unless he bashed his head against the wall.
It took them months to go that mad, mind. I reckon I’d get there quicker. Lock me in there and within five minutes I’d be running screaming round the room, pursued by a giant version of Joe Pasquale’s face on wheels.
Fortunately, the experiment isn’t simply being performed for entertainment. The show has a point to make.
After their ordeal, the volunteers are tested to see how susceptible to suggestion they’ve become – and surprise, surprise, they’re highly malleable. The point being, any confession made by someone who’s spent the past few days swatting invisible monsters is likely to be worthless. Nonetheless, sensory deprivation techniques are being used around the world right now, at Guantanamo for example. It may not technically be classed as torture, but the programme leaves you in no doubt whatsoever that anyone sanctioning such treatment on a fellow human being is a hateful pig of the lowest order.
Rumsfeld’s retired. I wonder if he sleeps at night, and if not – and I pray not – what self-made horrors he visualises as he lies in the dark? Here’s hoping they chase him through this night and the next. From now until never o’clock.
1,000 Things to Ignore Before You Die [19 November 2007]
Oh Christ. They’re back again. Those lists. Lists of Things to Do Before You Die. Fifty Movies to See Before You Die; 200 Recipes to Cook Before You Die; 908 Items of Flat-Pack Furniture to Assemble Before You Die, and so on. And so on. And so on.
The Guardian’s currently running a list of 1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die. Since the advent of CDs, the average album is about an hour long. So that’s 1,000 hours of my life I’ve been commanded to give up, just like that. 1,000 hours. That’s 42 whole days. Factor in sleeping time and it’s more like three months. That’s not a list. That’s a sabbatical.
The worst ‘before you die’ lists are the ones aimed at middle-class tourists. These are infuriating for several reasons. First, the writers use them as an excuse to show off about how cultured and well-travelled they are, so there you get lots of entries like: ‘No 23: Eat Spicy Malaysian Street Food While Watching the Sun Set Over Tioman Island in the Company of Some of Your Brilliantly Successful Novelist Friends.’ The conceited worms are recounting incidents from their own lives and holding them up as aspirational examples for us all. At first this strikes you as smug. Then you realise it’s merely desperate. Who are they trying to impress, precisely? The Joneses? They’re prancing around in front of an invisible mass of readers, nonchalantly cooing about how wonderful they are. It’s 50 times more snivelling and undignified than any Z-list celebrity you care to mention stripping naked and inseminating a cow on a Bravo reality show. At least that’s unpretentious.
Presumably the aspirational list writers are engaging in a last-ditch attempt to stave off their own gnawing sense of pointlessness. What’s that? You swam with dolphins? Hiked round Machu Picchu? Swigged cocktails in Vegas? Wow. Thanks for sharing. Now shut up and tie your noose.
Thing is, for all their faults, the lists work. It’s hard not to get drawn in. There’s so much crud and shod surrounding us on a daily basis, so many fair-to-middling fartclouds of ‘content’ and ‘lifestylechoice’, we’re all desperate to get our hands on something actually, authentically good. And that’s what the lists promise: a handy cutout-and-keep guide to what’s worth bothering with. In practice, however, they merely inspire feelings of inadequacy. No matter how cynical or detached you are, you can’t help experiencing a pang of shame at not having seen Venice for yourself, even when the writer boasting about it is clearly a prick of the grandest magnitude.
As a result, it’s hard not to walk around in a permanent state of guilt. Right now, I’m feeling vaguely guilty for
It took them months to go that mad, mind. I reckon I’d get there quicker. Lock me in there and within five minutes I’d be running screaming round the room, pursued by a giant version of Joe Pasquale’s face on wheels.
Fortunately, the experiment isn’t simply being performed for entertainment. The show has a point to make.
After their ordeal, the volunteers are tested to see how susceptible to suggestion they’ve become – and surprise, surprise, they’re highly malleable. The point being, any confession made by someone who’s spent the past few days swatting invisible monsters is likely to be worthless. Nonetheless, sensory deprivation techniques are being used around the world right now, at Guantanamo for example. It may not technically be classed as torture, but the programme leaves you in no doubt whatsoever that anyone sanctioning such treatment on a fellow human being is a hateful pig of the lowest order.
Rumsfeld’s retired. I wonder if he sleeps at night, and if not – and I pray not – what self-made horrors he visualises as he lies in the dark? Here’s hoping they chase him through this night and the next. From now until never o’clock.
1,000 Things to Ignore Before You Die [19 November 2007]
Oh Christ. They’re back again. Those lists. Lists of Things to Do Before You Die. Fifty Movies to See Before You Die; 200 Recipes to Cook Before You Die; 908 Items of Flat-Pack Furniture to Assemble Before You Die, and so on. And so on. And so on.
The Guardian’s currently running a list of 1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die. Since the advent of CDs, the average album is about an hour long. So that’s 1,000 hours of my life I’ve been commanded to give up, just like that. 1,000 hours. That’s 42 whole days. Factor in sleeping time and it’s more like three months. That’s not a list. That’s a sabbatical.
The worst ‘before you die’ lists are the ones aimed at middle-class tourists. These are infuriating for several reasons. First, the writers use them as an excuse to show off about how cultured and well-travelled they are, so there you get lots of entries like: ‘No 23: Eat Spicy Malaysian Street Food While Watching the Sun Set Over Tioman Island in the Company of Some of Your Brilliantly Successful Novelist Friends.’ The conceited worms are recounting incidents from their own lives and holding them up as aspirational examples for us all. At first this strikes you as smug. Then you realise it’s merely desperate. Who are they trying to impress, precisely? The Joneses? They’re prancing around in front of an invisible mass of readers, nonchalantly cooing about how wonderful they are. It’s 50 times more snivelling and undignified than any Z-list celebrity you care to mention stripping naked and inseminating a cow on a Bravo reality show. At least that’s unpretentious.
Presumably the aspirational list writers are engaging in a last-ditch attempt to stave off their own gnawing sense of pointlessness. What’s that? You swam with dolphins? Hiked round Machu Picchu? Swigged cocktails in Vegas? Wow. Thanks for sharing. Now shut up and tie your noose.
Thing is, for all their faults, the lists work. It’s hard not to get drawn in. There’s so much crud and shod surrounding us on a daily basis, so many fair-to-middling fartclouds of ‘content’ and ‘lifestylechoice’, we’re all desperate to get our hands on something actually, authentically good. And that’s what the lists promise: a handy cutout-and-keep guide to what’s worth bothering with. In practice, however, they merely inspire feelings of inadequacy. No matter how cynical or detached you are, you can’t help experiencing a pang of shame at not having seen Venice for yourself, even when the writer boasting about it is clearly a prick of the grandest magnitude.
As a result, it’s hard not to walk around in a permanent state of guilt. Right now, I’m feeling vaguely guilty for
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