Open Mic Night At The Badger And Crow

Directions: So I'm thinking this particular piece will be in the style of a comedian's monologue, right? So there'll be the odd joke, and maybe some stage directions to self, and plenty of misdirection. But it'll actually also be challenging, and intelligent, and emotionally rooted. It'll be deep, and rich. It'll be rich, this, you'll see. You'll take it all in, this comedy, and you'll say to yourself, ha, that's rich.

So I step up to the mic, and I start with a real quick one-two opener. Predictable, crass. Why was the chicken across the road? Briefly pause, screw up face, glance stage left, lean into audience. Because it had been run over. Pause again. Sigh affectedly, leave mic, start to leave stage, pretend to remember something, return to mic. But, I say, returning, that's not actually the story I wanted to talk to you about.

See, I actually wanted...I actually really wanted to talk to you about my relationship with God. Now, before you get worried about this, or wonder anxiously where it might be going, I should probably just note that God is the name of my pet Galápagos tortoise - or, more properly, my three-year-old daughter's pet Galápagos tortoise. Now God is in many ways a real rarity, a beautiful creature, but he is also by turns capricious and cowardly and, so far as I can tell, appears to dislike black, people and gays.

Now, before you get annoyed about that, I should probably also have noted that my three-year-old daughter actually has four Galápagos tortoises, and she's not terribly good at naming pets. Black is the oldest of the four, and her name makes some sense given that the Galápagos tortoise's shell darkens as the animal ages. And People's name, we think, is an early attempt at the word 'pebble', which the relatively small People does look quite like when placed next to the other three larger tortoises. We're not too sure what my daughter's thinking was in regard to Gays' name, and to date she refuses to be drawn on the matter.

Now, I'm the first to admit that having four Galápagos tortoises called God, Black, People and Gays can sometimes be a bit of an embarrassment. But we believe in letting children learn freely, and at the least it's not a bad conversation-starter. Sometimes when we tell people that our daughter has called her pets God, Black, People and Gays, they find it sweet, and playful. And sometimes they'll say 'that little bitch'. Now that may, I grant you, seem like a harsh thing to say about a three-year-old girl to her parents, but that's probably a misunderstanding that can be cleared up by telling you our daughter's name.

Some people, I know, might say that an appropriate name for a daughter might be Violet, Juliet, Rachel, Sarah, something along those lines. And I agree that does seem to be the normal way of things. But they don't exactly stand out from the crowd, do they? And, what's more, I should also perhaps have pointed out before now that, strictly speaking, English isn't our first language, not our country of origin as it were. And when we moved here and heard the things couples say to each other, we sort of assumed (wrongly, as it turns out) that they were being romantic, uttering sweet nothings as I think you say.

Where I come from, we say things to each other like 'sweet of my eye', 'light of my day', that kind of thing. And these are good names, too, for children. Still, we didn't want our daughter to be teased about having a foreign name, so we gave her an English one too, inspired (wrongly, as it turns out) by the things that your couples say to each other. Her name in our language is, well, it would be difficult for you to pronounce, but it roughly translates to 'most perfect person to whom I could speak'. Her given English name, for better or worse, is 'little bitch'.

So you can well imagine, I hope, that when our English-speaking friends say 'that little bitch', they're not necessarily saying it angrily, but rather with that kind of shake of the head one makes over a child's precocious or mischievous act - as you might say 'oh, that Tom', or 'oh, that Michael'. My understanding of names in your language has, as you can tell, grown in the last three years - although my daughter's grasp of the subject is still perhaps questionable.

Anyway, the other day, I turned to God in our garden and I said 'God, as capricious a tortoise as I know you are, I still remain stunned by your habit of eating all the pretty flowers while refusing to uproot any of the weeds'. And God looked at me, his wrinkled, funny little head gently poking out of his carapace of stone, and for a moment I thought he nodded in a kind of guilty understanding. And then he paused for an aeon, before climbing ponderously on top of Gays to reach what was undoubtedly a tasty but also potentially prizewinning tulip. Gently, God tore off my flower, and I said 'God', I said, 'what we have here is a failure in both communication and appropriate gardening methodology'.

For her part, my daughter sat in the nearby herb patch and burbled, sagely. On the whole, you see, my daughter has an innate and helpful ability to produce puns in a manner which God appeared to that point to lack - and I'm happy to say that our relationship with her is rather better than our relationship with God, which revolves mainly around his abuse of our garden and his liking for carrots.

Now that, basically, is the end of the story, the monologue, but I felt like it needed something more concrete at the end. A really conclusive, punchy finish; a final joke, something that ties it together. And I looked at the ingredients list - God, tortoises, three-year-old daughter - and I thought there must be something here. Honestly, I really thought about it at length, but came up with absolutely nothing. Empty-handed. And I said to myself, well, I can't be a very good comedian after all, and I should probably pick a different route in life, you know? A different vocation.

But then, as if by magic, or religion, or a heady combination of both, God the Galápagos tortoise turned his little funny wrinkled head towards me - no, he really did - and he - and this is the bit of the story that you might not quite believe, but it's absolutely true - God my daughter's Galápagos tortoise absolutely shot across the garden and up he climbed onto my shoulder. I do realise that, unlike the rest of what I've said, this perhaps seems a bit far-fetched. But honestly, it absolutely happened: it was like he'd accomplished the movement of a thousand years in a day, or in this case in a blinding flash.

It was like his ways weren't the same as ours; his ways were somehow different. And he's on my shoulder, God the Galápagos tortoise, and he puts his little funny wrinkled head right up against my ear, and he says, even before I've registered the shock that God my three-year-old daughter's Galápagos tortoise is speaking to me, he pokes his head up to my ear and he says 'No', he says, 'you definitely should be a comedian; it's about time you came out of your shell'.

Thank you, goodnight.

Why Don’t We Sit Down And Have A Nice Long Chat About Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak?

If you’re reading this because it’s several years in the future and I’ve put this blog down on my ‘academic’ curriculum vitae (as the kids used to call them), perhaps as an example of my diverse research output (as the slave-traders used to call it, and do still), then I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise.

Mainly, I'd like to apologise for the unseemly banner-like title to this particular blog area. ‘Waspinator-for-President’, indeed. What must you think of me? What kind of academic merit could such a title possibly infer? But look, I’m hardly the first to have a title that makes little sense: Thomas Dekker’s Dekker His Dreme isn’t even spelt correctly. Ah-ha, just kidding. Or ‘jk’, as the kids used to say. Or ‘J.K. Rowling’, as they mainly didn't and shouldn't still.

Anyway, look, let me excuse myself. More than that: let me tell you something about myself. Yeah, you've seen my astonishing articles on that one thing that happened a long time ago that doesn't really matter, and yeah, maybe you think those articles are pretty worthwhile and interesting. Maybe you’re even right (but you’re probably not). Despite that, we both know that you're going to need more than just worthwhile and interesting to hire me for your amazing position. Hey, I'd probably want more than worthwhile and interesting too.

No, you're here, I imagine, because you'd like to 'get me', as the nineties used to say. You'd like to know what makes me tick, as clockmakers used to say, what happens under the hood, as purveyors of automobiles, folk myths, and nursery rhymes used to say. You'd like to know what it is, if anything, that makes me so special. Well, let me help you with that.

This, dear reader, is what I'm like: what I like to do when I’m by myself, which, let's be honest, is pretty much all of the time, is to stroll into town, buy a cracking novel from Waterstones (the UK’s go-to store for all your novel but actually mainly not-so-novel needs), and sit down with it in a lovely coffeehouse for a couple of hours. And yes, I am aware that there are a lot of things wrong with that sentence. Why am I buying anything from evil, evil Waterstones? Have they ever sold a decent book? Didn't they use to be a stationers, for goodness’ sake? Aren’t they still a stationers, more or less?

And yes, why am I wasting time reading books when I should be working on socially-relevant, impactful, money-making research? Well, those are all good and worthy questions, and I thank you for asking them.

All the same, I think the most important question you're probably asking is 'but what sort of coffee are you drinking for a couple of hours?' And I'm glad you're asking that, if you're asking that, because unlike the other questions I have an answer all ready and prepared for you. For that matter, I also have an answer for you if your question was 'but what book are you reading?' And the answer to that latter question is that I would like you to kindly mind your own business. Perhaps you weren't aware, but people who think they can understand anyone based on what books they’re reading are just really, really annoying. If you're one of those people, then you should know that I dislike you immediately and immensely and that, on the whole, I’d like you to burn.

Oh, or songs. People who would want to take a look at my music collection to see if they can see into my soul can go and jump off a very, very high bridge. And hey, make it high enough that you can listen to some music on the way down. You'll probably learn something amazing. Thankfully, not for very long.

Anyway, if you'll actually let me get to the point, what I wanted to do was tell you all about my choice of coffee. And personally, I think that that one little fact can tell you everything you need to know about me as a potential hireling in your fine academic institution. I mean, let's be honest here, I think we both know that higher education has seen much better days. Money is tight, and jobs are rare. You need the right person in every position, and you need to make every position count. Well, that's all fine, but the right coffee in that person counts for a whole lot more, let me tell you.

I mean, I've seen colleagues (or people, as we used to call them) come and go. I’ve seen them go rather often, to be honest. But coffee, coffee is for keeps. Coffee won't let you down, and coffee won't walk out on you. Coffee will always perform to expectations, it will always meet its targets, and it will always be very tasty indeed. The last time I checked, I believe you found that people constantly under-perform, rarely meet targets, and are only slightly tasty, depending on the precise farming practices involved. Will coffee make you fall asleep during a lecture? It will most assuredly not (dependent on blend). Will coffee drone on about the relative merits of obscure theoretical practices? I don't think it will. Can coffee, properly applied, turn every academic into a model employee and lover of bullet-pointed writing? Well, no, maybe not, but it will at least help you weed out the ones with weak hearts.

So anyway, the right choice of coffee is important, you see, because when you're sitting in that coffee shop for a couple of hours with the picture-book you've just bought from Waterstones, well, you really have to consider several important issues.

Firstly, of course, you need to be able to sell the academic brand: now, if I was employed at your institution, I think you'll find you get not just an employee, you also get a walking (well, sitting) advertisement. And don't underestimate the importance of advertising, particularly of the walking (well, sitting) variety. Oh yes, I'll sit in coffee shops for hours attracting people towards your fine academic establishment, simply by my being there. It's called stealth advertising, you know – nobody sells products any more, they sell lifestyles. And don't worry, because you can count on me to sell the higher education lifestyle. When people see me looking bored and reading books for two hours in that coffee shop, trust me, they too are going to want to look bored and read books for two hours in that coffee shop.

Now, you might think that that would primarily bring business to the coffee shop, but wait, because those people are also going to ask me, 'how is it possible that you can do this?', and I'll tell them, 'well, it's because I have benefited from higher education, and you can too!', and then, well, the money will really just roll right in to your institution quicker than you can say everyday phrases such as ‘increased student quota’ or ‘line of branded polo shirts’.

And secondly, the right choice of coffee is also important because, when you're sitting and looking bored for two hours in a coffee shop while reading excruciatingly pretentious books that you've bought from Waterstones with the aim of impressing people who are never going to be looking anyway, not once, and really, what point would you even be trying to get across, and it's not like you'd even want to talk to them anyway because they’re probably horrible, well, look, when you're doing all that the right choice of coffee is quite important.

Wait. Okay, hang on. Sorry, I really seem to have lost the thread of my argument a little. Just give me a second here, please, and I'll try to get back on track.

Right, yes: choice of coffee; that was it. What I was saying, here, is that the right choice of coffee is important because, when you're sitting around for two hours, well, two hours is a long time to be sitting around just drinking coffee. I mean, you need to be able to pace yourself. Sure, it's fine when you're younger, and you can do what you like without any ill effects, and you can drink coffee after coffee and not even have to need the toilet. But when you're not younger any more, it all becomes a bit more problematic. Years ago, I too could drink espresso after espresso after deliciously dark espresso. And yes, I'm not going to lie to you here, I miss those days very much. Very, very much.

And I mean, yes, of course, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with the taste of espresso on my lips and on my heart and with only the faint memory of a bitterly broken dream. But who doesn’t? And I mean, yes, of course, sometimes I think of those long gone days and cry tears composed only and entirely of the espresso I so fervently wish I could still drink. And yes, of course, then I suck those tears gently from my own sunken cheeks with a stolen straw. But who doesn't?

So the right choice of coffee, you see, is really quite important. What you need is to have a type of coffee that you can drink for two hours and not, well, go a bit crazy. And what I am here to tell you in today’s blog is that, so far as I am currently aware, such a coffee does not exist.

Notes: Oh yeah, going by the title, this blog entry was supposed to be an amusingly out-of-date review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. You know what? Clearly even I just couldn't be bothered. Here’s your review, pedant: it sucks and it goes on, like, forever.