Robbie Williams' 'Tripping'

It’s the first verse:

First they ignore you.
Then laugh at you and hate you.
Then they fight you. Then you win.

Then what Robbie? Then what? He sings it as if this is a familiar situation for all of us: The old ignoring, laughing, hating, fighting before ultimately losing treatment, eh? Well I’ve seen that before and I’m ready for you.

He seems to be glossing over things a bit as well. Where are the details Robbie? Who is ignoring you? Why are they laughing? What form did the fight take? Was it a war of egos – is that how you won?

These are lyrics of a remarkably low standard. You might have written something similar in a school exercise book when you were fourteen, only you would have read them back and torn the page out and burnt it and then eaten the ashes and then buried your shit through gargantuan embarrassment. I don’t know whether Robbie wrote them, but he does sing them. If I’m embarrassed at the idea of having written them when I was fourteen – when I didn’t – why isn’t Robbie hiding his face for reading them out loud? And why hasn’t anyone laughed him out of town?

The verse ends:

When the truth dies, very bad things happen. They’re being heartless again.

Once again, you’re being overly specific here, Robbie. Need you have specified that the ‘bad things’ were ‘very bad’? There are likely to be children hearing this stuff, you don’t want to keep them from sleeping at night.

Razors

Essentially, this is the same point as for pyramid tea-bags, but that’s not going to stop me. Razors work – what’s to improve? Another question is: How many blades can one razor sport?

The answer is, of course, an infinite number. I have looked into my crystal ball and seen the marketing men’s plans for razors and their plans are these: More blades; stupider names; thinly disguised lies; and yet more blades.

Once upon a time shaving was practiced using what is now known as a cutthroat razor. It was all in the name really, so subsequent razors were developed in such a way that it was relatively difficult to cut oneself. Instead, the razor blade would glide across the surface of the face unable to deviate from its skin-skimming path because of the plastic in which it was set. Ingenious.

Nowadays they would have you believe that they can do better than that. The plastic surround now acts in such a way that it lifts hairs in order that they can be shorn even shorter. They can send electrical pulses into your flesh causing the hairs to practically leap out of your face. Modern razors can even suck testosterone from your body and replace it with oestrogen, meaning you will never have to shave your face again, although you may develop breasts.

In conjunction with all these shenanigans, the razor developers have been steadily adding blades. Having a single blade razor is like wearing a toga or fashioning rudimentary tools out of flint. Hell, the single blade razor is a sibling of the rope-bound flint axe. Even Luddites have twin blade razors. Triple blade razors are standard.

I’m not a great student of market trends, but I can see that there’s definitely room for improvement here. I wouldn’t stop until it was the done thing to take a facial cast of every man which would then be manufactured into a sort of attachable beard following the exact contours of the subject’s face, consisting entirely of razor blades. You would attach the razor-beard, press a button, whereupon the entire contraption would pulse imperceptibly removing every last hair right down to its source. Then they could change the attachments for each of these blades, causing you to buy a new one.

Exclamation Marks

The exclamation mark: A mark indicating an exclamation. Multiple exclamation marks: A series of marks indicating mental dullness, insecurity, an irritating personality and perhaps impotence on the part of the writer.

You have to leave yourself room for manoeuvre. If you end every sentence with an exclamation mark regardless of whether it is an exclamation or not, how do you indicate an exclamation? By using upwards of thirty of the bastards – that’s how. Some people’s writing is so exciting that exclamation marks outnumber other characters by three-to-one. Ordinary comments like: ‘I’m tired’ are lifted to new levels of meaning through the repeated use of the exclamation mark. Sometimes I count them to find out how deeply felt this tiredness is. On one occasion, the author had slipped into a coma.

Any publishers or news editors out there in search of the next Graham Greene or George Orwell – you need not read any more. Merely ask those with potential to send you a photograph of their keyboard. If the ‘1’ key is brown and illegible with ancient sweat, this is your writer.

For an amusing hobby, why not change the default keyboard settings on workmates’ computers to those of an unusual nationality and watch as they litter their work with dollar signs or inverted commas.

Loan Adverts

“Pay us £25,000 and we’ll give you £15,000 absolutely free”. Such is the nature of the loan, if you take time out of the equation. Loans are sometimes necessary. Nobody would own a house if they had to pay for one up front.

Loan adverts now appeal to more than those for whom a loan is necessary. They attempt to lure people into taking out loans for things that they want, but could wait for.

“This guy on our advert keeps pumas as pets and all his clothes are made entirely out of gold. Why should he have all of the pumas and gold? Take out a gargantuan loan today and purchase all the big cats and impractical clothing you desire. This lady is indulging in her new hobby of incinerating bank notes. You too could literally have money to burn. No. You SHOULD have money to burn”.

They always try and trick you into thinking that what everyone else has should be yours by right. The thing is, your workmate with the lilac sports car has taken out a loan to buy it and now his family are reduced to sharing a single oatcake while huddling round a nightlight for warmth. If you can’t afford to have your house carpeted in ermine, then you can’t afford to have your house carpeted in ermine. It doesn’t matter if someone tries to give you enough money to do so. Here’s the important point. I’ll italicise it. They’re not actually giving you the money.

Another relatively recent phenomenon in the land of the loan, is the loan to cover your loans. Consolidate your loans, they always say. What this amounts to is: “If you can’t afford to pay us back what you have borrowed, then you can pay an additional £3,000 for the privilege of paying us back over a longer period of time”.