Tesco Everyday Value

I don't know if you've noticed but the Tesco Value range has been replaced by Tesco Everyday Value. It's not special any more, that sort of value just comes along every day. There's no sense of panic now. It's not like Sainsbury's Basics. You can't go without the basics can you? It's not like Waitrose Essentials. You can't go without the essentials can you? They're essential aren't they? It's not like the Asda Smart Price range. You wouldn't go without those would you? You'd be an idiot to pay any other price, regardless of whether or not it was more expensive. But Tesco Everyday Value. Well, that sort of value just comes along every day.

“Shall we buy this?”

“What is it?”

“It's a bit of ham. It says it's Tesco Everyday Value.”

“Well... we can just get it another day can't we. It's Tesco Everyday Value. I imagine we could come back any day within a reasonable time frame and we could still buy it for a similar price. It would be a different ham, obviously, but it would basically be the same ham at the same price. It's the sort of value you get every day.”

“But I quite fancy some ham now.”

“Yeah but there's no rush. We can get that sort of value every day.”

“How about today?”

“Well... you don't need to jump the gun do you?”

“What?”

“You don't want to false start.”

“Yeah but-”

“Look, if you were running in the 100 metre sprint final at the Olympics, would you start running before the gun went off?”

“I don't really see how that's relevant.”

“Don't jump the gun, is all I'm saying. Of course you'd like to go before the gun went off because you'd get a head start. You're forty-five and a bit overweight after all; you could probably do with the head start. But you can't jump the gun, you'd get disqualified.”

“But we're just buying some ham, it's got nothing to do with running.”

“Yeah but it's a metaphor isn't it? Don't jump the gun and buy the ham today because, well... it's Tesco Everyday Value isn't it? It's the kind of value that comes along every day.”

“But if you're running a race you can't just start running at a random moment. You don't want to jump the gun, that's a given. But you don't want to run a long time after the gun has gone off, because then everyone else would have started running. In fact there's a very specific time when you need to start running, and that is more or less the exact moment that the gun is fired.”

“Yeah well it's just a metaphor.”

“Yeah but my point is that my craving for this bit of ham is like that gun being fired at the start of the race. Basically, we need to buy the ham now, because the perfect time to buy ham is when you have a craving for a bit of ham.”

“Yeah but it's Tesco Everyday Value though isn't it? It's the sort of value you can get every day.”

“YES BUT MY FUCKING CRAVINGS FOR HAM DON'T COME EVERY FUCKING DAY DO THEY? CAN WE JUST BUY THE FUCKING HAM?”

“Jesus, I never knew you liked ham so much.”

“I DON'T. I JUST WANTED TO EAT A BIT OF HAM, IN A SANDWICH, MAYBE WITH SOME CHEESE, BUT DEFINITELY WITHOUT YOUR FUCKING BULLSHIT.”

“Okay okay. We'll get the ham. Calm down.”

“Thank you.”

“But we could have bought it any day at all.”

“...”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“BECAUSE IT'S TESCO EVERYDAY VALUE!”

“I hate you.”

Swimming to save us from tedium

As those of you who are white, middle-class and living in predominantly white, middle-class areas of Britain will know, last Saturday there was the Oxford-Cambridge Boat race. The rowers for the boat race trained six hours a day for six days a week. It's exploitation. We've taken muscular men from foreign countries that don't really understand what they're being trained to do, and we've tricked them into thinking it means something. I can just picture the scene now: dozens of men on rowing machines as ageing former-heroes of the rowing world whip them from behind.

“Please sir, you jus' say why you make me does this, ye?”

“No Xavier,” he says as he whips him for his insolence. “I ask the questions here. You're going to have to pull that imaginary oar back and forth for another hour now because of that.”

“But sir, me has wife and childrens back home, six hours a day is too many. I need see my babies, no?”

“Listen Xavier,” he says as he whips him again for bringing his personal life into the gym. “If you win this race, you will earn fame and riches throughout the land. Everybody will remember you, Xavier Mendez, as one of the eight men who won a rowing race. Everyone remembers rowers. Just think of Steve Redgrave, and... well... and Steve Redgrave dammit. Most people know his name.”

“Actually sir, back in Mexico Steve Redgrave not big name in most household.”

“Just be quiet and push the imaginary oar! You don't get a choice in this,” he says as he whips him again for sharing how Steve Redgrave doesn't really fit into the Mexican cultural frame of reference.

That is undoubtedly exactly how rowing works. Why else would anybody train for thirty-six hours a week when they could be taking drugs, having sex with prostitutes, getting drunk, going to the cinema to see a good film, listening to a decent album (or maybe not even a decent one, just one that other people have said “oh my god this album is terrible” and you finally get round to listening to it and yeah, it was terrible, and now you have something to talk about), seeing a friend, lying on the sofa watching T.V. and scratching your balls, sitting on the floor and doing nothing, lying on a patch of soil and doing nothing, eating some unpleasant food, like some rotten fruit or stale bread, being insulted by someone for whom you have a lot of respect, stubbing your toe on a door, eating a shard of glass, getting punched in the face by your childhood hero or rubbing your genitals against a cheese grater for thirty-six hours a week. All would be at least marginally more pleasant and worthwhile.

As you can see, rowing is not really 'my kind of thing,' and hence I find a three mile boat race between two universities which I am not smart enough to go to slightly boring. That's right I said it, I think the Great Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is slightly boring. I don't know why, but watching two boats run parallel against each other for a quarter of an hour, followed by interviews with rowers about rowing, doesn't really get my blood pumping. Which is why I was delighted when a man in a rubber suit managed to add a bit of controversy to the whole thing. It raised so many questions! Questions like, “I wonder why that man has decided to go swimming on a cold day in April? Why has he chosen to go swimming in the Thames at all? Is he not aware that muscular academics in rowing boats are trying to come through here? Is it a desperate proposal of marriage for Oxford's female cox? Did he see her warming up (for sitting down? Ha!), decide immediately that she was The One, run a couple of miles to get safely ahead of the boats and swim out across to meet her, shouting proclamations of love and promising his eternal devotion?”

Whatever his reasons, it made the race far more exciting, which is an inherently valuable thing. But fans of the Boat Race weren't congratulating the man but condemning him. For the first time ever people actually had something to say about the Boat Race other than “Hey, did you acknowledge the difference in speed between those two boats? Wowzer.” And that's a bad thing apparently.

I don't know, maybe I'm a bit out of touch with the contemporary rowing scene (the 1920s had the most exciting rowing scene if you ask me. Personally, if I was to go on Mastermind, my specialist subject would probably be “Cambridge and Oxford rowers of the 1920s,” but alas I think I'm just not cut out for the newfangled rowing of the 21^st century). All I know is that when the next Boat Race comes along I will be watching just in case a man gets his head cut off with an oar on live television. You don't want to miss out on that sort of thing. 

Like women? Like music? Hate Chris Brown.

Hello. Today I'm trying to become more relevant by blogging about popular culture. I am therefore going to talk about a song that was released almost a year and a half ago. I know what you're thinking: but he only posted that retrospective analysis of Cressida Dick less than two months ago! How does he manage to stay on top of the ephemeral nature of current affairs? Well, the truth is I actually have a team of bloggers and joke writers working around the clock in order to ensure that I have important things to say about very pertinent issues, like an old Chris Brown song (in my defence you still hear it in clubs). Fans of Chris Brown's music may want to stop reading this now, I genuinely don't want to belittle the music tastes of any of my friends.

Although I'm not sure fans of Chris Brown's music are capable of reading (I told you you should have stopped there).

It's easy to dismiss Chris Brown's music as banal, mindless, repetitive, unoriginal, boring and meaningless drivel, but I'm willing to look at Chris Brown's music from a professional, objective perspective. Even if the malicious, woman-beating, mentally ill (come on he must be) 'musician' does not deserve my fair-minded dissection of his popular faecal matter. I am too good to him I know. Chris Brown, if you are reading this: there's no need to thank me; an anonymous cash donation will suffice.

You may have noticed that I have alluded to the fact he beats women. It was subtle but it is there. I'm sure you all know about the fact he physically harmed his ex-girlfriend Rihanna after an argument. Maybe it is unfair of me to use the plural term 'women.' I do not know the exact number of women that he has beaten, and if he has only beaten the one then I'm sorry, but I have no moral or ethical issues with slandering Chris Brown. I think that would be a pretty poor defence to put forward anyway: “yes, we'd like to take David McIver to court because he has misrepresented the number of women that our client Chris Brown has beaten on an online blog that receives about a dozen views per week.”

One could argue that this one incident of domestic abuse alone should rid him of any manufactured success in our pop charts; and one would be right. The argument should end there really, but it doesn't. It turns out that fans of Chris Brown love domestic abuse, and hence he continues to see his name in the UK music charts. I assume these charts are painted on some sort of wall somewhere in London, and teenagers gather round the wall chanting the names of their favourite 'artists' and throwing money at the charts until the person(s) of their choice makes it to the top of the pops, hence becoming 'King of the Charts' and winning Reggie Yates and Ferne Cotton as butlers for the week.

So if we disregard his violence against women as playful antics, (because when has violence ever hurt anyone?) we must instead turn to his music for analysis, which in many ways is far worse than domestic abuse (and worse than many other violent crimes too. I'm unable to pinpoint his exact place on the scale of terrible psychopathic atrocities, but I think his music lies somewhere between paedophilia and genocide.)

One song of his that is particularly fertile ground for analysis is something that goes by the name of “Yeah 3x.” Firstly, the name of this song is problematic. By incorporating a mathematical symbol in place of words he has created a song title with no clear way of saying it. Is it pronounced 'Yeah Three-Ex?' which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or is it pronounced 'Yeah Three Times?' which is not so much a title so much as a rough guide to the words that will be appearing in the song and their respective frequency, but also begs the question, why not just call the song 'Yeah Three Times?' It gives the exact same message as 'Yeah 3x,' while at the same time being a more aesthetically pleasing song title to read and eliminating all confusion. It's almost as if he has a certain level of self-awareness about himself and is trying to create a song title with ambiguous pronunciation possibilities in order to pose some sort of subversive artistic statement. Except of course he is an idiot, and you can't make art out of shit. Unless of course you are Piero Manzoni, who, despite being an Italian man that made a living out of shitting in a can, still has more self-awareness and artistic credibility than Chris Brown.

Let us delve into the frightening body of this song shall we? Let me present you with a verse or a chorus or something, I don't know I'm not a musician:

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, girl, I wanna

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna see you tonight

Yeah, yeah, yeah, girl, I gotta

(Yeah, yeah, yeah)

I gotta, I gotta, I gotta see you tonight.”

Now, seeing as Chris Brown has demonstrated such enthusiasm for maths in the naming of his song, I thought I should approach the criticism of his song through mathematical analysis. Not many people these days approach musical criticism from a strictly mathematical perspective. I guess my methods are just to radical for 'The Man.' Maybe that's why I'm not a music journalist. (I can think of no other reasons.)

Anyway, in this chorus there are a total of thirty-two words. Out of these words, the word 'yeah' is used a whopping twelve times. A massive 37.5% of the chorus therefore is just the word 'yeah.' I'm not even totally sure if it is being used as a slang term for a positive affirmation, or if Chris Brown is just treating it as a random syllable in order to give his listeners more sound for their money. But the maths does not stop there. Out of this thirty-two word chorus, only eight unique words are used (yeah, girl, I, wanna, see, you, tonight, and gotta.) The chorus is therefore 25% unique words, and 75% repetition of words. They are shit words too. I'm not even sure I should be validating the existence of the words 'gotta' and 'wanna,' as I am unsure as to whether or not I could find them in the Oxford English Dictionary. When Samuel Johnson completed the first English dictionary in 1755 I am pretty sure he didn't envision the lazy bastardisation of 'want to' into 'wanna' being accepted by future lexicographers. Perhaps Chris Brown hates Samuel Johnson as well as women, and if Samuel Johnson were alive today Chris Brown would endeavour to fight him. Although he probably wouldn't because Samuel Johnson, being a man, poses too much of a danger to Chris Brown, who is timid about entering into fights with less than a 90% (yes more maths!) chance of success.

Also, despite the fact that Chris Brown uses only eight words, (and that's being kind) it is still too many words to portray the message of his chorus. I don't like to extract a single meaning from poetry as I feel this is almost always a reductive method of literary criticism, but I feel that we lose absolutely nothing from the song if we say that the chorus could be summed up with the words “Chris wants to see you tonight” (presumably so he can beat you). Those words, in perfect grammar, adequately sum up what Chris Brown took thirty-two words to say. And look, I've done it in six words, which is two less unique words than his version, and a massive twenty-six less words in total. To think people say mathematically dissecting pop songs is a waste of time!

What can we deduce from Chris Brown inability to use more than eight original words in a thirty-two word chorus? Well firstly, that Chris Brown hates Samuel Johnson, his fans, poets, poetry, all writers, eminent literary scholars, teachers, university professors, lexicographers, people's virginal eardrums, Rihanna, Rihanna's friends and family, all women in general, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Talking Heads, The Stone Roses, the past hundred years of innovative pop music, choruses that consist of more than 25% unique words and any suggestion of a successful pop song so much as pretending to grasp at any shred of artistic credibility, among many other things that I don't have time to name (I'm obviously a very busy man). You can just make them up yourself if you want to. Think of something nice. Are you thinking of it? Chris Brown hates it. Your thought didn't contain enough domestic abuse for his liking. (Unless of course you are a fan of Chris Brown, in which case you probably were thinking about domestic abuse, and Chris Brown liked it.)

The second thing we can deduce from the song, is that in the attempt to manufacture a commercially successful pop song, terms such as 'innovation,' 'creativity' and 'poetry' are ugly words that get in the way of things like money, profit-margins and money.

And that is my incredibly obvious message for you all today.