Different Folks

I know nothing about being a hippy.

If I think hippy, I think flares, drugs and silly dancing around some Neolithic monument to the Mamas & Papas. I also have a tendency to lump Buddhism, New Age things, Druids, Black Magic, Whale-Mating music and the more radical green movements out there into my self constructed box labeled ‘Hippy’.

The reality is of course very different but I have constructed this because it’s simple and easier for me, a nice tidy box to shove stuff I don’t understand into. If I see a filthy young man chained to a tree complaining about a new motorway I think Hippy and drop him straight into the box. If I see someone sitting cross-legged humming, I think hippy. If I see a group of naked young women dancing in a field I think, well eventually I will think hippy. 

I have a bias, a construct in my head because I don’t understand and it’s easier for me this way.

If I am being honest I have a few of these boxes in my head: Hippy, Lazy, Gypsy, Fatty, French, the list is endless. In fact, everything is in a box of some sort, some boxes are good, some bad but everything is labeled and thus has a bias in some shape or form attached to it.

If I think gypsy for example, I don’t instantly think of the Cadbury Flake girl or a woman with hoop earrings and a glass ball in front of her. I think filthy caravans, fighting, dogs on string, unintelligible language and an aversion to paying tax. This bias has a real world impact, it would for example help me quickly answer the question; do I want to go out for a pint with some Gypsies?

I would rather fire walk naked wearing a pair of straw shoes, in case you were wondering.

It is a bit worrying though, if I imagine that all of my thoughts and decisions are driven by these biases. Watching a news bulletin and a man comes on to discuss how wrong the current austerity measures are my bias kicks in and without even listening to his argument I have already pegged him as a lazy, public sector moaner. He could have the solution, however unlikely this might sound to you, his argument could be well constructed and he may well be able to lead us all out of this economic mess but my bias isn’t letting me hear it.

So the question is how do I change this and open myself up? 

How do I become more receptive to gypsies, hippies, longhaired teachers, losers or anyone for that matter who doesn’t think exactly like Mike Shanks?

All of my biases are formed through experience or by the experiences of people close to me. I don’t have a bias without this. An example of this is Ryanair – my bias tells me they are shite. This is because I have flown them a few times and on those occasions they were for all intents and purposes shite. But they might not be now, they might have changed, I could walk onboard and be greeted by a friendly smiling steward. I might, but just hearing the word Ryanair has a Pavlovian effect on me, like a hypnotist clicking his fingers - I instantly fall into a deep dark depression.

It’s my lifetime of experience which has formed these biases and I am concerned that by continuing building them up and reinforcing them I am on a direct path to becoming a man who ends up stuck in his ways - unable to think differently.

I need to change and start taking a crowbar to the boxes.

To this end I have completed a deep investigation, a study to prove or disprove one of my biases. I have approached the two simple questions; What is a hippy? and Do I want to become a hippy? with a clear open, unbiased mind. I want science and mathematics to decide if my bias is right or wrong.

It has taken months or hard work and personal sacrifice but I feel I am now ready to share my findings.

As a side note, my research was very detailed and lengthy. I applied lean six sigma project management tools to my approach and now at its conclusion have realized this in itself is very un-hippy. I will therefore dumb the conclusions down and in doing so try to break free, hippy style, from my square corporate bindings. 

I have broken my findings into some clear categories mirroring my own biases about hippies.

Washing

My bias told me hippies didn’t wash, ever. Dreadlocks, beards and body odor were the signature of a hippy and gave normal people fair warning when a hippy was approaching. This is not true, hippies do smell yes, but they also wash, they just do it a lot less frequently. They also do it differently than normal people. Instead of the normal bathroom routine, the seek out sacred streams, the ocean or public fountains to carry out their cleansing activities. Sinks, showers or baths, as I found out, represent a ceramic prison for the soul and should be avoided at all cost.

Clothing

In my box a hippy is either naked or dressed in the most outrageous tie dyed hemp clothing. After weeks of building a statistical database, with a control group of Transvestites, the resulting continuous probability distribution shows that μ, the mean, lands exactly where my bias thought it would. See figure 1.1 below:

Figure 1.1

Without delving into the deep mathematics which have gone into this, what this statistical analysis has proved beyond doubt is that in fact hippies do look utterly ridiculous.

Food

Lentils and veggie burgers? I found this section of my analysis particularly difficult to approach. Food comes in all shapes and forms and if I eat an Indian meal for example it doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to move to the Punjab or start watching awful movies. No, I approached the food problem from the perspective of the impact that food has on the body and thus the only logical, sensible way to measure this was to organize an arm-wrestling competition. The results were startling. In all age/weight categories the hippies lost. I then decided to test the food/strength elasticity and started mixing up the groups. The only group the hippy men performed well against was the under 8yr old female category and even then the results were far from resounding. For me the most startling outcome from this study group was the propensity for hippy-man to faint immediately after engaging in any form of physical activity.

Sex

Hippy-man is the Joy of Sex man. He exists in pencil drawing form only and engages in every form of sexual activity someone with a drug loaded graphite brain can think of. The hippy woman is thin and sexy and for some reason unknown to normal women very happy to engage in sexual activity with a smelly man and a bird nest beard. Personally I find the idea of hippy sex unappealing, hippies should be a-sexual, but I have overcome my distaste for the subject and spent hours trawling through the internet using search terms like ‘hippy chick sex’ to delve deeper into this taboo subject. Apart from my eyesight deteriorating my conclusions are still sadly inconclusive. Yes hippy man is a very unappealing proposition to most normal women but he still manages to score highly on an, albeit simplistic, number of women scale. Normalising for the obvious male reporting bias the results are fairly even across both sample populations. I feel unsatisfied with my results in this category so will continue my internet search and report more conclusively at a later date.

Protesting

The hippy marching towards a corporate glass and steel tower shouting angrily is the epitome of hippydom, put simply, you are not a hippy unless you have something to protest about. The cause or topic I have found is secondary to the need to protest. Since 1961 when the hippy movement was born by Jacob Steiner a German immigrant who was unemployed and in need of sex and something to do, protesting has been central to the movement. It took a dip in the late 70’s and 80’s when there wasn’t much to complain about really but recently with the economic crisis and austerity measures hippies protesting has once again become a common sight on the streets. From my perspective, having a job and not much to complain about financially I find the need to protest somewhat alien but in the spirit of reinvention and my study I have taken part in a march. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was I was complaining about but have realised protesting is fun. It’s a lovely walk through a city centre with no traffic, you get to shout loudly, wave flags and throw things at policemen. All in all a very nice way to spend an afternoon.

With my study complete I have reached a personal conclusion about hippies. Ultimately they are exactly how I thought they would be and this frankly is a very disappointing outcome for me. I now know what a hippy is and I’m very happy not to be one. They do smell, wear stupid clothing, take drugs, live off rabbit food and protest for the sake of protesting. My bias was correct and thus I do not need to change it so I can now hammer down the lid on that box and turn my attention to the next one.

This will be a long journey of self-discovery, one where I have to challenge my own personal beliefs, I may even cry, but after my journey into the lentil pot of hippydom I feel emotionally and physically equipped to continue my quest.

I will have a pie supper and a pint first then turn my attention to the next box in my head: 

Lifestyles beginning with the prefix ‘Trans’.

Penoplasty

My Hotmail account is a mess.

I have no idea which websites I have visited to precipitate the tsunami of spam I receive every day but judging from their content some must have been adult in nature. Every day I am offered everything a computer algorithm thinks a man of my age and surfing habits could ever want; Rolex watches, Motorbikes, Russian Brides, drugs - no prescription required, easy money making schemes and products which will add anything between 2 to 6 inches to my penis.

I would to take this opportunity to state, for the record, if any computer program is listening, that I do not need a fake Rolex watch, I already have a job, I cannot ride a motorbike and I don’t like Russians per se, so the thought of actually marrying one isn’t an attractive proposition. I also have no need, yet, for any funny little blue pills which will either help keep me up all night or stop me from wetting myself if I cough or sneeze.

I am however very interested in the offer of an extra 2 to 6 inches…

Not because I actually want my penis to be any longer, its fine as it is, or at least I think it is. No I am mildly interested in the how and the why. If I was to imagine being, lets say for arguments sake 6 inches longer, I can only think it would be more of a hindrance than anything else. Surely it would start getting in the way of stuff. How would I, for example wear shorts for sport without ‘showing’? Or how exactly does one ride a bike with something that long? I don’t want the trouble and forgive me for my naivety but I wouldn’t quite know what to do with it all.

I saw a documentary some time ago about men who actually put themselves under the surgeons knife to do exactly what these spam emails are offering me, but they did it for real.

Penoplasty, as I have just found out, is the official name of the procedure which offers to lengthen and widen a man’s self-esteem. They would pay to have some fat from their arse, for some reason I imagine men who want to do this have plenty of spare fat on their arse, injected into their penis. A simple and quick procedure and hey presto, a couple of extra inches. Sounds simple really, what could go wrong? Within weeks, once the stitches were removed and they stopped walking like John Wayne they would happily be sporting a package most men would die for. No longer would they be the laughing stock of the locker room and beautiful women would start winking at them as they walked through a restaurant or casino wearing tight trousers.

Well, actually no, not really.

It was horrible and funny in equal measure. I found myself wincing and then almost wetting myself with laughter at these stupid, stupid, stupid men as they wept on screen describing the horrors which followed what was a totally unnecessary procedure. I could understand if these men really had issues in the underwear department, if they, genuinely had the appendage of a shrew but they didn’t. No they were normal men, normally sized. They did it for reasons which baffle me, they wanted to stand tall in the gym and, believe it or not, at the urinal.

There’s a number of things I don’t get about this, firstly what the fuck ever made you think letting a man with a knife or needle anywhere near your nether regions was a good thing and secondly if you did, why would you go on the telly and admit it, then cry?

I don’t get plastic surgery at all for that matter.

Perhaps I am fortunate enough to have an average everything. I am not overweight, I still have all my hair, I am average height, have average looks, an average build and have an averagely sized…well you know. Perhaps its this which stops me from feeling sympathy or empathy or whatever with the people who have low self esteem from their body shape and feel the need to cut something off or tack something on.

I would have understood if the elephant man had wanted to try a little botox or a nip here and tuck there but normal people? I mean normal everyday people who look normal? This is what I don’t get.

Why go to the trouble of getting liposuction when you can eat some lettuce, stop eating takeaways, stop watching telly every night and do something physical a few times a week. It’s really, really, not that hard. Put it this way most people aren’t born grossly overweight and I have yet to meet a big-boned or water-retaining Ethiopian.

Plastic breasts? The ones I have seen, purely in the interests of researching this blog you understand, don’t look like real breasts. They are too round. They look like someone has attached a foot pump and stomped a couple of times. They look silly and I have no idea if they feel real.

A headline I read and will admit I didn’t bother to read the full article, was promoting the next big innovation - a silicone six-pack. I don’t know if this is real or not, but will assume it to be true and now have a picture in my head of a large bellied man with a stick on six pack in a pair of Calvin Klein’s.

It’s just not going to work is it? I could go on, but I think you get my point.

There are some discussions going on at the moment to determine whether the NHS should start picking up the tab for operations such as the ones mentioned above. The argument for it goes along the lines that health isn’t purely about physical health, it encompasses total well being. Given there seems to be a never ending supply of people feeling depressed with the shape and look of their body then surely this also should be treated. This depression could be treated by providing a fat person with liposuction or a gastric band, a wrinkly person with botox, a small chested woman with a silicone foot pump and a man with rodent genitals a fat injection.

Really?

It might not be as simple an argument as I am making out though.

I understand the Gastric Band is one procedure which is offered on the NHS albeit only after some strict criteria have been met – i.e. being fat and too lazy to do anything about it.

Now as I think I have pointed out, being overweight is a lifestyle choice so should the NHS treat for self-inflicted things?

I would have to say yes.

Lifestyle isn’t just all about smokers and fatties, it also covers skiers, divers, runners, pregnancy and pretty much everything you do apart from breathing so where to draw the line?

Also should a severely depressed person be treated on the NHS? Of course they should, but what if the depression is driven by something silly (silly to me that is), like the size of a penis or breasts? Should the doctor tell them to bugger off and only come back when they have a proper illness, like lung cancer?

I don’t actually know the answer to all these questions, I have an inkling of an answer though. It’s a fine tightrope to walk and at what point do you classify something as silly or vanity driven and when do you classify it as a genuine medical complaint?

My suggestion would be this, in instances of lifestyle related illnesses, if its health threatening treat the symptoms but do not treat the root cause. The root cause is a personal thing, i.e. I choose to smoke, eat too much or get depressed looking at other men’s willies in the showers and I can either choose to stop doing it or continue. It’s not really going to stamp out the underlying problem but neither will a nanny state banning extra sized mars bars and hiding cigarettes in shops i.e. the root cause. A nanny state which treats every ‘illness’ genuine or not will definitely not change this, it will only serve to multiply their incidence rates.

I do believe it’s a personal choice to be unhappy, regardless of the rational.

No, the only thing which will work is a sea change in personal responsibility, get a grip of yourself no one else will and I am at a loss as to how to legislate for this.

Finally, I must add that most of the above treatments are not currently offered on the NHS, mostly they are paid for by individuals privately out of their own hard earned cash. For this reason I can’t really moan too much, it is after all, their money and their bodies to do with as they wish. Should they wish to fix a botox grimace on their face or slice bits off their bodies its their own choice, nothing really to do with me.

Also on the plus side it also gives me something to write about, I get to learn cool new words and the schadenfreude moments are truly wonderful.

I wouldnt change that for the world.

VHEMT

I did my recycling yesterday morning.

It’s one of my many Saturday chores, made necessary by living in a country which still clings to the quaint idea that Sunday should be a day of rest. In Switzerland nothing opens on a Sunday. Nothing at all and therefore anyone who actually works during the week has to make full use of the only day available to them.

The Swiss also like to recycle. Statistics show that Swiss recycle more than any other country in the world, some 52%. I am not sure what this statistic means. Is it of everything? Is it of stuff which can be recycled? Whatever it is it’s higher than all the other countries so it must be good.

My local recycling center (open Saturday 8am to midday) is a well-organized and surprisingly tidy looking affair. Specific containers for everything and anything. All well labeled and well presented. There is a crushing machine for cardboard, the usual colour coded bottle collecting bins, bins for metal, wood, plastic, fabric, cork and batteries. All of this you can find at any recycling center but the Swiss do go one step further with their bins for Alt Brot (old bread) and used Nespresso coffee pods.

The reality is, with the exception of human waste, the Swiss recycle pretty much everything. To maintain their status as the greenest of them all they have hiked up the price of the bin liners. At £2 per bag even the laziest of us are encouraged to go out of our way on a Saturday morning to save a polar bear or two.

The bags are ‘special’ bags, not your common or garden bin liner, they have a picture of a tree on them and tell you in no uncertain terms what can go inside. The word ‘STOP!’ is printed next to a picture of a battery and a bottle. I have not seen them myself but have heard if you decide to simply use a normal black bin liner and place your rubbish in the collection bins the Rubbish Police will swoop down. They will forensically examine the bag for any link to the perpetrator, a letter, a bill, a speck of DNA and once they have this the wrath of the Swiss police will be breaking down your door to shame you and then fine you.

The added benefit from all this regulation is that the Swiss walk a little taller. They know they are the greener than everyone else. I am sure they believe if Polar bears could travel, they would visit Switzerland, to eat cheese, to yodel, to ski a little and to say thank you.

How far can one take your green card carrying credentials though? You could install solar panels or a smelly seeping septic tank. You could fund a wind turbine, drive a Prius or actually pay the carbon offset when you fly. For me though if you really want to be the best and look down your nose at everyone else including the Swiss you should become a member of VHEMT.

VHEMT is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Basically their premise is that mankind is the problem, so eliminate the problem. Thankfully they aren’t proposing everyone lies down and takes poison en-mass. No, they are proposing that people abstain from reproduction to effect a gradual reduction of man from the earth.

Personally I like this. I like their logical approach to the problem as well as the almost unpalatable solution to it. It’s logical and unthinkable in equal measure and they use this shock tactic as a means to promote their ideology. They wouldn’t include the word ‘Extinction’ in their name if they didn’t want to shock. Think about it though, simple arithmetic shows that if we all decided to have one child per couple, in a generation the worlds population would half. Within 4 generations the worlds population which currently stands at 7 Billion would be reduced to 400 million.

It’s not a bad idea really, but then I have 3 children so it’s a little late for me to be signing up.

The movement was founded by the improbably named Les U Knight and with a name like that and an ideology based on voluntary extinction I would happily stand in line to listen to him speak.

You just know it’s going to be off the wall madness, probably in a Vegas convention center and I would be there, whooping and applauding at his every word. At the very least it would be the most fun anyone could have when discussing the death of 6.6 billion people.

But if wiping out mankind isn’t your bag where else could you turn?

Well there aren’t that many places really. There are of course the usual suspects: Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth but they are not very cool. I always found such groups extremely boring and, frankly, rather dull. I don’t quite know why this is but not ever having been a huge animal lover I find it quite hard to get worked up when I hear of some animals being used for testing drugs or some other life saving things. I understand make up and other non-essential things but drugs or surgical procedures I don’t really have an issue with.

I once spent an afternoon at a surgeon-training center in Hamburg. It was a brand new facility, state of the art, using virtual operations, computer generated 3D training and the like. Computers are good to a point but for a trainee surgeon to really appreciate how to carry out the procedure properly he or she needs to use a living thing, a real living thing. Cadaver’s work but saving the life of a cadaver is somewhat tricky and I would guess the success rate is on the low side. No, there is no substitute for the real thing or as close to the real thing as possible.

Now what would you prefer?

To be the first person thing this man has carried out this particular procedure on or to know that he or she has 100’s of hours under his belt practicing on the nearest thing to the human anatomy? The animal for whom nature has chosen to give an almost human anatomy is the pig and in this facility they would operate on live pigs.

They would sedate them, operate on them and then even if the operation was successful, put the animal to sleep. It was a little shocking but I can see why it was necessary. Also as a collateral benefit the bacon sandwiches in the canteen were the best I have ever had.

I like pigs, aside from Polar bears they are my favourite animal but I still find it hard to be enthused by a group of radicals screaming about their rights. I totally understand their point but what’s their solution?  

Would they be happy for their son or daughter to be cut open by a man or woman who had never actually done it for real? I doubt it. As much as I disliked the pig murdering facility in Hamburg I understood the necessity of it.

No, I will opt out of the Animal Liberation Front, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, The Earth Liberation Front and the brilliantly named Animal Right Militia. Also I am probably not going to be accepted into the VHEMT which is a disappointment, as I genuinely like their ideology.

I have just re-read this and realized I am coming across as someone who cares about nothing except for the £2 per bag I am forced to pay if I don’t recycle. This is not the case.

I just know that at the macro level people will not change unless they are forced to. Individually we can recycle everything in our house and fertilize our plants with human faeces if we like but this really isn’t going to change anything at all. Halving the population every generation would work but I think persuading the rest of the worlds population would be a struggle.

No the only real solution lies in finding solutions to allow people maintain their current lifestyles without them changing anything. We have our cars, central heating, Internet and toasters and will do anything we can to keep them. That includes damaging the planet beyond repair for generations to come.

Humans really are that selfish. We will continue on our path of convenient self-destruction rather than considering a restrictive alternative because it’s too much like hard work.

The political ruling classes know this as well and I safely predict legislation will never be introduced which forces us to act very differently. We won’t vote for it because lets be honest why should we, what have the polar bears, white rhinos or cute bottle nosed dolphins ever done for us?

When President Chirac gave President Bush a souvenir statue of the Eiffel Tower…President Bush looked at it and said ‘This is great! A little oil rig!’

I rest my case, whatever the hell that might be.

Blue Cheese & Sparta

As a child I didn’t like drinking Guinness.

I didn’t like smoking, hot spicy food nor did I like blue cheese. I did however like dilutable orange juice, sweets and my mother's home made potato soup.

Today it’s the opposite. Apart from the soup.

Since childhood my tastes have changed dramatically, in fact on the like/dislike swingometer a 180-degree swing has been registered.

This process has been going on all my life, I didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly decide I liked beer or Stilton. It was gradual change, like my eyesight getting worse or hair sprouting from every orifice - imperceptible and only really noticeable in retrospect. I can't remember the day I stopped looking at blue cheese thinking I would probably die if I ate the foul smelling lump of mould. I also imagine this process will continue the rest of my life, like my ears growing.

I can, with some certainty, predict that by the time I am 130years old I will be happily wolfing down brussel sprouts and have flappy Indian elephant sized ears.

It is the same for a lot of things, music, fashion, hobbies, hairstyles.

I read in the paper last week about Billy Connolly frumping off stage because a heckler decided to take him on. Seems in this instance the heckler won and I wonder why this is. What’s changed with Mr Connolly which made him think walking off stage like Elton John in a huff was a better option than standing there and verbally abusing the man in return?

Comedians, if you forgive the pun, are a funny breed.

I can’t think of a comedian who has lasted, that is continued to be funny throughout their life. I am sure I am wrong here but personally I can’t think of a single one.

Billy Connolly is a great example of someone who once was at the top of my list of funny people but has now joined the unfunny list alongside the likes of Jay Leno and Piers Morgan, neither of which I must add were ever on a funny list.

Why is this? Is it like I’m slowly outgrowing my glasses, I have grown out of Billy Connolly?

I don’t think so.

There are a lot of ‘old’ comedians which fit the same pattern. What about John Cleese? Or Robin Williams? Or worse still Lenny Henry? These men were all very funny at some point in time. Is it that the world around them has changed and they have stayed the same or have they changed and become less funny?

I have a theory….

The Spartans once used to be the most ferocious fighting race of people known to man. From birth, the men were trained exclusively to be warriors. They were so extreme that the Spartan leaders would examine every baby born and should there be a sign of abnormality or weakness they would kill the child there and then. These were the lengths they went to to be the best fighting force in the world.

Then they got soft.

Like every great civilisation, they reached the their zenith, beat everyone around them and then said ‘What now?’

Well they started partying a little too much. They softened up on the rules of entry, engaged in orgies and slept in. Got fat and watched too much daytime TV.

Pretty quickly, relatively speaking, they were defeated by the Thebans in 371bc and passed into history.

Sparta, to quote a mildly important document, had earned the right to go after the pursuit of happiness. In short, they became self-indulgent and lost their edge.

Why is this relevant to comedians?  Well there is a tenuous link coming so please bear with me.

One common denominator between Spike Milligan, Billy Connolly and John Cleese is they have all written biographies and they have all written them from a psychological perspective.

The books are analysing why they do what they do, where does the motivation come from and what is the driving force behind their need to be funny, in front of people. It’s this introspective step which I believe is the problem. It’s a bit like that awful Big Brother program. Within a day or so of entering the house, the occupants of the house go all Lord of the Flies and start eating themselves from the inside.

Whenever you stop and start wondering why you do what you do you run the risk of losing the thing that you do in the first place.

I liked Billy Connolly the edgy, offensive comedian. 

I don’t however find Billy Connolly the reflective, quiet, well-rounded person funny.

I am sure he is now comfortable with himself. I am positive his inner self is at peace with the abuse he suffered as a child. I am very happy for him that he has reconciled his mojo with his aura or whatever the fuck he has gone and done.

Self-analysis and an internal focus isn’t necessarily a good thing though. By discovering or conquering your inner demons you will probably become a different person. This does not necessarily mean you will become better person.

Stand up comedians are edgy, they need to be to be funny. Laid back, calm and at peace with the world are not traits I would immediately associate with stand up comedy. They should be angry, they should be opinionated and they need to be a little left of centre.

The Spartans became soft because they lost the desire to beat everything in front of them, like an up and coming boxer trying to fight his way out of the ghetto. What happens when there is no one in front of him and he has an awful lot of money in his back pocket? These comedians have followed a similar route, they reached the top, got a bucket load of cash and then started becoming self-indulgent.

I tuned into a television program the other night. It featured the new well balanced Mr Connolly touring around Canada. He would stop and look at some arts and crafts shops. He drank tea and ate scones at a local cafe. He then spent a day on a fishing boat and discussed in detail the demise of the fishing industry with the hard working common men.

All in all it was a television program about Canada, a dull, un-enlightening program about Canada and absolutely nothing more.

If this is what finding yourself does for you I would suggest we should all simply stay as we are.

If we do, we might be a little weird, a little damaged perhaps, but we will definitely be a lot more fun and I might not be able to find a barely perceptible link between Billy Connolly, Sparta and Blue Cheese.

Names, Places & Sport

In my last job, there was an online tool to search for someone’s telephone number, address, email. It was a tool to facilitate efficient communication, no time wasted scrabbling around trying to find someone’s address. Do a quick search on whole name, part of a name, nickname (appropriately titled ‘prefers to be called’) and in a second or two you are communicating efficiently. Given the company I worked for had over 100,000 employees it was a very necessary and useful tool.

It was also a lot of fun.

100,000 is a critical mass of people. I’m no statistician but would guess for a population size of 1,000 there would be a lot of John Smiths, some Brian Jones’s and perhaps a smattering of Gillian McKenzie’s. I can also guarantee there would also be at least one poor unfortunate soul with a ridiculous name. Princess Sebastian Adolf or Billy Bum-whole.

So it became a competition.

Who can find the stupidest name in the system? I won with Amy Analzone (a real, genuine, bonafide, no shit name). I sincerely hope she doesn’t stumble upon this entry, poor girl.

Imagine for a minute would you, going through life with such a name. Who in their right mind would choose to keep it? And given there is an Amy, there must be Amy’s mother and father. Assuming they are married, Amy’s mum, lets call her Silky, must have thought, yes I will take on his surname after we are married. 

Why oh why did you do that Silky?

Or it could have been Amy, perhaps it was she who married into the Analzone’s but the question still remains, what on earth convinced you this was a good idea?

Only if the Analzone’s are billionaires would I start to understand.

In any event there must be millions of people out there with such opportunity limiting names. Would you for example even consider dating Billy Bum-whole even if he did look like Brad Pitt or hiring a Princess?

Place names are the same, there are hundreds of examples of stupidly named places. But in some respect these are worse, at least when you are naming a place you can choose it in its entirety, you are not stuck with a surname as in poor Amy’s case.

‘Well at least we’ve given her a nice first name’ I can imagine her parents saying, trying to comfort themselves.

What the fuck were the people of Yorkshire thinking when they named the town WetWang?

Every country has countless examples but my favourites have to be in Pennsylvania. 

I was driving through the state a year or so ago and was so surprised at some of the place names on signs I ended up studying a map and and realized there are loads, the state is full of them. If there is a record for most stupid names in a state (and there should be) Pennsylvania would win it hands down.

Here are some examples:

Deposit. Climax. Lick Run. Walnut Bottom. Lover. Burnt Cabins. Blue Ball. Bottom. Big Beaver. Intercourse.

There is also a town called Jim Thorp, which would probably win the prize for laziest.

Scene: Forest and high mountains. Trees, boulders and snow cover the vertigenous landscape. It’s cold and sunny. We see 3 men all sat on horses, they are deep in conversation. Two are wearing uniforms which proudly proclaim Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

Jim Thorp, sits on his horse, squinting at the two men.

‘Why do we need a name?’ He spits tobacco into the snow as if to underline his distaste at their request.

‘Like I was saying Jim, the railroad is coming’. Replied the buttoned up railroad official.

‘I heard you but why do we need a name?’

‘Becaaaause Jim, when the railroad comes, it will bring mail and addresses, town names are needed for a postal system to work. We need a timetable and a map as well’ the impatience in his voice was clear.

Jim, scratches his head and replaces the sun-bleached hat on his head. ‘But no one has ever written to me’

The official smiles at Jim’s simplistic country ways, progress is coming and Jim is not ready for it.

‘That’s what I’m saying Jim, its because you don’t have an address and the railroad isn’t here yet, but when it is, you can get letters’ he pauses looking round at his clerk and smiling a salesman’s smile ‘wouldn’t you like that Jim?’

‘But no one knows where I live and I don’t know anyone who can write’ He is shaking his head as he speaks and then starts to remake his pipe, stuffing it with tobacco.

The official turns to his clerk and speaks quietly ‘fuck it, lets move to the next town’ he writes JIM THORP on the piece of paper and pulls his horse around touching his hat as he does so.

Jim nods in return.

As they trot off, he turns back shouting

‘Jim, how do we get to that place where all the shagging goes on?’

Place names are great. Here in Switzerland my favourite, without a shadow of doubt, has got to be ‘Wank’ - a leafy suburb of Bern. Every time I pass a road sign with Wank or Wank Dorf in it I giggle the same giggle I used during my sex education classes, aged 12. 

I am sure the good folks of Wank are very aware of how well this translates into English.

The Bern football stadium used to be called the Wankdorf Stadium. Thankfully someone had the foresight to change it before the Euro 2008 football competition. England were playing there, can you imagine the chants? It’s now the much less chant worthy, Stade de Suisse.

Australia is a good place for place names also: Dismal Swamp. Eggs and Bacon & Mount Buggery to name just three of what I would imagine is a very long and colourful list.

I like Australia generally. 

It’s an honest straightforward place and their place naming conventions reflect this. I am, for example, absolutely positive Dismal Swamp doesn’t have a nice lake and I shudder to think why Mount Buggery is named so but am sure it is appropriate.

I think the fact that beach volleyball was invented in Australia encapsulates all of this, it ignores feminism, equal rights, fairness and the like. It simply celebrates the female form and sport. It must be the only sport in the world which, as part of its rules, as accepted into the Olympics, stipulates exactly how high the leg has to be on the female swimwear.

Clearly it was invented by men, Aussie men.

Scene: Tin roofed bar somewhere in the outback. Flies and oppressive heat. The beer is warm and three men stand against a roughly made bar, each have a large glass half filled in front of them. The barman is not in sight.

George ‘I’m bored’

Jason ’Me too’

Phil ‘We need some women’

Long pause.

George ‘Lets invent a sport’

And so it went, beach volleyball was invented in that tin shed, probably, and I, like most men on earth, am eternally grateful to the hard work and creativity of George, Jason and Phil.

I also think the male version came out of this discussion but as I understand it men can play dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi should they wish, the rules are very loose according to the Olympic rule book.

Extract from the official Olympic beach volleyball rule book:

Dress code, article 24c, paragraph 57:

Rule 327 ……is shaved so no hairs are visible.

End Female dress code.

Male official dress:

Rule 1 : Doesn’t matter.

End Male dress code