The Cat that Lost Everything

Harringay’s station cat – a white cat named Snowy – is a minor celebrity in my area. He has around 5,000 Twitter followers on an account ghost-written by an unnamed local. The account details Snowy’s life as he prowls his small dominion, chats with the local coffeeshop owners, and occasionally goes on drugs-fuelled benders. I see him almost every day.

One of Snowy's more interesting escapades

Until last weekend, when Snowy’s owners packed up and moved to Croydon, taking their famous feline with them. In a stroke Snowy became a nobody. Just a cat, unknown and unrecognized, like any other in South London.

Something about the idea of animal fame stuck with me. Fame -- where a group of humans abruptly acquires a particular interest in an individual -- is the most ridiculous of social phenomena. The people shriek when they see the famous person, follow their every move, give them money relentless. And the famous person develops various complexes, loses their freedom, becomes enormously rich, and ends up on a daytime TV show. Bizarre. But the concept (like a lot of concepts in fairness), just cannot gain traction on an animal. Animals are a-celebrity. The grip of fame on an animal is like a wet bar of soap in the shower or that coating you can put on your windscreen that makes rain just fly off. Animal celebrity is a void, a mirror, a human absurdity.

The world’s most famous cat is probably Grumpy Cat, that cat that looks sad all the time. Thanks to an extensive merchandising effort on the part of her owner, Grumpy Cat has a net worth of around $1 million apparently – more evidence that money can’t buy you happiness. She was the internet’s hottest property in 2013.

But what of the cat psyche at the centre of it all? Even humans struggle to deal with Resting Bitch Face. THAT’S JUST MY FACE, MORON!!! they yell. How would Grumpy Cat respond to the parade of people delighting at its miserable expression? I HAVE A CONDITION OKAY?? FELINE DWARFISM BITCH? U HEARD OF IT?? AT LEAST MY UNDERBITE MADE ME RICH. But of course, Grumpy Cat probably has a minimal sense of self, little idea of what it looks like, even less how it compares to other cats, and absolutely no conception of how humans respond to its mutation. The cat is essentially absent from the whole thing, the grumpy-looking black hole at the centre of a minor commercial cosmos. But unlike Snowy, Grumpy Cat is still famous and her fame will endure even beyond her eventual death.

Another famous cat I’m fond of is Famous Fred. Famous Fred is a fictional cat from one of my favourite books as a kid. His was a different dimension of fame. During the day he was an ordinary lazy housecat, but at night, after he was let out to do his business, he moonlighted as an Elvis-like hip-swinging, panty-dropping crooner cat. From amateurish beginnings, his talent blossomed, his fame escalated, and he left England on a world tour, selling out stadia and concert halls across the globe. But the fast living eventually caught up with him. His waistline grew as fast as his fame and not long after he died.

Famous Fred taps into the idea that our pets must have more complicated lives than the simple existence we provide them. We project these fantasies on what are, sentimentality aside, dumb creatures driven by a few primal instincts. Maybe that explains why Snowy has such a large twitter following and why Snowy’s ghost writer sometimes writes about his own life as Snowy. Fantasies about the hidden lives of less intelligent creatures and inanimate objects is a well-established genre – think of Toy Story, The Indian in the Cupboard, literally any film with animals in it.

An interesting aspect of Famous Fred is that Fred’s secret life seems to be real within the context of the story. Fred’s human owners* actually meet the sentient cats at Fred’s funeral (“He’s got a digital watch!”) and Fred’s hidden life has real-world consequences (his death). It seems to relish the idea that our pets could have second lives. Compare it to Toy Story, which keeps its cards closer to its chest. By making sure Andy never becomes aware that his toys are alive it preserves the possibility that the whole thing is pure fantasy. Indeed, Andy’s obliviousness is the source of much of the film’s pathos. Maybe Snowy is a closer analog to Andy than Woody, completely unaware of the adoration flung his way.

All this is swirling in my head when I think about Snowy in Croydon. And even though I know intellectually that he has zero understanding of the social dimensions of his move, deeper down I don’t believe it. I can’t truly shake the feeling that Snowy was aware of his celebrity. And that’s because, well—

All cats think they’re celebrities.

(and all dogs think you’re one.)

Goodbye Sweet Prince

* It's only the children of Fred's owners that meet Fred and the other cats, the adults stay oblivious. This plays into another trope where children have the ability to see worlds that adults can't.

The Library of Babel

Alright alright alright, settle down, settle down. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. This is indeed my first blog in over a year. In fact, I’m breaking from my cardinal rule of blogging: never apologise for tardy blogging regularity. But this needs addressing because frankly what the fuck Malcolm. So I apologise. Especially to my fans, Nick, Nick, and Rob.

Why the delay? I’ve got excuses, loads of ‘em actually.

I write for a living now. I spend seven hours a day (minus ping pong time, minus coffee time, minus poo time…so like.......three hours a day) tip tap tapping away at the same laptop I’m using now, writing about companies. The content is interesting, and I’m given scope to put a sprinkling of flair into my writing too, so I don’t particularly have the inclination to do more writing when I get home. At least, that’s an excuse I’ve been using. I don’t particularly buy it to be honest -- it’s an excuse, not a reason.

Or perhaps it’s that I haven’t been feeling inspired by much recently. Last year was not a great year, maybe the worst one yet. I haven’t been reading much, gone to the cinema much, or otherwise sought out much intellectual stimulation. For a while my life has been a whole lot of work, gym, beer, PASSIVE CONSUMPTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA, sleep, work… This one feels more like a reason to me.

But I found something this week that put a spark back into my imagination.

*

Please go to libraryofbabel.info and have a look around.

In 1941, the Argentinian writer Borges wrote a short story called The Library of Babel. The story imagines a vast library of hexagonal rooms, with each wall having five shelves, each shelf housing thirty-two books, each book having 410 pages, and each page forty lines of eighty random letters or spaces. Each book therefore contains 1,312,000 characters.

The books collected in the library contain every possible combination of those 1,312,000 characters with no repeats. The number of books is thus unimaginably large, and in that epic library you can somewhere find the complete works of Shakespeare...backwards. Or the complete works of Shakespeare where all the characters are called “Buttface”. Or everything you’ve ever said out loud in chronological order. Literally…everything that has ever been written or ever will be written. Of course, given the unimaginable size of the library, all the good stuff is swallowed by infinite reams of absolute nonsense. The chance of picking a book at random and looking for even half a sentence of coherent text is a Planck length above zero.

Kind of a weird but neat idea right?

The website I linked a couple of paragraphs up is one man’s – Jonathan Basile’s -- attempt to recreate Borges’ Library of Babel. There's some clever maths and computing behind it that I don't understand, but it doesn't simply create a page every time someone searches. Every page has a consistent location. Basile has created Borges' library.

Go to the Search page and stick something into the box. Mash the keyboard. Tell it your heart’s desires. Insult your friends. Put in Romeo & Juliet but with the fated lovers both called Buttface. And marvel at how each time it returns your exact input. From each page of white noise your phrase emerges eerily.

*

It took me a while to get my head around it. That website has everything on it. It has a description of my entire life on there, and yours, and everyone’s. It has every book, song, poem, scientific paper…all of it. There’s a sense of touching pure, raw information. It evokes the strongest feelings of curiosity in me, as everything I could ever want to know is in there somewhere.

But that curiosity is a melancholic one because everything useful is out of reach. You realise it's a massive, impenetrable wall of noise. It can only repeat, never speak of its own accord.

And as you get accustomed to that idea, the maths of the thing starts to overtake the poetry of it. The library starts to feel mundane. It’s a pure experiment in mathematics, an exercise in tedious number crunching. It’s irritatingly logical, a frustrating rush of uncontrolled, indigestible information.

There’s also something smirking about the way it’s one step ahead of you, it already knows everything you want but deigns not to reach out a guiding hand.

I mean, why did I even bother writing this blog post? You can find the whole damn thing on that website already. On Browse, put in these details

Hex (I made the text really small so doesn’t look ridiculous on the page, just copy all of it):
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
Wall 2
Shelf 2
Volume 3
Page 118

And there it is. Isn’t it glorious.

All Companies Sell Solutions Now And It's Weird

I write about companies and business now. I know, right? – weird. How has that happened? Not only do I not know anything about business whatsoever (I mean, I’ve done some brushing up since, but when I started: no), I also try and nurture a healthy scepticism of capitalist enterprise.

So with capitalism having kicked up a notch since 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis [citation needed], it’s interesting to see how companies are working hard to efface their identities as overtly capitalist makers and buyers and sellers of things, in favour of something approaching charity.

All companies solve problems now. The things they sell are no longer products but “solutions”. We’re here to help people, and make your life easier, they say, lots of eye contact, hand on knee. And if we make some money from it at the same time well that’s rather nice. Why tho? Is it supposed to distract from all the shady activities companies conduct? Is it a guilt thing? Is it just a corporate fad?

The approach, creepy as it is, works without sounding too weird for companies in the service industry for instance, but when companies in other industries that sell literal physical things bend over backwards to position their wares as solutions, it becomes strange and hilarious.

Over the past few months I’ve curated a collection of the best examples and put them in a quiz format. I’ve removed all the company names, and for each, try and work out what they actually do from the description.

1. [This company] assists industries in finding and implementing ever more responsible and value-creating solutions. Our products serve diversified markets, from consumer goods to energy, with one main aim – to improve quality of life and customer performance.
2. We are the ones who help your application landscapes become flexible and productive. We take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of your applications from development to maintenance, while working with you to simplify your landscape.
3. Inventing, designing and producing high quality solutions for customers and patients, [company] offers products that are designed with patients’ needs in mind.
4. [Company] is a globally diversified natural resources company with low cost operations. We empower our people to drive excellence and innovation to create value for our stakeholders. We demonstrate world-class standards of governance, safety, sustainability, and social responsibility. At [Company], our people are our most important assets. We actively encourage their development and support them in pursuing their goals.
5. [This company] is a leading sleep solution destination.

Answers

1. This company is a fucking gigantic chemical group
2. Why does a massive IT group have such an obsession with landscape gardening?
3. This lot sell gases used in healthcare
4. A mining company
5. A bed company. This company sells beds. For fucksake.

Spurs, Arsenal and Suffering

Oh Arsenal fans, you amateurs. You thought the turbulent late-Wenger years had taught you to suffer – all those embarrassing losses to the Premier League’s tadpoles, Theo running, Theo stopping, Theo tackled, all those predictably brief Champions League runs, perennially failing your way to another fourth-place league finish to the soundtrack of Piers Morgan’s petulant wailing – God what misery it is to be an Arsenal fan, you thought. What purgatorial spite, what embers of hope so cruelly drenched, year after year.

You pathetic amateurs. You haven’t a clue.

On Sunday afternoon a crescendo of suffering – a shrieking, deceitful, Beckettian crescendo that for so long sounded like a waltz – peaked at St. James’ Park and came crashing down on the white half of North London. Our best team since the 1960s, a miraculous coming together of unlikely young Englishmen and rejuvenated foreign talents, smited on the Northern Rock. Sorry fellers, this century’s fairytale quota has already been spent, there’s nowt we can do.

We flew too high. A combined seven unanswered goals past Stoke and Manchester United in April gave us a real if outside chance of catching Leicester. A stumble from them and we could – as Harry Kane expressed on his Instagram with a picture of a pack of lions – pounce. But lions can’t fly (what a ridiculous notion, Harry) and in the rarefied air of a title chase West Brom equalized and Dele Alli’s little-shit schtick came home to roost: a three-game ban for a schoolboy swing, out for the season. Title hopes on life support. But still, a 5 point gap to Arsenal.

Then came Chelsea, a team of zombie champions whose only contribution to the season has been a massive weekly hit of schadenfreude for everyone else in England. Eden Hazard, the purest personification of Chelsea’s mighty under-performance with no goals and no visible effort expended by late April, publicly expressed his desire to see Leicester take the title. Any further points dropped would see the midlanders take the title, and deep within his small reptilian brain he saw the opportunity to make his mark. And so when Hazard joined the fray at halftime – and it indeed was a fray, a real re-telling of the Battle of Stamford Bridge worthy of the 1066 original – he set about an overheated, Alli-less Spurs team with the athleticism and clarity of purpose that won him a deserved Player of the Year last time out, bending a beautiful equalizer past Hugo Lloris.

Something broke that match in the minds of this young, so young, barely post-pubescent, Spurs team. Their calm deserted them, as did Mousa Dembélé, a pillar of strength throughout the season who joined Alli in the FA’s Monopoly-board prison for clawing crazily at Diego Costa’s face – do not pass go, do not pick up 3 points. Southampton, normally an easy fixture, sealed a 2-1 win at White Hart Lane through a Sean Davis brace, and with a draw at Manchester City, Arsenal closed the gap to one win. A draw at relegated Newcastle on the final day would be just enough to postpone St. Totteringham’s day, but wouldn’t it be funny, wouldn’t it be fucking hilarious, if Spurs were to lose that match?

Imagine if they lost, that even after being the prime victims of the Leicester City fairytale, in a year in which so the narrative goes they finally vanquished all their traditional rivals and scored the most goals, conceded the fewest and played the best football, but still came second – surely the epitome of Spursiness – that choice ability to find new and inventive ways to fail, the team’s only reliable quality – a prime cut of Spursiness – and then came third anyway? To Arsenal? On the last fucking day of the season? After shipping three goals in 20 minutes to 10-man relegated Newcastle when it looked like a comeback might be on? The sickness of mind needed to imagine such cruelty. The perversity.

At the end of the aforementioned Beckett’s tragicomic Waiting for Godot, one of the main characters tries to hang himself with his belt; he fails and his trousers fall down. Well string me up, you fucker, for it doesn’t get worse than this. 

Roundabouts

There’s a roundabout near where I live.

© Google.com 2015

It sits on a bypass connecting Reading to High Wycombe. There are two other exits, on the north and south of the roundabout (making four in total) that serve low-traffic roads to Marlow and the quiet part of Maidenhead, respectively.

The vast bulk of the traffic that joins the roundabout at rush hour simply passes straight across, to and from Reading and High Wycombe. Traffic joining from the Marlow and Maidenhead roads, either to cross or join the bypass, is, at a guess, maybe 10% or less.

Roundabouts have a slight bias towards the direction of traffic that has a car joining the roundabout, i.e cars need give less space when following than when paths intersect, because the lower speed vectors mean it’s easier for the driver to judge. Because traffic has to give way to the right, a steady stream of traffic joining a roundabout can gain momentum of sorts.

The speed limit on the roundabout is the same as the dual carriageway it sits on: 70mph.

The combined effect is that it becomes very difficult and hazardous for cars joining from the unfavoured Marlow and Maidenhead roads to join the roundabout, due to the speed and density of traffic passing west and east. Roundabouts are designed with the assumption that there will always be plentiful gaps for vehicles joining at each exit, and that traffic will regulate itself, but when cars join fast and frequently in one direction and in smooth single file, those gaps get smaller and scarcer. Accidents are common.

On Thursday last week, Britain voted to add an extra lane to the bypass.