blog 
There are few things more depressing than reading other people’s life goals. What a person aspires towards defines the limits of his existence: if your goals are vague you will never know when you have achieved them; if they are too unrealistic you’re bound to be disappointed. Rule one of goal-setting: make sure you’re goals are SMART. Most people’s life goals are unspecific, meaningless, unachievable, unrealistic and vague.
Here are some of the usual suspects:
Achieve Happiness
Unless you suffer from anhedonia, you can be happy whatever your circumstances. Happiness is a relative state — some people are more happy than others, but the reasons they are happy are not always obvious. However, people who have the ability to get into a state of flow are generally happier than those who find it impossible to concentrate.
Financial Stability
Human desires are almost infinite, so it is unlikely that anything less than superwealth will satiate your desire for more stuff. For most people, stability means earning at least what they earn now without actually doing any work, preferably through low-maintenance investments or through their novel.
Create a work of genius that will have make them famous for all eternity
Anybody can write a book, but few get them published, and fewer still actually get them read. What is most dismaying is that most of these writers don’t actually seem to read contemporary novels — if they did, they’d probably think again about wanting to write one.
Improve the World
Again, improvement is a relative concept. Look at someone who has dedicated his life to improving the world, like Bone-o or Bob Geldof. Sure, a few lives have been saved but now the world is running out of resources because of overpopulation.
Help People
. . . Or meddling. Whilst it is admirable to do horrible jobs like caring for the elderly and teaching naughty children, most goalsetters seem to have a less hands-on idea of what help means. Like, say, writing a book which reforms education or something equally unrealistic.
Travel
There is a persistent myth that travel broadens the mind. What it does, I think, is defers the time when you actually have to take action. In the 18th Century, travel was something you did when you were young to help prepare for adulthood. Now we all aspire to live in a state of perpetual adolescent wonder.
07 Jul 2008
blog I know it’s unfashionable to say it nowadays, what with the price of oil rising by the day, but I really love driving. Having only passed my test just over a year ago and not really having driven much inbetween, it is an experience that I still find completely absorbing. Today I drove from Glasgow to Cumbernauld to Paisley and back again. I didn’t stop to have a look at any of the places — what would be the point? they’d probably only have the same high street shops you see everywhere — I just concentrated on enjoying the sensations of speed and smoothness.
What is fashionable, apparently, are the people on the Observer’s 50 Coolest People list. My own sang-froid prevents me from chasing after such notions as coolness, but I am quite interested in the zeitgeist. So I made an effort (bloody Observer can’t be bothered to link up to most people’s websites) to have a look at who they are and what they’ve done. What I discovered was that none of them appear to be doing anything particularly radical. It’s all the same old street styles we’ve been seeing for the last couple of years.
The only really interesting thing about the list is that to be cool, you apparently have to have a krazy name: Santogold, Ladyhawke, LoveFoxx, Yvan Face Hunter, Charlie Le Mindu, Zaldy Goco, Noki, Blaine Harrison . . . there aren’t many Neils on there. Anyhow, my favourite of the lot is one with the unglamorous name of Rob Ryan whose illustrations are excellent:
06 Jul 2008
blog Important thing I learned this weekend: it is easier to imagine the end of the world from your armchair than it is when lying in a tent that is being battered by a gale.
We went camping on the east coast of Loch Lomond on Friday to prepare for my going to Latitude (I haven’t put up a tent for eleven years) and to prepare for TEOTWAWKI (my survival skills run to a couple of badges earned at Cubs).
Everything went well. Driving was fine, putting up the tent was fine, chatting to my camouflage-clad fellow campers was fine and cooking burgers was fine. It was only sleeping that proved to be an issue. Not only is camping really quite uncomfortable, but the wind howled all night long. It would die down for a second AND THEN ROAR AGAIN, never allowing me to go into the deepest level of sleep. In this restless state, I tried to picture myself fleeing the cannibal gangs who had invaded the city but it was no use. I was camping in a campsite, no matter what I tried to tell my mind. Sometimes, it seems, the senses are overwhelmed by reality that they can’t imagine any other possibilities.
The next morning, we got up dozily and set out for Rowardennan where we proceeded to conquer Ben Lomond in a leisurely 6 hours. Again the wind (usually my least favourite element) proved violent but there weren’t too many crags or sheer drops to worry about. Here is me shortly before reaching the summit:
05 Jul 2008
blog I was reading Life After the Oil Crash last night, a breathtaking compilation of every depressing news story of the last few years. It is chilling and convincing; reducing all of humanity’s arrogant belief in progress to ashes. Anyone who has read John Gray or Jared Diamond will understand that civilizations crumble despite their best delusions, but to see it spelt out is actually quite nauseating.
However, on balance, I would prefer to live an impoverished life than no life at all so at the back of my mind I am already making plans for what to do when everything collapses. I make a mental note to do things like archery classes (bullets will be difficult to find after TEOTWAWKI) and medical training (what would you use for antibiotics?). I ponder buying portable solar panels and wonder if being in the Cubs is enough training to survive in the wild.
I am reminded of Dylan Evans who spent several months setting up and running a settlement, called Utopia, posited on the idea that civilization would be destroyed by resource wars and economic crises. Indeed, the premise that he used as a basis now looks remarkably prescient.
When the predictions of the sceptics came true, and the economy started creaking, there was no announcement on the evening news, no billboards proclaiming economic collapse. It was much more banal than that. The first signs of impending doom were no more spectacular than inflation and unemployment. It was the price of energy that began to shoot up first. Electricity and gas got more and more expensive, and an ever larger slice of the household budget went on cooking and heating, leaving less for cable TV, fancy clothes and holidays abroad – all of which came increasingly to be seen as luxuries. Petrol doubled in price too, a hard blow to a nation that had become accustomed to driving long distances to work and shopping in out of town superstores. Since the food in those superstores was also transported long distances, often by lorry, the rising price of fuel also pushed up the price of food. Everyone began to feel a lot poorer.
Unfortunately, Utopia became something of a dystopia (according to the now-defunct Yahoo Group), with leadership struggles and the realisation that Evans couldn’t dictate to the rest of the group how they were going to live (there was something of a kerfuffle when the group, against Evans’ wishes, went to the local pub). Of course, all utopias turn into dystopias which is why we have to put up with civil society, but the idea that people would gain a lot from losing the baubles of civilization is a very attractive one. Every time you buy something you are weighing yourself down. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the protagonist and his son carry all their possessions in a supermarket trolley. Could you do that? Where would you put your golf clubs?
04 Jul 2008
blog 
Title
I Am Legend
Premise
A scientist (evil Emma Thompson) claims to have cured cancer by using a special virus. Unfortunately, there’s the small side-effect of killing 90% of all humans and turning the rest into flesh-eating zombies. All except for Richard Neville (Will Smith, looking strangely Obama-esque), a military scientist who is surviving alone in desolate New York searching for a cure.
Lessons Learned
1) If you want to avoid going mad, don’t watch Shrek too many times.
2) Get into a good routine of doing loads of exercise and reading an Almanack to ensure you keep mentally and physically trim.
3) If you’re going to set traps to catch zombies, remember where you put them, because . . .
4) Cutting the rope and falling to the ground really hurts.
And the upside?
1) Zero population makes it much easier to drive around New York.
2) DVD rentals are now free.
3) More time to work on your pecs (Smith has the muscle definition of a plastic He-Man).
Conclusion
I Am Legend offers meagre fodder for any apocalyptician worth the name. New York would be a fascinating place to scavenge, but Smith spends most of his time driving a car and hitting golf balls. The fact that he is the luckiest twat alive doesn’t help.
03 Jul 2008
blog We took another step towards getting married yesterday after receiving the paperwork we need from the Spanish Consulate in Edinburgh. It always amazes me that Edinburgh is so close to Glasgow and yet so foreign, going there always feels like a holiday despite the fact that it takes less time to get there than it used to take me to get from Colliers Wood to Shoreditch. Last time we were here, we went to Edinburgh Zoo. This time, we went to the Dean Gallery, enticed by Foto, their exhbition of Modernist photography.
The exhibition covers the rise of the modernist aesthetic in central and eastern Europe. Everyone it seems was enthralled by the possibilities of the new aesthetic and it spread like wildfire. Photomontages depicting man and machine were common, the stark geometric lines of Bauhaus became the dominant mode, and anti-war protests by the likes of John Heartfield pinched viewers into political consciousness.
It was all very inspiring stuff. Indeed, on getting home, I made the following postcard as a homage:
02 Jul 2008