The High-Rising Terminal, or "Uptalking"

You know it well. The Australian/Valley-Girl tic of making declarative statements sound like a question: "So I went to, like, the shop? And, like, saw this dress? And it was, like, so cute? I, like, had to buy it?"

Fuck. Off.

Intoning every sentence as a question makes you impossible to listen to or take seriously.

Don't be one of these apologist cunts who excuse this bad verbal habit saying it's a natural evolution of the language that somehow shows sensitivity to the listener by checking to see if they've understood. Because it isn't that, and even if it was, I'd call that "condescension".

The constant yoyoing of pitch is a way of making the listener pay attention, something like the whine of an annoying child or spoilt dog. It is narcissistic approval-seeking, and a petty, continuous attention-grab by the vacuous. It is a verbal probe in search of ego-stroking nodding heads and murmured assent. It removes every shade of intonation from proper elocution and turns your speech into the equivalent of a flashing advertisement. It is mentally taxing, forcing you to repeat mentally what you've just heard to parse the grammatical structure.

This used to be an exclusively pubescent female thing, but now you seemingly can't avoid it from people of any gender or age. But you still sound like a pubescent female to me and so I'm going to consciously accessorise you with a a small, pink, Swarovski-studded handbag and "Princess" T-shirt.

I am going to make an actual suggestion here. When the people you know and care about start to do this: Call them out on it.

I want teachers punishing children to prevent it becoming standard English. I want parents soaping mouths. I want friends playing games that involve inflicting pain on offenders.

Get to it.

Intra-Female Babytalk

Sometimes, when strategising for my personal apocalypse (or when I'm stuck in a waiting room), I browse women's magazines.

There are definitely interesting things in ladymags. One can definitely learn a lot about how truly inadequate one is as a person when confronted with one-season outfits consisting of about one handkerchief's worth of material that cost more than a second-hand car. Sadly, I do think the sex advice subject matter well dried up in about 1982 because the truly interesting stuff, as covered by Dan Savage, is just going too far for most sponsors. What does prey on my mind though, when reading about womanly matters, is the language used.

Why do they write articles for adult women in babytalk? What is this paedolinguistic abomination that is female-targeted copywriting? Why are outfits for grown women "cute"? Why, after puberty, do you have still have "tummies"? Why, in a magazine that features tips on the act of fellatio, do you resort to infantile euphemisms for your breasts? 

If they write it because it's proven by marketing people not to confront the readership, then, come on, harden the fuck up, ladies. That cheesecake-distended, orange-peeled abdominal sac of adipose tissue that's hanging over your pantihose isn't getting any smaller when you refer to it in the diminutive.

Post-War Architecture

I recently had an argument with an architect friend about the merits of Brutalist Architecture. I argued that, as with all things, Sturgeon's Law applies and the vast bulk of it is an utter blight. Poured concrete fortresses designed specifically to upend the viewer's sense of space and mass ("exhilarate") do not make liveable environments.

You could argue that it represents a vision, that it is bold, striking, clear, clean, and has of late acquired a historical "warmth" through familiarity and association. You could argue those things, but then you could argue that quite a few nice people have been born as a result of the many rapes committed in the tangled concrete intestines of cheaply-erected poverty warehouses like the Trellick Tower.

I'm not saying that I don't see the stylistic boldness in the cantilevers, I'm just saying I don't want to be underneath them, because the impression of hanging weight above you is not "exhilarating" as much as it's immensely disconcerting on an animal level. This kind of thing makes for striking video game levels and sci-fi movie sets, but vast expanses of temporarily congealed grey slurry hanging above you in person are threatening. Additionally, the sheer finality and planar blankness of Brutalist design does not lend itself to anything much in the way of modification and softening but graffiti, something it attracts almost as well as the walls erected by political segregationists.

This particular dislike of mine forced me to examine my stance on contemporary architecture. Do I, in fact, like any of it? I had to think hard. I admit that I like looking at books of architecture. And I like how some of the more imposing designs look in carefully composed and lit photographs. But do I actually like any of the buildings in person? No, I actually don't.

Of particular vexation is the popularity of utterly talentless swine like Frank Gehry, who apparently think that building a rapidly decomposing structure composed of concave mirrors in a hot climate is a tenable architectural style. His Los Angeles Walt Disney Concert Hall is renowned by locals for creating a "death ray" that heats the surrounding pavement to sixty degrees Celsius and sunburning passersby.

I can't help but feel that something went horribly wrong with architecture after the Second World War. The understandable desire to leave history behind was acknowledged as a flaw by Post Modern architects, but their solution was not to move back and carry on from where the pre-Modern styles left off, but to tack hideous, infantile references to older styles onto the same asymmetrical building blocks. The funny thing is that I like challenging art, but challenging architecture is art you can't escape. Have you ever got hopelessly lost in one of these "adventurous", award-winning public facilities designed to escape the confines of the grid? This is bad design. There seems to be a genuine problem of architects needing to escape modish peer criticism instead of building something likeable.

Of late I've noticed that materials like stainless steel and stone have made a pleasing comeback here and there, but I still haven't seen a new building that looks remotely inviting. Every time I see a small, humble old house made of carefully cut stone with lumpy windows next to a towering robot factory, I can't help wondering if the architect in question felt like a bully when observing the contrast himself.

I hope he did.

Blue LEDs on Everything

Let me explain this one: an LED is a light-emitting diode, and is familiar to most people in the form of the tiny blinkenlights festooning nearly every gadget ever made. As it happens, blue LEDs were a serious technological challenge and not available until fairly recently. The moment they became available it sparked a technological revolution as suddenly white light was available from these tiny, extremely economical bulbs, and technologies like Blu-ray could exist. This is a truly great thing, and I therefore love blue LEDs.

The problem is that every gadget manufacturer simultaneously suddenly saw the popular appeal of the intense blue they produced, and now one almost cannot buy a gadget without the things on the front of the device. Why is this a problem? Why has it elicited my hatred? Because they are too fucking bright for their actual purpose and do not inherently communicate anything.

This is very simple. Green means "on", orange means "standby", "charging" or "processing" and red means "off". It's a scheme that has worked for ages and is still employed by responsible manufacturers because everyone who lives near a road with a traffic light understands it.

But now nearly every device has a bloody blue-violet eyeball-tanner instead of a proper status LED. This is particularly galling on audio/video components, where, when watching a movie late at night, it is difficult to see low-level detail on your TV screen because you are blinded by the power lights on your gear rack. I have a USB wall charger that I bought specifically to charge things overnight without the sound of a computer intruding on my precious sleep, and the stupid blue LED on the thing is so damn bright that it's actually possible to read in bed with it on.

Are we all over this new colour yet? I am.

"Cute" as an All-Purpose Superlative

I'm sorry, ladies (and twee gentlemen), but I can't take you very seriously when everything you like from kittens, to clothes to shirtless firemen apparently triggers some giggly maternal reflex.

Please try to emulate a semblance of intellectual worth by using more specifically expressive words so we have insight into why you like the things you like and stop wasting our semantic attention with what amounts to a satisfied grunt, devaluing yet another word.

The New Infantilism

I'll admit that I'm something of a child. I like poring over gadgets, cars, helicopters and fighter jets, and I regularly make a detour past the toy section to see if there are any satisfying tiny versions of real machines I can't otherwise afford to own. I have told the occasional cashier that my purchase is a gift for a younger relative. I'm not proud of it. I'm vaguely concerned that someone's going to call the cops on the sinister adult male figure lurking in the toyshop fondling the blisterpacks.

All this said, I'm beginning to find the current trend towards an infantile iconography of style really worrying. You must have noticed it. Those overweening Apple ads with their twinkly, soothing, neo-folkie lullabies. The unbearably twee soundtrack of "Juno", featuring Kimya Dawson's glibly chirpy vocal stylings. The children's-chorus-escapee quacking of Joanna Newsom. The adult-hipster-targeted "Where the Wild Things Are" with hipster-approved soundtrack. Hello Kitty vibrators. Hell, Hello Kitty everything, snapped up in bucketloads by everyone from playful executives trying to cutesy up their thronerooms to goth princesses hoping to up their lolita quotient. The rehashing of toy-hocking 1980s cartoons as feature films. The explosion of shops selling cupcakes. Women's fashion reincorporating the babydoll dress, the empire line and gathering of toddlers' party dresses. The electric guitar has been usurped by the glockenspiel.

What's going on here?

I think we've got to the point where we're so far up our own collective recta in inoffensiveness that we seek to couch our beast urgings in unthreatening mock-playfulness. Cute is the new sexy, and it's fucking repulsive. It's repulsive on 21 year-olds who don't need to look any younger. It's repulsive on 40 year-olds who are fooling no-one. It's repulsive when it's megacorporations like Apple infiltrating the scene like John-Wayne Gacy in his clown-suit infiltrating a playground.

Is it because you all started sharing playlists and discovered that guilty pleasures were the new sophistication?

Stop it.

Hair-Shirt Hamburgers

It's interesting how the laws of form and function do not apply to gourmet food. Gourmet hamburgers, in their attempt to appear to be a kind of handheld cornucopia, are almost impossible to eat with your hands. So much produce spills out of them while you eat that you need a knife and fork to clear your plate. The worst part, however, is the near insistence on the use of hard, crusty rolls.

Crusty rolls are the product of a mentality that regards food as better the more physically punishing it is to consume. Hearty chunks of fibre stuck inextricably in your teeth, gums abraded near to bleeding by the carborundum crust, flour all over your face and clothes, and filling squeezed out the back due to the rigidity of the fucking thing. Texture is fine and dandy, but sandwich something soft between two crackers and see if it stays there when you bite into the little bellows you've just created. And it's nearly impossible to tear puffy wholewheat rolls apart without a grimacing, messy gymnastics routine.

Also, whoever gave trendy eateries the suggestion that it was a good idea to replace lettuce with rocket deserves a herbal enema administered with a fucking firehose, although I suspect they'd enjoy that. When the garmish overpowers the flavour of the patty and sauce, your hamburger has failed.