Less of a man and loving it.

2012 included one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Having decided that we were not going to have any more kids in addition to the two daughters we currently have, I made the decision to have a vasectomy. 33 is probably quite young to do it, but we are sure in our convictions. Once we’d made our decision I paid a visit to my doctor to get the procedure booked. He asked if I’d considered sticking with less permanent forms of contraception because I’m a bit young. I convinced him of my determination to not have more children and he booked me in for an initial consultancy. Then he told me I was a fat bastard and to lose some weight (but that's another blog).

So Rach and I turn up for the appointment a little later. We had been preparing ourselves for some difficult questions (the worst I could think of was what might we do if through some terrible tragedy we lost both of our kids but the both of us were still alive – would we regret the vasectomy then?) but nothing of the sort happened. It was more like ‘So, having a vasectomy? Right-o, here’s how it works...’ She talked us through it fairly matter-of-factly, going through how I’d need to prepare (by shaving), what would happen on the day (needles, snipping, difficulty sitting afterwards) and what I would need to do afterwards to be sure it had worked. Well. She looked me square in the eye and she said: “You will need to ejaculate as much as you possibly can.” You see, to make sure it worked, you need to clear out the, um, plumbing, so to speak. You get 16 weeks before you need to submit a sample, and then again at 20 weeks. And both of them need to be completely sperm-free. A ball-park figure is at least 50 times before the 16-week point. So for 4 months it was my solemn duty to become completely sex-obsessed. Not a great stretch, I’ll grant you. But initial thoughts of sending oneself into knuckle-shuffle oblivion soon sour in the cold light of day. It didn’t take long to become, frankly, a bit of a drag.

But I get ahead of myself. That was afterwards. First came the operation (no pun intended). We arrived at the surgery and I went in while Rach took the kids off to play. After sitting around in a small waiting area for a while, I was called in. In the room was a nurse. She was older than me, probably mid to late forties. I’m not sure if her being a different age or gender would have made the prospect of getting my cock and balls out in her presence better or worse. “So, had enough kids?” she asked. Yep. Two’s plenty for me, thanks. Then in comes the doctor. A silver haired, confident fellow, he gave the impression of experienced competence. So, on the table, lie back, think of England, jeans and boxers round your ankles, so these two people I’ve never met can closely examine my bits and pieces. It seems my preparation is inadequate, because the first thing he does is grab a bic and give me a quick additional shave. At least his hands are warm.

Next come the needles. Needles in the bollocks. Or at least in that general area – to be honest I was too busy quietly freaking out inside my own head while staring at the ceiling to remember exactly where the pricks were felt. Numbness, and then, incision time. The next bit involved hands down the weirdest sensation I have ever felt. There was no pain, but you could feel it. And it was uncomfortable. The best way I can think to describe is a bit like going to the dentist. Not that a dentist would ever do this. And if yours does, they need reporting. What I mean is that when you have a tooth out, your mouth is numbed so there’s no pain, but you can feel your tooth being loosened and pulled – you can feel the pressure on your gum. Well, I could feel my tube being pulled, unravelled and cut. First one, then the other. Eventually it was done. It didn’t take long, but every uncomfortable second seemed to drag on interminably.

A few pieces of gauze to hold against the two incisions and trousers up. Another female nurse in her forties has a look. Before today I would have put money on my getting my dick out in close proximity to three complete strangers getting me reported to the police. As to recovery, well, there is no pain, but there is a great deal of discomfort and sitting becomes something you do with a great deal of care. Lifting and having your kids jump on you are both pretty much out of the question. But this is over in a matter of days, not weeks, and then the fun begins. Well, it’s fun for a while, but, as mentioned before, the pressure to jizz over and over again rather takes the fun out of it pretty quickly.

Not long after the procedure there was a frightening few days where I found a few lumps and hoped fervently that it was just these granuloma things. Looks as though they were ‘cause they eventually went and I’m still breathing. The long slog finally over, the time came to produce the samples. There is something uniquely depressing about getting it on with a small plastic cup, but get it on I did. Twice, in fact. Thrice, in fact, thanks to the hospital sending the results to the wrong medical practice originally. Still, it was confirmed: I am spermless. Shooting blanks. Unable to make babies. Hoorah!

Driving: Bad for blood pressure.

I’m not the world’s greatest driver. Hell, I’m not even the best driver in my family – that would be my wife. Sometimes I misjudge distance or speed and come out in front of people when I shouldn’t, I get nervous when traffic builds up, or I find myself driving through somewhere unfamiliar. When I was learning, my instructor once said to me “You’re not a natural driver, are you?”

But. I do try not to be a dick. I try to be a little considerate. I try not to be idiotic. Take the recent snow, for example. I do think people went a bit over the top due to a bit of the white stuff. But some roads were pretty slippy. So you try to take care – avoid particularly difficult roads, instead of brakes go down the gears to slow down, pull off in second, high gear to go up hills, low gear to come down. And yet, time and again, you see cars attempt to get up hills while revving the throttle in first gear. Surely they know lower gear means more power, which means more spinning on the snow? So you can’t get up. What do you? Retreat and find an alternate route, right? Apparently not. For some, the correct course of action is to try again coming at the hill faster, with more power. I know I’m not the only person to wonder what on earth these gobshites think they’re doing.

But some mild annoyance at some shit driving in the snow is nothing when compared to the incandescent fury caused by the widespread lack of indication. It’s just basic manners. You’re not the only fucking thing on road, you know? At a roundabout or junction there are usually other cars, cyclists or pedestrians who would really like to know where you’re going. As the Government enjoy nannying us so much (“Don’t forget to wash your hands”, “Don’t drink too much”, “Don’t forget your five a day”) it should start an initiative around the considerate use of indicators. They should call it ‘Flick the Stick’.

So if you’re near a roundabout and you hear a muffled scream of “CUUUUUUUUUUNT!!!!!!!!!” I wouldn’t worry – it’s probably me shouting at the non-indicating spasm in the car in front.

Things change.

You can’t stop the arrow of time. Things, people, societies, they all evolve. Things that used to be a good idea don’t remain a good idea forever. That’s why religious texts look sillier the more we learn. The things in the Bible, in the Koran, the things those on the fanatical outer fringes of religions (or death cults, to put it more accurately) believe are, in the cold, scientific light of day, obviously nonsense. It isn’t the fault of the books, the religions or the people who wrote them. They are merely products of their time, attempts to understand and describe their Universe as best they can. But, things change. Most of us know it wouldn’t be right to stone an adulterous woman to death. Most of us know that homosexuality is not something to be reviled. Most of us know that the Universe is billions of years old, not thousands. Those that don’t tend to be strongly religious. Funny, that.

I apologise for any offence I may cause Americans now, but your Constitution is not immune to this. The 1787 US Constitution is the shortest written constitution and this reverence accorded it is so embedded that to suggest it is flawed in any way is akin to heresy. Mostly it works fine, and is a beautiful example of a set of articles that can be used to successfully govern a large number of people. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, I doubt they looked at their muskets and foresaw the utterly terrifying array of fully automatic weaponry that is so easy to purchase nowadays. Of course, they knew very well in 2008, when it was confirmed that the Second Amendment applied to any fucknut on the street who wants a gun. The pressure from the NRA and the fact that pointing out that sometimes a gun is a dangerous thing is political suicide might have had something to do with that.

I’m not saying the US is alone in worshipping old Constitutions – we are very fond of our own 1215 Magna Carta, more than five-and-a-half centuries earlier than America’s, but viewing it in a glass case isn’t tantamount to a religious experience. If people are allowed to carry guns, other people are going to get shot. It really is that simple. The much-celebrated right to bear arms is defective in a modern society, and if you want people to stop getting shot, you need to retract that right, at least partly. Gun crime is almost unheard of here. It has been much reduced in Australia since a change in law was adopted following a tragic shooting incident in 1996. The sad truth is many, many more people will have to die before anything changes. But hey, an outdated civil liberty applicable to a different age is more important than life, isn’t it?

Operation Don’t Die: Update.

So, it’s been about four months since I declared my intention to not be such a bloater, and, mostly, progress is still slowly being made. A couple of stones have been lost (not sure exactly how much), resulting in less hideous chin and less bulbous belly, and the positive comments continue come my way. Hurrah! I did tweak it recently, because it got rather boring – I now give myself the weekends off. So the progress has slowed, but is still being made. No longer king of the toads. More like a prince. There is still work to be done though – I’m aiming for at least a minor functionary.

Why Obama’s win is important, even though little will change.

I suppose the first point to address here is that I live in the UK, so I don’t have any business expressing an opinion on an election that I wasn’t eligible to vote in. But, one, this blog is mine, so I write whatever happens to fall into my head, and two, and, much as many of us wish it wasn’t so, things that happen over there do have quite far-reaching international consequences. So there.

Now, the thing about the US election, is that, in many respects, it doesn’t matter who wins. Not even a little bit. The US (and the UK, to be fair) operates under a system that is closer to an elective oligarchy than it is to a democracy. Although, on the face of it, Democrats and Republicans appear to be bitter rivals, there is collusion to retain power in the form of that unchangeable two party system. The Pres isn’t about to change the corporate love-in that is US politics, nor will he alter the foreign policies or military stance. None of those in power will acknowledge that the American Dream, in its original form, is incompatible with a world with finite resources and a population of 7 billion. Climate policy is unlikely to change. Now, at the risk of being a pot shouting racial slurs at a kettle, I am aware that UK politics, and indeed the politics of many countries continue to act and plan as though social and economic systems built on constant growth are endlessly sustainable, but America is quite a lot bigger than most of those other countries, including my own fair homeland.

But, Obama’s win does matter. It is a good thing, for a number of reasons. One of the parties wants to force women to have their rapist’s baby. America chose the one that doesn’t. One of the candidates posthumously converts dead atheist loved ones to his own religion, violating one of the most sacred cornerstones of the very concept of freedom; that of freedom of religion. America chose the one that doesn’t. On the subject of religious freedom, one of the parties would like to dissolve the separation of church and state that helps prevent religious persecution. America chose the one that doesn’t. One of the parties will not even acknowledge climate change is something that exists. America chose the one that does. One of the candidates thinks 40% of the people he would like to represent are parasites feeding off a too-generous state. America chose the candidate that is able to respond to a person communicating in sign language without missing a beat. One of the parties wants dying people who cannot afford healthcare or health insurance (assuming they could even get cover for pre-existing conditions, which they often can’t) to hurry up and die already. America chose the party that is working towards providing healthcare for everyone. One of the parties wants to stop or at least reduce teaching the sciences in general and evolution in particular in an attempt to keep the population as dumb as possible. America chose the party that isn’t afraid of educating people, even if it means they start questioning the conflicts arising between what their religion tells them and what we now know about our Universe.

While I get the cynicism in respect of the illusion of choice (the same illusion exists here as well), the differences noted above are important. What is more important is the choice reflects an underlying feeling in the US; the feeling that the GOP, the tea-party and Donald Trump (by the way, Mr T – ‘unprecedented’ and ‘like never before’ mean the same thing) do not represent the way they feel. I’m no fool, I know the Republicans will gain power again sooner rather than later, but for the moment, there is reason to be positive.

In the long run, the most useful thing anyone can do, either here or there, in my opinion, is to attempt to effect change at a local level while still partaking in the voting charade that goes on at a national level. But I’d be surprised if even that ever begins to change things.

The horror, the horror...

It’s begun. My eldest daughter is five, and the bollocky, over-sexed, unoriginal pit of fecal aural matter that is our current pop scene is now starting to exert influence on her. She was jumping on our bed, the words “I am Jessie Jay Jay” coming from her mouth. She’s a big Toy Story watcher, so I hoped she might be referring to the cowgirl doll voiced by Joan Cusack in the films. Alas, when I asked her who, she said “Jessie J daddy, she’s a dancer and she dances every day”.

Hearing that sparked an odd kind of horror inside me, in which my mind’s eye showed me my daughter in a ridiculously tight outfit thrusting her crotch in the direction of Brian May’s guitar. Clearly, things are unlikely to ever get that bad, but I suspect I’m not far away from the JLS or One Direction phase, or whatever unshaven ken dolls styled and auto-tuned for the screaming masses they have by then. A band once cleverly prophesied that Pop Will Eat Itself. Pop is no longer eating itself, but is now feasting on its own cannibalised regurgitated vomit and calling it X-Factor.

Is it odd that I’m feeling more confident about handling the drink, sex and drugs phase than I am about the incoming being-fed-this-putrid-ear-shit-and-brainwashed-into-thinking-it-has-any-fucking-value-whatsoever phase? Wish me luck.

But is it art?

Not really. But maybe, in a way. I’ve had conversations before about whether cinema is really art. Well, yes, it absolutely is. Sure, when presented with Transformers: Dark of the Moon it is harder to contend this. But, what about ‘real’ art? For every tortured Van Gogh masterpiece, there is a light switch or unmade bed. Now, I'm not here to tell you that that kind of modern art isn't art, but I am contending that film has as much right, perhaps more, to be called art. Cinema is another form of storytelling, and storytelling is an art form, whether it is in the form of a book, graphic novel, concept album, or simply told around a campfire. If you don’t agree are you really trying to tell me that Tracey Emin is an artist, and yet Terrence Malik is not? Then you are nuts.

But games? Now we’re on to rockier ground. Roger Ebert would say no. There are many others who might tell you yes. Me? As usual, I’m kind of on the fence. Ingenious? Definitely, whether classic or modern – Pong, Pac Man, Tetris, Sonic, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, Bioshock, L.A. Noire... on and on the list goes. But art? Stories in games now have a much more cinematic feel, and as mentioned, I believe story-telling is a genuine art form. And some of the concept art and graphical touches are simply phenomenal (just two of many, many examples are shown below). But the stories and the design, which are art, is in service of the creation of an addictive diversion, which is not. So is art employed in the service of something which is not art still art? Perhaps some things man was never meant to know.

Concept art for Gears of War.

Concept art for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.