7 Reasons

Tag: society

  • 7 Reasons That Social Kissing is a Minefield

    7 Reasons That Social Kissing is a Minefield

    I’m perplexed by social kissing.  I’m referring to non-sexual kissing here, the sort that goes on all the time on all manner of occasions and at every gathering.  I’ve been trying to make some sort of sense of it since 8:30 am.  On a morning in 1985. As an Englishman, I just find it all a bit fraught and overwhelming.  Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far.  Here are seven reasons that social kissing is a minefield.

     

    This is bad. Even I know that.

     

    1.  Straight Men.  Social kissing, if you’re a heterosexual man, is fraught with myriad rules and conventions that must be strictly adhered to.  In truth, it’s a bit complicated.  As a straight man, you can kiss any unrelated woman socially, except for the Queen and ones that smell really bad and keep pigeons in their hats.  You can also kiss any related woman socially: mothers; sisters; aunts; nieces; cousins; in-laws; grandmas; that woman you’re told is an aunt but no one can remember how the family know her (she probably just latched on to them at a christening in 1974), they’re all fair game.  You can’t, however, kiss any unrelated man unless a) you are both professional football players in the act of celebrating a goal or b) you are more drunk than you have ever been in your life and it is your wedding night (I played the role of surprised wedding guest in this scenario, I don’t recommend it) .  Related men are simpler.  You can kiss both your father and grandfather up to the age of about twelve and you can kiss babies (but not excessively, and once they can walk unaided that has to stop or you’ll get a bad reputation).   Oh, and uncles should never really kiss anyone, ever.  All clear?

    2.  Straight Women.  The etiquette for straight women is more straightforward.  Heterosexual women can kiss any unrelated woman, also excepting the Queen (though they will kiss the smelly woman with a pigeon in her hat because they’re generally kinder than men).  They can kiss any related woman (probably including the Queen, should they be related).  They can also kiss all men (both related and unrelated).  In short, they may kiss pretty much everyone apart from the dead (and even then it’s acceptable for the first few days).

    3.  Gay Men.  It’s more complicated for gay men.  The same rules that apply to straight men kissing relatives apply to them but, in the case of unrelated men, things are a little different.  The football celebration exemption that applies to heterosexual men doesn’t apply to them, because there are no gay professional football players.  At all.  None. No!  But gay men can kiss each other socially (should they feel comfortable doing so), unless they are in a location where such activity may attract a crowd/mob.  They are also not allowed to kiss socially within the pages of the Daily Mail, unless accompanied by some sort of lurid headline about declining standards/moral turpitude/Britain’s going to hell in a handcart because we’re so against modernity that we won’t even put it in a metaphorical car.

    4.  Gay Women.   Exactly the same rules apply to gay women that apply to straight women, with only one important exception.  Under no circumstance can a lesbian ever kiss Justin Bieber.  That would just be too much confusion for anyone to bear.

    5.  The French.  Now, the French have their own unique approach to social kissing.  French men and French women (of any persuasion) can kiss absolutely anyone they like (except for the Queen and my writing partner, Jon), as long as they do it twice.  Once on the left cheek and once on the right.*  You can see this demonstrated at civil ceremonies throughout France as various mayors and civic dignitaries present medals for courage in the face of extreme paper cuts to postal workers and the highly-prized and hotly-contested croix de blanc, which is annually awarded to the first person  to surrender their town to any approaching army (or a passing traffic warden should there be no invading army available at that moment).

    6.  Transsexuals.  Okay, the rules are really blurred here.  But, as far as I’m concerned, transsexuals can kiss anyone they like, except for the Queen and me outside York Minster at midnight on New Year’s Eve 2004 just when I’m moving in to kiss my wife and am off-guard.  Yes, I concede that it would have been very funny had it happened in a sitcom or to someone else, but sadly it didn’t.  Oh, and when you’re saying, “I bet you didn’t think you’d be kissing a transsexual at midnight”, try not to do it in a tar-soaked scouse accent, because that just made it feel dirty.  Try it in lilting Irish next time, or a West country burr.  Then I’ll probably feel better about the whole experience.

    7.  Eskimos.  Eskimo kissing is weird.  I don’t know which Eskimos can kiss other Eskimos.  I also don’t know how Eskimo gender affects which Eskimos can kiss other Eskimos (or how they can tell what gender the other Eskimo is under all the layers of clothing and the furry hood).  I do know, however, that Eskimos aren’t Eskimos at all, they’re Inuits, Yupiks and Aleuts, but they don’t Inuit, Yupik or Aleut kiss, they Eskimo kiss (oh, and they don’t live in igloos**).  I’m sure it’s quite acceptable for them to Eskimo kiss other Eskimos (who also aren’t Eskimos) though, but probably not seals and definitely not polar bears.  Just as long as they don’t come and rub their faces against the rest of us without warning really, as it’s bizarre behaviour.  And by the rest of us, I mean me.  I seem to have enough problems with social kissing as it is.

     

    *If an English person says that you can kiss them on an additional cheek, they are insulting you.

    **Except for the ones that do.

     

  • 7 Reasons That Twitter Will Alter All Human Existence

    7 Reasons That Twitter Will Alter All Human Existence

    Twitter:  Fun?  Yes.  Useful?  Yes.  A culture-changing behemoth that will fundamentally alter all human existence?  Yes.  Here are seven reasons why.

    LOL

    1.  Opinion.  Twitter is a hotbed of instant opinion and, thanks to the medium, our ability to express opinion will remain undiminished.  Unfortunately, also thanks to Twitter, all human opinion will eventually come to be expressed in 140 characters or less.  Thus Machiavelli’s view of history as a tool for learning will change from:

    “Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

    To:

    “He’s just like his dad.  Men are all the same.  LOL.

    And Albert Einstein’s,

    “The population of the civilized countries is extremely dense as compared with former times; Europe today contains about three times as many people as it did a hundred years ago. But the number of leading personalities has decreased out of all proportion. Only a few people are known to the masses as individuals, through their creative achievements. Organisation has to some extent taken the place of leading personalities, particularly in the technical sphere, but also to a very perceptible extent in the scientific.”

    Will become:

    “People are becoming more stoopid.  LOL”

    And where we would once have had wordy treatises extolling considered opinion on the omniscient nature of the supreme being, we will have:

    “God knows.  LOL.”

    2.  Mimicry.  And it’s not just that opinion will be condensed to insubstantial gibberish.  Some people will eventually be reduced to saying nothing at all.  Thanks to the retweet button, the lazy and unoriginal will find it possible to maintain discourse with others without ever stating any of their own thoughts or opinions at all.  This will be familiar to anyone who has ever conversed with a Daily Mail reader or a viewer of Fox News but, the spectre of it escalating further is worrying indeed.  Perhaps thanks to the constant retweeting, the world will be reduced to having just one opinion on any given subject.  Rupert Murdoch’s, probably.

    3.  Courage.  And it’s not just that we’ll lack opinions and the capability for extended expression.  Humanity will eventually develop to lack courage.  Because when we disagree with the opinion that someone has just retweeted: “Pink is for sissies.  LOL”, we won’t reply, “No it isn’t.  Chuck Norris wears pink underpants.  LOL”, we’ll send a direct message to someone else saying, “Did you see what @RupertMurdoch1874 just said?  Where does he get off saying that?  LOL.”  Because as people fear losing followers or public ridicule they become more and more timid and secretive and would rather whisper things to their friends in the corner.  Sadly, however, they don’t become any less stupid.

    4.  Shame.  Shame will disappear completely as a human emotion.  As we increasingly rely on Twitter for information that we would previously have acquired through knowing stuff and learning and having a modicum of sense and whatnot – or even just old-fashioned googling things – we will eventually attempt to acquire all of our important life information from Twitter.

    “Is Twitter down?  LOL”

    “Can I eat lamb that’s been in the fridge for over a day?  LOL”

    “Is it weird that my period’s six weeks late?  LOL”

    “Why am I getting so fat?  LOL”

    Seriously, if our dead ancestors came back from the grave and saw the things that people tweet, they’d…er…die again, of shame.  And spin too.  (Okay, I really didn’t think that metaphor through but at least I’m not brazenly parading my stupidity on Twitter full-time.  No.  I’m busy writing this.  I’m saving my Twitter-stupidity for later).

    5.  Emotions.  Human expression of emotion will also come to be affected by Twitter.  People will no longer smile, cry, or frown, they will merely write “*smiles”, “*cries”,  “*frowns”, “*throws self under a bus.  LOL”, to denote emotion.  Whether this will extend to mainstream media is a matter of conjecture (which is fortunate as that’s what I’m doing.  I’m conjecting. I’m a conjector), but it’s easy to imagine rolling news channels with banners stating “M6 Traffic Jam Reaches Sixth Day *sticks bottom lip out”, “Man Found Guilty Of Sex Act With Goat *eeuuggghhh” and “Osama Bin Laden Captured *punches air with fist”.  Well, actually the last one is hard to imagine.  But at least emoting by using the asterisk is some progress from using smileys and emoticons, which is just abusing perfectly good punctuation-marks in order to make a stupid bloody sideways face.

    6.  Internationalism.  As cultures interact on Twitter, entire national traits will disappear as the world becomes a more homogenous place.  After all, anyone who is aware of the Twitter phenomenon that has been @theashes, will have noted that, after 234 years of trying, an American has been finally converted to following the glorious sport of cricket.  This means that, in a mere 71,839,532,700 years, the entire population of the United States will be cricket lovers, and the world will be all the better for that.  And then we can start converting China.  Seriously, Cricket will be the world sport in…(Nope, my computer isn’t powerful enough to compute that.  Probably at about the time when people return to the sea and the dinosaurs come back in their meteor).

    7.  LOL.  As the phrase “LOL” becomes so ubiquitous that every last feckless bastard ends their tweets with it (this will probably happen in about six days time) and we come not to notice that we’re doing it altogether and forget its original meaning, there will come a moment when someone actually wants to write “laughing out loud” which, as it takes up too many characters, they will abbreviate to LOL.  And as all tweets will already be suffixed “LOL”, the tweet “LOL.  LOL.” will eventually occur.  And that will be the moment that Twitter, or humanity (or both) will implode.  Or explode.  Either way, there will definitely be a plosion of some sort.  LOL.