I was having a conversation with my dad the other day, who tends towards the optimistic end of the spectrum as far as scientific progress goes. He was arguing that computers are bound to acheive self-awareness in the near future, given that they are advancing at such a great rate. I've included my response below, for anyone who's interested (be warned that many of the thoughts therein are pilfered from Raymond Tallis, Kenan Malik, Nicholas Humphrey and other techno-skeptics). Also, be warned - it's pretty long....
The conversation that we had about computers got me thinking: it was difficult to think on the run about the computer intelligence issue, so I’ve refined my thoughts on it a little.
I think it helps to think back to the first calculators. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that in 1950 there was an autistic maths genius who could calculate pi to 100 decimal places in only 3 seconds. This was a lot faster than anyone else in the world.
Then the first decent calculator was invented. It could calculate pi to one hundred decimal places in 2 seconds. When everyone heard about this, they were terrified. A computer had knocked man off his perch, threatening all that made him superior to the beasts!
Soon, though, people realised that they were mistaken. The calculator was better at calculating pi than the maths genius, but this did not make the computer ‘human’. The computer and the maths genius were performing an identical operation: feeding numbers into a simple algorithm. Using an algorithm is not a human trait; a computer that can do algorithms quickly cannot be said to be ‘human’. (It also shows how easily human-type words infect how we think about computers, making them seem more human than they are: the calculator wasn’t ‘feeding’ anything into anything, because it has no agency. Its ability to get the answer was simply the result of electrons being forced through a bunch of switches in a chunk of silicon by the laws of physics.)
The chess case is more complicated than the pi case, but not for the reason that I first thought. The reason why a Grand-Master-beating computer freaked everyone out so much is that the computer and Gary Kasparov – unlike the calculator and the maths genius – were not playing the same game.
Kasparov was playing chess. The computer, however, was only playing ‘chess’. To all observers, ‘chess’ was indistinguishable from chess. There was a real chess board in the room, with real pieces. Every time the computer printed a move on the screen, the attendants would physically move the chess pieces on the board.
‘Chess’ also looked like chess because Kasparov was in the room, sweating, becoming increasingly agitated, and generally acting human. We are used to seeing human-like things interacting with human-like things. So, by inference, the spectators assumed that Kasparov’s opponent was also a human-like thing.
But in fact, for a computer, playing ‘chess’ is just like calculating pi: numbers are fed into an algorithm. The computer, in a sense, did not beat Kasparov at chess, because it was not playing chess at all. It was only playing ‘chess’.
Kasparov, however, was playing chess. If he was playing chess against another Grand Master, his success would rest largely on his ability to second-guess his opponent several moves in advance. To win at chess, chess masters must construct a psychological profile of their opponent. This requires an understanding that the opponent is a thinking being, with his own self-contained intentions and desires. Only conscious entities can do this.
When two chess masters play each other, there is a circulation of thought between them:
‘If I do X, he will do Y; but if I do Z instead, he will still think that I am going to do X, because I know that he doesn’t know that I know that he will do Y if I do X’. This is not just number-crunching: it requires multiple levels of intentionality. Not only do you have to understand that your opponent is a thinking being, but you also have to understand that your opponent knows that you are a thinking being. And so on. This requires empathy with your opponent.
If the players know each other beforehand, this circulation of empathy becomes more obviously ‘human’. So, the famous Bobby Fisher vs. Boris Spassky match in the 1970s was highly dramatic, because each player knew the other, and could use their previous knowledge to second-guess the other man’s technique.
But even if the players don’t know each other, they have to quickly construct a complex, evolving sketch of the other player’s mind. This requires building a set of assumptions about the opponent’s future behaviour that can be violated if the player does not meet expectations. For example, if I know you as a reckless player, it may take me some time to realise that you are playing cautiously.
It’s true that chess-playing computers can use strings of human-like moves that seem to demonstrate an understanding of human psychology. But such moves have been put there by human programmers. In these cases, the computer functions as a simple container that has been filled with the products of human creativity (i.e. millions of moves). The computer uses an algorithm to select the most suitable string of moves, and uses that string to do the job: just like calculating pi.
The difference between Kasparov and Deep Blue was also invisible because humans are hardwired to ascribe intentionality to objects. We rely for our survival on interacting with other people, and we have an innate tendency to ascribe consciousness to non-conscious things (e.g. the wind blows a potplant over, and I think there is an intruder). So, we assume that Deep Blue was doing what Kasparov was doing – i.e. constructing a psychological profile of its opponent – but it wasn’t. They were doing totally different things.
Kasparov, meanwhile, couldn’t obtain a psychological profile of his opponent, for the simple reason that the computer has no psychology. A computer doesn’t ‘change tactics’ in order to psychologically intimidate its opponent – it just crunches more and more numbers. Another reason for the confusion is that the language of chess is hopelessly biased in favour of human agency: the computer is not really performing a ‘move’; it does not really put Kasparov in ‘check’; it is not really playing ‘aggressively’. All of these human terms are illusions based on our past experiences with humans. The computer is not ‘playing’ chess: it is performing algorithms.
Another reason that Deep Blue’s victory was seen as overly important is because of the strange nature of the game of chess. Chess comes with an incredible amount of cultural baggage. The powerful imagery of medieval battles gives chess an emotional dimension that it does not really have.
Imagine if chess pieces were identically shaped, and distinguished only by number. For instance: all the pieces are numbered squares. Call the Knight ‘piece no. 3’. Rule: Piece 3 can only move in an ‘L’ shape. Call the bishop ‘piece no. 4’. Rule: Piece no. 4 can only move diagonally. The game would be exactly the same, yet much of the effect would be lost. The rich connotations of battle are not part of the rules – we bring these feelings to the game because we are human, and are affected by the emotional connotations of battle.
This change to the game of chess would make the nature of the computer’s ‘victory’ a lot clearer. Computer chess is distorted by the same illusion that makes a Windows operating system seem more ‘human’ than a Dos system, even though they are performing identical operations.
This makes me think that the predictions about increased computer ‘intelligence’ have come to exactly nothing. Computers are faster at calculating pi than they were in 1950, because humans can now cram more logic gates on a silicon chip than they could before. But that is all computers are better at. They are no closer to achieving consciousness now than they were when the Chinese invented the abacus a few thousand years ago. Same principle, same result – just more beads on the abacus being flipped faster. The illusion of ‘intelligence’ is all in the interface: we supply the ‘human’ dimension and falsely ascribe it to the computer.
I can’t see how a supercomputer could be seen as anywhere near as ‘intelligent’, in an emotional sense, than, say, a mouse. The false promise of AI is even clearer when you think of how much better computers are than mice at lots of things (e.g. mice can’t calculate pi), yet how much worse they are at others. A mouse can experience a primitive form of affection for its carer – not because it can do more algorithms than a computer, but because it has a dim awareness of the existence of another being with separate intentions, even if this awareness is very limited.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Post-life
Some months ago, my friend – who is turning out to be a frequent source of unconventional wisdom these days – gave me some advice about managing anxiety. True to form, the advice was pretty much out of left field; when I first heard it, I was inclined to take it with a rather large chunk of salt. But as I think more about it, his theory sounds more plausible. I’ll paraphrase him here (although, due to my partial memory of the conversation, he’ll just have to grin and bear it if I heinously misquote him).
“A few years ago, I noticed that I was having quite a few panic attacks. When I spoke to my friends – who were also in their mid-20s at this time – it turned out that they were having similar experiences. For a while there, it seemed like everyone I knew was suffering from panic attacks. This made me realise that our mid-20s are a pretty intense time for such feelings.
This got me thinking: why is it, at this age, that anxiety hits people so hard?
I began to realise that this type of anxiety could be caused by our growing awareness of our mortality.
In our teenage years, we think that we’re pretty much invincible – and by and large, we are. But when you notice yourself aging a little bit, you begin to understand that this kind of attitude can’t be sustained. We all get older, of course; when we start understanding that we’re on a continuum with our elders, rather than being totally separate from them, we suddenly stop thinking of ourselves as a ‘special case’.
I stopped feeling anxious about the future once I began to think of mortality differently. When I was younger, I thought about the fact of death a lot differently than I do now.
In our teens, we find it hard to think of the fact of death in a genuine way. It’s simply that we don’t really understand it. We all have moments when we – even fleetingly – imagine what it would be like if we were no longer around.
The difference between then and now is that these imaginings of the end of our lives are based on a failure of imagination. When we are feeling very sorry for ourselves (for instance, when we feel unappreciated by our peers) we ask ourselves the question: ‘what would they do if I wasn’t here?’ This idea is based on the selfish idea that all children have – i.e. the world won’t be able to function without me.
Although it may not seem like it, this is a comforting thought. But it’s also a destructive one.
When we are young, we find it impossible to think of a situation when we are ‘not here’. This is because we can’t help seeing it from our own perspective.
Think back to when you were a child, when you were angry with a parent or friend for not appreciating you. You probably thought, ‘what would they do without me?’
If we travel forward in time until after our deaths, we sometimes tend to imagine people grieving for us at our funeral. It is a type of revenge fantasy. The people in attendance will be saying, ‘I wish I appreciated him when he was around.’ In this common childhood daydream, we are watching our friends as they mourn for us. We feel validated by this fantasy, because we are able to maintain the same perspective that we have in our everyday lives. We stick around as observers, just so that we can say, ‘I told you so.’
But if we can only think of death by including our own subjectivity, we have not properly faced up to it. The challenge of mortality, for an adult, is to think of life going on without you. This doesn’t mean thinking of life going on while you are watching it from a nice spot in heaven. The conventional Christian idea of an afterlife is flawed, because it can’t take the ‘self’ out of the equation. When we imagine ourselves in ‘heaven’, we are still ‘alive’ in the sense that we retain our own identity. It is a comforting denial of the fact of death, rather than an acceptance of it.
Thinking of death in a purer sense is more difficult, but it helps to dispel anxiety about our future. We have to be able to think of the time after we are gone as lacking our selves, not just our bodies. Getting rid of the ‘observer’ also rids you of the thought that your friends and family only have meaning in relation to you. Forcing yourself to imagine a state of the world where you no longer have a perspective to view things from may sound scary; however, I found that it was a very effective way to come to terms with the limitations of my own existence.
After I learned to jettison the notion of ‘afterlife’ as a time in which we can only helplessly observe the world, I found that my anxiety was no longer such a problem. You can only accept your finite lifespan once you realise that the end of life also entails the end of subjectivity.”
Not bad for a half hour at the pub, eh?
“A few years ago, I noticed that I was having quite a few panic attacks. When I spoke to my friends – who were also in their mid-20s at this time – it turned out that they were having similar experiences. For a while there, it seemed like everyone I knew was suffering from panic attacks. This made me realise that our mid-20s are a pretty intense time for such feelings.
This got me thinking: why is it, at this age, that anxiety hits people so hard?
I began to realise that this type of anxiety could be caused by our growing awareness of our mortality.
In our teenage years, we think that we’re pretty much invincible – and by and large, we are. But when you notice yourself aging a little bit, you begin to understand that this kind of attitude can’t be sustained. We all get older, of course; when we start understanding that we’re on a continuum with our elders, rather than being totally separate from them, we suddenly stop thinking of ourselves as a ‘special case’.
I stopped feeling anxious about the future once I began to think of mortality differently. When I was younger, I thought about the fact of death a lot differently than I do now.
In our teens, we find it hard to think of the fact of death in a genuine way. It’s simply that we don’t really understand it. We all have moments when we – even fleetingly – imagine what it would be like if we were no longer around.
The difference between then and now is that these imaginings of the end of our lives are based on a failure of imagination. When we are feeling very sorry for ourselves (for instance, when we feel unappreciated by our peers) we ask ourselves the question: ‘what would they do if I wasn’t here?’ This idea is based on the selfish idea that all children have – i.e. the world won’t be able to function without me.
Although it may not seem like it, this is a comforting thought. But it’s also a destructive one.
When we are young, we find it impossible to think of a situation when we are ‘not here’. This is because we can’t help seeing it from our own perspective.
Think back to when you were a child, when you were angry with a parent or friend for not appreciating you. You probably thought, ‘what would they do without me?’
If we travel forward in time until after our deaths, we sometimes tend to imagine people grieving for us at our funeral. It is a type of revenge fantasy. The people in attendance will be saying, ‘I wish I appreciated him when he was around.’ In this common childhood daydream, we are watching our friends as they mourn for us. We feel validated by this fantasy, because we are able to maintain the same perspective that we have in our everyday lives. We stick around as observers, just so that we can say, ‘I told you so.’
But if we can only think of death by including our own subjectivity, we have not properly faced up to it. The challenge of mortality, for an adult, is to think of life going on without you. This doesn’t mean thinking of life going on while you are watching it from a nice spot in heaven. The conventional Christian idea of an afterlife is flawed, because it can’t take the ‘self’ out of the equation. When we imagine ourselves in ‘heaven’, we are still ‘alive’ in the sense that we retain our own identity. It is a comforting denial of the fact of death, rather than an acceptance of it.
Thinking of death in a purer sense is more difficult, but it helps to dispel anxiety about our future. We have to be able to think of the time after we are gone as lacking our selves, not just our bodies. Getting rid of the ‘observer’ also rids you of the thought that your friends and family only have meaning in relation to you. Forcing yourself to imagine a state of the world where you no longer have a perspective to view things from may sound scary; however, I found that it was a very effective way to come to terms with the limitations of my own existence.
After I learned to jettison the notion of ‘afterlife’ as a time in which we can only helplessly observe the world, I found that my anxiety was no longer such a problem. You can only accept your finite lifespan once you realise that the end of life also entails the end of subjectivity.”
Not bad for a half hour at the pub, eh?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Latent Content Warning
Earlier this week, after sleeping soundly on my friend’s superbly comfortable couch, I awoke from one of those dreams that I am convinced only my brain could think up. I have included a transcript for your amusement.
* * *
FRIEND: OK, Tim – just a few points about the house before you go to sleep. Now, it’s true that we’re renting, but the rent only really includes the furniture.
ME: What do you mean?
FRIEND: Well, we rent the furniture, but the floor is on a time-share arrangement.
ME: Ah. Hmmm?
FRIEND (Energetically picking up a chair in each arm): Well, we share the floor with another family. They have half the floor area, and we have the other half.
ME (Baffled): Right. So how does that work?
FRIEND: It’s complicated. Although they have half the floor area, it’s not always the same half.
ME (With bafflement rapidly intensifying): I’m lost.
FRIEND: OK. Well, here’s the diagram (unfurling immense blueprint on kitchen table): Now, you’ll see here that on Monday nights, the ‘floor rights’ change throughout the evening. It’s about nine o’clock now, so we have access to here – here – and here.
ME (Miraculously understanding complex schematic blueprint): But...we don’t have access to the piece of floor right underneath us.
FRIEND: That’s why I have to move the chairs.
ME: Where are you taking them?
FRIEND: (Pointing to blueprint): Here. We are allowed on this, this, and this piece of floor at this time.
ME: Do we have access to those pieces of floor all of the time?
FRIEND: No. It changes hourly. (Friend puts both chairs down on vacant floor section. While he is doing so, the floor area on blueprint starts moving, thus redistributing floor ownership rights).
ME: It just moved!
FRIEND: Oh. It does that sometimes. Where is our available floor space now?
ME (helplessly pointing): Where the chairs were before.
FRIEND (admirably taking situation in his stride): OK. I’ll move the chairs back there, then. Can you please grab the couch and move it to that other piece of floor over there?
ME (Warily): OK.
As I drag couch to available floor area, I nervously glance at kitchen table. Blueprint design continues to move of its own accord.)
ME: It did it again.
FRIEND: Did what again?
ME: Um, now the bit of floor that we’re allowed on is where it was before.
FRIEND (suspiciously): Are you sure you’re reading the blueprint correctly?
ME: No, not really.
FRIEND (In tone that strongly suggests that it was all my fault):
Just help me with these chairs, Tim.
* * *
Although this dream probably lasted minutes, it seemed a good bit longer. When I woke up, I felt as if I had been moving chairs for hours. I walked across to the nearest chair, grabbed a firm hold of it and thought: “so, it’s 6am: this chair goes….where exactly?”
And it was only then that I felt really stupid. (I sincerely hope that I wasn’t moving the chairs around in reality while I was asleep, but I can't completely rule this out.)
So, brain, my question to you is this: Just what the hell are you playing at?
* * *
FRIEND: OK, Tim – just a few points about the house before you go to sleep. Now, it’s true that we’re renting, but the rent only really includes the furniture.
ME: What do you mean?
FRIEND: Well, we rent the furniture, but the floor is on a time-share arrangement.
ME: Ah. Hmmm?
FRIEND (Energetically picking up a chair in each arm): Well, we share the floor with another family. They have half the floor area, and we have the other half.
ME (Baffled): Right. So how does that work?
FRIEND: It’s complicated. Although they have half the floor area, it’s not always the same half.
ME (With bafflement rapidly intensifying): I’m lost.
FRIEND: OK. Well, here’s the diagram (unfurling immense blueprint on kitchen table): Now, you’ll see here that on Monday nights, the ‘floor rights’ change throughout the evening. It’s about nine o’clock now, so we have access to here – here – and here.
ME (Miraculously understanding complex schematic blueprint): But...we don’t have access to the piece of floor right underneath us.
FRIEND: That’s why I have to move the chairs.
ME: Where are you taking them?
FRIEND: (Pointing to blueprint): Here. We are allowed on this, this, and this piece of floor at this time.
ME: Do we have access to those pieces of floor all of the time?
FRIEND: No. It changes hourly. (Friend puts both chairs down on vacant floor section. While he is doing so, the floor area on blueprint starts moving, thus redistributing floor ownership rights).
ME: It just moved!
FRIEND: Oh. It does that sometimes. Where is our available floor space now?
ME (helplessly pointing): Where the chairs were before.
FRIEND (admirably taking situation in his stride): OK. I’ll move the chairs back there, then. Can you please grab the couch and move it to that other piece of floor over there?
ME (Warily): OK.
As I drag couch to available floor area, I nervously glance at kitchen table. Blueprint design continues to move of its own accord.)
ME: It did it again.
FRIEND: Did what again?
ME: Um, now the bit of floor that we’re allowed on is where it was before.
FRIEND (suspiciously): Are you sure you’re reading the blueprint correctly?
ME: No, not really.
FRIEND (In tone that strongly suggests that it was all my fault):
Just help me with these chairs, Tim.
* * *
Although this dream probably lasted minutes, it seemed a good bit longer. When I woke up, I felt as if I had been moving chairs for hours. I walked across to the nearest chair, grabbed a firm hold of it and thought: “so, it’s 6am: this chair goes….where exactly?”
And it was only then that I felt really stupid. (I sincerely hope that I wasn’t moving the chairs around in reality while I was asleep, but I can't completely rule this out.)
So, brain, my question to you is this: Just what the hell are you playing at?
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Reposting 'Graffiti Junction'
I took this article off because it was mean and unfair. But now I've decided, with the help of a friend's advice, that taking posts off blogs just because you don't like them anymore is chicken. So here it is again. I'll get the hang of this blog thing eventually.
* * *
I saw an article the other day about a man whose house had been graffitied. Or, to use the singular form, he discovered a large Graffito on his wall. Of course, he wanted to do what most of us would – i.e. scrub it off – only to find that it had been heritage-listed in the interim. (That’ll teach him for holding fire with the Karcher!) Accompanying the article was a picture of the ‘redecorated’ house. Sure, the graffiti was colourful; it might even be called ‘competent’ if you were feeling generous. But the fact that people were seriously proposing protecting an afternoon’s misadventure with a spraycan seemed a little odd to me.
This isn’t a paranoid argument about all the 'thugs who are threatening our private property', as Andrew Bolt might say. I don’t really care about the man’s house, and anyway, the Graffitied wall looked perfectly OK. But I want to discuss why our expectations are so gutter-level low when it comes to assessing the aesthetic merits of Graffiti, to the point where a marginally competent glittery logo on someone’s house can spark a call for its preservation.
Anyone looking for a rock-solid argument against artistic relativism is invited to visit a place in St. Kilda called ‘Graffiti Junction’. It is a comprehensive refutation of the wishful argument that if we only provided legitimate places for graffiti artists to express themselves, our surroundings would be awash in colour and beauty.
Let’s be blunt. ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a piece of irritating crap. (Go on: admit it to yourself as you’re forced to walk through it. Hating a piece of bad art will make you feel better, I promise.) Despite their lack of talent, its contributors have achieved quite a feat: they have made something significantly uglier than the butt-ugly concrete underpass it conceals.
To figure out why this is, it’s important to remember that Graffiti Junction is actually an ‘artwork’ in two distinct parts. The (tiny) ‘Jekyll’ part looks like a typical mural painted on the inside of a train station walkway. You know the ones I mean – they’re all pretty much the same, even in the US and England, and probably everywhere else in the world. The archetypal ‘train station mural’ is painted with honourable intentions, bright primary colours, and (usually) comically crook execution. Diego Rivera does not, at any stage, spring to mind when looking at it. But despite this, train station murals actually improve most people’s lives. This is because they are painted by good people, with sincere faith in humanity, for good reasons. TSMs are nearly always about one of two issues:
a. Saving the environment, and
b. Achieving worldwide racial harmony.
Both are obviously noble causes. TSMs won’t win any prizes for artistic excellence, but they are uniformly honest, positive and direct. And faith in humanity is sorely needed when you’re being squeezed through the godforsaken bowels of Sydney’s Central Station.
Graffiti Junction Part A. is part of the TSM school. It contains a cartoon version of a tram, an Aboriginal flag, and (from memory) assorted Australian flora and fauna. It reminds you what a nice city Melbourne can be; makes the underpass look more cheerful; and perks you up when your hangover threatens to destroy you. Job done.
Graffiti Junction Part B. is a very different beast. Here, we have the graffiti ‘artist’s’ dream – finally, a legal place to express one’s inner thoughts, within the cosseting embrace of a government-funded social improvement project!
It’s probably too kind to call Graffiti Junction B a two-dimensional representation of a Technicolor Yawn. Walking through the brain-fart-art of the underpass is oppressive to the point of nausea.
There is a glimmer of artistic hope in a figure that looks like the Monopoly Mascot, complete with cigar, bowler hat, and monocle, standing pompously against a wall, brandishing a whip. The sentiment’s inane (Capitalism’s bad, m’kay?) but I like the Monopoly man.
But the rest! Did a vast graffiti artist convention pass an unbreakable decree that its every member must paint like a degenerate? The walls of the underpass are full of that bubbly, bespangled lettering that has somehow become the official letterform of the Graffiti movement.
The standout picture - and I mean that in a bad way - depicts a comely, green, be-warted Martian woman in a low-cut haltertop top commandeering a personal flying saucer, which she controls via a ‘Space Invaders’ joystick. Remember: an adult painted this.
I have come up with a theory on why people praise Graffiti ‘art’. When you’re on, say, the Frankston line, and you see an ornate tag – such as ‘Wozza ‘D4ZA!’ or some other witty jibe – why are you impressed?
It’s not because it’s good. It’s because such art forces us to imagine the circumstances under which it was produced. i.e. the spraypainter’s manic foray at the wall before fleeing from the cops. And we think: ‘Wow! Just imagine what he would have had time to do if he wasn’t a criminal!’
But at Graffiti Junction shows, more time doesn’t help. Ripping off the bandaid of criminality only exposes the suppurating wound of basic artistic incompetence. Seeing Graffiti as a rebellious act makes the juvenile, emotionally stunted, glittery crap that constitutes ‘Graffiti art’ seem much better, ‘edgier’, than it really is.
For now we know what happens when Wozza gets the chance to express himself. Gaining an outlet – a patron, I guess you’d say – doesn’t improve on the first products of his artistic urge, i.e. carving of ‘I H8 Fags’ in his school desk with a rusty compass. The official version of Graffiti looks shoddier than the rushed, illegal version, because you know that the artist wasn’t dodging Police when adding the last sparkle to the ‘A’ in ‘Wozza’.
Perhaps I take the Graffiti too personally. But I have friends who are seriously talented fine artists who take immense care with their work. I don’t hear, however, any arguments saying: ‘Just imagine what they could do if they had a massive piece of government-funded, weather-protected canvas to express their views!’ Sure, perhaps my upper-middle class background, and that of virtually all of my friends, is clouding my empathy for the misunderstood graffitist, but I doubt it. Criminality is Graffiti’s reason for being. It automatically turns an illegal act into a political and/or artistic statement. (The officially-sanctioned pseudo-rebellion of the title ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a desperate attempt to maintain an antisocial pose in the face of government-funded evidence to the contrary.)
But there’s also the ‘different in kind’ argument, which distinguishes noble, exulted Graffiti from mere ‘tagging’, the pastime of degenerates. This false distinction is based on the idea that adding borders, three-dimensionality and basic shading to illiterate slogans is sufficient to ‘art-ify’ it. The difference between a tagger and a Graffiti artist is one of degree, as both art forms exist for the same sole purpose: to escape law enforcement. (Granted, some graffiti displays a level of low-level dexterity – but so do compulsive masturbators, and I don’t see anyone giving them government grants. Perhaps that’s because they’re all in government themselves.)
Lest I be accused of being an elitist bastard, I want to finish with a case in support of stencil art, a phrase which I’ll allow to escape my terrifyingly sharp scare quotes.
Unlike graffiti, stencil art enriches its surroundings. This is because stencils are created, of course, away from the ‘scene of the crime’, giving the artists time to craft something of aesthetic worth before illegally depositing it. There is not the same obsession with naming in the stencil as in graffiti, where the perp’s greatest wish is to let people know that he has metaphorically pissed in a spot he shouldn’t have (I’m using the male pronoun out of respect for women). The stencils around Melbourne often suggest that their creators are capable of thinking a more complex thought than ‘Tracy = Slut’ or ‘Lebs: Go Home’.
To sum up, then: stencils = art, while graffiti = mild scourge. Society isn’t duty-bound to provide a ‘space of expression’ to everyone, least of all people whose sole claim to artistry is the possession of an opposable thumb to grip the spraycan with.
Posted by Timothy Roberts at 9:04 PM 0 comments
* * *
I saw an article the other day about a man whose house had been graffitied. Or, to use the singular form, he discovered a large Graffito on his wall. Of course, he wanted to do what most of us would – i.e. scrub it off – only to find that it had been heritage-listed in the interim. (That’ll teach him for holding fire with the Karcher!) Accompanying the article was a picture of the ‘redecorated’ house. Sure, the graffiti was colourful; it might even be called ‘competent’ if you were feeling generous. But the fact that people were seriously proposing protecting an afternoon’s misadventure with a spraycan seemed a little odd to me.
This isn’t a paranoid argument about all the 'thugs who are threatening our private property', as Andrew Bolt might say. I don’t really care about the man’s house, and anyway, the Graffitied wall looked perfectly OK. But I want to discuss why our expectations are so gutter-level low when it comes to assessing the aesthetic merits of Graffiti, to the point where a marginally competent glittery logo on someone’s house can spark a call for its preservation.
Anyone looking for a rock-solid argument against artistic relativism is invited to visit a place in St. Kilda called ‘Graffiti Junction’. It is a comprehensive refutation of the wishful argument that if we only provided legitimate places for graffiti artists to express themselves, our surroundings would be awash in colour and beauty.
Let’s be blunt. ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a piece of irritating crap. (Go on: admit it to yourself as you’re forced to walk through it. Hating a piece of bad art will make you feel better, I promise.) Despite their lack of talent, its contributors have achieved quite a feat: they have made something significantly uglier than the butt-ugly concrete underpass it conceals.
To figure out why this is, it’s important to remember that Graffiti Junction is actually an ‘artwork’ in two distinct parts. The (tiny) ‘Jekyll’ part looks like a typical mural painted on the inside of a train station walkway. You know the ones I mean – they’re all pretty much the same, even in the US and England, and probably everywhere else in the world. The archetypal ‘train station mural’ is painted with honourable intentions, bright primary colours, and (usually) comically crook execution. Diego Rivera does not, at any stage, spring to mind when looking at it. But despite this, train station murals actually improve most people’s lives. This is because they are painted by good people, with sincere faith in humanity, for good reasons. TSMs are nearly always about one of two issues:
a. Saving the environment, and
b. Achieving worldwide racial harmony.
Both are obviously noble causes. TSMs won’t win any prizes for artistic excellence, but they are uniformly honest, positive and direct. And faith in humanity is sorely needed when you’re being squeezed through the godforsaken bowels of Sydney’s Central Station.
Graffiti Junction Part A. is part of the TSM school. It contains a cartoon version of a tram, an Aboriginal flag, and (from memory) assorted Australian flora and fauna. It reminds you what a nice city Melbourne can be; makes the underpass look more cheerful; and perks you up when your hangover threatens to destroy you. Job done.
Graffiti Junction Part B. is a very different beast. Here, we have the graffiti ‘artist’s’ dream – finally, a legal place to express one’s inner thoughts, within the cosseting embrace of a government-funded social improvement project!
It’s probably too kind to call Graffiti Junction B a two-dimensional representation of a Technicolor Yawn. Walking through the brain-fart-art of the underpass is oppressive to the point of nausea.
There is a glimmer of artistic hope in a figure that looks like the Monopoly Mascot, complete with cigar, bowler hat, and monocle, standing pompously against a wall, brandishing a whip. The sentiment’s inane (Capitalism’s bad, m’kay?) but I like the Monopoly man.
But the rest! Did a vast graffiti artist convention pass an unbreakable decree that its every member must paint like a degenerate? The walls of the underpass are full of that bubbly, bespangled lettering that has somehow become the official letterform of the Graffiti movement.
The standout picture - and I mean that in a bad way - depicts a comely, green, be-warted Martian woman in a low-cut haltertop top commandeering a personal flying saucer, which she controls via a ‘Space Invaders’ joystick. Remember: an adult painted this.
I have come up with a theory on why people praise Graffiti ‘art’. When you’re on, say, the Frankston line, and you see an ornate tag – such as ‘Wozza ‘D4ZA!’ or some other witty jibe – why are you impressed?
It’s not because it’s good. It’s because such art forces us to imagine the circumstances under which it was produced. i.e. the spraypainter’s manic foray at the wall before fleeing from the cops. And we think: ‘Wow! Just imagine what he would have had time to do if he wasn’t a criminal!’
But at Graffiti Junction shows, more time doesn’t help. Ripping off the bandaid of criminality only exposes the suppurating wound of basic artistic incompetence. Seeing Graffiti as a rebellious act makes the juvenile, emotionally stunted, glittery crap that constitutes ‘Graffiti art’ seem much better, ‘edgier’, than it really is.
For now we know what happens when Wozza gets the chance to express himself. Gaining an outlet – a patron, I guess you’d say – doesn’t improve on the first products of his artistic urge, i.e. carving of ‘I H8 Fags’ in his school desk with a rusty compass. The official version of Graffiti looks shoddier than the rushed, illegal version, because you know that the artist wasn’t dodging Police when adding the last sparkle to the ‘A’ in ‘Wozza’.
Perhaps I take the Graffiti too personally. But I have friends who are seriously talented fine artists who take immense care with their work. I don’t hear, however, any arguments saying: ‘Just imagine what they could do if they had a massive piece of government-funded, weather-protected canvas to express their views!’ Sure, perhaps my upper-middle class background, and that of virtually all of my friends, is clouding my empathy for the misunderstood graffitist, but I doubt it. Criminality is Graffiti’s reason for being. It automatically turns an illegal act into a political and/or artistic statement. (The officially-sanctioned pseudo-rebellion of the title ‘Graffiti Junction’ is a desperate attempt to maintain an antisocial pose in the face of government-funded evidence to the contrary.)
But there’s also the ‘different in kind’ argument, which distinguishes noble, exulted Graffiti from mere ‘tagging’, the pastime of degenerates. This false distinction is based on the idea that adding borders, three-dimensionality and basic shading to illiterate slogans is sufficient to ‘art-ify’ it. The difference between a tagger and a Graffiti artist is one of degree, as both art forms exist for the same sole purpose: to escape law enforcement. (Granted, some graffiti displays a level of low-level dexterity – but so do compulsive masturbators, and I don’t see anyone giving them government grants. Perhaps that’s because they’re all in government themselves.)
Lest I be accused of being an elitist bastard, I want to finish with a case in support of stencil art, a phrase which I’ll allow to escape my terrifyingly sharp scare quotes.
Unlike graffiti, stencil art enriches its surroundings. This is because stencils are created, of course, away from the ‘scene of the crime’, giving the artists time to craft something of aesthetic worth before illegally depositing it. There is not the same obsession with naming in the stencil as in graffiti, where the perp’s greatest wish is to let people know that he has metaphorically pissed in a spot he shouldn’t have (I’m using the male pronoun out of respect for women). The stencils around Melbourne often suggest that their creators are capable of thinking a more complex thought than ‘Tracy = Slut’ or ‘Lebs: Go Home’.
To sum up, then: stencils = art, while graffiti = mild scourge. Society isn’t duty-bound to provide a ‘space of expression’ to everyone, least of all people whose sole claim to artistry is the possession of an opposable thumb to grip the spraycan with.
Posted by Timothy Roberts at 9:04 PM 0 comments
Early misgivings
It struck me, when reading over the last two posts, that the tone of this blog is overly grumpy. Doing a bit of research on Graffiti Junction, I read the following:
"Work on 'The Junction' started in April 2005 with over 100 individual stakeholders involved in the project. Especially deserving are the 50 volunteer artists. These included primary school students, members of the local indigenous community, respected Melbourne Street and Stencil Artists and the young people in Whitelion juvenile justice system serving community orders."
I've decided that in light of this, my comments on the graffiti wall were unduly harsh and mean-spirited. So, from now on, I'll try to tamp down the cranky and rachet up the crackpot.
"Work on 'The Junction' started in April 2005 with over 100 individual stakeholders involved in the project. Especially deserving are the 50 volunteer artists. These included primary school students, members of the local indigenous community, respected Melbourne Street and Stencil Artists and the young people in Whitelion juvenile justice system serving community orders."
I've decided that in light of this, my comments on the graffiti wall were unduly harsh and mean-spirited. So, from now on, I'll try to tamp down the cranky and rachet up the crackpot.
Stupidity on Tap
There's been a lot of talk recently about bottled water, the latest cause celebre of the Australian media, for some inexplicable reason. It’s been amusing, in a tragic sort of way, but – enough! Let’s end the bottled water ‘debate’ here and right-bloody-well now.
Bottled water is disturbing in the way that it reveals how some factions of the environmental movement (all the ones that write for newspapers, apparently) can develop severe ADD at moments when their attention should be on genuinely terrifying problems, like the possible ensuing destruction of the entire planet by negligent Governments who cheerfully let us burn whole valleys of brown coal to fuel our knick-knacks.
Anyway, ‘experts’ at The Age and the SMH have recently discussed the environmental impact of bottled water as if it made a detectable, even alarming, contribution to global warming. Their argument goes like this: the bottles that entomb retailed water are made from oil – true. Also, the fossil fuels needed to transfer this heavy product from, um, mountain to shop, cause further damage. This is trivially true – as Dad always told me, a cubic metre of water weighs a whole damn tonne) – but utterly negligible by any reasonable definition. It makes as much sense as attacking shoelace manufacturers for their industry’s devastating contribution to land degradation caused by the cultivation of cotton
More importantly, the above bogus argument overlooks the clear benefits of bottled water, which performs a valuable service that is almost never discussed in polite circles. Like homeopathy – a highly sophisticated, soothingly ancient and completely non-invasive system of medicine which is also 100% water-based, and therefore useless – I see the bottled water industry as an indirect system of redistributive taxation which steadily takes money away from the cretinous, eventually making it available to the rest through stimulating the economy. (Admittedly this trickle-down effect, so to speak, must occur via the overstuffed coffers of unscrupulous multinationals, but let’s look at the positives for now).
The fact that someone can voluntarily pay for this stuff is one of the quirkiest aspects of modern life. Sure, we don’t have nearly enough water in Oz; but, at least in urban areas, it gushes prodigiously out of that wonderful device that we blithely call ‘the tap’. (A free pearl of wisdom for bottled-water connoisseurs: there’s one of these magnificent oracles in your kitchen…and another in your bathroom, O happy day!)
Even funnier than watching people buying the clear stuff for exorbitant prices is watching advertising companies trying to flog it – which they do with spectacular and depressing success. The meagre clutch of arguments deployed to this end can be broken down into a few distinct groups:
• The ‘healthful’ argument, i.e. bottled water is better for you than tap water. This argument is easily demolished due to its being such out-and-out bullshit. Bottled water is tap water. And putting it into a bottle doesn’t make it magic – only Jesus can do that, children. (Biblical scholars please note that His disciples, bless their pragmatic souls, became awed only after He turned water into wine. Working the miracle circuit would have been much, much easier for JC if the shindig at Canaan was populated with today’s water-purchasing yuppies. He could have easily convinced them of his Godliness in a jiffy, simply by pouring water from a large amphora into a slightly smaller one. End of miracle. Cue gasps, applause, cries of ‘Why, that was a good one, Lord!’)
• The ‘tasty’ argument, i.e. bottled water tastes better. Sorry: it doesn’t taste better, it tastes worse. Much worse, actually – almost as if it’s been distilled from the synthetic urine of a gigantic inflatable llama.
• The ‘picturesque source’ argument: the bottled water that you buy is taken directly from pristine sandstone repositories in the [insert photogenic mountain range here]. Bullshit again in most cases, I’m afraid: most of it comes out of the good ol’ tap, augmented with a bit of Capitalist wand-waving to provide it with its shiny commodity-aura.
• The ‘portability’ argument: although this is by far the most hilarious tactic, I often become stricken with worry for the human race when I wonder if this has ever actually influenced anyone’s buying habits. This quasi-Dadaist selling point emphasises the fact that the bottle of water you just unforgivably purchased for 3 bucks ‘moves with you’. (What’s the cheapo alternative, I wonder? A bottle of water that stays on the counter when you leave the shop?) As I found out to my intense disappointment, so-called ‘portable water’ still requires you to physically carry it, rather than, say, gliding serenely beside you on a velvet-lined Rickshaw held delicately aloft by a bevy of nubile Arabian Princesses. Oh well.
• The ‘lifestyle’ argument (also featured in every other ad ever made for anything): Drinking Brand X bottled water will make you sexy. (Tried it. Didn’t work. Beer is infinitely better for this, and for most other purposes to boot. The best thing that can be said for water in this respect is that it doesn’t Provoketh the Desire while it Taketh away the Performance, as I learned in my Year 10 English class.)
So, next time you see a misguided person serenely sipping the elixir of life from their translucent-blue Mt. Franklin bottle, don’t lecture them on their implicit support for the Military-Industrial Complex. Spend the money that you save on Beer, the real elixir of life – then laugh drunkenly at their precisely-measured, acetic, spuriously-carbon-neutral sippings from the other end of the bar, preferably while passionately making out with a beautiful, and equally tipsy, person whom you just met.
Them Yuppies’ll break eventually.
Bottled water is disturbing in the way that it reveals how some factions of the environmental movement (all the ones that write for newspapers, apparently) can develop severe ADD at moments when their attention should be on genuinely terrifying problems, like the possible ensuing destruction of the entire planet by negligent Governments who cheerfully let us burn whole valleys of brown coal to fuel our knick-knacks.
Anyway, ‘experts’ at The Age and the SMH have recently discussed the environmental impact of bottled water as if it made a detectable, even alarming, contribution to global warming. Their argument goes like this: the bottles that entomb retailed water are made from oil – true. Also, the fossil fuels needed to transfer this heavy product from, um, mountain to shop, cause further damage. This is trivially true – as Dad always told me, a cubic metre of water weighs a whole damn tonne) – but utterly negligible by any reasonable definition. It makes as much sense as attacking shoelace manufacturers for their industry’s devastating contribution to land degradation caused by the cultivation of cotton
More importantly, the above bogus argument overlooks the clear benefits of bottled water, which performs a valuable service that is almost never discussed in polite circles. Like homeopathy – a highly sophisticated, soothingly ancient and completely non-invasive system of medicine which is also 100% water-based, and therefore useless – I see the bottled water industry as an indirect system of redistributive taxation which steadily takes money away from the cretinous, eventually making it available to the rest through stimulating the economy. (Admittedly this trickle-down effect, so to speak, must occur via the overstuffed coffers of unscrupulous multinationals, but let’s look at the positives for now).
The fact that someone can voluntarily pay for this stuff is one of the quirkiest aspects of modern life. Sure, we don’t have nearly enough water in Oz; but, at least in urban areas, it gushes prodigiously out of that wonderful device that we blithely call ‘the tap’. (A free pearl of wisdom for bottled-water connoisseurs: there’s one of these magnificent oracles in your kitchen…and another in your bathroom, O happy day!)
Even funnier than watching people buying the clear stuff for exorbitant prices is watching advertising companies trying to flog it – which they do with spectacular and depressing success. The meagre clutch of arguments deployed to this end can be broken down into a few distinct groups:
• The ‘healthful’ argument, i.e. bottled water is better for you than tap water. This argument is easily demolished due to its being such out-and-out bullshit. Bottled water is tap water. And putting it into a bottle doesn’t make it magic – only Jesus can do that, children. (Biblical scholars please note that His disciples, bless their pragmatic souls, became awed only after He turned water into wine. Working the miracle circuit would have been much, much easier for JC if the shindig at Canaan was populated with today’s water-purchasing yuppies. He could have easily convinced them of his Godliness in a jiffy, simply by pouring water from a large amphora into a slightly smaller one. End of miracle. Cue gasps, applause, cries of ‘Why, that was a good one, Lord!’)
• The ‘tasty’ argument, i.e. bottled water tastes better. Sorry: it doesn’t taste better, it tastes worse. Much worse, actually – almost as if it’s been distilled from the synthetic urine of a gigantic inflatable llama.
• The ‘picturesque source’ argument: the bottled water that you buy is taken directly from pristine sandstone repositories in the [insert photogenic mountain range here]. Bullshit again in most cases, I’m afraid: most of it comes out of the good ol’ tap, augmented with a bit of Capitalist wand-waving to provide it with its shiny commodity-aura.
• The ‘portability’ argument: although this is by far the most hilarious tactic, I often become stricken with worry for the human race when I wonder if this has ever actually influenced anyone’s buying habits. This quasi-Dadaist selling point emphasises the fact that the bottle of water you just unforgivably purchased for 3 bucks ‘moves with you’. (What’s the cheapo alternative, I wonder? A bottle of water that stays on the counter when you leave the shop?) As I found out to my intense disappointment, so-called ‘portable water’ still requires you to physically carry it, rather than, say, gliding serenely beside you on a velvet-lined Rickshaw held delicately aloft by a bevy of nubile Arabian Princesses. Oh well.
• The ‘lifestyle’ argument (also featured in every other ad ever made for anything): Drinking Brand X bottled water will make you sexy. (Tried it. Didn’t work. Beer is infinitely better for this, and for most other purposes to boot. The best thing that can be said for water in this respect is that it doesn’t Provoketh the Desire while it Taketh away the Performance, as I learned in my Year 10 English class.)
So, next time you see a misguided person serenely sipping the elixir of life from their translucent-blue Mt. Franklin bottle, don’t lecture them on their implicit support for the Military-Industrial Complex. Spend the money that you save on Beer, the real elixir of life – then laugh drunkenly at their precisely-measured, acetic, spuriously-carbon-neutral sippings from the other end of the bar, preferably while passionately making out with a beautiful, and equally tipsy, person whom you just met.
Them Yuppies’ll break eventually.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Urinal Etiquette
What’s that, ladies? An oxymoron, you say? Not a bit of it: just as exquisite tendrils of bathroom mould can flare up violently behind sodden towel rails, unexpectedly intricate social mores can bloom in the most inhospitable of places.
So it goes with urinal etiquette.
While having a Monday night drink with a friend at a cosy Fitzroy pub, the more delicate branch of my excretory system reached its endgame. Now, a striking fact, of which few women are aware, is the strange effects that ‘personalised’ urinals (a.k.a. ‘horizontal basins’, if you will) have over the communal, stainless-steel variety (a.k.a. ‘hog troughs’, whether you will or no). I will try and explain this concept to you as clearly as I’m able, using my own experience as a template.
On entering the men’s room, I was forced to wait for one of the three uri-cubicles (i.e. a personalised, wall-mounted urinal – ‘uri-cubicle’ is my second, preferred coinage for this heinous invention, the formal name of which escapes me).
The first person to finish was the occupant of the middle uri-cubicle. (I hope you are paying attention: you may think this detail is insignificant, but you would be dead wrong.)
Thus begins the first impossible trial of The Soon-To-Be-Urinating Man: i.e. to discreetly position himself between two currently urinating men while not seeming intrusive. A hard task at the best of times, this is made infinitely more so when dealing with Uri-Cubicals. (This effect has something to do, I think, with the fact that each man’s Uri-Cubicle effectively becomes his ‘private property’ when in use, while Hog Troughs derive from a more Marxian tradition. But I digress).
On moving into the middle position, the two men flanking me moved slightly, grudgingly sideways, crablike, as you would if a new, hostile urinator in town – The Urinator With No Name, if you will – had positioned himself between you and your buddy.
Things continued quite uneventfully for a few seconds. (A blessing. No news is good news at this particular time).
And then problem #2 arrived. (It gets a little complicated here, so please pay attention – it may help if you draw a (tasteful) diagram for your own reference.)
If the middle urinator arrives at the uri-cubicle after the left and right urinators, they will of course tend to finish before he does.
But the ‘changing of the guard’ ritual forces the urinator-intruder to commit a second imposition even worse than the first.
For if one of the outermost urinators leaves his uri-cubicle before the other (which is usually the case, unless the two outermost urinators are perfectly synchronised, which is unlikely.), the two remaining urinators – the newcomer-intruder in the middle and the remaining veteran on the edge – find themselves in sudden, unwelcome proximity. (The distance between them of course remains the same, but it feels closer, due to the loss of the counterbalancing force of the recently-departed outer urinator. That’s relativity – although I forget whether it is the Special or General theory).
Anyhow, who is blamed for this situation? Why, the urinator-intruder, naturally – even if his motives be as pure as the driven (yellow) snow!
But, I hear you say, surely there is a way out of this impasse. Yet state your case, and I will refute it.
There is, of course, no chance of either one of the unwillingly adjacent urinators relocating to the outermost uri-cubicle at this late point of the game:
As for the middle urinator, a hasty relocation is deeply suspicious – possibly disastrous, if the execution is bungled.
For the rightmost urinator, relocation is logically impossible, as he already occupies an outer position in the uri-cubicle complex: how would it benefit him to move around the central urinator?
The intruder, on committing his second faux-pas by no fault of his own, is falsely viewed as the willing cause of this awkwardness.
Finally, bladder capacities being equal, the remaining of the two initial urinators eventually leaves his post.
But the final – and most egregious – indignity suffered by the middle urinator-intruder has yet to occur. For remember: both outermost urinals are now vacant.
The following scenario commonly ensues. Two friends, both soon-to-be urinators themselves, enter the room. In a perfect world, they would each take up an outermost uri-cubicle, leaving the middle uri-cubicle vacant. (A vacant middle urinal makes conversation between men possible by minimizing genital proximity).
But of course, the initial urinator still occupies the middle uri-cubicle. His presence beside the two usurpers, brief though it is destined to be, achieves three things, all undesirable from his perspective:
i. It cuts off the possibility of conversation between the two friends, again causing the middle urinator to become the (hopefully figurative) target of resentment on both sides.
ii. It introduces an element of unanticipated genital proximity that strains the jovial, yet emotionally remote, atmosphere that is essential for a thriving uri-cubicle atmosphere.
iii. It forces our protagonist, the middle urinator, to perform a delicate ‘reversing’ movement in order to extricate himself from the middle position without committing an unnecessarily exhibitionistic ‘swivel’ manoeuvre.
(N.B. It is important to remember that our hero is no longer a urinator-intruder in relation to the two newcomers. It is they who are the urinator-intruders; although in the bitterest injustice of the whole experience, it is he who is treated as such.)
So, the interloper – who has now been thrice-disgraced for a single transgression! – must slink out of the uri-cubicle (a cruder, but not strictly inaccurate, writer would have said that he must do so, moreover, with his tail between his legs).
So please take note, ladies. It is not all beer and skittles when you are a member of the privileged gender that is permitted to fart with relative impunity at ceremonial occasions.
DISCLAIMER: Do not, under any circumstances, on the basis of the above article, attempt to verbally remind the two outer, replacement urinators that it is you who are the rightful and original (yet obviously still temporary) occupier/overseer of the uri-cubicle complex. Doing so may result in the painful and unexpected loss of urination apparatus.
So it goes with urinal etiquette.
While having a Monday night drink with a friend at a cosy Fitzroy pub, the more delicate branch of my excretory system reached its endgame. Now, a striking fact, of which few women are aware, is the strange effects that ‘personalised’ urinals (a.k.a. ‘horizontal basins’, if you will) have over the communal, stainless-steel variety (a.k.a. ‘hog troughs’, whether you will or no). I will try and explain this concept to you as clearly as I’m able, using my own experience as a template.
On entering the men’s room, I was forced to wait for one of the three uri-cubicles (i.e. a personalised, wall-mounted urinal – ‘uri-cubicle’ is my second, preferred coinage for this heinous invention, the formal name of which escapes me).
The first person to finish was the occupant of the middle uri-cubicle. (I hope you are paying attention: you may think this detail is insignificant, but you would be dead wrong.)
Thus begins the first impossible trial of The Soon-To-Be-Urinating Man: i.e. to discreetly position himself between two currently urinating men while not seeming intrusive. A hard task at the best of times, this is made infinitely more so when dealing with Uri-Cubicals. (This effect has something to do, I think, with the fact that each man’s Uri-Cubicle effectively becomes his ‘private property’ when in use, while Hog Troughs derive from a more Marxian tradition. But I digress).
On moving into the middle position, the two men flanking me moved slightly, grudgingly sideways, crablike, as you would if a new, hostile urinator in town – The Urinator With No Name, if you will – had positioned himself between you and your buddy.
Things continued quite uneventfully for a few seconds. (A blessing. No news is good news at this particular time).
And then problem #2 arrived. (It gets a little complicated here, so please pay attention – it may help if you draw a (tasteful) diagram for your own reference.)
If the middle urinator arrives at the uri-cubicle after the left and right urinators, they will of course tend to finish before he does.
But the ‘changing of the guard’ ritual forces the urinator-intruder to commit a second imposition even worse than the first.
For if one of the outermost urinators leaves his uri-cubicle before the other (which is usually the case, unless the two outermost urinators are perfectly synchronised, which is unlikely.), the two remaining urinators – the newcomer-intruder in the middle and the remaining veteran on the edge – find themselves in sudden, unwelcome proximity. (The distance between them of course remains the same, but it feels closer, due to the loss of the counterbalancing force of the recently-departed outer urinator. That’s relativity – although I forget whether it is the Special or General theory).
Anyhow, who is blamed for this situation? Why, the urinator-intruder, naturally – even if his motives be as pure as the driven (yellow) snow!
But, I hear you say, surely there is a way out of this impasse. Yet state your case, and I will refute it.
There is, of course, no chance of either one of the unwillingly adjacent urinators relocating to the outermost uri-cubicle at this late point of the game:
As for the middle urinator, a hasty relocation is deeply suspicious – possibly disastrous, if the execution is bungled.
For the rightmost urinator, relocation is logically impossible, as he already occupies an outer position in the uri-cubicle complex: how would it benefit him to move around the central urinator?
The intruder, on committing his second faux-pas by no fault of his own, is falsely viewed as the willing cause of this awkwardness.
Finally, bladder capacities being equal, the remaining of the two initial urinators eventually leaves his post.
But the final – and most egregious – indignity suffered by the middle urinator-intruder has yet to occur. For remember: both outermost urinals are now vacant.
The following scenario commonly ensues. Two friends, both soon-to-be urinators themselves, enter the room. In a perfect world, they would each take up an outermost uri-cubicle, leaving the middle uri-cubicle vacant. (A vacant middle urinal makes conversation between men possible by minimizing genital proximity).
But of course, the initial urinator still occupies the middle uri-cubicle. His presence beside the two usurpers, brief though it is destined to be, achieves three things, all undesirable from his perspective:
i. It cuts off the possibility of conversation between the two friends, again causing the middle urinator to become the (hopefully figurative) target of resentment on both sides.
ii. It introduces an element of unanticipated genital proximity that strains the jovial, yet emotionally remote, atmosphere that is essential for a thriving uri-cubicle atmosphere.
iii. It forces our protagonist, the middle urinator, to perform a delicate ‘reversing’ movement in order to extricate himself from the middle position without committing an unnecessarily exhibitionistic ‘swivel’ manoeuvre.
(N.B. It is important to remember that our hero is no longer a urinator-intruder in relation to the two newcomers. It is they who are the urinator-intruders; although in the bitterest injustice of the whole experience, it is he who is treated as such.)
So, the interloper – who has now been thrice-disgraced for a single transgression! – must slink out of the uri-cubicle (a cruder, but not strictly inaccurate, writer would have said that he must do so, moreover, with his tail between his legs).
So please take note, ladies. It is not all beer and skittles when you are a member of the privileged gender that is permitted to fart with relative impunity at ceremonial occasions.
DISCLAIMER: Do not, under any circumstances, on the basis of the above article, attempt to verbally remind the two outer, replacement urinators that it is you who are the rightful and original (yet obviously still temporary) occupier/overseer of the uri-cubicle complex. Doing so may result in the painful and unexpected loss of urination apparatus.
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