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Pissing my life away

Have you ever pissed from a great height? Like off a bridge, or the roof of a ruined building? Just pissed with wild abandon, in a state of near rapture as all that potential – that glorious stream – arcs away, catches in the wind and dissipates into feeble rain?

If not, you’re missing out. I’ll concede that it’s a pastime more easily enjoyed by penis-havers, but plenty of vagina-havers I know have indulged. There is something innately human about the desire piss so wantonly. It’s sort of braggadocious and hedonistic, all very “fall of Rome.”

It’s transgressive and indulgent, yet mostly harmless. Sure if everyone was pissing from a bridge every single day, that might be a problem. But we don’t, which is why it feels so liberating. The social contract forbids it, not because it is innately a heinous act, but because if we all did it every day, it would create a very stinky problem, and we invented sewer systems for a good reason. 

Nearly twenty fucking years ago, I was a drunken teenager pissing off dual carriageway overpass late at night as cars drove underneath. I remember watching with anticipation as headlights approach down the long, dark road. The satisfying release of just letting go, of indulging, doing the bad thing. Because nothing really matters when you’re seventeen years old and six cans into the evening. Life is long, and it’s all still ahead of you. You can literally just piss it away. 

Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I realise I am – in every way that matters – still pissing. Still indulging in that same, transgressive catharsis of doing the bad thing. I can tell myself I want to use my time differently. I can make alternative plans. I can carefully construct conditions that enable me to define my own purpose and pursue my own ambitions. Yet spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually I am living in the last days of Rome. An stagnating opulence that cascades into a great and steady decline over the course of decades. 

That feeling of standing on the precipice, the decision still unmade, all of the time and clarity required to choose differently but then unzipping and pissing anyway. Not just once, but again and again, day after day, until I am awash in my own piss. And I am watching it happen. At best an impartial and helpless spectator to my own downfall. At worst, a baying crowd demanding greater, more self-destructive displays. 

“Are you not entertained!?” I scream, as I hurl myself into a twelve hour binge of Heroes of Might & Magic III. There is blood in the air, my own blood, and I am sick with the thrill of it. 

Yes, fuck it, keep playing. Play until you are sick. Play until your head pulses and your eyes ache. Play until it is all you can think, all you can dream, and all you can ever know. Do not stop playing. Food is optional. Responsibility is optional. Ambition and desire and purpose are all optional. Binge, binge, binge. You are powerless to choose otherwise, so submit yourself unto the maw of your own ravenous appetite for oblivion. 

Keep. Pissing. 

It is difficult not to feel like I am broken or defective. That there is something wrong with me, and I am doomed to spiral further, deeper, more completely. A once grand colosseum, now little more than a crumbling tourist attraction, all of that buzzing life which once defined me, now little more than dusty bones. My body and soul, colonised by that same ancient hunger from which humanity’s illness was born. If I cannot fulfil my purpose, and am instead at the frivolous mercy of this demented, harbinger of self-destruction that lives within me, how else am I supposed to feel? 

I will at some point in the near future enjoy a few weeks in “Functional Dyke” mode. It is a highly functional, extremely restrictive existence. I will exercise regularly, keep my screen time at a minimum, not drink or smoke, maintain an impeccable sleep schedule, and even get some work done. 

But then one day without warning, it will all become too much. The wheel will whiff right out the window while I’m driving, and I will once again find myself spinning out over the edge. It’s a smash cut. I black out, and don’t even notice until I’m already in freefall, and at that point I am willing the ground to come up to meet me. Pushing myself down further and faster, goading gravity to just fucking kill me, if it wasn’t such a little bitch. 

Then clarity strikes like lightning, and I awake to find myself covered in my own proverbial piss and for what? Because I am so avoidant, I would rather implode than acknowledge my own emotions? I would rather piss my life away than sit with the uncomfortable feelings that accompany a human existence. It’s a cycle of binging and restricting and binging and restricting again,and I’m so tired. Tired of feeling so out of control, so gleeful at my own demise. 

I know the answer lies in moderation. In balance. But maintaining an equilibrium is so much more difficult than reckless indulgence. I have the resolve and emotional resilience of an overtired toddler; it seems too fragile a thing to be held in my palm. A single big feeling can ruin not just my day, but entire fucking month.  

But I can see the pattern clearly now. It is etched onto the walls of my mind, arcane and incomprehensible sigils I don’t entirely understand. All I can do now is seek to understand it, and hope that the process doesn’t drive me to new heights of madness. 

[forgot-how-catflap-works]

My weekend at Ty Newydd – or – Getting Drop Kicked Out of my Comfort Zone

It is 9pm on the first evening at Ty Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales, and I find myself in a waking anxiety dream. 

By some fluke, miracle, or administrative error, I was accepted onto the Representing Wales bursary programme along with thirteen other writers. Ahead of me lies one and a half days of intensive workshops hosted by author Alys Conran and a guest session from the national poet laureate for Wales, Hanan Issa, followed by a full year of masterclasses, peer support, and mentoring. This is the exact opportunity I have been desperate to have for years, it has only just begun, and I already feel like I am about to choke. 

I am on a sofa in the middle of a room full of strangers, the big light is on, and we have been asked to write something. Just conjure up words from the ether, like we’re writers or something. Yeah, sure thing boss, no problem. I am a writer, that’s why I am here. I write things, and you can’t prove otherwise. And yet the page remains blank.

It's been just a few hours since arriving, and the experience is already a perfect microcosm of things that make me nervous. Like it was purpose built by my sleep paralysis demon to twist the psychic knife, to peel back the skin and expose all those raw little insecurities. 

I stare at the blank page and almost start to hope that there was in fact an administrative error. But nope, there is no chance that the very nice people at Literature Wales are going to turn around any minute now and say, “Who are you supposed to be?” then hoof me out into the night. 

That would almost be easier, because then it means success was never an option. It means my failure was inevitable, and not a result of something I did or did not do. I am a leaf on the wind, carried by forces beyond my control, and am therefore blameless for where I land. Oh sweet, sweet blamelessness. Strip me of agency and drown me in the sea. That’s actually just how I like it, thanks. 

But no, I have agency, I am supposed to be here and I am therefore responsible for what I make of not just this weekend, but the whole programme. Which means, which means, which means…. I have to actually make something of it and oh fuck, there it is: the dread. It is cold and it is vast. It is so heavy it weighs me down like lead in my bones, it gums the gears that drive my thoughts until they cease to turn and I am just a useless sack of meat; heavy, terrified, meat. 

It is not long into the next day that I begin to sense a theme emerging. Can you guess what it is? 

That’s right, paralysing fear! A distilled panic so intense my head becomes an empty cavern of buzzing static. The mental and physical discomfort is palpable, it exists not just within me, but as a tangible property of the air itself. Inescapable. The only signals I receive are vacant, distant thoughts that I am drowning. 

It’s a familiar sensation and – as I reflect on this weekend – one I have built much of my life around avoiding. I often feel like I am an alien, like I slipped through a wormhole into the wrong corner of the universe, and all I can do is try to survive. It’s not so different from an episode of Star Trek really, but instead of an entire crew charting the cosmos in an interstellar spaceship, it’s a single dyke having a panic attack in a Suzuki. 

I am at times certain that everyone else has access to secret information that I don’t. Like how to navigate unfamiliar social situations, or understand poetry. And I am scouring the land in search of the secrets that will make all of this make sense. But I never find them, because they don’t exist, and in reality we’re all just trying our best. 

I have a tendency to keep my world small. Over the past few years, I have cultivated a manageable, predictable, entirely unchallenging existence. It is safe down here in Plato’s Cave and no matter how many times I am told that the shadows on the wall are not reality, I can’t bear to face the sunlight. 

The shadows feel so real. They are all I have ever known. It is cool and dark and uncomplicated down here, with only shadows for company. The world outside is vast and tangled and so bright it burns. So I don’t want to hear that shadows aren’t real. I won’t listen, no matter how much you tell me.  

I am at my core a terrible listener and horribly self-indulgent – if the last 700 words hadn’t clued you into that. I am fuelled by a fear of my own inadequacies, defined by them, and if I don’t highlight them in excruciating detail then the people around me will think that I am unaware of them. They will think that I don’t know that I am shit, and the only crime worse than being shit is being unaware of one’s own shitness. I believe that is also in Plato’s Republic, I don’t know, I haven't read it because I am a fraud 👍

The thing about writing is that it demands vulnerability. You can, if you are like me, hide behind irony and humour. You can splash around in the shallow end of the pool pretending to be a crocodile and never once risking anything, or you wander barefoot through the Florida everglades and can read aloud your bad poetry to a room full of your extremely talented peers.

Which is what I ultimately did. Twice. And let me tell you, it was a revelation. I’ve never written poetry before, but spending the weekend in the company of such thoughtful, welcoming, and warm people gave me the confidence I needed to wrestle back some control from my insecurities. To expand my world, even if just by a few small inches. 

I still don’t know how others are able to access the deepest depths of their emotional reservoir during a fifteen minute writing exercise, conjuring forth dreamlike prose like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. It all looks so effortless, and I am in awe of those who are able to do it. Compared to them, I am finger painting in the Louvre. 

But also, you have to be bad at something before you can be good at it. We all started out finger painting. 

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It's an addict's life for me

Last week YouTube served me an ad that fundamentally changed how I understand myself.  It made me finally realise after years of struggling with this unamable feeling, that I am an addict.

I’m not addicted to one specific thing though, veering instead from one addiction to the next, always chasing that next high. I cringe to say this, but I have an addictive personality. This might not seem much of a revelation; it sounds like the sort of thing you might flippantly claim after getting your third frappe in a single day, like it’s a fun personality quirk rather than something looming at the edge of your world, threatening to take your life over at any given moment. 

I can, and will, get addicted to basically anything. I’ve had periods where it’s been gambling, smoking, social media, junk food, weed, booze, porn, and even pain. Usually it’s some combination of addictions working in concert together, but my first and truest addiction is video games. 

The ad that prompted this newfound self-awareness was for a game called IdleOn. It ran for maybe a minute, the entirety of which was this emphatic endorsement for how addictive the game was. About how there was always more to do, how all-consuming it is, and how the narrator had put hundreds of hours into it, how they hadn’t seen the sun for weeks. Stylistically it was laden with post-ironic doomerism that’s become so prevalent online these days. The world is on fire, I’m a car wreck of various personality disorders, we’re all miserable but we’re also laughing about it so it’s okay. You know the vibe. 

I couldn't find the trailer again, but it looks like Heroin: The Game

As far as I can tell, without doing any research, addiction to video games is extremely common but also largely dismissed as unimportant. Being addicted to video games is often the point, and it’s not a new trend either. 

If you’re a wizened old hag like me who remembers the days when dodgy streaming-sites were the de facto way to watch films and TV online, you’ll be familiar with the addictiveness as a selling point in advertising. Banner ads featuring half-naked anime figures, with taglines like “THE MOST ADDICTIVE GAME EVER” will no doubt feature somewhere in your core memories. 

The whole reason you should play IdleOn, according to the marketing, is so that you can become addicted. So that you can spend countless hours in a meaningless grind that will consume your entire life. A full mask-off approach. I’m sure IdleOn isn’t the only game making its case so plainly, but this ad caught me at the right moment to trigger a profound, existential horror.

It made me realise that is, and always has been, my relationship with video games. Once I lock in, that’s it for months until the shame and regret and frustration at wasting all of that time finally shunts me out of the spiral for maybe a couple of weeks. But I never considered it an addiction before, because it was just so normal. A fish unaware of the water. 

This isn't some serious, rock bottom revelation or come to Jesus moment about how I need to change my ways before I ruin my life. I’ve already ruined and rebuilt my life, I’m happy with where I am, content with my choices (or at least at peace with them). I have been to rock bottom, and clawed my back out. That’s not where I am now. But something about naming this lifelong experience for what it truly is has been extremely liberating, and helped release me from its grip. For now at least.

My addiction is more life-limiting than it is life-threatening. I am not in danger of losing my relationship, my home, my financial security. I think when we talk about addiction, those are usually the stakes that spring to mind. We see alcoholics on kidney dialysis, gambling addicts made homeless; we see musty community halls with Twelve Step programmes and desperate people on the edge of ruin. 

Make no mistake though, I have been to those musty community halls drinking bitter instant coffee, chatting to a woman who’s drinking got so bad in university she nearly threw herself off a bridge. 

I often describe myself during that time as a “basically a high-functioning alcoholic”. The words “basically” and “high functioning” are a deliberate choice to mitigate and downplay the reality though. 

“I am not an Alcoholic,” I tell myself. “Just, y’know, basically a high-functioning one. It’s different. There is a distinction, and it does matter.”

I haven't thought about this meme format for like 20 years

I attended a handful of AA meetings, but decided I didn’t need it. I never stood up in front of all those people and said the words that you can’t unsay, the incantation that changes your reality from one of denial to one of acceptance. The all important first step. I told myself it was because I couldn’t speak in front of a room full of strangers, but that’s not true. I’ve done that dozens of times. The truth is, I couldn’t be honest. 

I was a problem drinker from the first time I got drunk at 11-years-old, sneaking booze whenever I could, and needing to drink to excess in every social situation. I drank every day from the moment I turned 18, right through until I was about 29 when I finally started to get a handle on it. But I held down a full-time job for much of my twenties, and even had a career at one point, something I cannot do these days without booze as a crutch. 

I now have a reasonably healthy relationship with alcohol, but it’s still fraught. Oblivion is always just a few steps away. If there is booze in the house, I will drink it. The only thing that slows me down these days is that Estrogen has fucked my tolerance, but I feel the pull towards the booze aisle every time I’m in the supermarket. It takes physical effort to not drink every day, and once I start I don’t want to stop.

Even if I am not at risk of imploding my life, I feel pinned down and stymied by my own addicted nature. I am now staring down the barrel of middle age, clutching onto a handful of totally achievable ambitions, but utterly paralysed in my ability to make any of it happen. 

I’ve been working on one novel or another for the best part of ten years and up until recently all I had to show for it was several hundred thousand words of false starts and discarded projects. Something changed last month though, and I was given an amazing opportunity that I cannot currently speak about publicly. But it’s huge. I was so excited when I found out that I actually cried (I am not a big crier). It requires work though, a lot of hard graft, and I have found myself sinking like the fucking Titanic.

For the last few years, the conditions for me to write my book couldn’t have been more perfect. I have time, financial security, space, and support. There are people out there struggling to find 30 minutes a day to write, and still they manage. Yet I find my urge to create is drowned out by the noise of that irresistible pull. 

The siren song of whatever bullshit I’m currently addicted to. Right now it is Pokémon Showdown, but a few months ago it was Divinity Original Sin II, and before that it was a RuneScape relapse, which had been preceded by a different RuneScape relapse, at least three Elden Ring spirals, a couple of Wildermyth stints, and fuck knows how many Xcom and Total War binges. 

An actual photo of me, aged 34

When I was 25, I was unemployed, living with my parents, with no obligations or commitments. I had a writing year for my Master’s dissertation and had also started a self-taught journalism diploma which should have, at best, taken me six months. Instead I spent the entire year playing League of Legends from sunset to sunrise, because I was completely nocturnal. 

Just hour after torturous hour, chasing the dopamine hit of a victory screen that became ever more elusive the longer I played and the more frustrated and titled I became. I wasn’t even having fun, but I literally didn’t want to do anything else. It was all I could think about.

When I wasn’t playing League, I was watching YouTube and Twitch streams, or theorycrafting or just thinking about it. No, thinking is the wrong word. That implies consciousness. It was more like League had colonised my mind, setting up in my brain as a series of flashing after images, impulsive and meaningless impressions left on the brain. Like radiation poisoning slowly dissolving my mind long after exposure. 

I never completed my journalism diploma, and my dissertation turned out so bad it brought down my average mark from high 70s to low 60s. The thing is though, I still graduated with my MA with Merit and managed to find a job in journalism. I think that means I might be actually smart and capable, but simply refuse to apply myself. Which aligns with every school report I ever had. I would be unstoppable if I could pull myself away from the screen or the bottle or whatever my current kick is long enough to get my shit together. 

My earliest memory of these compulsive behaviours was my obsession with Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. I didn’t have my own copy, so my dad would rent it for me from the local game store every weekend until he realised it made more financial sense to just buy a copy. I’d smash it out, start to finish, over and over again, usually completely naked for some reason. 

Mentally I am here

When I couldn’t play because my brother wanted the TV, or I had school, or we had to “go outside” to do something as a family, I fucking hated it. I would spend each moment just itching with the need to scorch Ripto’s bare-ass with the super fireball you get for 100% completion. 

From there I moved onto the Might and Magic series which accounted for my tween years a solid chunk of my twenties. My only real memories of high school are being bullied, and wishing I was at home playing Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honour (one of the all time greats, btw). 

This screenshot is amateur hour, the only true way to play Might and Magic VII is with three liches and one cleric

When I discovered RuneScape at about 14 years old, I played for so long I got a crick in my neck and couldn’t go to school. I spent the next four days recovering and playing more RuneScape, just with better posture. In sixth form college I played Guild Wars for upwards of 16 hours a day. My friends would log on, also in college, studying for the same exams, and leave after a sensible couple of hours only to come back and find me still playing. I nearly flunked my third year of University because I was addicted to speed running Sonic Generations of all things. 

This isn't even close to comprehenisve list, but you get the point. I am always hooked on something, and it stands between me and the things I actually want. I don’t want meteoric success, fame, acclaim, staggering wealth or anything like that. I want the ability to function, to actively pursue my goals without falling into the same fucking ditch, over and over and over. 

I was in that ditch until just a few days ago, hooked on Pokémon Showdown, and not for the first time in my life. I haven’t played since this recent revelation and don’t currently have a desire to. But until about five days ago I was getting out of bed and immediately grinding that ladder for hours, playing for so long that I’d wake up in the middle of the night with Breloom on the brain. I love my sweet mushroom boy, but he just doesn’t fit onto my team. 

On good days this compulsion just feels like a desire to solve a puzzle, to stimulate my mind with something complex and engaging; a need to crack a complex system and understand it, pull it to pieces and find all the unusual little quirks that allow me to dominate it. I will make Goodra the lynchpin of my team in Showdown, I just need to figure out how. It's reaching my limitaitons and overcoming them. It’s control, it’s power, it’s drive.

I'm running Assault Vest, max HP and max attack with Draco Meteor, Fire Punch, Earthquake and Knock Off. I gave her Sap Sipper and paired her with Gastrodon... it pretty works well.

The irony is, I started playing Showdown again because I had to lock down all my social media accounts with strict usage timers or I would doomscroll Reels and Shorts for hours on end. I needed something to fill the yawning pit in my soul that craves. Right now I can’t even tell you what it craves exactly. Sometimes I think it’s oblivion, other times it’s dopamine. Perhaps it’s just a form of self-harm, designed to keep me safe from the fear of failure, from the pain of struggling. 

Either way, I think I can finally accept that I am an addict. If I can get addicted to something, I will. I need to find a way to live in harmony with that part of myself, because a strict ethos of denial has never worked. If I cut something out of my life, I just replace it with something else. It's a cycle, and while I might enjoy a few weeks or months where I am free from the pull, it doesnt' last.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do next, sometimes it just helps to name a thing. This feels like a good first step, so I’m happy with that. 

[forgot-how-catflap-works]

Sitcoms perpetuate “harmful stereotype” of having friends in adulthood, experts insist

Hundreds of experts across the country have signed an open letter stating that friendships portrayed by modern media are damaging the nation’s mental health. 

The letter comes in response to rising concerns from childless layabouts who claim that having friends as an adult should not be an unobtainable fantasy. 

“The whole structure of our late-capitalist hellscape society completely disincentives adulthood friendships,” said Ololade Fren, spokesperson for the adult friendship advocacy group The Friends of Friendship. “Our lives are consumed by work, the cost of living crisis continues to spiral out of control and our wages have stagnated. 

“The desire to maintain and foster friendships stands in direct opposition with a system that wants to bleed us dry. The rancid ghouls that run everthing leverage the vacant, hollow feeling that remains in order to sell you a fucking smart watch by making it look like a fun time with friends.”

But experts have refuted the Friends of Friendship as “naive children”. They claim that television shows and sitcoms in particular promote an “unhealthy and unrealistic expectation” of prioritising joy over meaningless toil. 

“When you watch a television show that features a tightly-knit friendship group, this can trigger what’s known as sitcom lifestyle dysphoria,” says Professor Chad Blokesworth from Brosdown University. 

“This intense discomfort arises from the incongruence between an individual’s perennial loneliness and the feeling that they should have a core friendship group of their own. Not only do they feel this friendship group should have always existed, but it should be able to withstand seismic vibe shifts such as members starting new jobs, going through breakups or having children.”

Since the global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent atomisation of society in the social media age, friendships have increasingly moved online. But depictions of friendship in modern media haven’t kept pace with this trend, and it’s causing emotional distress. 

“The freeform antics depicted in television shows reinforce a harmful stereotype that broke millennials and zoomers with emotionally draining, pointless jobs are able to enjoy themselves,” said Dr Winnie Gurlsbrunch, from the Gal Pal Institute. 

“We have to accept that regular, in-person interaction with our friends is simply an outdated cultural standard. It’s long past time that we moved away from this monolithic view of social interactions as something we do in person as a vital part of our mental wellbeing.”

While some thought leaders have suggested that the refocusing of modern sitcoms around workplaces is a positive move, Dr Gurlsbrunch said it creates an unhealthy expectation of having fun at work.

"As each new generation enters the workplace, they are shocked by the grim and soulless nature of modern employment,” she said. "Shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation are creating an unobtainable standard and distorting expectations. It's only making things worse and it needs to stop.”

Loneliness advocates also chipped in, telling Totally Unbiased News that the whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. 

“It’s an issue of entitlement,” said Rupert Sadboi, a loneliness influencer on Instagram with a single digit following that we included in this article because our slavish devotion to being balanced means we report all viewpoints as being equally valid no matter how demented they are.

“I have no friends, so why should anyone else? Human misery is an essential operating requirement for the machine. It needs us to be physically and emotionally isolated from each other in order to function. Therefore we all have a moral duty to fall in line and make that happen. If we don’t, the entire system could collapse, and then who will plunder the earth’s natural resources or uphold its genocidal regimes? The system is working as intended, and I have an Apple Vision Pro, so I think it’s working pretty great.”

The Labour government recently classified friend groups as a “bloated aspiration that cannot be justified in the current economic climate.” 

The Friends of Friendship were met with indifference after calling upon government ministers to realign society with the founding principles of the Labour party by prioritising the needs of working people over racist oligarchs. 

“You are supposed to be working, not having fun,” said Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer from her reinforced machine gun nest at the heart of Westminster. 

“Decades of neoliberalism has left a blackhole in this nation’s finances that successive governments have failed to address. Now that we’re in charge again, it’s about time someone carried on trying basically the same strategy. To attempt anything else would be insane; like allowing transgender women to compete in women's sport or using women's spaces. 

“What it comes down to, ultimately, is that If your nan can’t have a warm home this winter you certainly can’t have any friends. You all have to make sacrifices. It’s called austerity. Look it up.” 

(Inspiration: The Core ‘Friend Group’ Is a Myth—and It’s Making Us Feel Bad About Ourselves)

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10 Lessons from a transfemme gym rat

I’m the only trans person at my local gym. I sometimes worry that I stick out like, well, the only trans person in a room full of cisfolk. I’m taller than most of the men and broader than all the women; my face often darkened by stubble because I have electrolysis later that week and can't shave; and I have to wear loose fitting shorts rather than tight leggings so that I don't accidently cock slap someone when I’m on the elliptical.

I don’t see any trans fitness content on my feeds either, presumably because the algorithm is as confused about my gender as my parents are. It sort of understands that I am a woman but occasionally forgets, and is utterly dumfounded by the idea that trans people might doing something other than porn and JK Rowling discourse.

Since transition, I can now imagine a future where before there was only a grey expanse. I realised if I wanted to live that future, I needed to start taking better care of myself. So with Lady Ballers still fresh in the cultural consciousness, I stepped foot into a space that felt not only unwelcome, but actively hostile to my presence. Nearly six months on, here’s an incomplete list of what I've learned so far.

1. None actually gives a shit 

What a fucking relief that was! I expected to be immediately clocked and then chased out the building by pitchfork wielding gigachads. But here’s the thing — a little seceret I try to remember while at the gym — literally no one cares or has any interest in me. People do not talk at the gym, they do not make eye contact, they do not smile. They lift weights in the corner or sweat on the treadmills. My presence as a trans person does not factor into their gains, or distract them from scrolling on their phone between sets. Even in my tiny ass local gym, I’m basically invisible. 

2. Take up space

I know it feels hostile out there for trans people at the moment, but for the time being our right to take up space is enshrined by UK law. Cis people take up space all the time. It would never occur to them that they might be unwelcome somewhere, and even if it did that wouldn’t stop them. If you've ever been to a Pride, you know exactly what I mean.

We have the same right to access these facilities as any of those cis dudes full-stacking the chest press. Anti-trans campaigners are trying to exclude us from public life; don't do the work for them by refusing to participate. They will have to physically remove me if they want that, but I’ll be so jacked they won’t be able to. Which brings me to my next point… 

3. Strength is power

If you’re transfeminine, physical strength is power. It is protection. Unless they hit the gym too, most people aren’t as strong as they think they are. Estrogen will prevent you from getting too girthy, but you’ll be surprised how quick you can build muscle with a regular routine. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been, and I feel confident I could defend myself if necessary just by having that extra raw power on my side. 

I get that plenty of transfemmes want to lean away from physical strength for a number of valid, dysphoria-related reasons. But don’t let it be because society tells you women have to be weak, or that you’re not a real woman because you're strong. That’s some misogynist bullshit. You can be whatever you want. To that end… 

4. Fuck gender

Fuck it right into the bin. The world of physical fitness is incredibly gendered. It relentlessly reinforces the idea that men are supposed to be big and strong, and women are supposed to be thin with a juicy butt. Fuck that. I’m a non-binary transfemme. I want a juicy butt and to be jacked as hell. I want to be able to bodyslam a grown man and look good while doing it. Now more than three years into transition, I’ve left behind certain aspirations of unachievable femininity, but I’ve also never been hotter. I feel like myself in whole new ways. Confident, powerful, beautiful. I am the woman I always too afraid to be, and it fucking rules. 

5. My relationship to my body has changed

I spent the last 33 years disconnected from the sack of meat that contains my unwilling consciousness. Even as transition progressed, I did not want to be a part of my body. But as I exercise, feel my muscles working and my heart pumping, I am connected to it. I am a part of it. There is something beautiful about that. All my life I avoided exercise because I couldn’t stand my physical form. But now I recognise that my body is my home, and I should care for it like I care for the rest of my world. 

6. Exercise is actually good for you 

Every smug prick that tells you that exercise is good for your mental health and general well being was, unfortunately, correct. I want more than nothing else to rot in my own filth, smoking weed and eating doritos until I die. But that leaves me feeling like literal shit, and the improvement I’ve noticed in mood, energy levels, sleep quality and general daily vibe cannot be ignored. I resent this truth, yet here we are. 

Exercise has not “fixed” me or suddenly cured my lifelong depression. I’ve been more depressed in the last few months than I have since I started transition, but exercise was actually the one thing that kept me going. I almost had no choice on whether I went to the gym. It happened at times against my will, but it always improved my mood, even if I did just go right back to a RuneScape-induced fugue afterwards. 

7. Setting the vibe

For whatever reason, gyms love to play Radio 1. I can only assume this is because whoever is in charge of the music was hired by Satan to ruin my day with inane chat and the musical equivalent of liquid diarrhoea. Before you call me a boomer, I was born hating all things popular and despite my best efforts I really can’t find a way to feel any differently about it. 

So if you’re like me, which is to say very cool and refined, you need headphones to blast some raw punk for those weight sessions. I’m talking about Soft Play, Lambrini Girls, Be Your Own Pet, Amyl and the Sniffers. If you’re on the treadmill or elliptical you want an audiobook; something compelling, uncomplicated, and full of action. No mournful dyke lit. I’m sorry fans of Julia Armfield, but Our Wives Under the Sea isn’t going to cut it when you’re only 15 minutes into cardio and already want to die. For my money though, the best cardio option is to hop on a bike, get your Switch out and play Legend of Zelda. “Oh, but what if someone judges me for playing my Switch at the gym?” That person can eat shit. Also, they won't because as highlighted earlier, no one cares! 

8. Leisure centres are your friends

Leisure centres, unlike private gyms, are funded with your taxes. They are the public libraries of getting jacked. Make use of those spaces. They are usually cheaper than the alternative and yes, they might be a bit grottier but they’re still pretty good. Don’t be afraid of the staff, they are there to help you.

Make sure to get an induction too. It should be free and will help familiarise you with the space and how the machines work. Do not wing it unless you wanna show up, cause a scene by hurting yourself and then get taken out on a stretcher. Most leisure centres will also offer to put together a workout plan, and some of the fancier ones will give you a full fitness MOT where you can learn about your bone density and shit. Not my gym, because it’s small and crap. But you probably have better facilities on your doorstep than I do within 20 miles. 

9. The changing room question

You have the legal right to use the changing rooms that align with gender identity. Labour even recently dropped plans to rewrite the equality act, which would have removed that right.  So for now, it's yours — use it. That said, if you’re really nervous about the changing rooms, contact the gym beforehand and ask what their facilities are like. Do they have changing booths? Or gender neutral spaces? 

I rarely if ever change at the gym. I either get ready at home, or even change in my car sometimes like the lil gremlin I am. If that’s not an option, put on your gym clothes under your outfit for the day, and wear something simple like a jumpsuit so you can get changed with minmal fuss. If you absolutely need to change at the gym and aren’t comfortable or don’t feel safe using the changing rooms, use a disabled toilet. That might be controversial, but your safety and comfort matters. If people are going to give you shit, or if you don’t have access to the facilities you need to feel safe, claim space where you can. As long as you are respectful of others who need that space too. 

10. Don’t get in your own way

This is where I will do the most projecting, but as someone who is both trans and autistic, I really thought going to the gym would be too fraught an experience for me to handle. I worried that I was going to get clocked, or ridiculed or harassed or merely perceived against my will. 

But let me remind you: No one else cares. You are allowed to be there. You are entitled to these spaces. If someone gives you shit, whether that staff or users, report them to management. File a formal complaint. Make it clear what actions they take to make it right. Advocate for yourself. If that’s too overwhelming, ask a friend to help. Hell, drop me a line and I’ll put those bitches in their place for you. 

Yes, it’s fucking exhausting having to fight for every inch of space, every moment of safety, but fuck the rest of the world. If they can’t handle our presence, that’s their problem. Soon you’ll be jacked as hell and able to throw them down a well if they give you any trouble. 

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Meet the ghouls squabbling for power in the race to rule the Tories

Tory MPs are donning their robes and sharpening their sacrificial blades this week as they prepare to ritualistically cull a second candidate from the Conservative Party leadership race. 

Priti Patel was eliminated last week after securing just 11.9% of the vote, which already sounds quite embarrassing, then you do the maths and realise that’s a total of 14 votes. Considering the sheer number of controversies that litter her political career like dog shit in a play park, I’m amazed she didn’t perform better.  

(Formerly of the tobacco industry, Patel voted in favour of overturning the smoking ban because she recognises that mainly poor people use public spaces so, y’know, fuck ‘em.) 

Patel resigned as Home Secretary in 2017 after attending up to a dozen private, unsanctioned meetings with Israeli officials where departmental business was discussed while she was on holiday.

This gross breach of the ministerial code wasn’t enough to prevent her from being reinstated to the position under Boris Johnson’s government, where she dedicated herself to ruthlessly targeting asylum seekers, lobbying for pharmaceutical companies during the height of COVID, and bullying her staff. 

Next up on the chopping block appears to be Mel Stride MP who narrowly escaped elimination last round with a whopping 16 votes. 

(Launching his campaign, Stride said the Tories need to “build trust with the electorate again", presumably so they can get right back to abusing it.)  

Mr Stride served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in Theresa May’s cabinet, when he spearheaded the controversial loan charge policy which – as of January 2024 – has been linked to ten suicides. He was then elected as chair of the Treasury select committee, effectively securing himself a position where he was the one responsible for scrutinising his own dastardly deeds and, unsurprisingly, finding nothing to be concerned about. 

Former Minister of State for Security Tom Tugendhat limped a single vote ahead of Stride in the first round. Tugendhat is notable only in how boring he is, and hasn’t even breached the ministerial code once (that we know of). Total amateur. His strategy appears to be to fly below the radar, presumably in the hope the other candidates will destroy each other and he can rule over the ashes. 

(Having already lost one leadership race to Liz Truss of all people, Tugendhat looks like a surefire bet to lose another.) 

A former soldier, Tugendhat holds some classically conservative positions like increased military spending, opposition to the European Court of Human Rights and wanting a cap on immigration but these days that’s a mild salsa. He appears moderate compared to the others, and lacks the brain rot and crypto-fascist brainworms that UK conservatives have been steadily importing from America over the last decade. The most interesting thing about him is that he had to change his campaign slogan because the acronym spelled TURD. 

Now we’re done with the dregs, let's take a look at the front runners starting with weed smoking, Warhammer playing, porn enjoyer James Cleverly. That makes him sound much more interesting than he is. Having previously filled both the Home and Foreign secretary positions, Cleverly has long had leadership aspirations.  

(Cleverly once had to apologise for an “ironic joke” about spiking his wife’s drink with rohypnol during a Westminster reception, apparently being both a weird creep and not understanding the definition of irony.) 

Another paint-by-numbers Tory, he stirred up a fuss a few years ago by saying that gay football fans should show "a little bit of flex and compromise" when visiting Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He added that it was "important when you're a visitor to a country that you respect the culture of your host nation." Cleverly it seems considers a seven year prison sentence for being gay little more than a cultural quirk rather than something queer football fans might have legitimate concerns over. Basically saying reign it in lads, no need to be homo in public. 

Landing in second place during the last vote is former Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch who claimed in a speech last year that transgender people could transition “too easily”. This is supported by the fact that waiting times for an initial assessment are as high as seven years in some parts of the country, so that definitely tracks. Badenoch clearly knows what she is talking about. 

(Speaking on the Spectator podcast, Badenoch said the Tories need to “stop acting like Labour”. I can only assume she misinterpreted the narrowing ideological gap between Labour and Tories as a softening in her party’s ranks rather than a calcification of right wing leanings in Westminster.) 

Characterised as an “anti-woke” politician, she has also supported conversion therapy for trans people. Speaking like someone who has never actually heard themselves talk, she also claimed that providing gender affirming care for trans kids was a “form of conversion therapy” intended to turn gay kids trans. It’s ironclad reasoning and, as a trans dyke, I value above all else the perspective of a cisgender, hetrosexual woman in all matters relating to queer issues. If anyone is going to lay down the law on who gets to be gay and in what way, it should be her. 

Badenoch bravely announced during a recent campaign video that she was unafraid of fictional character Doctor Who. Furthermore, as a woman of colour, she believes that Britain is not institutionally racist, so we can all stop worrying about that now. What a relief, I was starting to get really concerned about it. You know, what with all the institutional racism that’s been going around. But turns out that was a false alarm, which is probably why she also said “I don’t care about colonialism”. 

Badenoch came out swinging on the subject, making claims broader than my fat ass in order to minimise the brutality of Britain's well-documented colonial history. 

"There was never any concept of 'rights', so [the] people who lost out were old elites not everyday people,” she said in some leaked WhatsApp messages. It’s a relief to know that the three million people who died in the 1943 Bengal Famine were all elites. 

Lego figure cosplayer Robert Jenrick is the current frontrunner, having secured 28 votes in the first round. Jenrick served as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government under Boris Johnson where he dedicated himself to pulling political favours for luxury property developer and Tory party donor Richard Desmond. The move allowed Desmond to avoid paying a community council levy of £40 million which could have been used to fund schools and health clinics. 

(Courting the far right voters who flocked to Reform in the last election, Jenick resigned from his position as immigration minister, saying the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda didn’t go far enough.)

Grenfell United, the pressure group dedicated to securing justice for the victims of the Grenfell fire refused to meet with Jenrick in 2020, saying: "Your perceived focus on the interests of property developers over the needs of an impoverished local community has soured our opinion of you.” 

Jenrick also served as Minister of State for Immigration where he took aim at the greatest threat to our nation: unaccompanied asylum seeking children. During a visit to an intake centre in Kent last year he reportedly told staff to paint over a mural depicting cartoons and animals, saying it was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre”. 

Finally, someone had the courage to put those kids in their place. If they wanted to experience even a single moment where they felt safe, or like they weren’t completely alone in this terrifying and hostile world, they shouldn’t have crossed the bloody channel should they? They need to learn that actions have consequences, unless of course you’re a Tory politician then you can basically just get away with whatever and certainly not have your political ambition stymied in the slightest. That would be unfair.  

With such political titans in the running, Labour should be quaking in its boots. This gaggle of ghouls is among the finest we could hope for, and the fact that they each crave power enough to run the highest office in the land should in no way concern anyone. As the old adage goes: Power corrupts, but only if you’re a little bitch. 

Which of these unscrupulous, foreigner hating, homophobes will proceed to the next round? Tory MPs will be casting their vote today in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, and trim the eligible candidates down to four. 

This three month slog is only just beginning, so buckle your pants because we have to put up with this fucking circus until November.

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Breaking News: Half-baked compromise proves shitty and divisive

Businesses trialling the four day work week have found it ineffective and unpopular, a new report has revealed.

Companies across our great nation participated in a trial of the four day work week, but employees report being just as tired and sick of their grinding existence as usual. 

It’s not the reduced hour work week campaigners have been advocating for, but rather a watered down version that sees people just working longer hours over fewer days. Literally something no one asked for but it’s the best you’re going to get so maybe smile and say thank you. 

“The longer days mean I’ll have two existential crises by lunch instead of just one,” reported Michael Hingecroft, a corporate compliance officer at Hostile Takeover Inc. “I start my day at 8am and don’t finish until 6pm. I’m so tired by the end of Thursday that I just sleep the whole weekend away. Before I know it, I’m back at the office and the robed figures from HR are chaining me to my desk again.” 

Totally Unbiased News heard from several other desiccated husks like Michael after Labour revealed it plans to strengthen workers rights by offering more flexible hours. 

“I was looking forward to spending the extra day at home with my kids,” said some crybaby who’s name we didn’t get. “But my entire life passed me by. It turns out they’re in their 30s now and have all flown the nest. I’m also divorced. I had no idea. When did that even happen?” 

The arrangement has been well received by employers however, with big businesses heralding it as masterclass in pretending to make susbtantial changes but actually doing fuck all.

“It’s great,” said Carol Lunchmeat, a spokesbabe for sustainable energy firm Frack Me Harder. “By offering this lukewarm compromise, we can easily prove that no one wants to work a four day week and so we can finally put the issue to bed. People should be working more hours for less money, not fewer hours for the same amount. That doesn't make a lick of sense. How are we supposed to hoard enough resources to survive total climate collapse if our drones are slacking off?” 

During a press conference held within a hermetically sealed dome so none of the plebs can get their filth inside the halls of power, prime minister and self-described socialist Sir Keir Starmer called his own party’s proposals a “communist delusion that will destroy the nation with its blind idealism”. 

When deputy PM Angela Rayner clarified that under the proposed changes employees would “still be doing the same amount of work”, Sir Starmer offered his wholehearted support to the proposal. 

“This is the kind of limp wristed policy that will be our legacy,” said the prime minister. “Ineffective, uninspiring and unambiguously aligned with the interests of capital. There’s plenty more where this came from, mark my words.”

In response to the announcement, Reform leader Nigel Farage MP said, “*****, those ********. I’ve never seen so many ******* in one place. Who lets these filthy ****** in here? Someone get my rifle.”

A representative from the Green Party also said something, but we weren’t listening and nobody wrote any of it down. 

Campaigners for the four day work week argue that committing to a wholesale reduction in hours will increase revenue, reduce employee churn rate, and is better for the mental and physical well being of workers 

“The data is there to support not just compressed hours, but an overall reduction in the hours worked,” said four day work week advocate Lesley Cimble. “On average, companies that trialed the full proposal saw a 35% increase in revenue and 57% decrease in staff leaving. Not to mention 71% reduction in burnout and 39% reduction in stress.

"We do not advocate for the half-baked compromise of compressed hours. It does almost nothing to change material working conditions, and seems more concerned with appeasing big businesses than supporting workers’ rights or fostering sustainability.”

However, the black clad anarchists that hang around outside our offices said that even this position doesn’t go far enough. 

“In his book Bullshit Jobs, anthropologist David Graber found that 37% Americans felt their jobs were completely meaningless,” yelled one of the hoodlums through an open window. “Obviously we’re talking about the UK here, but we share the same economic system that pedestals a protestant work ethic and values profit above all else so it's a fair comparison. 

“We should acknowledge that roughly a third of all labour is expended on pointless bullshit. What a catastrophic waste of human life. That in itself should be justification enough to completely change our ways of working. We shouldn’t need to appeal to the motives of big business by saying this will make them more money. That’s an ass-backwards approach that only further entrenches the profit motive as the primary driving force in poli–”   

Fortunately Nigel Farage was visiting our office at the time to reveal his upcoming collab with Elon Musk to deport all foreigners to Mars and was able to shoot the anarchist dead in self-defence. 

"It's ****** season," he said as he produced his flensing knife and descended out to the street.

(Inspiration: Does working a four day work week make you happier?)

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I've been saying for ages (to myself in the bathroom mirror) that business is just a cringe a sub culture that got out of hand. They have their fashion and their trends and imprentrable lexicon just like any other subculture, but for some reason their weird hobby has become the dominant way of running the entire world.

Imagine if we granted that same political capital to r/ButtSharpies? Would the world be better? I don't know, but it would certainly be different and right now that's good enough for me.

people should stop acting that way about mathematics to mathematicians and start acting that way with business majors instead

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Hot take: Sisyphys got a sweet deal

We must imagine Sisyphus happy, according to existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. It’s one of his hottest and most widely known takes. The idea that when confronted with the meaninglessness of his existence, condemned for all eternity to push a boulder up a mountain only for it to roll back down, dear old Sisyphus may find contentment. What other choice does he have after all? 

(Showing my age here with the rage face meme and will not apologise #MillenialPride)

The assertion is that we mortals are faced with a similar conundrum. Life is unpredictable, chaotic, and frequently terrifying. With nothing but the infinite void to look forward to, how are we to spend our days? Either we embrace religion and pray for eternal salvation, skip the queue to the void by killing ourselves because it doesn’t make any difference in the end, or laugh at the absurdity of it all and find joy in the simple act of being here. It is up to us to create our own meaning. 

On my good days this notion provides me a lot of comfort, and links in nicely with the zen buddhist idea that this moment is the only thing we truly have. So the take home is to embrace it, and live fully for the moment. It’s all very Dead Poets Society or, if you’re like me and have never seen that film, the B plot in Season 1, Episode 3 of Community.  In the immortal words of Professor Whitman, “Seize the day Jeff, for real. Go running naked in a hailstorm, kiss a girl in the middle of the day, fly a kite but do it for yourself! Or you wot just fail my class, you’ll fail life.” 

On my bad days however, I’m just salty about it. Suddenly the pressure to create my own meaning in the limited time I have becomes crippling to the point of paralysis. Every moment not spent living my best life is a moment wasted. I move steadily towards the grave, the years ahead steadily becoming fewer than those behind. What have I achieved with these dwindling hours, these precious days in which I am burdened to create my own meaning? I’ll tell you what I’ve done; play RuneScape and be depressed.

The problem with transferring this thinking from Sisyphus to a human living under late stage capitalism in the 21st century, is that Sisyphys didn’t have to go to a fucking job everyday. All he had to do was push a boulder! All day! Piece of piss mate. 

What I wouldn’t give to just push a boulder all day. No laundry, no dishes, no reletenlessly targeted advertising and no more fucking work emails or meetings. I bet Sisyphys never once had a melon-related panic attack in the fruit aisle of Aldi. On top of that, pushing a massive boulder to the top of a mountain is an incredible workout. Right now I have to drive nearly 30 minutes to go and sweat in a leisure centre while strangers grunt in my periphery. Give me the boulder any day. I want that head empty, no thoughts, brain scampled egg life baby. Release me from the curse of my own self-awareness. 

Okay, I get it that Albert Camu grew up in poverty, survived tuberculosis, and lived through the Second World War. I readily admit that my “melon crisis” doesn’t stack up in comparison.  All I’m saying is, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone happy when they are free from the mountains of bullshit that besiege us every single day. I am completely overwhelmed by the mere act of existing under capitalism. The sheer number of decisions I have to make every single day just to get from one end to the next breaks my autistic brain. I can’t handle it, didn’t ask for it, and I certainly don’t want it. But surely we could do literally anything else? 

I know it’s sort of laughable to say, “Let’s all go back to a simple, agrarian existence where we live off the land and chill by a waterfall smoking phat blunts.” Like, obviously that sounds a thousand times better than what we’re doing now, but short of a catastrophic societal collapse and then thousands of years of recovery, that’s not going to happen. Did you know it (sort of) takes six months and over $1,500 dollars to make a single chicken sandwich from scratch? Sustaining a single human life requires an incredible amount of work. 

There are so many of us, and we’re so connected and interdependent on each other as a species. No organism on the planet comes close to what we have built for ourselves and it is an amazing feat by every conceivable metric. But what is it all for? Have we ever once as a civilisation stopped and asked ourselves why we’re doing any of this? 

For whatever reason, we are apparently limited in our conception of all that remains possible. A civilisation disjointed and misaligned, adrift on this rock hurtling through space at mind boggling speeds, confronted with the meaninglessness of it all and refusing to collectively acknowledge it for even a moment. 

It’s like we’re still locked in that primordial stage of evolution, where we must accrue resources to survive the harsh winter and outlive our rivals. When we predominantly existed as smaller bands or tribes, that made a lot of sense. But now we are a single connected superorganism, our sense of competition is squarely in opposition to our sense of collaboration. 

We broadly recognise the need to collaborate in tackling existential threats like climate change, yet our primal competitiveness sees us knee jerking our way back towards fascism. It’s like we’ve gone to the doctor about a backache and they prescribed a dozen hungry tigers to be administered immediately. We’re still acting as though there is not enough to go around, when there is in fact plenty; it has just been misallocated. I am left always wondering why? What do we have to gain from eating ourselves alive?

I cannot help but think it comes from a petulant refusal to collectively acknowledge the void. We struggle desperately for meaning, to leave a legacy, but forget that it is impossible. Even those who live on in infamy after their death will one day perish from the collective consciousness. Our sun will die, all heat will fade from the universe until it is nothing but a barren, lifeless waste. No tower you build or lineage you foster will outlast that. Yet we sit watching helplessly as oligarchs and plutocrats rail against their own mortality to catastrophic and destructive consequences for the rest of us. I suppose in the long run, that doesn’t really matter though does it? 

We have made a home for ourselves in the belly of a vast, insatiable beast. A beast so hungry for our blood and labour that it stifles anything that cannot be effectively comodified. How are we to find happiness and peace under such conditions? It is simply not a priority. 

To quote folk punk band AJJ: 

This is no exaggeration, we're living in a death machine

And no, it's not just your imagination

You've been living in a death machine

Some of us are passengers, and some of us are driving

Almost everybody's getting bled to death to keep the motor running

Sisyhus at least is free from its roiling guts, and in that freedom it is not difficult to imagine him happy. For the rest of us, it takes a little more effort and a lot more work. 

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The GUPPY Appreciation Zone (and some stuff about being gay and possibly an alien)

You have entered the GUPPY Appreciation Zone. Please remain seated and keep your appendages within the designated zone for the duration of this appreciation. The GUPPY Appreciation Zone does not accept liability for any tentacles, tendrils or fronds harmed through the disregardment of these instructions. 

What is GUPPY and how does one appreciate it? GUPPY is a band that originated in LA about seven years ago, presumably through a process involving primordial goo and alien technology. The most effective way to appreciate GUPPY is to play American Cowboy – at full volume – and jiggle your body around the food preparation area of your habitat while loudly singing the refrain, “I’m an American Cowboy, and my stomach hurts like shit”.  

This is not a review of GUPPY’s latest album Something is Happening, because I'm not really qualified for that. I could say how much I love vocalist J’s playful inflections that make them extra fun to sing along to; or I could tell you how great it is they use a slide whistle in Mayor Pt.2, and how the track develops this wild, galloping, circus-clown quality that just gets better the more you listen to it. But really I just want to appreciate them. This is the GUPPY Appreciation Zone afterall. Not The Smart Bitch Who Knows Stuff About Music Zone. 

(Clip clop horse cop, City hall salami. Kiss your baby, Now I am your mommy)

Previously described as “the new gayer, Green Day” by Out Magazine, GUPPY’s music could best be defined as tenderpunk, a term coined by Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin who is also the band's producer. 

I lifted that tenderpunk insight from this Swim into Sound blog post but I did already know about the Sarah Tudzin connection because I AM VERY COOL AND KNOW THINGS ABOUT COOL AND TRENDY MUSIC. NO I DO NOT HAVE RECEIPTS.

As someone who never got into Green Day, I can’t really say how that comparison stacks up. Their drummer Gabbi is a huge Green Day, and the first album had a rough, straightforward garage sound to it along with the kind of atmosphere you only get when everyone involved is having fun. Is that the sort of thing Green Day is known for? I literally have no idea. 

What I can confirm however is that GUPPY's music is deeply gay, and the kind of gay that is difficult to quantify. Speaking as an autistic, navel gazing kind of queer I often feel disconnected from large swathes of popular gay culture. I’m not really here for drag queens and Lady Gaga and the sort of technicolour hedonism that tends to monopolise portrayals of queer culture in modern media. It’s fine, pop off, live your best life etc. It’s just not my speed. But because it’s the default depiction of queerness I’m left feeling like I’m somehow not the right kind of queer.  Like I'm an alien.

Speaking to Out Magazine after the release of their first album in 2017, J said: “GUPPY is all about having fun with your friends in a totally unchecked and spontaneous way. This is a space I think that a lot of femme, nonbinary, queer folk don't get the chance to occupy. Like, yeah, we've all seen Bam Margera and Tyler the Creator be silly menaces in a fun and lovable way, but I just wanna say there are some new freakin' menaces in town. And these new menaces are soft as fuck because being soft never stopped anyone from having fun. So stay soft, my LGBTQ cuties, and please remember to continue enjoying yourself as an act of resistance.”

GUPPY 's queernes makes sense to me. It transcends sexual and gender identity; social norms I exist outside of through my mere existence as a trans dyke. The labels I chose to define myself are more for the benefit of a society that feels the need to categorise me rather than something I need for myself.

It’s a queerness of the soul. An almost Victorian definition of queer, before it meant gay and it meant, you know, queer. Odd, peculiar, not right somehow. Something amiss. Like, what is that person doing with their arms? Have they ever even used their arms before? Are they an actual alien doing a really shit impression of a human? Who do I call about this? 

From that transcendental queerness GUPPY blooms in all their glory. They would rather eat the pavement than kiss Nacy Pelosi's boot. They were made mayor for the day and all they got were their feelings hurt. They’re texting God in their head. They ate their own homework (the dog made them do it).

I could pick almost any lyric from any track of the new album to illustrate the difficult to define queerness of GUPPY, but for whatever reason the opening lines of Nature Song feel right.

Go out in the front yard you’ll find Ian pulling weeds

Go out in the backyard and that’s where you’ll find me

I’m digging up worms

I’m taking them to church

I’m taking them to church

If you can’t understand how that’s gay, I don’t know what to tell you. 

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Don't waste your life. Consume.

Wake up! You’re wasting your life. What are you doing, reading this shit on the internet!? You should be out there, in the world, among the people. No, don’t stop to feel the cool breeze against your skin. Definitely don’t smell those roses. Those roses have nothing for you. They are ephemeral, they will rot and die just like you. Your mortal form will soon be ash, all memory of you scattered to the wind, your name lost from the lips of future generations. Soon you will be just a great grandparent or uncle or aunt or distant cousin. Everything that you ever were will cease to exist. 

But I’ll tell you what you need, right this fucking minute. Something that will dull the yawning, existential ache of your own mortality. It’s a free Hasbro board game worth up to £39 RRP when you buy four qualifying BirdsEye products. 

That’s right, lap up that information like the greasiest hog at the shit snarfing contest. Let it fucking settle in your brain, sit with it and let it ferment. It could be yours. Something that will outlast you. Something that will live on for thousands of years, long after civilization has collapsed and all that remains are towering pillars of rubble. An artefact, proof that you existed. Evidence that you were here. The box may rot, but the contents will remain. Leave your mark on this fallen earth. Let it be known that you lived, that you laughed, that you loved. 

Don’t think about it. Just do it. It’s a limited time offer. You could go out today, right this minute, and buy four bags of frozen peas. Or some chips and nuggies, like the little slut you are. You could do it, and then within 30 days you could play Hungry Hippos alone in your room, doing silly voices for all of the individual hippos, making up little stories about their messy polycule. Or you could be playing Connect 4, alone in your room, trying to outwit yourself but failing every time because you are the smartest person you know. You are the only person you know. 

Operation, Guess Who, fucking Bop It?! Are you seeing this shit? The list goes on. It’s all there for you at the end of a grocery line and a 30 day wait. Think of how different your life could be. An entire board game, worth up to £39 RRP. Unthinkable. 

This is your opportunity to get a copy of fucking Monoply with your fish fingers. Now that’s a bargain. That’s a life worth living. Think of all the family gatherings you could ruin by whipping that out. Is that an evil glint you spy in your grandmother’s eye? Of course it is. She knows how this will end. In tears, like it always does. And she loves it. She craves it. That will be you one day. Smiling a wicked smile, safe in the knowledge that the copy of Monopoly you acquired through a promotional scheme between a board game company and a frozen food producer will be the trauma that bonds you through yet another miserable christmas.

Don’t think about what it took to make this happen. Don’t think about the long email chains, the meetings and pre-meetings, the spreadsheets and powerpoints, the circling back or where the pins were put. Don’t think about the thousands of work hours that were invested or the money spent. Don’t think about the finite resources that were extracted from the earth using heavy machinery, the vast and incomprehensible supply chain required to refine, process and transport those delicious balls for which the hippos crave. Consider not how our life on this earth is fleeting and how this moment, this exact slice of history that you are living right this very second, is the only thing you truly have. Do think not about the immutability of the past and how each second that slips your fingers is another moment lost. Do not think about how the future does not exist, and how tomorrow is not a guarantee. 

Think only about how you could own a copy of Trivial Pursuit, all you have to do is act now. You might even still be here when it arrives.

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AI is B.A.D.

(Bad always, damnit)

(edit: turns out Druckers was massively misrepresented in the original interview conducted by Sony and that article has been taken down. It doesn't change anything about what I've written below, but I shall retract and amend any dunking I did on Druckmann because I used to be a journalist and I'm still a little bitch for accountability and accuracy)

Be honest, have you ever used an AI and been impressed?

I have. When Chat GPT4 was first released, I was kind of taken in. It had obvious limitations, but I found it also had some pretty great uses. At the time, I was applying for a bunch of jobs and let me tell you, there are few things I hate more in this life than applying for jobs I do not care about but desperately need. 

I was mainly applying for minimum wage positions and using Chat GPT to draft all of my cover letters. It must have been around thirty in total. I had to extensively edit them because they were all universally terrible, but at least I wasn’t starting from a blank page. I just cut out all of the paragraphs that were irrelevant, or made me sound like a robot (about 40% of each draft) until I had something clear, concise and human.  

My success rate was piss poor. But I suspect that’s more because I have an MA in History and the manager of my local YoSushi kiosk didn’t want to hire a nerd. 

But still, I saw the potential for AI to automate (or at least partially automate) the bullshit. I had some mandatory training at my old job that was fairly involved, requiring written answers, and I did not care about. Again, extensive editing aside, Chat GPT was really helpful for drafting those answers. It gave me a starting point, which when my level of emotional investment is lower than the deepest basement of Hell, comes in very handy. 

The same goes for writing work emails. My current job is fairly customer facing, and so much of customer service is essentially emotional labour. As an autistic person, this kind of work uses up a disproportionate amount of my mental energy and I have a tendency to come across as… curt, shall we say? People often assume I’m a sourfaced bitch, rather than someone who just likes to get to the point. I treat these emails as an information exchange rather than a social activity and I don't t have the spoons required to manage the emotional state of others. But people often get offended when I do that. Enter Goblin Tools, a neat little AI that can rewrite your emails to fit the situation; among other things it can make them sociable by adding some waffle, more professional, less emotional, and – my personal favourite – less snarky. 

(Goblin Tools is the only AI I reccomend using, and it's still shonky as hell. But for my fellow neurospicies, it has actual applications day-to-day)

We do run into the perennial issue of AI tools once again however in that even after Goblin Tools has worked its magic, I still have to get in there and edit the results. But it’s done the emotional labour for me. It's cushioned my words, made them more polite and professional when I simply didn't have the will to. I just need to make it sound like it wasn’t written by an AI. I suspect that as a writer and former journalist I am more acutely aware of that distinctive aftertaste you get when something is written by a machine rather than a human. Like how a visual artist can spot AI generated images while I’m completely oblivious to how the light is wrong or whatever. 

If I had to write an email to a customer service department, or draft a cover letter, or fill out some arduous form, I would still start with an AI draft. If it’s onerous busy work, I will automate it as much as possible. I literally don’t have the patience for it. It makes my brain feel like it's full of wet cement. But even this one thing that AI is useful for, it’s still kind of bad at. It only gets a free pass because I would rather edit some bullshit than write some bullshit. 

Every other dalliance I have made with AI has demonstrated to me without a shadow of a doubt that it is complete garbage however. I asked it to draft a mini adventure for D&D, and it regurgitated Lost Mines of Phandelver to me like it was the smartest boy at the Smart Boy Contest for Smart Boys, rather than just plagiarising readily available information.

Another time I was struggling with a passage in some fiction I was writing. Sometimes I just fully forget how to write. My partner once came home to find me Googling “How to write a sentence”. My brain, it just ain’t always there you know? So I asked Chat GPT to ratchet up the tension, make it more atmospheric and spookier. I was curious to see what it could do when it had some bones to work with, and just needed to add a flourish. 

When I read the version Chat GPT spat out for me, my initial thought was “Oh god, this is much better. I am both shit, and redundant and machines will replace us before the year is over.”

Then I read it again once I had crawled out of the pit of self loathing and doubt that caused me to turn to Chat GPT in the first place. I could immediately see the end result for what it really was; a florid, melodramatic mess. Yes, it spun a few sentences here and there that were nicely descriptive and had a bit of flair, but it’s like AI generated images. It can make something look nice, but it cannot make something good.

The fact that AI is bad at art is more funny than anything else. Like of course it is. It creates without intention and therefore cannot create meaning. But let's take a quick look at the new Spotify AI shall we? Because this could have potential. 

Imagine this purely hypothetical scenario. You’ve been smoking OG Kush in the hot tub and you’re stoned out of your gourd. You want to cultivate a distinctive musical vibe, but you’re high and you’re wet. You can’t be messing around with your phone, scrolling endlessly through the functionally limitless selection of available music. Decision paralysis has already rendered you inert. So you ask the AI to make a playlist that will take you on a musical journey. A playlist that defies genre and transcends the petty confines of your own established musical taste.  

Firstly it won’t respond to any prompts that include the vital information that you’re stoned and need music to reflect that. When you do finally get it to spit out something, it gives you Eternal Melodies: A Celebration of Joy. For starters, yuck, ew and cringe. For seconds, it’s basically ten songs you already know and like, and another twenty from the most popular artists in the world. It’s just absolutely hopeless. It cannot meaningfully interface with the emotional needs of a stoned trans woman in a hot tub. So what’s the fucking point of it?! 

Another time I gave it the prompt, “I’m in the bath but I’m being gay about it” because I am perpetually in warm bodies of water and I am always gay. I was hoping for some queer, chill jams. It responded by signposting me to some mental health resources. Tell me your AI tool was developed by a bunch of cis-het dudes for a corporation that is chronically joyless without telling me your AI tool was developed by a bunch of cis-het dudes for a corporation that is chronically joyless…

AI has a few fringe cases that it's mostly bad at but better than nothing. It does not however understand what it is creating. There is no substance to any of it, and once you can see what it does, once you’re familiar with that flavour, it’s so obvious and overwhelming you can’t help but retch. 

It’s all a parlour trick. A little bit of riz and misdirection, some razzle, a pinch of dazzle. That’s it, and like with crypto and NFTs, 3D televisions, virtual reality, and the Metaverse, the odious little tech worms that we’ve given all the power in both art and technology have been suckered in like the clueless rubes they are. 

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Tales from a former Gamer Network employee

Some good people and excellent writers lost their jobs when this happened, and as a former employee of Gamer Network I have some thoughts/feelings about this that need to go somewhere so they're going here.

I had been at GamesIndustry.biz for less than six months when it was announced that Reed was buying up the whole company. Before that I was a trainee reporter for the Isle of Wight County Press, which at the time was the largest regional weekly newspaper in the country. 

I left the IWCP when it got sold to News Quest in 2017 but before the inevitable cuts. We all knew what happened when News Quest snapped up a local paper. They scaled it down and stripped it for parts, integrating what remained into their wider news ecosystem that included more syndicated stories and less rigorous local coverage. Oh and click bait. Just shit loads of click bait. 

Back then the IWCP had somewhere in the region of 60 staff, including nine full time reporters, four sub editors, and about four features writers, along with dedicated sales and design teams plus admin and IT. Last I heard, it's down to single digit staff and maybe two reporters. This is pretty standard for local newspapers these days, and the quality of the journalism suffers as a result. It's no fault of the staff either, but rather the extreme limitations they’re operating under.

You might think, 'Who gives a crap about local news'? Well, you should. We have been conditioned to follow national politics like it's a sport or soap opera. It’s all drama and intrigue, breathless analysis and weird mythologising. We neglect what's happening on our doorstep; the stuff that is most likely to have a direct impact on your daily life and, more importantly perhaps, the stuff you have the most power to enact change upon. What your council is spending money on, the state of your local Teaching Health Board, the impact of police and state violence in your community, and the needs of your neighbours. Any sense of accountability goes out the window when the people charged with reporting what's going on in your hometown are stretched to the point of breaking and the atomisation of our communities continues apace as we are dislocated from the people around us. 

I digress, but the point is when something that serves a purpose other than the profit motive is taken over by a larger organisation, the original purpose is sidelined and we all pay an invisible price. One that doesn’t become evident until so long after it’s happened that we can’t do shit about it. 

When it was announced that Reed was buying Gamer Network, I remember thinking that I just jumped from one sinking ship to another. Because for all of the Reed execs' long town hall chats where they spewed effusive praise about how much they "loved the brand", it was still ultimately a business venture for them. They were an events company, and they wanted our events. The rest was fluff they didn’t know what to do with, and they ultimately cut it loose. It was at best a curiosity, and never really mattered to them. 

The irrelevance of sites like Rock Paper Shotgun might be a fun little feather in your hat, but really they just want it as a channel for more affiliate marketing revenue. The solid reputation of GamesIndustry.biz as a well connected and respected publication isn't worth half as much as its potential for SEO content.

At the time, Eurogamer was the golden child. It did big numbers on SEO while still putting out great reviews, insightful journalism, and weird left-field features that you just didn't find anywhere else. But none of the sites were safe from the encroachment of SEO guide content and affiliate marketing, which had admittedly been happening for a few years by this point but picked up after Reed took over. The implicit prime directive for everyone within the company was to serve the dark, inscrutable god of the Google algorithm. It must be appeased, and little else mattered. As far as our corporate overlords were concerned, actual journalism became a secondary objective, only slightly above there being coffee in the breakroom. 

That's not to say that good work wasn't being done. It absolutely was. I like to think I did some good journalism during that time too, despite my best efforts at sabotaging my own career by being arrogant, reckless, depressed, and just all around difficult to work with.

It's easy to dismiss games media as unimportant hobbism, but it's so much more than that. Especially in more recent years when we've seen the once flourishing video game art form become the front line of rot economy capitalism, exploitative monetisation practices, and culture war bullshit. We need more than ever dedicated, passionate, insightful people working in those trenches because the games industry was fucked four years ago when I left, and though I've stopped keeping up with it I can see pretty clearly that enshittification has only continued, leaving it more hegemonic than ever before. 

Like with every other industry on the planet, we're all being held hostage by a handful of enormous conglomerates that provide choice only in the form of an illusion. We think that being acquired by some larger organisation provides safety and security that independence never could, but it doesn’t. It’s the Borg. It’s assimilation. It crushes creative diversity and divergence of thought into a monoculture that feeds off itself like an AI on the brink of a model collapse. Or, if you’d prefer a more vintage analogy, like Bear Grylls drinking his own piss over and over and over until there’s nothing left but raw waste. 

When Reed announced redundancies in 2020, I put my hand up and asked to leave. They were interviewing everyone in the company, deciding who got to stay and I immediately requested voluntary redundancy before the meeting had barely begun. I remember it took them by surprise. I guess they just assumed everyone would want to stay. I don’t know who else if anyone did the same as me, but I’d just had enough by that point. 

(Fun personal trivia: Following advice from my union rep I filed a Subject Access Request when I left, and saw an email exchange between some higher-ups that described me as giving “Fuck you vibes” during my redundancy consultation. I’d never felt so seen.)

I took the job because I thought it would be interesting and exciting, and that I could write cool things that I would be proud of. There was some of that, but I was ultimately left feeling ground down as I dealt with one games exec or PR goon after another trying to gaslight me into thinking loot boxes aren’t gambling (I don’t care what the law says, that shit is gambling); or reading in dumbfounded horror all the gruesome details of the latest industry abuse scandal; or watching young talented writers toiling away to earn £18,000 a year while living in the second most expensive city in the country, having their passion and drive exploited to produce endless reems of SEO content for an uncaring algorithm.    

Reed did exactly what I expected of them but I’m kind of amazed it took six years. I honestly thought it would have happened a lot sooner and even though I’m out of the industry I’m still gutted. It's fucked, and I'm sorry for all of those people who staked their livelihoods on something they loved and got burned for it.

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5 posts!

I'd like to dedicate this to my high school form tutor who said - or at least heavily implied - that I'd never amount to anything. Who's laughing now!???

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The other day I saw someone make the point of AI generated art that it can replicate style, but it cannot comprehend meaning. Never has that felt more true than with the new Spotify AI generated playlist function.

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I wanna take a brief moment out of my day to digest some thoughts I have on the idea of a self-made millionaire.

Putting aside any genuine good this guy may have done with his fortune, and any Marxist critique I might have on how his wealth comes from pocketing surplus labour value from his workers, the idea that anyone is a self-made millionaire is such an interesting lie we tell ourselves as a society.

His wealth and business empire is ultimately a product of cooperation. The thing we humans do perhaps better than any other species on the planet. We are so dependent on each other for everything from food and shelter to transport and infrastructure.

Who grew the food this guy eats? Who built his hotels, and maintained the roads for his supply chain. Who tended to his medical needs? Or took that promotional photo and did the PR for his philanthropy. He depends on the skills, expertise, experience, labour of millions of other people around the world. All working in unison to keep this catastrophic theme park ride we call humanity from coming off the rails and killing us all.

None of us are self made. We all depend on the eachother to such a fundamental extent that we take it for granted. Especially in rich, white countries where we outsource our dirty work to those less able to turn it down.

So yeah, I'm sure this guy is good at what he does and ultimately has a good heart - most people do. But he's a tiny piece in the vast organism. The idea that he is a "self made millionaire" is just such a wild misconception about everything it takes for our species to continue surviving one day after the next, let alone accure unfathomable wealth.

I don't know this guy's full story, and I'm not gonna spend more time than a quick Google to verify that this story is at least mostly legit. That's not the point here. But let's not pretend there is any way you can be ethically rich or in anyway a self made millionaire.