Travel hangover

There's something deeply unsatisfying about when traveling comes to a jarring end. Arriving back into a Yorkshire town after wandering around in the sweltering heat of New York in what felt like the same hyper-extended day is hard to both comprehend and accept.

It's not just the cultural differences between America and England, but the perceptions of people's ambitions having radically altered once you arrive back in your depressingly familiar home-town.

And it doesn't hit you until you reach that station, until you are finally stationary for the first time in what feels like the length of the entire trip. It hits you again when you wander out into the street and see the same places you've seen for too long already in your life, and once more when you wake up the following morning and don't have to make plans, don't have to fire yourself across into some distant part of an unexplored city simply for the sake of it, just because that's what you should do.

It hurts more when people you are now surrounded by, rightly or wrongly, have the look of those happy to be settled into the 9-5 routine, to trudge around the streets staring at their own feet, snarling at others and waiting until an hour early enough for it to be acceptable to start drinking.

To not be walking across New York today, standing swaying on the Subway or sitting in the shade to get away from the oppressive heat just feels mad. And horrible. Pass me a beer.

Why Facebook 'charity' is costing lives but saving egos

Of all the negative aspects of human existence Facebook has inadvertently highlighted over the last half decade, by far the most repulsive are the 'causes' and 'charity group' collectives of egotistical creators and members, who either genuinely believe that they are doing good, or are simply making themselves feel better at the cost of having changed exactly nothing.

An example of the type of group can be seen here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=257971646686&ref=nf

The premise of these groups is disturbing; they are invariably established by some unheard of 'philanthropist' who claims to have the financial clout to lend some real support to the 'up to 200,000 people [who] may have died in last week's tragic earthquake in Haiti, with countless others injured or left without a home.'

However, rather than simply stumping up the cash, this human being has decided that no, he does not wish to simply open his chequebook and give generously, as he clearly believes he has the power to do, but rather he is going to correlate the support he is prepared to give to the number of people who join his group.

This amounts to no more than a misery-fuelled ego boost : 'Hey there, you don't want to see people dying in anguish and poverty do you? No? Of course you don't. You're a person. So join my group, be my friend (because I am bloody great and noble and have sex with me?) and I will send some money to these poor starving (are they starving or just dying?) children...mothers...people...it's all about people. And I have the money to help, and I really want to help, but only if you and everyone else you know will be my friend and see how great I am.'

This, however, isn't the end of the problem. Because upon closer inspection of the monetary values offered per person in these groups it becomes clear that this philanthropist, far from being a wealthy do-gooder eager to give something back, is just an ordinary person who has decided he wants to donate a stunningly mundane sum, but in doing so has resolved that if he has to chuck a couple of tenners at an international crisis of some scale, he might as well try and buy some friends in the process.

For instance the above group offers a princely £5 per 500 members. £5. He currently has just over 2,000 members, so he will be giving £20, and suddenly this 'philanthropist' appears to have similar financial means to most people with an internet connection who is merely indulging in a sponsored friend making session. At the expense of a humanitarian disaster. Charming.

The fact that people join these groups shows there is a desire among the membership for help to be sent to Haiti, and that they wish to do their bit. However, people are lazy, and if they think they can help by clicking a mouse, then that's probably all they'll do.

They join the group, and suddenly their massive sense of guilt they potentially might have when they see a few corpses rotting by the side of the road in the scorching heat is gone. Because they did their bit. These facebook groups effectively nullify the potential to get people to actually donate themselves, rather than lend their name to a group in the belief that they are making an impact, when in fact the money being sent in their name, in this instance, is a penny.

Facebook 'charity' is a microcosm of westernised society's attempts at charity. Every crisis must have fundraisers or celebrity backers. It's not enough to give money, we instead expect to be entertained before we consider being generous. Yes, Haiti's been flattened, but where is Bob Geldof's live musical event?

The number of mouse clicks it takes to join these facebook groups is equal to the effort it takes to donate money to the appeal. Why is it not possible to donate generously and meaningfully? To donate and show humility? To donate without shouting it from your next facebook status?

Ben Parker and James Mayo

Odds and ends

-Pretty much a consensus that Christmas TV was worse than usual this year, saved for me by gratefully receiving DVDs of HBO's finest (Generation Kill, The Corner, Recount) to keep me ploughing on with life into 2010.

-2009 was the year that I realised that Jeremy Vine poisons anything he lays his hands on with Daily Mail-itis, turning his Radio 2 slot into a right wing polemic, having already driven the once fine investigative television programme Panorama into a sensationalist tabloid travesty.

-2009 was also the year that I realised I couldn't stand (even detested), those that can't spell, can't differentiate between 'your' and 'you're', 'to' and 'too' and 'of' and 'off', and the boring mass of the (young, although not exclusively) British population who are obsessed with drinking, shouting, ignorance and little else. I've entered my old life crisis at 21.

-Quote of the week
'(Sarah Palin) would like Avatar: its depiction of "the noble savages" is, no doubt, a well intended argument against the destruction of rain forests, but add in a couple of orange brush strokes and you have a Gauguin painting. It is patronising, simplistic and offensive, like Palin and fake science.'
-Hadley Freeman, G2 -30.12.2009

-Picture of the decade



A Palestinian boy being teased with toy guns. A picture that had me disturbed for some time, and neatly encapsulates our new era of terror. Happy New Year.

Mild irritant. May be corrosive to brain.

I have just seen one of my favourite hate figures on television once again, the unbearably cheerful 'Gavin from Autoglass', who has once again reminded me to get that pesky chip in my windscreen seen to before I drive through one of those 40 feet deep craters he seems to encounter on a surprisingly frequent basis on his Barratt Homes Estate road, and shatter it.

Gavin joins the as yet unnamed 'redhead' on a generic mobile phone advert, where, for reasons largely unsaid or non-existent, said redhead feels the need to organise a party for like minded, apparently oppressed redheads in order to feel better about themselves. To do this, they travel to the notoriously tolerant (!) Moscow to celebrate.

And, because it is a redhead party, where other races, creeds and colours are, one imagines, shunned and ignored, the music they choose is, wait for it, Simply Red.

Between casually vomiting out the window and shouting at the television during this advert, I managed to flick the channel over, just in time to see Gavin appear again.

The difficulties of blogging

Who cares what you have to say?

Is my initial reaction to the trend of blogging. Fair enough for people that have already made something of themselves, or for people who may genuinely have something important to get across, but for anyone else it has always felt, to me, an unnecessary ego trip fuelled solely by a desire to become famous or well regarded within a section of society.

Neither of which is applicable to myself. Yet.

I've got to give it a go though, a module for my journalism studies dictates it. So let's see what happens shall we? Yeah? YEAH?