Q & A

Some of you may remember my post last week.

Time to submit your questions...

Sexual Dynamite

Whilst not everybody is asking me for their sperm, there does seem to be an awful lot of love towards mysterg at the moment.

It's weird and I find it a little bit uncomfortable. For a start I don't like being the centre of attention, which may sound strange coming from a blogger who has revealed some highly personal truths, but it's one of the many reasons I choose to preserve my anonymity. For another thing, I still think I'm in love with my ex, which means it wouldn't be fair to get involved with anyone else. And as I've blogged before, I've given up on the idea of love, as I don't think I will recover from being hurt again.

"I'll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
And all I know of love is how to live without it
I just can't seem to find it

So I've made my mind up I must live my life alone
And though it's not the easy way
I guess I've always known
I'd say goodbye to love

There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine
Surely time will lose these bitter memories
And I'll find that there is someone to believe in
And to live for something I could live for

All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I'll go on as best I can

What lies in the future is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that I've been wrong
But for now this is my song

And it's goodbye to love
I'll say goodbye to love"


However, recently at work I've been made aware of not one, or two or even three but four ladies who appear to be carrying a torch for me. Whilst some guys I know would love this, for me, it's borderline frustrating.

Don't get me wrong. I am flattered in many ways by the attention and I can be a bit of a flirt at times. However, unlike many of my colleagues, I try to refrain from dipping my pen in the company ink. It can only lead to trouble.

The first of my admirers we will call Plain Jane, who is actually very sweet and not unattractive, but a little too quiet and timid for my liking. Therefore, despite it being the quiet ones you have to watch, I'm not too worried as it is the sort of situation that I can manage on its own.

The second of my admirers who I have mentioned before is HILF. Slightly older than me and innately sexy, I like her a lot, but the fact that she has just ended an engagement and that I'm her boss just smacks of trouble if I were to go there.

The third of my admirers we will call Nubian Princess. I met her a couple of months ago at a birthday party where we had the briefest of conversations. So far so good. However in the last couple of weeks, all of a sudden, she has increasingly been chatting to me and emailing me. At first I thought she was just being friendly but now I am certain she is flirting with me. A lot.

How can I be so sure? Aside from some of the things she has said, it's my job to know people and to be able to read them, and I'm extremely good at what I do. Plus she lent me a copy of True Blood which is all about sex and vampires so it's obvious isn't it? I hope she doesn't want me to bite her....although I probably would if push comes to shove as she's pretty tasty looking...

The fourth lady is an unknown quantity, mainly because I have been told by someone I trust that I have a secret admirer (who isn't one of the others) but the person who told me won't betray their confidence. Slightly scary but fair enough.

On top of all of this, blogger ex wants to see me as I have something that belongs to her, which she needs back - although that may be an excuse on her part, plus I really don't want to see her, but feel I owe it to her. And then there is the girl who my heart still belongs to, who I may or may not be making plans with to see next year...

I still can't figure out what's changed recently to have had so much attention. All I can think is perhaps as I've mentioned before, with renewed confidence which is in no small part down to this blog and you guys, I've been opening up a lot more recently and maybe people like what they see. I'm genuinely suprised.

Anyway, I have a work party/karaoke function thing coming up at work next week which I've been invited to, and I know at least three of the four ladies listed above will be going.

I would like to go, mainly because I know my ladycrush is also going to be there (more on her coming soon), but I'm starting to think that the idea of me, multiple admirers and alcohol may not be such a good idea...

So I put the question to all of you guys: should I run the risk, go along, and do my mean cover version of Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love or should I be sensible and make other plans?

His face at first just ghostly...

...turned a whiter shade of pale (aka as 'she only wants me for my sperm').

girl next door: "Hey Babes, how is your back now?"
mysterg: "Much better thanks. Still the odd twinge here and there but other than that I'm ready for some vigorous activity!"
girl next door: "What activities?...Actually, don't answer that. Although I am looking for a sperm donor..."
mysterg: "You're not serious are you?"
girl next door: "Why not?"
mysterg: "Not because it's bad but because you don't want to wait until you find someone?"
girl next door: "There's no one out there. I've given up on that idea."
mysterg: "That's not true. You just haven't found them yet. What kind of sperm are you looking for?"
girl next door: "I don't believe so. What do you mean what kind?"
mysterg: "Maybe...I mean what type of guy?"
girl next door: "Someone intelligent, kind and tall..."
mysterg: "Sounds familiar..."
girl next door: "Mmm..."
mysterg: "Okay, but what if you met someone intelligent, kind and tall, wouldn't you want him AND his sperm?"
girl next door: "No."
mysterg: "Why not?"
girl next door: "I suck at relationships and I've been hurt once too many times."
mysterg: "Me too doll but you should never give up hope entirely. He's out there somewhere. As for the whole sperm donor thing, if you want to do it then go for it, but you need to think long and hard about it first."
girl next door: "..."

Mysterg's Movie Mondays

Welcome to a new feature on Meditations in an Emergency.

So the other day One Sassy Girl over at Hot Piece of Sass left me this comment:

"New idea just hit me as I was wanting to pick a movie I haven't seen that would be good - you can recommend a movie every once in a while and tell us why you like it. It's your area of expertise, no? I'd take your recommendation and I'm sure everyone else would, too."

Initially I was a little skeptical, not because the idea didn't have some merit, but rather because there are plenty of other dedicated review sites and bloggers out there who do something similar.

However, after some consideration, I have decided to make this a regular feature on a Monday - hence the blog title. So, if you want to read about the films that I love and the films that you should discover for yourselves if you haven't already, drop by on a Monday...

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A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

“But in the beginning, did God not create Adam to love him?"

Since the appearance of ‘Maria’ in Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie Metropolis, the science-fiction film has continued to intrigue audiences with it’s portrayal of humanoid robots. Nowhere is the question of the concept of ourselves and what it means to be human raised more then in this subgenre of science-fiction movies, whose thematic concerns typically revolve around the threat of technology and the fear of the ‘other’. Based on the short-story Supertoys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss, this collaboration between Kubrick and Spielberg tells the story of David, a cybernetic boy played by Haley Joel Osment, and his quest to gain the love of his human mother.

Now whilst I'm a big fan of the films of Stanley Kubrick, I'm generally less enamoured with Spielberg, Jude Law and the Science Fiction genre, so this is a strange movie for me to be praising. Yet it is also one that despite its critical and commercial failures, in my humble opinion, deserves a re-evaluation and a second chance by audiences who either loved it or hated it first time around. Despite its many flaws, it has a great central performance from Hayley Joel Osment, along with one of the most complex and compelling exploration of ideas ever to feature in a blockbuster release. It is arguably one of the greatest films of this decade.

The opening voiceover of the film explains that the world has been devastated by flooding caused by greenhouse gases melting the polar ice-caps. Population control has been introduced and instead it is machines, which do not consume any resources after their initial manufacture (known as 'mecha') that have been created, to ensure the economic prosperity of Western civilisation continues. We are immediately positioned into a world that is not so dissimilar to our own contemporary society and is postmodern in its very nature – a world shaped by the introduction of new technologies into society and by capitalism. Therefore from the beginning of the movie we are explicitly aware that what we are seeing is a cautionary tale about our not-so-distant future.

It is into this world that David, a child substitute robot capable of human emotions is ‘born’ or rather created by Professor Allan Hobby - (note the suggestive name) - in the image of his own dead son. The creation of 'mecha' to fulfil the needs of their owners, as highlighted by a black female scientist - thereby drawing implicit comparisons to slavery - raises a larger moral question about the responsibilities of us playing God. It also raises wider questions about identity, the role of women in a world where children are created not born and the disposable nature of the consumer culture we live in.

David is adopted by the Monica and Henry Swinton, a couple whose own natural-born son Martin is seriously ill in a coma. Despite their initial acceptance of David, when Martin suddenly awakens and returns to the family home, a 'waning of affect' is instigated. When presented with both their real son and the commodified David, the depthlessness of their child substitute in comparison to the original becomes highlighted through a series of misunderstandings which are partly orchestrated by their real son. Eventually this leads to David being viewed as a potential threat. As Henry Swinton remarks: “If he was created to love, then it is reasonable to assume that he knows how to hate. And if pushed to those extremes, what is he really capable of?”

After his abandonment by his adoptive parents, David falls into the hands of a 'Flesh Fair' whose purpose is to destroy 'mecha' in a gladiatorial arena, purportedly for robot population control but also clearly for entertainment. The Flesh Fair, whilst looking for new victims, announces: “Expel your mecha, purge yourself of artificiality” which reinforces the idea of being human or 'real' as authentic and therefore superior, as opposed to the artificial and inferior 'mecha'. To the human spectators (known as 'orga' denoting organic) whom may not be granted a license to have children, 'mecha' represent the death of originality and therefore the death of humanity.

The Flesh Fair aims to redress this balance through what once can only describe as a 'mecha' Holocaust – as one 'mecha' destined for destruction states: “History repeats itself” – in which body parts are disposed of in mass graves. This time it is robots as the icons of postmodern capitalism that have become the victims of genocide, despite paradoxically being the very things that have helped preserve Western society. Arguably the film is contradictory in nature, suggesting that if technology continues to rise in society unchecked then we risk descending into Fascism, yet the very act of the destruction of capitalism is the act in which we unmake ourselves, both metaphorically and in the case of the 'mecha', quite literally.

Indeed, further deconstruction of A.I. reveals the fusion of what were previously binary oppositions – human versus machine or 'orga' versus 'mecha' - into one: a machine that can experience human emotions. In other words, humans are the classical body, the 'mecha' are their modernist representation and David is a mixture of the two. When faced with this new postmodern body, the 'orga' spectators can no longer distinguish between the real and the represented and it is that which allows David – notably an Aryan child, something associated with eugenics - to escape the clutches of the Flesh Fair safe from harm.

A.I. takes the notion of the fear of the ‘other’ and by subverting the traditional boundary of human/robot into one, it suggests ultimately that we ourselves are the ones to be feared. When viewed alongside our own history, as well as a contemporary society that already makes cyborgs out of its own people with pacemakers and prosthetics as just the first step in a new evolution of mankind, this scene serves as a clear reminder not only of acceptance but also of what the ‘enemy within’ is capable of.

In the postmodern world, our identity is dependent on the basis of our external relationships to others and the world around us, rather than older philosophical notions of the self. Without the love, or indeed the consumption of his owner, David has no identity of his own. This is further compounded by his permanent childlike state. Without the opportunity to become real and thus mature, David will forever be trapped to define his existence by the oedipal nature of his programming – his relationship to the ‘other’, his mother - rather than develop his own sense of self or ‘superego’. This is cleverly referenced in a scene near the start of the movie in which David opens the toilet door to find his adoptive 'mother' Monica sat on the toilet reading ‘Freud on Women’, a not so subtle nod by the filmmaker to Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex – the notion that a child wishes to displace his father as the object of desire of his mother. Furthermore our identification with David throughout A.I. in the numerous point-of-view shots from his perspective, arguably infers that we too are unable to break the same cycle of needing to consume and be consumed, or differentiate between our real selves and the narcissistic identities we have constructed for ourselves.

David's quest for the Blue Fairy to make him into a real boy takes him to a partially underwater New York, a city whose skyscrapers are one of the most recognisable symbols of modernity. It inevitably draws parallels to another city swallowed by the sea, the mythical lost city of Atlantis, and the idea of the destruction of civilisation. Filmed and released in cinemas shortly before the events of September 11th 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Centre – icons of capitalism – are still standing but the world under their gaze has decayed (under a flood of biblical proportions). This ‘desert of the real’ has an even greater resonance to its audience on viewings of A.I. subsequent to that date. It is capitalism not terrorism that destroys our world.

In what was a highly-criticised ending, David enters the depths of the ocean to pray to the Blue Fairy to make him a real boy until two thousand years have passed by and his prayers are answered by an evolved future incarnation of 'mecha' - who I and many others mistook for aliens on first viewing - discover him. The significance of this number of years is clearly not coincidental; it along with his ‘baptism’ under water signifies his rebirth or second coming. Thus A.I. ends with David reunited with this mother. The future 'mecha' are able to clone Monica from a lock of hair, resurrecting her from the dead, and it is now David that has become ‘real’ and Monica who is the simulacrum - the reproduction of an original image that never existed.

A.I. poses just as many questions as it gives answers about the evolution of identity and society in postmodern times. The film is a bleak vision of our future where capitalism has led to global warming and in which millions are starving and dying in third world countries whilst the Western world propagate their existence through the “guiltless pleasures” of an enslaved machine race that they also take pleasure in destroying. A.I. therefore marks somewhat of a turning point in its representation of the cyborg. Traditionally they have been portrayed in a negative manner as posing a threat to humans, yet in this film it is the humans that display the cold and calculated machine-like behaviour of consumption and destruction, whereas more often than not it is the machines that display human qualities – such as the compassion shown by Gigolo Joe to David, or the love that David has for his mother. A.I. ultimately seems to suggest that although our downfall may appear to be assured, it is not that when we make cyborgs we unmake ourselves but rather that when we make cyborgs we remake ourselves as ‘posthuman’ – to ensure our survival in one form or another, for better or worse, in the dawn of a postmodern world.

So what did you think?

An Inspector Calls...

It's only a matter of time until I'm fired.

We've had a new Inspector join our team at work recently. Now this usually wouldn't be all that remarkable, except for the fact that she seems to have the uncanny ability to make me ramble, which leads to me making inappropriate comments and making a complete fool out of myself...as evidenced by the following conversations we've had over the last few weeks:

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Conversation #1:

Inspector: "How was your weekend?"
mysterg: "It was good, thanks Ma'am. I went to the NFL game at Wembley."
Inspector: "Did you enjoy it?"
mysterg: "The game itself was a bit one-sided, but the cheerleaders were fantastic!"
Inspector: "Yes...well...I'm glad to hear you had a good time..."
mysterg: "Although it did make me wonder..."
Inspector: "Wonder about what?"
mysterg: "What happens to all the male cheerleaders?"
Inspector: "I'm sorry...what?"
mysterg: "Well, you always see male cheerleaders in these high-school movies but never at real life football games. So what happens to them all? Although I guess when the pinnacle of your career is spinning the tassles on your nipples in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions simultaneously then your career options are limited. Or am I thinking of strippers?"
(suddenly becomes very aware that everybody in the room is laughing at him)
Inspector: "That was...interesting...perhaps I should let you got back to work?"
mysterg: "Yes, Ma'am".

---

Conversation #2:

mysterg: "Evening Ma'am"
Inspector: "Evening mysterg"
mysterg: "Looks like it's going to be a busy one tonight."
Inspector: "It's a pay weekend, holiday celebrations, a full moon..."
mysterg: "Do you believe in that stuff? The moon making people crazy?"
Inspector: "I can only go by what I've seen, but from my own observations over the years, there is some truth in it."
mysterg: "I guess. Although I don't believe in it. Not really."
Inspector: "Why?"
mysterg: "I once read in my horoscope that I was going to meet the girl of my dreams that day, so I sat at home all day as I didn't want to miss her, but she never knocked on the door."
Inspector: "Right..."
mysterg: "Although on the other hand there must be some truth in it. If humans are made up of 70% water just like the earth, and the moon affects the tides, it stands to reason that it will also have an effect on us too. Plus the moon has a 28 day cycle, just like a woman's period, and we know how crazy they can get when they are PMS'ing..."
(suddenly becomes aware that everybody in the room is staring at him)
Inspector: "Ok...are you talking to me about the menstrual cycle?..."
mysterg: "Um...I was just...nevermind...oh I think one of my colleagues needs my help with something, excuse me..."

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Coversation #3:

Inspector: "So mysterg, I hear you are taking a career break...when are you planning on leaving us?"
mysterg: "The beginning of Febuary, Ma'am."
Inspector: "I'm assuming you are planning to come back to us?"
mysterg: "Until the Olympics at least."
Inspector: "Then what?"
mysterg: "I'm not sure yet. I might do my PhD so I can teach, or make a film, or write a novel, or even go and live in Japan to teach English."
Inspector: "Really? That's a lot of different choices."
mysterg: "I like to keep my options open."
Inspector: "That's very wise. Although, I highly recommend Japan, I spent some time there myself. And they would love you over there..."
mysterg: "because they could yell (does awful Japanese accent) 'bring the big man forward' whenever they need help getting something just out of reach..."
Inspector: "Um...no...because you are fair-haired. In fact in rural areas they would probably follow you about."
mysterg: "Despite always secretly wanting some followers, I'm not sure I would like that as I once met David Beckham and it was a bit intimidating having everyone screaming, shouting and filming me with their mobile phones as I was speaking to him. In fact I had to tell him 'I'm sorry, I get this all the time' and leave before it all got a bit too much."
Inspector: "Is that so?"
mysterg: "Luckily for me I just went to my happy place to find my power animal"
Inspector: "Your happy place?...Your power animal?..."
mysterg: "Don't worry, it's in the Amazonian rainforest as there are no penguins there, as I'm scared of penguins. But if you ever see my eyes glaze over mid-conversation, that's usually where I am, singing away to myself in my head...."
(starts drifting away)
Inspector: "You mean like now?"...

---

Like I said, it's only a matter of time until I'm fired, although maybe she likes me...after all, why else would she keep coming back for more?...I'm pretty sure underneath the icy surface I've seen her struggling to suppress some laughter.

Regardless, I like her, but I also want to keep my job...so if you have any advice on how to bite my tongue, become more disciplined and follow the chain of command, please let me know.