When Burnout: Paradise first came out I thought of it as something which might almost scratch my GTA itch.  I saw myself driving around a city for a few minutes and then getting frustrated with the lack of safe houses, rocket launchers and bitter satire.  It would excite my hunger without putting it to rest.  I could see myself cursing the game for all the things it never set out to provide.  I put the box back on the shelf.

This being the case I am as surprised as anyone to find myself, with GTA IV still half-completed, playing Burnout Paradise, a lot.  I do like the graphics, the viceral crashes and the stunts but what really appeals is the utter directionlessness of it all.  The game makes it virtually impossible to plan your activities and you are launched ito a state of constant side-tracking.  No sooner do you decide that there is a secific race which you want to win than a car you want to catch wizzes past, or you find yourself being invited to join a different race.  The game’s rewards for completing one activity vary very little from completing another to the point that it is impossible and counter-productive to lay out any specific goals.  You just drive and do shit, then drive and do shit without really knowing what shit it is you want to do until you are actually doing it.

This has a very pleasing effect on my brain, not dissimilar to browsing in a shop.  I find myself not really thinking at all.  I realised that sidetracking and being sidetracked is something which I purposefully factor into every activity.  Right now I am writing this, I have an email I am working on and I am looking up the exact wording of our copyright form for an author, I check my inbox every few minutes and I am eating my (first) lunch.  I periodically flick between these activities, doing a little work on each.  This way I structure my time so that every activity happens in parallel to another and I never dwell on one for more than 20 seconds or so.  When I get home, I tend to read whilst eating, listen to music whilst playing games, do forms whilst my food is cooking.

I understand that this is not the most efficient way to go about things.  People get more done if they dedicate themselves to one task at a time, but this behaviour is hardwired and I find focusing on one task for an extended period exhausting.

Is this MTV’s fault?  Do I have a postmodern brain?

I am supposed to do some time management training.  I am writing this at work and, apart from the email concerning the training I am supposed to do, my inbox is otherwise empty, which I take as a testament to my time management skills as they stand.  The email directs me to an online course I can do which will train me in time management.  It includes a link which I can follow and instructions on how I will need to register and enter an activation code if I do not have a login already.  If I do have a login already, then I need to sort through my ‘Important Messages’ folder and find the login and password.

I have opened this link three times over the course of this last afternoon and each time I have looked at the little box prompting me to log in and the gargantuan weight of putting work into logging in, in order to entitle me to do more work is so overhwelming that I have closed the box.

I went to school for this.

I have had three phones, my latest one can do lots of stuff, it never has signal but that is not the phone’s fault.  It can take pictures, videos, it can surf the internet, it has bluetooth, it has a massive memory, it can make calls.  It also goes through spells where it switches itself off at random despite having full battery.  The other day I entered a number in it, hit save, went back to the phone book and did not find the number.  Then I entered the number again, hit save and the same thing happened.  Sometimes it buzzes for a text after I have read the text, making me think that I have a new message when I have not.  It also keeps on telling me ‘please insert sim card’, which means that I have to open up the back, wiggle the sim card around and then boot it up again.  Then it tells me ‘please insert sim card’….  The fact is, as modern phones go, this is a good phone.

My phone before that used to have a problem with its background, which would occasionally go all pixelated.  It also claimed to take videos and did not, ever, even when it said that it was taking a video.  It never, in the whole time I owned it, successfully sent or opened a picture message.  It broke when some Vitamin Water in my bag burst in New York.  The combination of wet and lemony was too much for such a fragile object and the screen stopped working.  The water tasted awful as well, it was nothing but a disappointment to me.

This got me thinking about my very first phone.  It was a Nokia 3310, one evolutionary step past a brick, two past a phone box.  I took it out of its old box, charged it and booted it up.  This phone is almost six years old now, to me, and I was not its first owner.  It does not take pictures, or go online, or have bluetooth, you have to input ringtones manually or have someone send them to you.  Its picture messages were crappy stock stick-man pictures of, say a birthday cake.  You know what it did do though?

It fucking worked!  It did everything it claims to do every time I told it to without sim card errors or please wait timers.  It also has snake.

After more than six years, three of which had been spent it a box doing nothing, it worked as well as the day I bought it.  I am prepared to bet that it could withstand wet lemonyness as well.   It even kept all of my old snake highscores (and, I should add, no phone game, however colourful, has ever topped snake).  My dad still uses one of these things and it works as well as it did the day he bought it.  These phones came before video messages and pre-planned obsolescence.  It has a blunt cave-man efficiency to it.

Frankly I would take a phone which claims little but delivers over one which claims to do many things and then switches itself off.

 I am not opposed to football in theory.  I just can’t seem to form any strong opinions about it.  I watch when England are playing and I am near a television, and someone else has switched said television on, and for some reason I do not have a book to hand.  Otherwise I am not fussed.

I am not sure quite how this came about.  In the normal flow of things a boy in the UK generally inherits loyalty to his local team or, sometimes, the team from whatever county his family are from, or he follows Manchester United and joins the wandering fans with no homeland.  At some critical juncture something must have disrupted the process because I just plain can not seem to care about football.  I find it odd that people talk about their team as ‘we’ as if they, personally, have a hand in the result of a game or, in fact, how they can muster the enthusiasm for it all.

Being a man in the UK with no strong feelings about football leads to awkward conversations.  Football is the default topic which two men fall back to when they have nothing else in common, so I often have conversations like this:

Stranger: Looking forward to the big match on Saturday?

Me: um… Yes. [long pause]  I hope that our team scores more goals than the other team.  [long pause]  And thus wins the game.  [long pause].  I hear that the other team are not very good at football [long pause] and probably gay or something else which offends you.

Cricket is good when I have something more important to do.  If I put it on in the background and sit with some paperwork I can spend the whole day avidly watching cricket and convincing myself that I am doing paperwork.  Take the paperwork away, though, and it gets rather boring.  The only other time I like cricket is when the sun is shining, I am watching it in the flesh (ie. not through a TV) and someone is bringing me beer.

I quite enjoy rugby.  I used to play rugby (not very well, mind) when I was younger.  Despite being rougher than football, rugby is conducted with much more level-headedness and propriety.  Players do not back-talk the referee in rugby.  They address him as ‘Sir’ and if an official wants to discipline a player, he calls the team captain over and communicates through him.  Rugby in its early days was known as a game for ruffians played by gentlemen.  It is a far cry from the spoilt celebrity tantrums we see in football.

I was lucky enough to be living with a much more committed rugby fan than myself whilst I was at university during England’s victory in 2003.  Johnny Wilkinson’s 19th minute of extra time drop goal was the JFK assassination to English rugby fans – I was in my then girlfriend’s bed whilst she was at work, watching it on a tiny TV which I had hooked up in her room if you must ask.  2003 was as good as it got, though.  A lot of players had all hit a peak simultaneously and the team operated as a smooth white killing machine.  Afterwards the team had to be reassembled and played in before England got that good again.

When I moved to Oxford I moved away from daily contact with rugby fans and discovered that watching sports alone is really dull.  The only time I experienced anything similar was watching Frank Shamrock vs Cung Le in the Ultimate Fighting Championships with my kung fu friends.  Cung Le is something of a star in sanda (Chinese Kickboxing).  He is undefeated with a string of knock-outs under his belt.  His legendary scissor-kick-takedown looks like it should be wired and has no place in a ring.

I have mixed feelings about UFC, which would probably take a whole post in itself.  I love the concept of an open format where different styles can compete.  In reality though, everyone who enters fights the same way with MMA; a mixture of the most direct moves from thai boxing, western boxing and jiu jitsu.  It also breeds an arrogance amongst MMA guys that their style is the most complete because it encompasses striking and grappling.  I can see the argument (that ground fighting does not get covered in a lot of other styles) but I would have to point out that if “complete” is what we are going for then we should not forget that in a lot of styles biting is as fundamental as kicking and that a lot of traditional styles teach the use of weapons.  Striking and grappling ain’t half of fighting.  If we really wanted to let every martial artist compete on a level playing field then Iaido guys should be allowed samurai swords and Dog Style practitioners should be allowed to bite to the groin.

All of that is even before we start discussing the problems with ground fighting multiple opponents and the whole issue of treating martial arts as a sport and parading it all around like pro-wrestling.  On the other hand, it is a nice show.  I have a lot of respect for the guys who do it, particularly the likes of Sakuraba and Rampage Jackson who put on an entertaining show.

So anyway, Cung Le represented sanda, he competed in Wushu competitions and he knows one of my friends.  He was our boy.  There was a pride in Chinese styles at stake.  In our pre-fight build-up we talked about how sanda does not have ground fighting so Cung Le will need a follow-through after his throws.  Cung Le’s kicks are amazing but kicks, high kicks particularly, leave him vulnerable.  On the ground Cung Le was going to be outclassed so he needed to avoid situations which might lead to a takedown, watch for shoots, finish throws cleanly so as not to get taken to the floor.  There was a gathering energy as we talked, we really wanted to see Cung Le come out on top.  We started tempering our enthusiasm with cautionary remarks I would be happy, I said, if Cung Le gave as good as he got, that he fought a good fight.  If he proved that a sanda guy could hold his own against an MMA fighter.

Cung Le and Shamrock communicated during the fight with nods, smiles and little gestures.  On one level there was a friendliness to it but they were also psyching each other out, nodding after each encounter to say ‘good hit but you haven’t phased me.’  The fight stayed upright throughout – at one point Cung Le caught a kick and swept out Shamrock’s other leg.  Shamrock sat, smiled and gestured for Cung Le to join him on the ground.  Cung Le grinned back and shook his head.  Shamrock shrugged and stood.

The exchange was fairly balanced until the end of the third round.  Cung Le finished with a barrage of blows and as the bell rang Shamrock’s side threw the towel in.  Shamrock had been absorbing Cung Le’s round kicks on his forearms and somewhere into the third round one of these kicks had broken his arm.  We were elated.  This for me was the same thrill as Johnny Wilkinson’s drop goal – he had actually done it.  He had won.  Our boy had gone toe to toe with Frank Shamrock in a UFC ring and come out on top!

I followed American football for a while.  More than anything though , I had to stop watching becuase it pains me to her it called football.  Even though I do not particularly like English football, I still cringe when I hear American football called ‘football’ – English people were playing a game called football before there was a place called America.  I would not mind if America had taken a word which we did not use anymore, but calling a different sport by the same name just causes transatlantic miscommunication all around.

I like the idea of American football.  It all happens in short bursts and then there is a lot of setting up again which suits my attention span and toilet/fridge breaks.  The guys are armoured to hell and it out-does rugby in terms of spectacular clashes.  There are cheerleaders.  The problem, for me, again, was not the sport but having no one nearby who cared enough about it to have a conversation with.

That said, if I was going to follow an American sport it would have to be hockey.  In hockey hitting someone in the head with a stick is punishable with a double-minor (4 minutes in the sin-bin), after that the player is allowed back on to the ice (presumably so that he can have another swing).  It is a game which actually distinguishes between different kinds of brutality and assigns different penalties for each; elbow strikes carry less of a penalty than headbutting; punching someone is not as bad as punching someone with a run-up or whilst airborne.  They actually have to have rules governing the use of blades with the intent to cause harm.  What an awesome way to organise a sport!  I am sure that there is more to hockey than violence, but as an outsider I really can’t see it.

About half an hour ago I discovered to my horror that I left the house this morning only partially shaved.  I missed a small section just under my right nostril and am currently sporting what can only be described as the beginings of half a Hitler-tash.  I think we can all agree that post-1946 a Hitler-tash is something of a facial hair faux-pas.  With half a Hitler-tash people are going to be confused as to exactly what I was trying to do and will most likely be offended anyway.  I am going to have to spend the day angling my head, standing sideways-on to people or positioning my hand to cover up my deeply innapropriate stubble growth.

I can not be the first man to leave the house half-shaved.  I am sure it has happened to most of us at some point.  It is like walking around with your flies open, but harder to fix.  I should carry a razor in my bag for this kind of thing.  If only I was that forward thinking.  I do have a pen knife but I can see that ending with a trip to the hospital to re-attach parts of my face.  There is a craft-knife blade somewhere on my desk (I remember – I was showing my co-workers how to make a shank if ever they found themselves in prison and could not find a toothbrush to sharpen).  If I can find my shank and am very careful maybe I could save myself a lot of difficult conversations.

I wonder if anyone has noticed apart from me.  It is not like people really spend that long looking at each other’s faces.  Maybe someone has noticed.  If they only saw me in profile from the right they might believe that I was growing a full Hitler-tash.  They might tell their colleagues.  By this afternoon people could be accusing me of being a Nazi.  I could be fired and no one will ever want to hire someone whose reason for dismissal from previous job includes the word “Hitler” in any context.  Thanks to one momentary oversight in the bathroom this morning I will wind up homeless.  Even other homeless people will hate me becuase they will believe the Hitler-facial hair rumors.

Maybe the pen-knife-face plan is not so bad an idea…

 [Update: I went to Tescos during my lunch break and bought a razor.  I also bought communal cookies to share around the office, you know, just to be safe.]

I have a firm handshake. Some might say too firm. It is a problem which comes from doing kung fu: you learn a load of cool things which are easier to demonstrate than explain, you learn a new (and not entirely socially condusive) set of rules concerning physical boundaries and your grip gets stronger. Before you know it you are enthusiastically jamming the second knuckle of your index finger into a stranger’s shoulder joint whilst explaining the finer points of dim mak, when all they did was innocently say ‘Kung fu? That sounds cool” in order to be polite. It also makes you unwittingly crush any hand which is offered to you.

I hate the floppy handshake approach. The Queen does this. She just drops her hand into yours and lets you do all the work. In fairness, if she shook hands like I do then not only would she come across as an aggressive hand-crushing jerk, she would suffer from severe wrist arthritis by now.

When I was a student, if someone offered me their hand I would angle my hand upwards rather than downwards and go for the thumb shake. You know the one I mean. It looks like this.  This served to demonstrate to the person I was being introduced to that I am really, really cool. It also gave them the option to slip me some drugs, if they happened to be holding any. It never came up, but I liked to give them the option.

It also allowed me and the stranger to lean in and shoulder bump, which did happen occasionally. The main reason why I used to do this was because the thumb shake is the gateway to the jive handshake. I always dreamed that one day I would be introduced to a stranger, they would offer their hand, I would take their thumb and we would seamlessly flow into a sequence of fist bumps, slides, finger wiggles and fives.  The likelyhood of us both knowing the same rehearsed sequence would be low, but if we nailed it, it would be the most awesome thing which ever happened.

If it did happen we would become friends for life. No further affirmation would be required – from that moment on we would both know that we had met a soul-mate. We would not need words. If it was a girl I would have to marry her.

The thumb shake may alienate and confuse my authors and editors but, as we have already established, my current handshake says ‘aggressive hand-crushing jerk’, is ‘weird British guy who thinks he is black and from the 80’s’ any worse? More importantly, I am cheating myself out of a potential soul-mate every time I go for the traditional shake.

I feel I would be amiss at this stage if I failed to mention high fives, which I think I should also reintroduce into my repertoire. When you hit a perfect high-low there is a spark of magic. People always mess it up my congratulating themselves afterwards or, and this is just embarrassing to see, messing it up and going back in for a missed five. A perfect high low is done without eye contact or either party breaking their stride. A perfect high-low should never be acknowledged.

If we are opening the floor to high-fives then I should also consider mid-fives and fist pounding. It would make for some very uncomfortable and confusing editorial board meetings.

I know someone who greets everyone he knows with a hug. He is a big, friendly guy and it works really well. Getting hugged is really disarming: I do not think I could ever deliver bad news to him in person, it would be unbearable. I could weave some hugs into my greeting repertoire but I am not sure I have a full enough grasp of the etiquette; head position and length of hug are a delicate matter. The last thing I would want is to either deliver a dismissive squeeze or, worse, an embarrassing slow-roast hug which they have to break.

Kissing on the cheek(s) is even more of a minefield – I like to imagine that I follow the stranger’s lead on this one but, frankly, I would be more comfortable with a chest-bump.

The other problem with hugs is that it brings me back to the crushing-people problem again. I am fully aware that, when prompted to hug someone I generally go in hard (like, rib-creaking hard) and leave them struggling for breath. I know that I do this but am incapable of stopping it – good kung fu comes at a price.

I was in Albuquerque for a conference last month.  Albuquerque is big and empty – everything is brown and turquoise.  The only things in Albuquerque worth getting excited about were the burritos and the old town.  I spent an hour doing everything there was to do in old town and a further hour waiting for a taxi to take me back to the conference.  If you find yourself in Albuquerque in the near future, there are three border-line intersting things you can see; The New Mexico Art gallery, an Atomic Weapons Museum and past lots of buildings (most of them closed) with hanging signs and cattle skulls over doorways.  It helps if you have someone to talk to whilst you do these things. The rooftops in old town looked perfect for sliding off onto a horse for a quick getaway if you are so inclined.

The taxi driver told us about a rodeo in town and I decided that I needed a cowboy hat.  I also bought a sheriff’s badge (as a novelty gift for my colleagues back in Oxford) and lingered around the huge belt buckles and boot-string ties before deciding against them.  I wore my hat for the rest of the conference (but not the badge).  You might not think that there are many things you can do with a hat, hats being, after all, clothes and clothes generally having no other purpose than covering parts of your body.  You would be wrong.  Here are some things you can do whilst wearing a cowboy hat.

- Doff it to people you know.  This works especially well if you accompany it by saying their name is they are a man or saying ‘mam’ if they are a woman.

- Tip it over your eyes when you are supposed to be manning a booth, except you drank too much tequila the night before and just want to sleep and there are no psychologists around to care about your booth anyway.

- Meet eyes across a conference hall with someone who is wearing a different coloured cowboy hat to you and pretend to go for your imaginary gun.  This only really works if they also pretend to go for their imaginary gun, rather than looking at you blankly.

- Learn to flip the hat onto your head: start with it facing away from you, roll it into the crook of your arm and in a fluid motion place it on your head.  I only learned this trick when I got back to Oxford and cursed myself for not working on it sooner: bitches love hat rolling tricks.

- Stick your thumbs either side of your belt buckle and walk around like a cowboy.  Say ‘howdy’ to strangers.

You should bear in mind that in a lot of south-west people wear cowboy hats without irony and, if they realise that you are in fact British and doing a bad impression of a cowboy, they may suspect mockery and punch you.  You should also be aware that when you get home and are heavily jetlagged, your friends will try to steal your hat and make Brokeback Mountain jokes.

 I helped a friend move last weekend and whilst doing so I found a pair of aviator sunglasses amongst his stuff.  I wore them for the rest of the day and decided by the end of it that, as with the cowboy hat, my life would be that bit sweeter if I had a pair of aviators so I bought a pair.  They arrived today and, as with the cowboy hat, I wore them in the office.  One of my colleagues tells me that I am becoming ‘that guy’, a statement which I take as wholly positive.

According to Neil Strauss, the practice of wearing cowboy hats, aviators and other daft accessories is referred to amongst the pick up artist community as ‘peacocking’ – apparently girls in clubs find men more attractive if they are wearing some kind of ironic and frankly rather homosexual accessory.  Thinking back, I can not remember an evening where I had more female attention than when, one Easter, I drank enough to earn myself a pair of bunny ears and then folded them downwards to make myself lop-eared.  If only I had seen the correlation at the time I would still be wearing those ears today – they would have made an interesting talking point in job interviews.

I wonder how much it would cost to get myself some giant Mr. T chains…