Advanced Bachelor Food Part 1 - Chilli

I am told that I have a signature dish. This is quite an achievement for someone who once didn't know which end of a knife to hold (OK, so I was only one-and-a-half but I learnt quickly - and the hard way). I was brought up with no cooking experience whatsoever. My culinary experience as a child was mostly meat and three veg cooked by my mother. In the best of Aussie tradition the veg were often overcooked or included dry and lumpy mashed potatoe (it was years after leaving home before I could bring myself to eat it again). My father cooked the barbies, still does.

So there's a lot to be said for spending at least a decade of your life in shared accommodation. What began as toasted sandwiches and pasta sauce in jars has developed into gourmet pizzas and spaghetti bolognese made from scrach (more-or-less). My greatest discovery was that bolognese sauce is the base for all manner of Italian and Mexican dishes, and if you stretch the analogy far enough, all sorts of curries too (and probably stews but I haven't got that far - yet).

But there is still the spirit of the bachelor (or the backpacker for that matter) in my cooking - use a minimum of utensils, avoid recipes and go with your gut instinct. What 's changed since those carefree days? Time and quality. The longer a sauce bubbles, the better it is. And buy the most expensive ingredients you can find.

So here we go - my contribution to the culinary world - my recipe (or lack thereof) for Chilli...

Ingredients:
2 cold beers
A bottle of wine
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (the expensive italian type)
1 tin of kidney beans
2 average sized red capsicums cut into smallish pieces
1 onion chopped into even smaller pieces
some garlic cloves (your call - how much do you like garlic?) crushed
1/2 a kilo of the best quality mince you can find
3 small hot chillis cut into tiny pieces OR a few scoops of hot chilli sauce (sambal is ideal) OR chilli flakes
small carton of sour cream
salt
pepper
Tabasco sauce
white rice
enchilada tortillas

And if you want to take a short cut...
1 jar of hot taco sauce

What to do with this stuff:
Open the first cold beer. Have a couple of gulps. Whack the onion in the biggest saucepan you have with some oil. Stir until it goes soft and a bit brownish. Add the capsicum and the chillis and keep stirring for a couple of minutes then add the garlic and stir some more. Rinse the tin of red kidney beans in cold water and throw them in. Keep stirring.

Have a couple more gulps of beer.

I hope you have strong wrists because now you're going to add the mince. Stir and fold and stir until the mince browns and the whole lot starts smelling yummy. Add the tin of tomatoes and all your spices (how much is up to you) - your chilli pastes, powders, sauces or flakes - and a splash or two of water (enough to wash out the tins is probably plenty). Don't forget the tabasco - add plenty. Salt and pepper to taste.

Drink some more beer. This is hot work and you don't want to dehydrate.

Keep stirring (what do you mean you stopped - don't) until it's all mixed up and it starts to bubble. Turn down the heat and let it bubble away for at least 1/2 an hour but preferably 45 minutes to an hour tops. Finish your beer and crack open the second one. Drink it while you wait but stir the chilli every 10 minutes or so. If you have an electric stove make it every 5 minutes - don't let it burn whatever you do - add more water if you have to but avoid this if you can.

Now the hard part - in an ideal world you would have done all of the above the day before or at least a few hours before you wanted to eat it - the longer it sits in the saucepan the better. But realistically you came home from work and it's already 8:00 and you're starving - so it's time to serve up.

Put the rice on 20 mins before you're ready to eat.

Serving suggestion:

Eat the chilli with a lover - use your imagination for what to do while the chilli cooks (but don't forget to stir - the chilli that is).

Open the bottle of wine and pour two or more glasses.

Warm the tortillas (microwave is fine) and serve on a plate. Warm, reheat or just put the saucepan in the middle of the table with a ladel, ditto the rice. Put the sour cream out too. Eat it however you like - I prefer to whack the lot in a tortilla - it's messy but so what - you cooked it - your lover/partner/dinner guests can clean up. Take large sips of wine between bites.

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One Limp Closer To Sporting Greatness

Injuries are the curse and the pay-back for the sportsman (or woman). Injury goes hand-in-hand with competitiveness, professionalism, intense training and pushing one’s body to the limit. All sportspeople will have injuries at some stage of their career (except for Mat Rogers who has them at all stages of his career). They often dominate the discussions on the backpage of newspapers and make medical experts of us all. There’s no real reason for any of us to know where an anterior cruciate ligament is or what a depressed eye-socket looks like, but we do.

So it was with pride and pain that I twisted my ankle in my first game of competitive touch football in ten years. At 36 I’m at an age where most sportspeople are retiring. Andre Agassi, 36, retired weeks ago. Michael Schumacher, 36, retired last week. Glenn McGrath, 36, should have and Shane Warne, 36, is a freak and a moron but I want to be him anyway (only a true moron wouldn’t realise how much of a moron he is).

I, however, have just reached my sporting prime, grand final winner in 3rd division indoor cricket and finalist in 2nd division tennis at the New South Wales Catholic Lawn Tennis Association (I’m not Catholic, the courts are just cheap and convenient). These are my greatest sporting achievements since I bowled a strike on the final bowl to win a match in Melbourne in my capacity as 4th ranked junior ten-pin bowling Jew in New South Wales in 1985.

Twisting my ankle was the icing on the cake. It became quite swollen and bruised and I have been out of action for four weeks already, although I did heroically strap-up the ankle and played through the pain to go down fighting and limping in my tennis final 6-2 6-2.

Previously I’d only ever missed one-off sporting matches for such piddling amateur injuries as a split webbing or a sprained finger. Sure I would have liked to have broken something or even better have been collected by an ambulance or picked up by a helicopter and placed in a neck brace but beggars can’t be choosers.

I’m contemplating whether I need to spend some time in a hyperbaric chamber to speed up the recovery process or perhaps issue a media release documenting the slow pace of recovery and my contemplating of retirement. Alas I’ve missed the opportunity for some choice coverage of the ankle wrapped in ice packs and me struggling with crutches and being limited to laps in ice cold water at Coogee or St Kilda the day after the game.

Perhaps I could publish photographs of the ankle for printing in newspapers so that my concerned public could concentrate on the image, producing good vibes and speeding the recovery. I would hope that the ankle is giving me an opportunity to get over my other niggling injuries (sunburn, a cold and a shaving nick) and concentrate on non-impact exercise regimes such as eating and drinking.

My comeback will be well documented. Australian Story might be interested. There could be a Good Weekend article about my triumph over adversity. I’ll be better for the rest and come back fitter and stronger and will lead my teams to world domination.

Or I’ll just wait a few more weeks and start from scratch. It’s all good.

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Heckling the Heckler, Insights, and One That Should Have Been

You may have noticed by now a certain bitterness that the inner journalist inside me feeds on. It is fertilised by petty jealousy and envy and all revolves around the innate desire to be published, fawned upon and recognised in the street. Don't give me for an instant that celebrities (even of the Dancing with the Stars variety) don't love it. Take it away and they would be, well, me.

Anyway, I share this desire to write (or perhaps cajole, bicker and whinge is more accurate) with a number of friends. One of them penned this for a Sydney Morning Herald Heckler a few years ago. It should have been picked up of course but wasn't because Fairfax are taking over the world (unless News limited take them over first) and there's just no place left for witty sarcasm and dry senses of humour.

Take it away....

Finally - A Sensible Immigration Policy

I like backpackers.

I was a backpacker once, as were many of my friends. And while my backpacking days are now behind me, I fully support the whole backpacking ethos.

If not for backpackers who would work in our cafes and bars? Who would pick our fruit? Who would be the backbone of our ailing tourism sector?

That said, there is a class of backpackers who should either be refused entry into this country or, if already here, deported. I’m talking about the Soccer Shirt Wearers. You know, those mainly British males who insist on wearing soccer shirts in public.

On the whole I can live with backpacker fashion – the beads in the hair from Bali, the woolly yak hats from Nepal, the lobster red skin from Bondi. But the soccer shirt (or as they call it, football), symbol of mindless enslavement to the sport marketing machine has to go.

The Soccer Shirt Wearer represents the lowest common denominator of society. Those who are content to wear their sad, empty lives on their chests as a badge of pride. Who think that it is some sort of symbol of sexual availability rather than a brightly coloured warning.

The soccer shirt is worn by those who have no imagination, style or confidence to dress themselves in anything remotely original. It is a lower point in fashion than the thigh high ugh boot, the pashmina wrap, the comb-over or the mullet.

Soccer shirt wearers are clearly not trying to integrate into our society. They are openly scorning our values and our culture. They are saying: I may be here drinking your beer and leering at your women but I’d rather be watching football, the world game. The game which has locked the battling Aussies out of its World Cup year after year by unfairly forcing us to play a better team in order to qualify.

Are these really the people we want clogging up the bunk beds of our illegally converted semis? Are these the people we want buying our clapped out combis? Are these the people we want to be keeping our life savers busy over the summer?

I don’t think so.

So I have come up with a few easy to implement immigration controls:

1. Any backpacker stepping off a plane in a soccer shirt will be automatically refused entry and deported.

2. A visa application question along the lines of “Are you or have you ever been a supporter of Manchester United?”. If the answer is yes the person will be automatically refused a visa. If it is no and they are later found to be sporting a red soccer shirt then they will be sent to Port Headland for a few weeks to show them we mean business and then deported.

3. As people are waiting for their luggage an official is to yell: “Hey, isn’t that David Beckham?” Anyone who turns to look will be interrogated and searched.

4. Any soccer shirts found during baggage searches will be confiscated and destroyed. Similar rules would also be applied to outgoing Aussies to save embarrassment overseas.

Already John Howard has seen the light and has forgone his telco promoting Wallabies jersey on his overseas jaunts. Alas, he has replaced it with a (admittedly logo-free) Australian cricket tracksuit so there is still room for a ‘correction’.

There would, of course, have to be some exceptions.

Visitors to the Rugby World Cup will be permitted to import and wear team jerseys for the duration of the tournament only. Registered members of the Barmy Army can bring in and wear whatever they want, as we need them to keep The Ashes interesting. And anyone is permitted to wear an Australian soccer jersey because Soccer Australia needs all the help it can get.

I know this all sounds a little draconian. But you have to remember we have the right to determine who comes to this country and the clothing in which they come.

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What's in a Euphemism?

The pantheon of Rock 'n' Roll history is littered with great band names. I'm not about to start trawling the internet to find out which band was the first 'The' somethings (now there's a great name for a band - unfortunately though it's already been taken - they're a UK based covers band available for parties, weddings, festivals and private and corporate functions).

I'm also not going to go looking for which band was the first to not be called 'so and so and his orchestra' or 'somebody and his band'. These would not be good names for a band - and hence they don't exist. Of course there are many clever band names and they take their inspiration from a variety of sources (however I've always wanted to ask Dave Grohl what is Foo and are you fighting for it or against it?).

Sex is an obvious inspiration for a band name. After all, it's why most young males get into Rock 'n' Roll in the first place. Perhaps the first such band was 10CC. Deriving their name from the volume of semen ejaculated by the average male, 10CC were highly successful in the early 1970s and pioneered to some extent the pop rock sound of the time. My research (2 minutes on the internet), sheds no light on why this name beyond that they were a little wacky with their tabaccy.

But for blatant sexual euphemism one can't go past the Sex Pistols. The pioneers of Punk, the purveyors of apocalyptic 70s anti-Thatcherism, Johnny Rotten and his mates rewrote all the Rock rules, how it should be played and sung and even how to market it. And what to name it. The Pistols emboldened a whole generation of Punk and post-Punk music, such as the anti-Pistols Celibate Rifles and the all-girl The Slits (at least when it comes to names). The Buzzcocks (I really hope) took it one step further by naming themselves after an artificial (vibrating) penis.

Today it is open slather when it comes to sexually euphemistic band names. Many blatantly reference penises, such as the Enormous Horns, the Hard Ons and Tool. Pearl Jam, in the spirit of 10CC, describes what comes out of the penis. And you can't have sperm without Testeagles. And don't forget anuses - Chocolate Starfish and the Butthole Surfers certainly haven't.

Sexual positions also provide fertile band naming ground, including Machine Gun Fellatio, the Butthole Surfers (again), the Red Riders (apparently, though to be honest I can't actually work that one out) and the Scissor Sisters (although whether it's a lesbian sexual act or a description of lesbians I don't know but it's a wonderful word picture in any case).

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to add to this list. Surely there are many more sexually explicit, sexually perverse or just sexual band names out there. I will though make one request – they do need to have been decent musicians (the exception being the Sex Pistols) and have had at least one single in the charts.

Your time begins…now.

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KaraOKe

I've always been biased against karaoke. It goes back to my backpacking days. Karaoke had just reached it's first fad stage in Sydney, so by definition my nature determined that I must reject it (along with Boy George, big hair and oversized jackets). My predetermined bias was only reinforced by seeing the damage it was wreaking across South-East Asia. Malaysians were heard attempting celtic yodelling and Thais were failing miserably in their renditions of I, I Baby (Thais can't say 'ice').

I must admit that I did dabble once. It was on a work trip with a colleague some years later to South Korea at the end of a week giving training courses where the one Korean who could speak some English translated for the 40 who couldn't, while at the same time attempting to translate all the training documentation. Still, they were all very grateful and offered to take us to dinner and then on to karaoke. I'm not sure how much of this was politeness or how much of this was because they were in shock that we had chosen to eat in local restaurants and walk to work, but to refuse would have been impolite.

The dinner, a Korean barbeque, was superb, although I never did get used to Kimchi. After a dozen shots of Soju I was up for the karaoke and we proceeded on foot a short distance to what seemed like a nightclub except that it was empty barring a couple of girls in short skirts who served drinks.

Our hosts were straight into the singing - awful pop culture Korean songs accompanied by jarringly tacky film clips that inevitably involved a young starlet staring lovingly into the eyes of an enamoured man while the wind blew white sheets around the place. By the end of each song the couple may get to the stage of holding hands. I thought of it as anti-porn.

The General Manager of the company shared Korean whiskey with his special guests (us) and slowly drank himself into oblivion while his staff, freed of the restraints of the working week, loosened their ties and sipped beers. They also seemed to enter oblivion on their one beer - an impressive effort that one suspects was a requirement written into their contracts.

Finally it was our turn to sing. Much to my horror, all the Koreans were suggesting we sing Hotel California. I couldn’t work out why – was the song really that popular in Korea (yes), was there an Eagles revival in Korea (yes) or was this the only English song in the songbook (yes).

My colleague wrapped an arm around me (he’s a touchy “I love you man” kind of drunk) and we sang a beautiful duet occasionally in time with a scratchy Korean backing tape while pop-girl made goo goo eyes at pop-boy. Every Korean knew every word and sang along.

Our performance over, we were led to the dance floor by one of our inebriated Korean trainees. He enquired as to our marital status and upon finding out I was single signalled to one of the short skirted girls to come over. He introduced us to her as “Well hung”. We were confused – was she a transvestite? Fortunately it was just her name and she was more hostess than waitress. The trainee encouraged me to dance with her, which I was reluctant to do, not just because I recently thought she was well endowed but also because she simply didn’t interest me. But again, refusal may have been taken as impolite, so holding her at arms length we had a few steps on the dance floor. This did not satisfy the trainee, who pushed my body up against hers, grabbed my hand and shoved it down her cleavage. I didn’t linger. I pulled my hand out straight away, thanked her for the dance, the trainee for his concern for my physical needs, the general manager for the whisky, my colleague for his singing ability, and exited stage left, my karaoke experience over – I hoped for good.

I was wrong, but it took eight years till my next karaoke experience.

Karaoke is experiencing a revival in Sydney. Led by the influx of Japanese and Korean students, its popularity has spread to the population at large, or at least at medium. I was mistakenly under the impression that it was essentially something sung in pubs by pissed business people and the entertainmently challenged. How wrong was I.

Karaoke World is just that – OK so it’s not an entire planet populated by people singing along to scratchy Korean pop songs, but within its confines it may as well be. Certainly entering Karaoke World is like visiting another planet – or at least going to the airport to get there. Armed security guards ran metal detectors over us and we descended a flight of steps to a counter where money changed hands, rooms were assigned and alcoholic beverages were purchased. From along a hallway resembling a hospital wing came the tortured screams and yells from the eternal torment of dying songs. Hundreds of pop songs get murdered at Karaoke World every day, only to rise from the dead and be murdered again at the next hen’s night, birthday party or student get together.

I was there for a friend’s 30th birthday. She’s a regular at Karaoke World. The smoky claustrophobic cells that serve as karaoke rooms are a source of great warmth and humour to her. She knows how the remote control works, which drink has the greatest alcohol to dollar value (white wine) and where the toilets are. I knew none of this and had to be shown. I also had to be shown the songbook, and much to my pleasure I discovered a telephone like book of hundreds of songs and all of them in English. There are similar books of just songs in Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Malaysian and many other languages. One accidental press of the wrong button on the remote control and you could be crooning along to Koreapop (if you could read hangul).

I selected ‘End of the World As We Know It’ by REM, not because I thought I could sing it but because I’ve always wanted to know what the words are. There are lots of them, they come very quickly and I couldn’t sing it, but everybody knew the chorus and helped me out and when it ended I got a round of applause for my bravery. I was also to find out the words to ‘The Look’ by Roxette. They’re wonderfully nonsensical in a poorly translated Swedish sort of way. Loving is the ocean, kissing is the wet sand. Huh?

I head banged at the right point in Bohemian Rhapsody (thanks of course to Wayne's World), knew all the words to Midnight Oil and INXS tunes, laughed at the expense of my friends’ attempts at singing Beatles, Missy Higgins and Elvis, and enjoyed the antics of the buck in his Lederhosen who decided to give us a song and dance routine to Kiss.

Perhaps the real triumph of Karaoke is the ability to turn the truly dreadful into, if not the truly wonderful, then maybe the hilariously bearable. 'I am the Walrus', 'Man, I Feel Like a Woman' and 'All Out of Love' have never sounded so reasonable.

OK, so the videos haven't improved. Korean pop boy is still trying to score with Korean pop girl, but much to my surprise, when I stumbled outside at 2am, I found I had enjoyed myself. And I’d do it again – but I probably should do some practising first.

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The Long of the Short of it

There are many ways to ruin a movie. Throw in a pointless romance for example or give it a Hollywood ending. Or cast Keanu Reeves in a lead role (to totally destroy it you could cast him opposite Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy with a Hollywood ending).

But of all the things that peeve me about modern film making, nothing gets my goat more than over selling a film with shorts that are too long, that not only give away the plot but also give away the best lines, and in the worst case give away the ending (OK – so maybe the worst case would be Keanu Reeves doing the voice over but fortunately even Hollywood won’t go that far).

I recently had the misfortune to view Thank You For Smoking. It’s an amusing film with an interesting spin on modern-day marketing of all those things that are bad for you – smoking, alcohol, fire arms and Keanu Reeves (I should move on I know but we go way back – as far as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Keanu was great in that but his acting just hasn’t progressed, let alone his hairstyle).

Thank You For Smoking has been promoted ad nauseum for months in cinemas with natty shorts combining a bit of narration, some clever graphics and some really funny lines. How do I know this? Because I see too many movies.

It is the curse of the movaholic to watch many more movie shorts than movies (the other curse is that there is nothing worth seeing at the DVD shop that you haven’t already seen). Really clever shorts are teasers, much as a bit of lace or some cleavage can inspire, titillate, torment and trigger the imagination. The shorts for Thank You For Smoking were the equivalent of full frontal nudity. Sure you liked it, don’t get me wrong, the job is almost done for us (that’s a line in the shorts by the way and a good one at that – I know them off by heart and that’s the problem).

I sat watching Thank You For Smoking almost waiting for all the lines to come. And of course, come they did. Those more fortunate than me to treat themselves to only the occasional film laughed generously and genuinely, I giggled at best. There were other lines too that were good and also some clever sight gags – Rob Lowe seemed to get all the best ones, but overall my lack of surprise turned what could have been a 4½ star highlight of the year into a 3 star take it or leave it.

So if you want an interesting study into modern movie shorts, get down to your local cinema, see anything you like but get there early and compare the shorts for M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady In the Water to The Devil Wears Prada starring Meryl Streep.

M’s films are all about seeing dead people or dead-like people and Lady In the Water is no exception. I don’t want to ruin the film by giving away the rest of the plot and the ending. You’ll have to see the shorts for that.

The Devil Wears Prada by comparison is one scene from the film. It’s clever, amusing and gives an insight into the characters. And then it stops. Best of all, Keanu Reeves is nowhere to be seen so I can’t wait to see it.

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Converting the Infidels

It is the dream of any fan of any sport that all the peoples of the world be so inclined. Soccer fans like to claim that their game is THE world game, but I doubt the New Guinea Highlanders that have seen white men twice want to be like Pele (actually they want to be like Mal Meninga but that's another story found elsewhere in this blog). Similarly, I'd like all Australians to wanna be Wallabies, but even I'm aware that that the bum sniffing codes are truly only played in two Eastern states. And don't even get me started on the plans of Australian Rules Football to eventually rule the planet - that's about as likely as American Football's (or Gridiron's) Down Under Bowl (no, really, it exists) being broadcast on free-to-air TV (which is only slightly less likely than Super 14s being broadcast on free-to-air TV - but that's a subject of regular tipping comp rants).

So most sports fans settle for much smaller goals. Those with children content themselves with simply brainwashing their children from the day they're born. My brother, in an effort to turn his sons into Wallabies, calls both Rugby League and Rugby Union just 'Rugby' so that as far as they're concerned it's the same thing and they will grow up not knowing what Rugby League is. It's an admirable cause designed to ensure that they don't follow the Bulldogs, but the plans were destroyed when the Tigers won the Premiership and his 1980s allegiances (and more particularly his 1989 heartbreak) ensured that he was the first on the bandwagon and his sons were soon sighted wearing Tigers jerseys.

A more common goal is the conversion of just one person, and that tends to be a partner, and the partner tends to be female. It's not sexist but statistics. I've tried it myself. I took an ex-girlfriend one day to one-day cricket. As any cricket fan who's tried this knows you have to start small. You don't introduce a virgin to the karma sutra, and you don't take a cricket virgin to a Test Match, you take her to a one-dayer.

I've pretty much got bored with one-day cricket. It's predictable and one-dimensional, of dubious entertainment value and lacking in the traditional strengths of test cricket - tactics that rival chess, stamina and concentration to rival marathon runners, a rich tradition of monumental deeds and nation defining controversies. One-day cricket is simple love 'em and leave 'em stuff but it serves (or at least served, until the advent of an even bigger abomination Twenty20 cricket) the masses appetites for results, action, colour and movement. So it’s a natural entrée for the uninitiated.

The day was going swimmingly. The ex was asking all the right questions and in those days you could still drink full-strength beer. With the correct amount of good humour we sledged the opposition supporters, cheered the inflatable condoms, booed the security guards popping beach balls and followed the chant of ‘Porn star – Porn star’ as a well-endowed blond in a Porn star t-shirt spilt a tray of beer (note here that the cricket was incidental). But then the Mexican wave started up. The first few laps were OK, but by the third lap we were sprayed by beer and on the fourth a half-eaten chicken landed in the exes lap. She’s a vegetarian and a tee-totaller. My one chance of converting her to my greatest passion (apart from barbeques and drinking) was over and the relationship ended soon after. I am sure it was no coincidence.

More recently, a friend went along to a soccer match between Australia and Kuwait. She had never been to a sporting match of any kind in her entire life, and debating the concept of soccer vs football with her was a total waste of time. But her reasoning was simple – I’ve reached a stage in my life where I need to know more people – more people are into sport – so I will give it a go too.

Now I hate soccer and I’m proud to say it (“soccer” – there I said it). I’d even rather watch one-day cricket. I warned her of the hours of no action, the pointlessness of a non-contact sport where any contact results in a pathetic attempt to fool the match official into awarding a penalty, and the arbitrary and random (ie non-skill) nature of the penalty shoot-out. But she went never the less.

Not surprisingly she was bored and texted me at half-time to tell me so. Her match report the next day consisted of “I went for Kuwait so people abused me but he Mexican Wave was fun. I left before it finished”. Apart from the irony of the Mexican Wave, my point was proved.

Now she has a boyfriend. He plays a variety of football. She’s not sure which but thinks they’re of both the touching (as in touch football) and non-touch (as in a Rugby code) varieties. Her very lack of understanding of this simple breakdown of the football codes (as incisive as it might be in an accidental sort of way) indicates to me that he has no chance whatsoever of converting her. And if he reads this article first he will never try.

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Freelance Massage

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I attempted to turn a fantasy into reality and explored the potential of freelance journalism. The lesson was learned. The pay is crap, it's really hard work, and, like being a travel writer, turning your hobby into a job can distance you from the very reason you enjoy the hobby in the first place.

Still, the Freelance Journalism course was the trigger for anumber of articles, some of which are dated, some of which are awful, and a couple that are OK. I like this one - it is of the nature of freelance journalism - and swedish massage - and me...



‘Freelance Journalism – Eight 1 hour lessons at the Intensive Language Centre’.

Well that’s a potential problem already. How intensive do I want my freelance journalism to be? Are we to be taught the art of dodging bullets, how to write and drink at the same time, the correct way to grow a four-day stubble and how to remove nicotine stains from one’s fingers?

Language Centre? Well English I imagine. It’s the only language I speak for one thing. Is journalism a language? Or do journalists communicate with each other in some sort of code through their writing or is it more of the nod/wink and silly handshake method preferred by Masons? Is it a question of tools? Are we to be taught to be flamboyant, to speak in punchy paragraphs, to translate, to spell, to punctuate, annotate, illustrate, photograph and plagiarise?

I walk to the Intensive Language Centre in the drizzling rain on Day 1. So far so good. I could be in London, probably Fleet St in the good old days, whenever that was. The Intensive Language Centre certainly seems to be rather intense. When I was a kid this was Cleveland St Boys High, and it had a definite fearsome reputation for thuggery, so that on this day I approach the building with some trepidation.

I follow a girl, mid-20s, cascading black curls, to the office. Students are being told which room to go to and how to get there. I quietly hope for the girl to ask for Freelance Journalism, although she doesn’t look the type. I admit to myself I don’t actually know what journalists look like. I think of them as small mug-shot boxes next to blocks of text or as caricatured icons (of the computer kind – not the religious kind) on the internet. But in any case, she doesn’t look the type.

“What course?”, we are asked.

“Swedish Massage”, she replies.

“Freelance Journalism”, I despondently mumble.

I follow her curvaceous hips up the stairs. I don’t choose to it’s just that our classes are next door to each other. Maybe it's true, I think - a stereotype based on a reality. Way out of my league alas. I'd be a blabbering mess just trying to talk to her let alone chat her up.

I console myself with the knowledge that my true skills are best kept to dark rooms late at night, tapping into a typewriter, a waft of cigarette smoke curling up to the slowly rotating ceiling fan. I could travel the world and be handsomely paid to do it, meet the strange and wonderful, tell the world of the globe’s majesty, contribute to world peace and understanding and make them laugh, make them laugh, make them laugh.

But just think of what I could do if I knew Swedish Massage.

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I - More than Just the Loneliest Letter

‘I’. It is the simplest letter in the English Language. In its capital form it is a single short or slightly longer stroke sometimes made more flamboyant by the addition of a head and tail. The ninth letter of the alphabet and the third vowel, ‘I’ is at its most powerful when standing proudly by itself unencumbered by the addition of extra baggage such as an ‘S’ a ‘T’ or an ‘F’. ‘I’ is the King of the letters in the great chess set of our language, seemingly innocuous and cumbersome yet at the same time an object of much desire and awe.

In it’s individual form, ‘I’ is blandly described by linguists as a ‘personal pronoun’. Yet to pigeon hole this letter in such a way does not do it any justice. To journalists, the simple addition of ‘I’ to a piece of work elevates the article from mere reporting to the far grander and ambitious level of opinion or even editorial. For anyone to deliberately open themselves to the court of public judgement by stating their own beliefs or thoughts is to risk driving a wedge in one’s readership by taking sides.

To write ‘I think’ is even worse. Thinking is not encouraged in much of society for fear of rocking whatever boat is at hand at the time. A journalist that is seen to think is viewed as a dangerous loose cannon by those that wield power, unless that thinking is along the lines of those with said power. Editorials may express an opinion, but unless an ‘I’ is used than there will always be the suspicion that the opinions expressed in the editorial are not necessarily those of the editor, but perhaps of the newspaper proprietor.

Point 4 in the journalists’ code of ethics actively discourages the use of subjective thinking. ‘They shall not allow personal interests to influence them in their professional duties’ it states. Yet aren’t we all the product of our own interests? The very fact that we are interested in them, that we have analysed and studied the subject, learned about it at length and enjoyed or been repulsed by it, implies that we are well positioned to comment on it. The whole fabric of our democratic society is based on making decisions, a freedom that millions have fought and died for. The freedom to write about our interests, to sit in judgement of others is an essential journalistic right.

Everyone is the product of their interests, they influence everything we do. Our interests operate subconsciously and guide us through life. It is impossible to prevent your interests from influencing what you say, think and do.

I am not proposing that reporting the facts of an incident should be embellished by the writer. It is for this very reason that reporting exists, to provide the information that others, including the reporter can use to make their own judgements. But all the best journalism involves a great deal of thinking and draws on a wealth of experience. All the best articles take time to state a case and if not expressly using the personal pronoun it is quite obvious that the piece is from a particular point of view. Personal interests, in their purest sense, when not used for personal gain, should actively be encouraged to form the basis of writing rather than be hidden in a cloak of political correctness and societal norms.

At least I think so.

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Talking About My Generation

"I think our generation has been called to apathy just as our grandparents were called to defeat fascism and the baby boomers were called to get divorced and fuck around for most of their adult lives before bankrupting the entire goddamn country when they retire. But we have the chance to do something really special here. Imagine a world where people didn't care enough to go to war over anything. Where some guy gets up in the morning and says, 'I know God wants me to kill the infidels and keep gay people from marrying each other, but I just don't give a shit. I'm going back to bed.' It would be paradise on earth. This is our mission. I think we can make it happen, but I really don't care either way. And that's called hope."

Paul Neilan, in conversation with Matt Borondy

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