Category: Other writing

Because Jesus Christ I’m not bungee jumping any time in the next 12 hours.

1. Shake Jeremy Beadle by the ‘wrong’ hand.

2. Live in Streatham, twice.

3. Get kicked out of Jongleurs, Portsmouth for having a piss in the corner.

4. Appear in BBC Olive Magazine as Daniel Wilkins, Engineer.

5. Livetweet a solo marathon of all the Police Academy Films.

6. Wake up walking across Tower Bridge at 5am and immediately call your mum to assure her that you don’t need to borrow money.

7. Drink 6 pints of lager then attempt to interview Stewart Lee before what neither of you knew was going to turn out to be a Fathers4Justice benefit gig.

8. Burn a jacket potato in the microwave.

9. Quote Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan in an email to a girl you’re in (unrequited) love with.

10. Wake up with your postcode written on your hand.

11. Play a hexadecimal in a musical rip-off of Tron.

12. Walk out of a screening of The King’s Speech because you’re so drunk you’re about to start ‘getting republican’.

13. Within 24 hours overhear different people describing you as looking a bit like Paul Merton and a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio.

14. Cry on the phone to HMRC.

15. Go to an 80s party as Winston Smith. No-one gets it.

16. Watch every episode of Stargate SG-1.

17. And Stargate: Atlantis.

18. Unwittingly talk about Saint Etienne in front of a man from Saint Etienne in a way that’s personally mortifying but doesn’t provide a satisfying anecdote.

19. Use the Science Museum’s PA system to pretend to be an alien overlord.

20. Send Alex Hern a DVD of The Beaver.

21. Pass out into the Wandsworth Road and smash one of your teeth out.

22. Fail an audition to be on Pointless.

23. Drunkenly slur Andrew Collins’ own name at him after a radio recording.

24. Be in a naked calendar. With your colleagues.

25. Have a hungover snooze on the company sofa and wake up to the chairman of the board looking at you suspiciously.

26. Leave a party because you think it’s funny that your friends’ creepy next door neighbour wants to ‘draw’ you then bolt once he starts asking you if you like his collection of porcelain elves.

27. Look forward to lottery night because you can earn 30p a go for texting drunk people the numbers.

28. Fail to have finished reading any work of classic literature, though you got to the bit in Ulysses where the man has a shit AND listen to the Classic Serial so you’re totally well-read.

29. Come to terms with people calling you ‘Harry Potter’ because at this point it’s flattering.

30. Fall down an escalator, followed by the speaker system you were supposed to be looking after.

 

The big political question that no-one is willing to talk about is where members of parliament do their shopping. I mean, obviously when they’re in parliament they probably go to that little Tesco Express by Westminster tube station to buy, e.g. a lasagne and a miniature bottle of wine, but what about when they’re at home?

For obvious reasons most MPs don’t publicise the locations of their houses, but the majority of them do have a publicly available address for their constituency office. Almost all of these these are available on the parliament website; about 50 don’t publish one at all so I’ve used either the address of place they most often do their “surgery” events for constituents, or that of their party’s local office, to stand in.

Gathering this data itself was an interesting demonstration of: 1) how difficult some MPs make it for their constituents to get in touch to talk about their concerns (sometimes there’s more information about how to get a tour of the Houses of Parliament), and 2) how bloody awful (and often quite broken) most MPs’ websites are. Anyway, with that in hand we can figure out what their local supermarket situation is.

The constituency offices of Conservative Party MPs tend to be the furthest away from supermarkets; on average they have to go almost twice as far as Labour MPs to do their shopping. This is probably illustrative of the fact that Labour tend to do better in urban areas & the Conservatives in rural ones, or maybe it’s because of Global Warming???

We can also see what the closest supermarket chain tends to be for each party’s offices.

Interestingly, despite The Co-operative group’s links with the Labour Party (32 of Labour’s MPs are also joint members of the Co-operative political party), Labour constituency offices tend to be closer to Tesco branches, while Co-op branches tend to be the closest supermarkets to Tory & Lib Dem offices.

Lib Dem offices favour Marks & Spencers more than those of other parties, Iceland is a lot more popular with Labour, and no-one much shops at Budgens.

Obviously there are some variables we can’t account for: Chris Kelly, MP for Dudley South, has an office that’s close to a Tesco Express, but maybe he really like Marks and Spencers’ Percy Pigs pig-shaped confectionery items, so makes the 10 km round trip every day to get himself a bag from the Merry Hill store. His terrible website doesn’t mention whether he likes Percy Pigs. Perhaps the government should have a website detailing which MPs like which sweets, to allow the public to get more of an idea about where their representatives do their shopping.

Below you can see the average distance of an MP’s office from each brand’s stores in kilometres, grouped by party. (Based on the closest 40 stores to each office.)

Nick Clegg’s closest store is a Tesco Express at an Esso petrol station, but I reckon he does his mum’s shopping at Londis.

Eric Pickles is closest to an M&S, so that’s probably where he gets his pickles, except on special occasions when he goes to the only slightly further away Iceland to get a mint Viennetta.

I assume I’ll probably have to go on the run now I’ve released all this sensitive government data, but this is bigger than me. People had to know.

(Supermarket data was provided by Chris Zetter, creator of the excellent SuperLocate iOS app. Other supermarkets are available. Here’s a Google Doc of the constituency office data. No accuracy is guaranteed.)

I tracked the RSS feed for Buzzfeed’s homepage for about a month, collecting data on around 3000 articles. About 40% of the Buzzfeed headlines in my sample contain a number, although that does include years. All the numerology is “genuinely” from the internet.

10. The number 22.

The most popular topic for Buzzfeed articles with 22 in the title is “LOL”, a new kind of emotion that is the only way for people on the internet to have a feeling. Other hot topics for 22 include: the royal baby, fast food, mermaids, and printables. Think about a tree: please do not print this internet home page unless you need it for an important meeting or a big poo.

According to internet numerology websites, the number 22 is associated with people who “radiate enormous potential, accompanied by a high level of inner tension resulting from an overwhelming desire to achieve something extraordinary”.

The famous star Taylor Swift had a number 9 hit in the UK charts with a song called 22. Here are the first 22 pictures I got when I Google Image Searched “taylor swift lol”.

As of today Taylor Swift has only released 3 fragrances officially, but based on my understanding of human biology it is possible that she has released 19 others unofficially.

9. The number 20.

The hottest topics for number 20? A three-way tie for: “world”, “win” & “philosophy”.

Numerologically speaking, the number 20 is associated with sensitive souls who strive to serve others as best they can, who are likely to have hasty, ill-advised marriages and become public relations agents, artists or interior decorators. I did not make this up.

The first Google Image Search result for “world win philosophy” is this picture of Fabio, famous star of romance novel covers and ex-England football manager. He looks quite cross, and has been married to his wife for over 40 years, but it is not really for me to say whether he made a hasty decision.

8. The number 18.

Popular Buzzfeed topics for 18 are “gay best friend”, “best summer” and “terrible sports fans”. Numerology suggests that the number 18 is “sexually powerful”. People associated with it can make good friends, but “despise those who are not as vigorous”. According to Google Image Search, the “best summer” associated with 18 involves this:

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to more fully explore these concepts.

7. The number 17.

And just ahead is 18’s close friend, 17! For Buzzfeed, 17 means animals, life hacks & Saved By The Bell. Numerologists link the number 17 with immortality, which makes sense when you remember that Saved By The Bell’s famous star was the time-commanding immortal Zack Morris. Time out!

I spent slightly more than a pound on the autobiography of Dustin Diamond, best known to the public as wacky comedy sidekick Screech from children’s sitcom Saved By The Bell. It is not worth slightly more than a pound, although it does contain a letter of apology to all the women he claims he’s slept with. Diamond presents himself as unpleasant, bitter man, the book is poorly written and apparently untouched by an editor. If you are looking to read the memoir of a star of children’s television, I would instead recommend the delightful Blue Box Boy by BBC TV’s Doctor Who’s Adric, who even divides his life up into episodes just like a BBC TV’s Doctor Who story.

Time in!

6. The number 8.

Apparently my life path number is 8! This means that I “have great talent for management in all areas of life, especially in business and financial matters”, although I’m not sure how that connects with my net worth consisting of three or four bin bags worth of stuff best kept in bin bags and a Lego Space Shuttle.

If I were to follow the path of Buzzfeed, I would live a life that followed the tenets of irony, the KKK, Kanye West, Steve Carrell, and ironic photos.

According to Google, this is the most ironic photo of famous star Kanye West:

I’m not sure that this is that ironic as, according to Yahoo Answers, Kanye West is a very intelligent man who probably has a lot of deep thoughts:

Maybe it’s some sort of special irony, like people who still talk about an Alanis Morissette song from 1995 have discovered. Two Buzzfeed articles in my sample referred to famous star Alanis Morissette, but only one spells her name correctly.

5. The number 12.

(In the following segment, I refer to lasagne as lasagna because of Americans.)

You know when the number 12 was big? The ’90s, according to Buzzfeed!

Famous 1990s television series Friends referenced the number 12 in the episode “The One With The Dozen Lasagnas”. According to the Friends Wikia:

After cooking a dozen lasagnas for Aunt Sylvia, Monica is stuck with them as they were supposed to be vegetarian.

I assume a dozen lasagnas is actually 12 and not 13 because bakers don’t make lasagnes, unless they do. I don’t really deal with bakers a lot in my day-to-day life and I’m not invested enough in this premise to bother phoning a baker. Anyway, a lot of hi-jinx are going on as you know is bound to happen when this crazy gang of Friends is around but also everyone eats a lot of lasagnas!

But wait! The editors of the Friends Wikia have noticed something:

Despite the fact that the lasagnas contained meat (which is why Monica is stuck with them in the first place), Phoebe is seen eating from one near the end of the episode, but she is vegetarian. However, it might be that she scraped the meat off her part, but this is not mentioned or implied at any time.

My explanation for this terrible error is that Phoebe in this episode is not actually Phoebe but is her identical twin sister Ursula pretending to be Phoebe. Ursula was a character from Mad About You also played by the famous star who played Phoebe but they made them twins because apparently Mad About You was once something anyone in the world cared about? Even fanfiction.net only has one Mad About You story, and it’s in Spanish (translated plot summary: “based on the last chapter, Mabel tells us something very interesting”).

Here are some pictures from the best episode of Friends that someone from the internet has put the corresponding words over the top of:

4. The number 11.

11 is a Master Number, “combining the most powerful male energy” with “the equally potent female energy”, for example in Boris Johnson, art, and James Gandolfini, the most popular topics Buzzfeed has 11 things to say about for some reason.

According to Google this image from the Daily Mail is what represents the combination of the 3:

A candle in the wind.

2. The number 15.

Jessica O wondered what the meaning of the number 15 could be, and wrote to about.com. About.com’s heaing expert Phylameana Lila Desy told her:

My approach when there are more than one meanings is to choose the meaning that makes the most sense to me personally and not be too concerned about which way may be right or wrong.

Phylameana Lila Desy is a fraud, you can’t just make up what a number means, numbers are science! For instance, Buzzfeed tells us the number 15 is most strongly associated with movies, fashion, bacon fat, and ‘addicted to Nutella’, so it’s clearly a number that indicates you might be a dietary knife-edge away from ruining some ambitions.

Alarmingly this is not the most disturbing thing you get when you look for pictures associated with the phrase “addicted to Nutella”:

1. The number 10.

A classic number, first popularised by 10th Doctor Who, famous star David Tennant, the number 10 now forms the basis for much of modern mathematics. “LOL” once again tops Buzzfeed’s list of topics, closely followed by “advertising” and “grammar and spelling mistakes”.

Numerology says

through this vibration you have the insight to recognize and understand the needs of humanity, and the ability to bring peace and harmony to all

so in a shocking twist it turns out that by posting loads of “hilarious” Jpegs like

this Buzzfeed are actually slowly drawing the psychic energies of humanity towards the perfect oneness that will unite our beings and allow us to experience the true totality of love. If you didn’t “LOL” at the above picture your brain receptors are just not advanced enough to join the next level of human experience 🙁 but maybe you’ll enjoy this word cloud of Buzzfeed topics by popularity:

The six degrees of separation theory states that everyone in the world is only six social connections away from anyone else (as in, Doug is connected to Fred because they both know Emily). It turns out this theory isn’t strictly speaking true, not least because of isolated tribe, children raised by wolves and so on, but there is something appealing about the idea that we’re more strongly connected to the rest of the world than might be immediately obvious.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon applies this theory to the Hollywood movie industry, suggesting that because Kevin Bacon has been in lots of films and worked with lots of other actors, it is possible to link Kevin Bacon with any other actor in less than six steps (a single step being appearing in a film with Bacon, 2 steps being appearing in a film with someone who has appeared in another film with Bacon, and so on). Also his name sort-of rhymes with the word separation, so it’s a pun.

Again, this isn’t strictly speaking true: The Oracle Of Bacon website, which uses the Internet Movie Database to track links to Kevin Bacon, counts 32 people who are a whole 8 steps away. These people are said to have a Bacon Number of 8. If anyone with a Bacon Number would like to act in a film with me, let me know.

The concept of a Bacon Number is predated by the Erdős Number, a measure of “collaborative distance” between a person and the dead mathematician Paul Erdős, based on writing mathematical papers together. If anyone with an Erdős number would like to work on a mathematical paper with me, let me know. I’m not very good at maths but I could colour in some graphs or something.

Best of all is the Erdős-Bacon number, which simultaneously tracks the Bacon and Erdős numbers of a person who has both acted in films and written mathematical papers. Natalie Portman has an Erdős-Bacon number of 6. If Natalie Portman is reading this and would like to act in a film with me or work on a mathematical paper with me, or just hold hands for a bit, let me know.

Anyway, I’m getting off the point.

Something is missing from our cinemas. The beloved national treasures that were “those fucking Orange ads” have vanished from our screens, after spending the best part of 10 years failing to convince a single person not to dick about with their phone during the middle of the film. Instead we are now treated to an ad for Orange’s parent company Everything Everywhere, featuring none other than Kevin Bacon, who informs us that he, Kevin Bacon, is the centre of the universe.

This is obviously a riff on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon connectedness concept. Bacon explains that he is connected to everything and demonstrates by pointing at a dog called Rover. Amazingly, Kevin Bacon is even connected to Rover, and he explains how:

“I was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks did Philadelphia, Philadelphia tastes great on a cracker, “It’s a cracker!” was Frank Carson’s catchphrase, Catchphrase was on ITV, same as Coronation Street, and we all know where Ken Barlow drinks: The Rovers.”

Needless to say, this explanation is rather unsatisfactory.

Let’s take it apart:

“I was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks did Philadelphia,”

We’ve now connected Kevin Bacon to the film Philadelphia. Fine.

“Philadelphia tastes great on a cracker,”

Here there’s an unstated connection here, between the film Philadelphia and the cheese Philadelphia. But they are both named after the state Philadelphia (although the Philadelphia cheese brand was actually started in New York) so this is just about acceptable.

“‘It’s a cracker!’ was Frank Carson’s catchphrase,”

The ‘connection’ here is purely wordplay. Carson is not referring to a cracker biscuit, so there’s some etymological reaching required at the very least.

“Catchphrase was on ITV,”

The problem here is that the quiz show Catchphrase had a stupid name, as it was not about Catchphrases. It did include catchphrases, “Say what you see”, “It’s good but it’s not the one”, “Mr Chips is having a wank”, etc, but the actual puzzles were just about phrases, like “a bull in a china shop”. I don’t think that’s a catchphrase, unless it belonged to music hall act I’m not aware of. So all we’ve got is that both Frank Carson and the show Catchphrase have catchphrases. (Catchphrase did do celebrity specials, but Frank Carson never appeared on one. Frank Carson is now dead.)

“same as Coronation Street,”

I mean, fine. They’re not made by the same production company, but okay.

“and we all know where Ken Barlow drinks: The Rovers.”

Even if the dog was called The Rovers, having the same name as a thing is not the same thing as being connected to that thing. You can’t change your name to Kevin Bacon and expect to share his fat Everything Everywhere cheques, can you?

(If you get a dog, why not call it The Rovers?)

The dog probably isn’t called Rover in real life. He’s almost certainly a special acting dog with a different name like Charlie. So why not just say he’s called The Rovers because his owner really liked Coronation Street?

However, all of this is irrelevant as Kevin Bacon has a much stronger connection to Rover: they’ve both appeared in an Everything Everywhere ad. Rover (or whatever the dog is actually called) has a Bacon number of 1. I would assume that he doesn’t have an Erdős-Bacon number, but you never know.

The reason the ad invokes Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is that it shows that Kevin Bacon is very well-connected in Hollywood; this is a metaphor for how connected you will be if you purchase an Everything Everywhere phone contract. But by the ad’s own terms, you may actually find your connection highly variable, to the point where sometimes it barely exists. This is disappointingly unrigorous and Everything Everywhere (and Saatchi & Saatchi, who made the ad) should be ashamed of themselves.

Also, Kevin Bacon doesn’t have the magical ability to create little planets and stars that orbit around him and then throw one of them at a dog. He can’t do that. It’s a lie. (It also seems unlikely that he’s heard of Catchphrase, but I suppose the wanking thing is on Youtube.)

As it goes, Kevin Bacon isn’t even the centre of the Hollywood universe. Dennis Hopper is. Kevin Bacon is the 444th most connected actor in the Hollywood universe. That’s lower than Derek Jacobi (346). And Natalie Portman (420).

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Everything Everywhere should throw the Kevin Bacon thing in the bin and make a new advert where the metaphor for the strength of their connections is me holding Natalie Portman’s hand, forever.