Bloody cats

Last night, around midnight, a tabby cat jumped onto my living room windowsill and peered in. I don't like cats and usually I will send the local cats on their way with a harsh word and the threat of violence (actually, cats have learned this now and seem to avoid Chateau Carlos). You'll understand by this how unusual it would be for a cat to take such a liberty, in my mind at least. For whatever reason, I opened the window. Maybe I admired his swagger, maybe it was the blustery night. I thought that as long as no-one was looking, I'd extend the hand - or paw - of friendship, a bit like playing football in no man's land at Christmas. I have to admit that I was prepared to allow the cat in for a while for some non-consequential petting before I would turf him back out into the darkness whence he came. The cat, by now rolling gleefully on the sill, rubbing his face on the concrete and looking every inch the relaxed gent only looked disdainfully at the open window. His blank face seemed to be saying 'you've got the wrong end of the stick, pal'. I reached out to 'help' him inside and he just patted my hand with partially sheathed claws and playfully gnawed on my fingers - sharp enough to remind me he had claws and teeth but lightly enough for there to be no real intent. After a couple of rounds of this, and his manifest lack of interest in coming out of the squalls, he gave me a final blank look, jumped down and vanished into the night.

I can't help feeling that that cat used me for for some purpose I cannot fathom. And that's why I hate cats.

Strange Fruit

You have to admire Apple. There's marketing genius at work here and it has been troubling me since iPad Day that I couldn't find anything in my analogy locker to describe how it all works. Now, as the same people queue up yet again outside shops to get an iPhone 4, I have gained understanding.

Apple treat their customers like spoilt, greedy children and give them several Christmases a year. The secrecy, the suspense, the mystery ... I know people who seemed genuinely aggrieved if they can't have their Apple stuff on the day it is released. Like Christmas morning when everyone is outside on their new bike and you're not. Boo hoo. Unlike the real one, Apple make their Christmases moveable feasts and tease their children: "oh dear, we left the new 'phone prototype in a bar". Genius.

There would have to be compelling reasons for me to queue up outside a shop to spend some hundreds of pounds on a gadget on the day it was released. They would include, but not be limited to, the gadget:

• enabling me to fly like a bird;
• making me irresistible to women;
• enhancing my car's performance to Bugatti Veyron levels;
• conferring immortality; and
• granting me free drinks in any bar, simply by showing it to the bartender.

I don't see the new Apple products dealing with any of these. In fact, as far as I can tell, the iPad is a laptop without a keyboard* and the iPhone 4 is a mobile telephone that does a few webby things. I have an iPhone, it's a perk of my employment and I like it. In these harsh economic times I would not burst into tears if they took it off me. With the ghost of my dear old socialist dad sitting at my shoulder I'd say it would be better to keep a working man in a job for an extra week than gratify my desire for shiny toys. But liking the product and being turned into a fiery-eyed evangelist for the Church of Steve Jobs are two different things entirely. And that's what they do, by sucking customers into the 'club' and turning them into salespeople. From the outside it looks strangely like an addiction, the nervous avarice of Christmas coupled with a bunkered 'chosen people' mentality Jim Jones would have recognised and applauded.

Maybe I don't understand after all. I wouldn't buy a phone because the camera on it is better. I'd buy a camera. If I want to read a book, I'll buy a book (and enjoy owning it and not worry if it falls in the bath). Apple fanpeople are probably already slavering over the next pointless thing that will fail to make their lives any better or easier, and despise me for not 'getting it' in the meantime.

Ah well.

*iPad users - there is bad stuff in the world Apple didn't think you're smart or sophisticated enough to see: men kissing, women's breasts etc. It has been explained to them now, so now you can.

iPad musings by Swiss Tony

Desiring an iPad, Paul, is very much like courting a beautiful woman: she's unobtainable but you desire her, she's attractive and you can imagine what she'd be like to handle. She's sleek and appealing and she'll look good in your company. Other men like you will want to use her as you plan to. But when you've waited for her to say 'yes', perhaps after a long wait and an expensive dinner, you may find her bland and unresponsive. She may promise tricks and new sensations, but in a week you'll have experienced them all. Then one morning she'll fart in bed and you'll be ringing her a taxi home and ogling her younger sister.

Excuse me?

So if I have understood this correctly, 35,000 delegates have travelled, mostly in 'planes, to an out-of-the-way city in Northern Europe to discuss climate change? Am I missing the point?

Hollywood directors - I know where London is, thank you.

It's more worrying than entertaining to watch someone on YouTube, when presented with a world map and asked where Iraq is, confidently planting their finger in the middle of Australia. How does anyone know anything these days? Hollywood seems to have replaced good old-fashioned reading and talking to people who have seen things as the way to learn about the world around you, particularly history. Using the movies of the postwar era as your reference library, you would be forgiven for now believing all kinds of historical lies and revisionisms. Not all of Hollywood is bad, it's only entertainment after all. I’d say the best Hollywood can offer is the best the world can experience. However, if you accept that the Hollywood version of events might sometimes stray from the actuality just a little, it means that there are two kinds of people responsible for actually making and financing movies: those that believe the viewing public is sophisticated enough to enjoy their films, knowing them to be fictions and keeping their disbelief willingly suspended in order to be entertained; and those who really don't give a fuck what lasting impression moviegoers leave the cinema with as long as they have left their money behind.

So, movies are often well-intentioned and entertaining lies. Within those lies there are often truths buried, facts so incontrovertible they add a gloss of realism to your viewing experience. One of these facts, for instance, is that London is in England. I know this to be the case because I have seen it captioned so in movies. London, England. Usually over an establishing shot of the Houses of Parliament being passed by a red Routemaster bus full of men wearing bowler hats, or guardsmen standing to attention outside Buckingham palace in the rain. What I want to know is this – for whom is this caption instructional? Can there be any doubt that the action has not moved from Paris, France to London, Ohio but to the capital of the United Kingdom, one of the world's major cities?

It makes me wonder how many Americans have ever been abroad. One mitigating factor is that the United States of America is so vast, it has to reference its own cities by citing which state they are in. Hence New York, New York. There is an entire episode of Friends in which the characters struggle to name all fifty states. Lest this turn into us laughing behind our hands at the silly Americans, I doubt many of my work colleagues could point out Spalding, Lincolnshire on a map of Great Britain. But they don't make international blockbusting films in Spalding and they do in Hollywood. It's in Hollywood that it is deemed acceptable to issue films to be watched in London, England where the audience is told explicitly that London is in England. Hollywood directors – leave the captions out. We know where Prague is. More to the point, even if we didn't, it wouldn't matter. We don't hand over our £5 for a geography lesson.

I have a radical proposal that would not only make the movie-viewing experience less stressful for me personally, but might, eventually, bring harmony to the troubled regions of the world. Developed nations – don't send your armed forces to sort out the world's conflicts. Send tourists. For the same money as maintaining huge mechanised armies far from home, you could send millions of regular folk to Kabul, Basra and Jerusalem. And not just camera-toting pensioners of independent means. Send everyone at least twice. That way, when Jason Bourne is running through Alexanderplatz, Berlin, Germany, they can say "oh, that's where we had a Currywurst, right there under the tower" and enjoy the action sequence just a little bit more. OK, less work for the industry's caption writers but that's an egg I'd be willing to break to make the omelette. A spin-off from this mass travel would be a better informed populace when it came to voting. What's the alternative? One of these days we're going to find ourselves in the middle of a war with Australia because somebody advising the President got lucky with their day job. Think I'm kidding? One small change to the American Constitution and Arnie is President. Hasta la vista, baby.

A message from you, Rudi

I'm delighted to share, word for word, a text message from a very good friend - a German - who is currently working in a local school:

'Quotes from the English teacher: "Take out the work you done last week" and "where is Justin and Colin?" :) '

Spend, spend, spend

I don't intend to spend, spend, spend my way to financial security. I'm no economist but I do know that anything you don't need is not a bargain at any price. Here are things we DO need, in no particular order, that might have benefited from the injection of some billions of pounds:

• fixing crumbling schools and restoring free milk for primary kids;
• revitalising our bloated and bureaucratic health service;
• a proper re-nationalised public transport and utilities infrastructure;
• an end to fuel poverty;
• proper equipment so that if we have to fight wars we don't want, at least we have the tools to do it;
• £400 million into each of the above; or
  
• £33 for every citizen. It would end up in the banks or in the shops anyway AND it would keep circulating.

Just an idea.