him, for the point of the spear went through it, and broke the bone, so that the brain inside was scattered about, and he died fighting.

Menelaus hit Pisander as he was coming towards him, on the forehead, just at the rise of his nose; the bones cracked and his two gore-bedrabbled eyes fell by his feet in the dust.

And so on.

So that’s the Iliad. Think you know the Odyssey?

Think again. Far from focusing on the well-known, exciting parts of Ulysses’ voyages (eg encounters with the Cyclops, sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, lashing himself to the mast to listen to the Sirens), these are all dealt with in one flashback.

About 70% of the Odyssey is taken up with the frankly rather weird situation going on with his wife Penelope and 115 “suitors” who have been having a three-year long bender round at Ulysses’ in his absence.

So an awful lot of the Odyssey concerns not, in fact, what you and I might call “an odyssey” – but rather:

1. Ulysses pretending to be an aged tramp and talking to a pig herder
2. Ulysses pretending to be an aged tramp hanging around the party, getting abused (someone throws a hoof at him!)
3. Ulysses continuing to pretend to be an aged tramp long after anyone normal would have said “I’m not really an aged tramp – I am, in fact, the king and I am not happy with all this”

Eventually, of course, the “aged tramp” routine wears as thin for Ulysses as it did for everyone else several books earlier and – as is the way of Greek epic poetry – it all ends happily ever after with a massive bloodbath.

On balance, I preferred the Iliad.